by May Dawson
“Why would you want that image?” For some reason, I feel a mix of morbid curiosity and trust when it comes to him. He might say awful things to me, but he isn’t going to hurt me. I step back from the door, waving him in.
He shrugs. “Don’t you use your image for good, Tera Donovan? And yours doesn’t seem much more fun than mine.”
“No,” I say sharply. Devlin shouldn’t know what I do for the Crown.
“Now that is truly odd,” he says, his voice mocking. “I’m quite sure I heard something to that effect.”
I close the door behind me hastily, shutting out any curious ears in the hallway, just in case. Earlier that day, Airren swept my room for eavesdropping magic, as he and Mycroft do religiously. Still, better safe than sorry.
“Are you the Fox?” I demand point-blank.
His eyebrows arch, and then he grins mischievously. “Perhaps I am. It would be a good cover, wouldn’t it? Everyone despises me.”
“Rian doesn’t seem to.”
“Ah, well. Old friendships can be complicated. And he hopes to keep the diplomatic ties open between….” He gestures vaguely, indicating the north and south. “It’s a lost cause, though. Sooner or later, my mad father will take him to war.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“Vasilik is a miserable place, and getting more miserable.” He crosses his arms over his chest, the potion bottle dangling from one hand. “If I were a hero, I’d be back there. But I’m not. Does that answer your question?”
“No.” I hold my hand out for the potion. “Do you know who the Fox is?”
“The only way to trust my answers.” He waggles the bottle back and forth before he puts it into my hand.
“I’m not sure truth serum helps if you still don’t answer a direct question.”
“I thought we were having fun. I love our banter.”
“I do not.”
Thankfully, I tell him that before I raise the bottle to my lips. The truth is, Devlin is fascinating to me.
But fascinating doesn’t mean I should trust what he tells me, either.
And yet, I still down a gulp of the blue potion. It tingles against my lips. It reminds me of Pop-Rock candy from dirtside, made into liquid form. The potion feels like little explosive pops against my tongue and in the back of my throat.
“Tell me something, Tera,” he says casually. “Something so you’ll know it works.”
“I figured I could dance around questions like you do.”
“Do you have a crush on the Fox?”
“Why do you care?”
He grins. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Half of Avalon has a crush on the Fox.”
“Do you?”
That makes him throw back his head and laugh. “He drives my father even madder, so perhaps I do love him—or at least, the idea of him.”
I cross my arms. “So you’re not the Fox.”
“I wish I could say I was, beautiful girl. I’d like if your crush was on me.” His eyes sharpen. “Still, even if I’m not wearing the Fox’s mask—” he forms his hand over his eyes and nose, peeking out at me from between his fingers, so that all I can see is the sensual shape of his mouth and his jaw. “Do you think I’m cute, Tera?”
“Is the dread Prince of Vasilik really asking if I think he’s cute?”
His hand falls away. “I’m not that dreadful. I’m still interested in pretty girls. And even worse off when it comes to the brilliant ones.”
I shake my head. And yet, I can feel the irresistible impulse bubbling up in my chest to spill my guts, to tell him everything.
The serum is working.
“I think you’re handsome,” I blurt out. “Certainly, you’re not boring.”
His grin widens. “Same to you.”
“I’m handsome?” My tone is light-hearted, like his.
There’s a pause between us, full of pleasant tension, before his silver-flecked gray eyes cloud. “We only have so long until we’re interrupted, and I did come here for a reason.”
Right. The comfortable flirtation between us wilts like a drying flower. “What did you want to tell me?”
The words come out sounding thick. I can’t stop thinking about the seer. About my premonition that tonight is the night I learn truths I need to know.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, his voice kind. “But those men you love are not what you think they are.”
“Oh?”
“They’re Crown. Still in service.”
I stare at him, hoping this big revelation is just a misunderstanding. “They never put down the Shield and Wand, I know that…”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says. “You are their mission.”
“In a way, sure.” They’ve been asked to help bring down the True, to protect me. “They started at the academy at Corum long before anyone invited me to come back…”
His lips twitch into an impatient line. “The plan to bring you home has been underway since the day you left, Tera.”
“How would you know that?”
“Rian’s always longed for you.” He shakes his head in bemusement. “Some childhood crush coupled with guilt has made for a potent aphrodisiac, no matter how foolish I think it all is. He’s been heartbroken he couldn’t save you since you were thirteen.”
When I was packed off through that portal, there was someone here who was fighting for me. The thought makes my breath freeze in my chest. How much would that have meant to me while I was wandering dirtside, homeless, friendless?
My mind is still reeling. “So why didn’t he make a move sooner?”
“His father is reluctant to abdicate the throne to him, or any responsibility at all, really. Rian wants a new way of doing things. Kinder, fairer, gentler.” His lips pull up at the corners, as if he doesn’t believe those ideals are achievable. “His father does his best to defeat him at every turn, just because he thinks Rian is foolish and irresponsible.”
“He didn’t tell me any of that.” Of course he didn’t. I don’t know him that well. Devlin’s point seems to be that I don’t know any of them that well, but I want to believe he’s wrong.
“He wouldn’t.” He takes the now-empty bottle from me and sets it on a table. “Normally, neither would I.”
“What you said about…” I start to say my men and then falter over the word my. I gaze at Devlin, hoping he’ll continue without noticing.
“Rian earned his father’s trust to oversee Crown intelligence—officially, at least. He cajoled his father into following his plan and using you to lure out the True.”
“Why did you want to tell me all this?”
He flashes me a smile that’s all predatory. “I might be Rian’s oldest friend, but I’m still a Vasilik. And I love to fuck up those Avalonian good-intentions. They are so self-righteous whilst they do whatever the hell they think is best, no matter who it hurts. No matter how pretty the girl is that they’ve put in danger.”
Devlin’s not telling me everything, but I’m sure there’s truth in his words, too. I need him to keep talking while I try to make sense of this all. “So Rian had the invitation sent…”
Devlin nods. “Years ago, he had Radner move to the university to spy on the student body, with a side of teaching. Two of her best—and apparently handsomest—officers went with her. Airren and Mycroft.”
They met Cax when they stopped Ravengers coming through the rip. Maybe they were still spies, but they weren’t waiting for me. “They had other work—”
“Yes, they made themselves useful there,” he agrees. “They always do. But all the while, they were waiting for Rian to have the clout to bring you home. And when you did come through, they were watching. One of your boys waited in the hallway while that cabdriver tilted you through, and another was waiting in the train station.”
My head swims. I can just imagine one of them following at a distance while that dirtside cabdriver brought me up to the window, high above a city street, that was secretly a
portal. I’d broken two fingernails against the windowsill, afraid at the last minute he was going to push me to my death. And one of them was there, watching, silent.
“Are you all right, Tera?” he asks. He’s told me that his motivation is ugly, and yet he doesn’t sound like the trickster Vasilik in this moment.
“No,” I say, because I can’t say anything else.
“They’ve watched over you since the beginning,” he says. “Befriended you. Seduced you. Cax tried to tell you the truth, but you wanted to believe in the lies, didn’t you?”
His question stings.
“I was stupid.” The words come out flat, harsh. I didn’t mean to say them, and they hang in the air between us. It sounds like I believe Devlin.
Damn the truth serum. He doesn’t deserve to be believed. I know he’s running some kind of game, and even though I want to know the truth, I’m furious he’s breaking my heart and keeping score at the same time. He might pity me, but this is a game to him.
“You were human,” he says. “In desperate need of love.”
Devlin cocks his head as he studies my face, a flash of sympathy in his deep gray eyes, as if he knows something about that need.
“Stupid,” I repeat. That’s what it means to be human, desperate, hungry for love.
“What are you going to do now?” he asks.
“You told me this for a reason,” I snap. “What were you hoping I would do? I know you had a plan.”
“Yes,” he says. “I hoped you might come home with me. My sorcerers have magic at their disposal that Avalon does not. I promise you will not be powerless, not if you put your trust in me.”
My lips twist. He’s slipped into formal language for his invitation, and I mimic him. “It seems to me that the very act of putting your trust in another person leaves you powerless.”
“Being able to trust—wisely—is a power in and of itself,” he promises me.
“Well, I don’t trust you,” I say, dropping the fancy talk. It’s not helping. I don’t know exactly what emotion I feel, but I know it’s powerful. It’s a force expanding steadily in my chest until I think I won’t be able to breathe.
“Probably wise.” He says the words lightly, as if my anger doesn’t hurt him one bit.
After a quick knock at the door, there’s an edge of panic in Cax’s voice when he calls, “Tera?”
“Well?” Devlin asks me. “Are you going to confront them or run away?”
“Get out,” I tell him softly. “Leave me alone.”
“I’m sorry that this hurt you, Tera.”
He’s not lying. He means that.
“I don’t care.”
I mean that too.
Devlin bows forward from the waist.
I wish I knew what he really wanted from me. He knows damn well I won’t go to Vasilik. His mother follows the True philosophy, even though I’ve heard she isn’t loyal to anyone but herself. Vasilik is a dangerous place for me. It’s especially a dangerous place for me if I am, despite everything, loyal to the Crown.
And I am. I’ll be loyal to Avalon even though Avalon has never been loyal to me.
Apparently, I’m a fool when I’m in love, whether it’s a man or a country.
When Devlin opens the door to my room, I glimpse Cax in the hallway. Cax starts forward, his eyes wide.
“Go away,” I tell him, just before Devlin closes the door between me and them.
I’m left alone in the room.
More alone than I’ve been since I left dirtside.
Maybe more alone than I’ve ever been before.
Chapter 36
I pace through my room, trying to figure out what to do. Devlin’s words echo in my head. Are you going to confront them?
The room around me is lavish and beautiful. Thick rugs are soft underfoot, and the French doors to the balcony are cracked open to let night air in, creating a pleasant balance with the warmth of the crackling fireplace. It’s beautiful, and it’s strange to think of how taken I was by the sight just a few days ago.
Now it doesn’t mean anything to me. Now I just ache with misery.
It takes me a while to realize I’m not even crying. I’m numb.
I’m the same Tera Donovan I used to be.
Once upon a time, there was a girl who cried because she missed her world, a girl whose face was wet with tears even as she shoved a knife into the man who tried to murder her. And then she was gone, and in her place there was a survivor who didn’t expect anything good. To expect nothing, to want nothing, meant I could lose nothing.
I’d thought everything had changed. I thought I was changing. The loss of that change takes my breath away. It was never real. I’m still just that dirtside girl, that survivor.
I already miss the men I thought I knew.
Did those men feel something for me that developed during this time? Or have they just been doing their jobs, so very well?
The thought of being face to face with them hurts. Cax’s earnest green eyes, Airren’s smooth explanations, Mycroft’s quiet hurt that makes me feel guilty even when he’s the one hurting me…
I make a quick decision. My mother’s ghost is waiting for me back at the house where I grew up. And so are many, many other ghosts.
I’ve always known I’d have to go back there one day.
The clothes I wore here have been washed and pressed and hung in the closet. I dress quickly in the sturdy leather riding pants and simple blouse I wore for our trip here. I don’t need the finery. My hands shake as I push the buttons through the holes on my shirt. With dread, with grief.
I can’t see them.
When I glance in the mirror before I leave, it doesn’t look like anything’s changed. My face looks pretty enough: long nose, generous lips, wide, dark, thick lashes over vivid blue eyes. And my face looks blank. I don’t look like I feel much of anything. The sight of the earrings peeking through my long, caramel-blond hair reminds me that they aren’t mine either.
Nothing I have in this world is mine, but I’m going to need a few things from people along the way. I don’t want to take more than I must. Every debt has to be repaid.
And I intend to repay the debts I owe to people that gave me handfuls of lies. I accepted those gifts so eagerly.
I pull the earrings out and drop the little jade-and-diamond posts into the marble jewelry tray. I do need some gifts from Rian, but not those.
I lay Mycroft’s wand beside the jewelry tray, where he’ll find it, and then stop, rubbing my thumb across the engraved wood. He had magnified his already formidable power with this wand, with hundreds of hours of careful work etching runes and working spells, imbuing magic into the wand itself. Then he gifted it to me, because I needed one, even though he knew I couldn’t use it. He wasted it on me.
I’m going to get my power back—on my own—and when I do, I’ll need a wand.
“I’ll give it back to you someday,” I whisper even though he can’t hear me. I don’t want anything from you. I mean to say the words out loud, but I stop. I’m not sure the truth serum will let me say those words out loud, and I’m terrified to hear myself falter.
After all that, I still want something from them. I want Devlin to be lying. I want everything between us to be real.
I take the wand, and my knife and my wallet—full of the last of Cax’s money—and head for the entrance to the secret tunnels. They’ve been boarded up, and I kneel, quietly prizing the nails out of the board with the tip of my knife.
There’s a quick, confident knock at the door.
“Tera,” Airren calls through. “We need to talk.”
I don’t bother to answer. I whistle to Penny, and she comes bounding across the room to jump onto my shoulders. Her weight bows me forward, just for a second, before I straighten. She makes small, anxious sounds and I pet her head, dropping kisses in her dark fur. “We’ll be okay. We’ve got each other.”
“T,” he calls again, and this time there’s an edge in his voice.
Is it anger? Anguish? I don’t want it to be anguish because I don’t want anything to soften how I feel right now.
“Please give me a chance to explain,” he calls. That low, sexy voice of his sends a ripple of pain through my chest. I wish I could block my ears. “I fell in love with you. Nothing about that was a lie.”
Quietly, with my fingers aching from trying to pull away the rough wood, I ease the lowest board from the door.
“Okay, well, I hope you’re there. I’m going to tell you anyway.”
I drop to my stomach and slide through. A few strands of my hair catch on the rough wood above me, and they’re yanked out as I squirm into the dark.
“That first time I saw you, I felt something I’d never felt for a girl. That was before we met outside the train station. You were so—”
Airren is still talking when I leave his voice behind.
The tunnel is pitch black. Of course it is. I don’t have magic to light my way, and no one in this damned world bothers to manufacture flashlights.
I still get to my feet. It smells deeply musky in here, stale and warm. I press my hand to the rough stone wall. I just need to get into another room, away from Airren and company. From there, I need to reach the stables.
Rian gave me the unicorn. He’s too boarding-school to ever take back a gift.
I follow the wall, my fingers drifting over the stone, searching for the smooth wood of a boarded-up door. I can’t help a rising sense of panic about being trapped in here, but when I imagine myself wiggling back into that room where I’d be trapped with Airren’s smooth, low voice instead, this seems like the least-panic-inducing option.
As long as I keep moving, I don’t have to think about any of that. Just follow my new half-assed plan and I’m sure things will start going wrong soon to thoroughly distract me from my broken heart.
For some reason, I think of Stelly’s bubbly optimistic streak. It’s a good thing she’s not here. It’s one thing to run out on the men I love, but my best friend is a different story.