“This is too much,” I said, shaking my head and turning my back to him. I started walking again, trying to process it all—that Red Fever had activated some strand of DNA in my body that wasn’t even human, then hearing what Uri was saying about killing Eve…actual Eve from The Garden of Eden. And now, that my family and best friend were being told that I was dead, but that I was never even supposed to remember any of my life before coming to Eden’s Bluff.
I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach, and I still couldn’t get a deep enough breath.
And then, I was falling.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I heard Leo call my name from far away, and then I heard Rhea.
“They’re here!” she called, and a second later, I was yanked upward by an arm around my stomach. My arms and legs were dangling, but I couldn’t even turn a fraction of an inch in the vise grip to see anything other than the whitecap waters reflecting the moonlight below.
It seemed like I only had time to blink before I was falling again, but this time only a few feet. I rolled a few times before coming to a stop in the cool grass.
“Damn, Rhea—she’s not even shifted!” Bryce yelled.
“If she’s hurt, she’ll heal. I need to go back for Alec.”
I looked up with enough time to see the back of Rhea’s red and gold wings arc wide, then bend in as she darted out of sight. She quickly reappeared after Leo in the night sky, barely visible save for his silhouette in the moonlight, the light and shadows outlining the curves of his wings and the outline of his cheekbones, chest, and shoulders. Alec had hooked his arms over Rhea’s, letting go when his feet were close enough to the ground.
Leo’s wings collapsed and folded in immediately when he saw me, then ran to kneel next to me. “Halsey!” he looked me up and down. “Are you OK? I saw Rhea grab you. Are your ribs—?”
“She’s fine,” Rhea sighed and rolled her eyes. “What happened? You both just fell into, and then out of the fog. Did you find the tear?”
Leo turned to her, then to everyone. “We found it, kind of. We were somewhere called The Fold. It was like, a neutral space or something—just all fog in every direction—but the tear must have been close by.”
“Are you sure?” Alec asked, pushing his hands through his wet hair. “There was nothing in the water except for rocks.” I couldn’t help but watch the intricately woven muscles of his torso move as he put on his dry clothes—there wasn’t even an ounce of fat on his entire body.
“A raven messenger was in there with us,” Leo answered. “That’s where it said we were—in The Fold between the worlds.”
“What’s a raven messenger?” Alita asked, hugging her knees.
“Kind of like a living map,” Leo said, turning to Alita. “A guide that tells you where you are…if you can figure out what it’s saying.”
Leo went on to tell the others that we’d overheard Uri talking to Ghob, who was now going by the name Luz. He explained that they were talking about Eve—the actual Eve—and how Uri intended to make Leo one of the generals in charge of killing her.
“Wait, Uri is Uriel? The archangel?” Bryce laughed, incredulous. “Uriel…who guarded the gates of Eden after Adam and Eve were kicked out?”
“Why would he just let Lucifer in?” Alec asked, now totally dry somehow. “And how is Eve still alive?”
“I don’t know, but Uri is working with Ghob to kill her. They’re talking about a war,” Leo answered.
“And how convenient that you’re one of the generals in that war,” Bryce said accusatorially.
Leo glared at him. “You think I asked for this?”
Bryce put his tablet down and got to his feet. “Why else would Ghob want you instead of a Gnome?”
“She wants a Gnome too,” I interrupted before they could escalate anything. “Ghob said she needed one of each Elemental type. That’s why she wanted another Sylph when they wrote Ian off for being too supportive of humans. There have to be four, plus whoever Knox Ryder is,” I insisted. “She said he was the fifth general, and they seemed to think he was the one who could lift the veil.”
Alec laughed out loud. “If that veil comes up, there will be no more separation between the Elemental world and this one. Not to mention whatever else is locked behind there.”
Bryce shrugged and shook his head. “Would that be so bad?” he asked. “Then we wouldn’t be stuck on this island. We could go anywhere we wanted without having to hide what we really are.”
“Wait, five generals for five continents,” Leo said to himself, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the conversation. “So Ghob and Uri are probably the other two,” he added, then finally looked up at the rest of us in realization. “They’re going to start a world war.”
“Or a war on the world,” Rhea added a few seconds later.
“Then we need to find Eve before Uri does,” I nearly shouted. “Ghob said she had somebody named Knox Ryder, and that she’d lured him off her boat in Portland.” I cleared my throat when everyone’s eyes fell on mine. “I’m from Portland, and I think there’s another tear in the veil there. It’s in the woods near my house.”
Alita nodded and forced a laugh. “Oh, our Citadel complex has woods too.”
I shook my head at her before I turned back to the others. “I meant if there’s supposed to be a tear close to each of our towns, I think I know where the one in Portland is. I think I know where to find Eve.”
I stopped feeling so confident in my information when everyone stared at me. Maybe I was just in shock…had I babbled any of that?
“Even if you do know where Eve is, so what?” Alec shrugged. “It’s not like we can get there. Once again, there’s no gateway underwater. Leo and Rhea can’t take on Uri and Ghob alone, and they can’t carry all three of us through the tear you just found.”
I glanced around at everyone to see if they agreed, but no one’s expression changed. “I…could carry someone,” I finally said, and now everyone except Leo started laughing again. “I can do it,” I insisted, which, to my surprise, stopped their chuckling. “I just need some time to learn.”
They all stared at me blankly until Leo spoke up. “I’ll work with you up here at night then.” He nodded, then turned to the others. “She’ll be ready.”
“Whatever,” Rhea said, which seemed to set the tone for everyone else, who also unceremoniously agreed.
“Well, if everyone is done leaping off cliffs for the evening, I’m going to go see what I can find out about The Fold,” Bryce said, picking up his tablet and slipping it into his bag. “I’ll let you know when we have enough information to try again.”
Alita got to her feet and dusted off to follow him. “See you at home,” she said to me, which made my chest ache all over again. This place wasn’t home, even if she couldn’t remember why.
Alec slipped an arm around Rhea’s waist and nuzzled her neck, then said something about hitching another ride. She elbowed him in the ribs and laughed as he feigned injury all the way down the hill.
This left Leo and me standing in awkward silence. I didn’t know how to remedy that since my options were either to scream at him for deceiving me, or run into his arms for saving me, so I left him standing there and started the long walk back to my dorm. If I were to take a clinical look at everything, I’d have to start with a baseline of what was known: I wasn’t completely human, a war between worlds was coming, and if I ever wanted to go home again, I needed to learn how to fly.
I’d skipped breakfast the next morning mainly because I just couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed, despite Alita’s nauseating enthusiasm about waffles. It felt like my mind was still rejecting everything that had happened since I left The Grind, even though I didn’t need any more proof it wasn’t a Red Fever coma dream, and none of this had been a hallucination. If I was ever going to get home again, I needed to start playing by the rules of this reality.
I made my way to my honing session the same way I’d gone before, but this
time I wasn’t talking with Ian and could pay attention to the impossibly surreal plants and insects that lined the route. Flowers with dark green stems and leaves that curled in on themselves, the buds a deep red with bright blue plumes escaping the centers. Not even a few feet farther up the path, magenta butterflies with long, feathered antennae fluttered over another patch of flowers, these like carnations, only purple and orange with variegated leaves.
But it wasn’t until I saw the tail end of something climbing up the white, birch-like bark of a tree that I stopped, completely in awe. An armored, bright yellow snake with actual horns appeared from behind the thick trunk, and I nearly fell backward when I saw that it wasn’t a snake at all. Whatever this was, it had arms and legs like a lizard’s and red and gold flowing wings like something in a fantasy drawing. As it made its way up the trunk and onto an extended branch, I realized it must have been at least six feet long with the girth of a softball. Each of its armored plates caught the sun as it moved, reflecting hypnotizing, iridescent rays in its wake.
“Wow…” I said under my breath, mesmerized by how beautiful it was.
“That’s a Djin snake,” Leo whispered, which was ironically more startling than it would have been if he’d just used his normal voice. I sucked in a quick breath, fortunately managing not to scare the animal in the tree away. Leo took a few slow steps toward me and stopped at my side. “I don’t think it’s a student either—no one really moves into their full shift unless they don’t have to come out of it for the day. And everyone is doing something now during honing week.”
“A Djin snake…” I repeated, then remembered this was what Bryce had called Rhea that first day in the dining hall. This was her shift. “This is what Rhea becomes?” I asked, glancing at Leo.
“If she wants to,” he answered, his eyes widening as the snake-like animal unfolded its wings in the rays of sun falling over them. “But she doesn’t like it—says it feels too confining—so she usually shifts just enough for her wings to come out.”
“That’s why her skin turned into the armored plates, and her hair…” I trailed off, amazed all over again as I remembered.
“This is the serpent Lucifer pretended to be in the Eden story with Eve.”
I remembered what Ghob had said about them all being punished for it—they’d lost their wings, arms, and legs—and I was suddenly struck with anger.
“Why were they all punished? It wasn’t their fault.”
Leo shrugged. “It’s just the way it was,” he said, tilting his head to admire the glittering wings as they soaked in the sunlight. “But they’re in their original form here, since this island is basically a replica of Eden. You won’t see them like this anywhere else in the world.”
We started walking towards the honing grounds, and I felt something light inside me. This injustice was no different from the power dynamic in The Grind where the innocent were punished and the guilty went free.
I had to learn to fly. I had to find my way home to my family and Max. And I had to warn Eve.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Leo walked me to the Sylph practice field, still apologizing the whole way for trying to make me forget where I came from. I didn’t know if I forgave him yet, but whether I did or not, we had to move past it so we could find our way home.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said, stopping just before he went ahead to help with the Salamander honing session. “If you’ll let me.”
“Teach me to fly, and we’ll call it a good start,” I answered. The corner of his mouth tacked up, and he gave me a little nod.
“Meet me on the cliff tonight. Just before sunset.”
“All right,” I said. He nodded one last time, then turned to make his way over the hill to his training session.
I had been expecting to see Midori on the Sylph field, but Ian was leading our group today. And apparently, I was late.
“Nice a’ye tae join us, Halsey,” he all but shouted across the field of Sylphs in white, racerback tank tops, who were practicing some kind of breathing exercise. I jumped when two of them closest to me suddenly disappeared in a puff of air strong enough to blow my tie over my shoulder. Each of their clothes fell to the ground in a heap, but no one seemed to pay any attention.
“What the hell!” I shouted involuntarily, my heart instantly pounding like I’d run all the way here. Several of the students started laughing, and Ian did little to deter them.
“Jes workin’ on transmutation,” he said casually, like I was supposed to have any idea what that meant. “It means how tae shift. We introduced it at the beginning of class. A half-hour ago.” Ian added with a flat smile. “Get’che a place then.”
A hummingbird and a huge, yellow moth fluttered back into the space where the two other students had just been, and with another gust, they both reappeared. The girls grabbed the other’s arms and started jumping up and down in celebration, each of them squealing and laughing until they realized their clothes were currently being trampled under their own feet. They screamed and scrambled back into their skorts and racerback shirts.
“Well-done, lassies.” Ian nodded at them, and their instant, obvious mortification was palpable. I turned away from them quickly in order to be one fewer set of eyes on them and waited for my instructions. But… Ian didn’t say a thing.
“Hey…” I glanced at the tall, dark-haired boy next to me. “How do we shift?” I whispered, completely unprepared for the death glare he gave me in return. Instead of just his lips frowning at me, his entire face seemed to turn down as he opened his mouth to answer me. The corners of his eyes, the muscles in his cheeks, even his dark hair, all of it almost looked like it was melting.
I stumbled back again, nearly falling into the person behind me as I watched the boy’s nose and cheekbones sharpen and his black hair grow down his arms. I only had time to blink before his shoulders arched, and the lengths of black hair gave way to black feathers that shimmered blue in the sunlight.
“I did it!” he yelled and started flapping his huge wings. They took out the girl behind me, whom I’d almost stumbled into a few seconds before.
“Indeed, ye have, lad!” Ian said, moving toward us clapping, then leaned in when he was close enough. “But listen, ya wee doo, mind yer wings, aye?” He winked to the girl behind us, then slapped the boy on the shoulder. As if he’d hit a button, the huge, black wings retracted, and Ian nodded to me. “Yer up, lass.”
“Oh, no… I don’t know how to shift on purpose,” I said, shaking my head. “And…I wore the wrong shirt for, um, my wings,” I added, looking down at my striped tie and white button-down.
“Highly advisable ye keep ‘em tucked in, then. Go on wi’ the rest, though.” Ian folded his arms and shifted his weight to one hip, apparently waiting for me to partially shift.
I shook my head at him. “Like I said, I don’t know how to do it.”
“Shore ye do.” He nodded adamantly, then reached into his pocket and, to my horror, pulled out my bra. “Ah believe that belongs tae ye, no?” he asked, tossing it to me. I snatched it out of the air, and felt heat rush into my cheeks. Sharp prickles ran down my arms, and I started to panic that my wings would tear my shirt to pieces in front of everyone just like last time.
“No…no, stop!” I said, frantically studying my hands, which were also starting to prickle.
“Let it come,” Ian ordered. “But only tae yer hands. Reroute each wee stabby like a leaf in a current.”
I tried to do what he said, to imagine water pulling each of the prickles to my hands as I tried to swallow the panic welling up in my chest. I pictured a rushing waterfall at the top of my head washing the prickles down my shoulders, then I pictured a crashing wave at the small of my back sending the prickles up and over my shoulders, down my arms, and finally, into my fingers.
It was working. The sharp little points that were everywhere a second ago were actually rerouting to my hands, and when I looked down, the feathers were only appearing there, st
opping halfway up my forearms.
“It’s working…” I said with the last of a breath. The rush of excitement broke my focus, though, and prickles started traveling higher up my arms, soon followed by feathers and the grotesque raised ridges. “No, no…no,” I said, consciously trying to channel the sensation back to my hands, and while the feathers didn’t recede, to my relief, the ridges finally did.
“That’s braw,” Ian said. “Weel done!”
“It worked!” I gasped. “You were right, I just had to think of the water pushing the—”
“Water?” Ian interrupted, raising an eyebrow. “Is 'at what ye imagined?”
I studied his face for a second, confused.
“Yeah, you said to imagine the wee stab or whatever like a leaf on a current.”
His eyes widened a little. “An' water is what came tae mind—nae air…“ he stated rather than asked, then nodded slowly. “Weel, tae change back, push th' stabs oot yer fingers an' toes.”
I did as he said, imagining the prickles running out of the ends of my fingers. To my amazement, the feathers that covered my hands started to recede.
Could it be this easy? I just somehow trigger a rush of emotion to create a flood of heat, and then just imagine that heat flowing to a particular place to control the shift? This must be how Leo and Rhea were able to stop right after their wings appeared.
“Thanks for—” I started to say, but Ian had already made his way to the other side of the field to help someone else. I stared at him, astonished that he had silently covered so much ground in a matter of seconds. In fact, when I looked around for the other Sylphs who were just here training next to me, they’d also drifted several yards away. I was standing far from the group, and I hadn’t moved at all.
Academy of Magic Collection Page 71