“Before they left, they held me down. My Fae parents, and some other Asrai. I was frightened, and I fought against them, but they were too strong. I felt a terrible twisting of my back, a pinching of my face, burning all over my scalp. I was terrified... I didn’t realize they were giving up their glamours for me and my brother. Making me into a Gardnerian. Ugly enough to keep me safe from fasting. Safe from the Fae Hunt.
“I remember screaming for my mother. And I remember her sobbing and trying to comfort me, then breaking down. My mother screaming for me as my father dragged her away, her nails like claws on my arm.”
Tierney pauses, still as a winter lake, her gaze locked on to the empty space before her.
“My Gardnerian family—we were planning on getting out of the Western Realm before the spring referendum, in case Vogel won,” she continues in a low, flat tone. “But now...we should leave right away, but we’re not ready to take our whole family across a dangerous desert.” She’s quiet for a moment. “My Fae parents...my Fae family. They were never seen or heard from again.” Tierney looks up at me, fear stark in her eyes. “The Mage Council voted today to make fasting mandatory for all Gardnerians eighteen and up. We have six months to comply.”
My stomach clenches. All of us—fasted by the spring. By choice, or by force.
“Vogel’s going to round us all up for fasting,” she continues, “and he won’t just be testing racial purity of the couple being fasted. He’s mandated the iron-testing of the fasting couple’s families at the ceremony.” Tierney’s mouth turns down in a trembling grimace. “My brother and I are Asrai Fae, Elloren. Full-blooded Water Fae. They won’t just arrest my brother and me. They’ll arrest my Gardnerian parents and brother for sheltering us. My whole family.”
She breaks into tears, dropping her face into her hands as she sobs. I go to her and sit down beside her, pulling her thin, crooked frame into my arms.
“We’ll find help.” I console her as she cries, my resolve hardening. “We’ll find a way to get your family out.”
And if no one will help us, I silently vow, we’ll fly you all out on a dragon, straight over the desert to Noi lands.
But I need more information, I realize. If we’re going to help Tierney and her family, we need to know what the Gardnerians are likely to do to the Fae. Where they’ll take them. And where the Fae disappeared to after the Realm War.
And I know exactly who to go to.
* * *
“What happened to the Fae?”
Professor Kristian pushes up his glasses and sets his pen down on his desk.
“I’ve been through all the archives,” I stubbornly tell him. And I need to know what happened so I can save my friend.
His expression turns jaded, and he spits out a grim laugh. “You won’t find anything about that in the archives.”
“I’m not in the archives,” I shoot back, shutting his door. “I’m here.”
He eyes the white band around my arm, then shoots me a hard look.
“Really?” I say, responding to his unspoken question. “Do you honestly think I support Vogel?”
Professor Kristian rubs his fingers along the side of his mouth as he sizes me up thoughtfully. He gets up, walks to the edge of one bookcase, pulls out a pile of texts and reaches behind them, sliding out a thick volume set into the case with its spine against the wall. He moves back to his desk and hands me the book.
I look at the stained, scuffed leather cover, the title scraped clear off the front and spine. My brow raised in confusion, I glance at Professor Kristian as he gestures with his chin for me to continue.
I open the book and read the title page.
Accounts from the Pyrran Isles
By Cellian Rossier
“At the end of the Realm Wars,” Professor Kristian says, his voice low, “the Gardnerians came in and purged the archives of certain texts they deemed ‘Resistance Propaganda.’ And the Gardnerian historian who wrote them...” Professor Kristian pauses until I look back at him. His eyes are heavy with warning. “He was sent back to the Pyrran Isles. Just like the Fae.”
* * *
I read in the hallway of the North Tower, by the light of a dim, flickering lamp, hunched against the wall with Marina curled up beside me.
It’s past midnight and the full weight of the night presses down on me, but I beat back against the fatigue and focus on the pages in front of me.
Toward the end of the Realm War, Cellian Rossier, an outspoken critic of the Mage Council, was arrested and sent to the Pyrran Isles. While a prisoner there, he took down secret, detailed accounts of what he witnessed, eventually escaping and smuggling his writings out with him.
They shackled the incoming Fae in Asteroth copper, the metal strong enough to sap them of their strength and power. Then they herded them into huge, stone island fortresses and locked them inside.
And then they rained iron shavings down upon their heads.
There was a toddler. A little girl no more than three years old. With jewel-toned butterfly wings that the child frantically beat as she aimlessly ran in circles and screamed for her mother. The Gardnerian soldiers laughed as they kicked at her, then, growing irritated at the noise, grabbed the child up by her wings, swung her around and slammed her headfirst into a stone wall.
The nightmarish accounts go on and on, and eventually I have to set the book down, unable to read anymore, my gut close to heaving with a nauseating mix of disgust and despair.
Devastated, I drop my head and sob into my palm, the force of the cruelty at play slamming into me like a riptide.
Marina’s slender hand comes up to pat my head with a kind, gliding touch. She murmurs softly in her rough, flutelike tones, trying her best to comfort me as I slouch down against her and cry.
* * *
I agonize over Tierney’s and Marina’s plight the next evening as I tend to several pots at once on the kitchen stove, stirring each one in turn, vaguely aware of the workers going about their tasks around me.
My despair rapidly hardens to outrage.
We’ll get Tierney out, I defiantly vow. I don’t know how, but we will. And we’ll find Marina’s skin and bring her home. Surely Gareth will be able to help us.
I stir harder at the thick stew.
And we’ll make sure the Gardnerians have one less military dragon.
Yvan enters the room and kneels down to load more wood into a nearby stove, careful not to acknowledge me in public. Too careful, I dejectedly note. I watch him out of the corner of my eye to see if the iron bothers him. He makes extremely quick work of opening the stove, not letting his hands linger on the iron handle any longer than they have to, but he doesn’t seem hurt or repulsed by it at all.
My concentration on Yvan’s movements evaporates when my brother Trystan unexpectedly walks in. Trystan is wearing his heavy winter cloak, his bag slung over his shoulder. Worried by the arrival of an unknown Gardnerian, the Urisk and Kelt workers quickly give us a wide berth and find tasks to do in the corners of the kitchen farthest from us, or even outside. Iris and Bleddyn shoot each other looks of alarm.
“I have a present for Yvan,” Trystan announces in a delighted whisper. Trystan is smiling. Not a barely detectable smile of irony, but an actual wide, triumphant grin. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile so widely in his entire life. Trystan looks pointedly at Yvan then discreetly at the back door.
I quietly follow Trystan out, Yvan exiting soon after.
Yvan joins us under the lantern that hangs by the kitchen’s back door, the three of us huddled together in the cold, our breath fogging the air.
Trystan extends his hand and opens it, like a flower greeting the sun.
In his palm is the Elfin steel arrowhead. In pieces. Lots of them.
I gasp.
“But how?”
Yvan breathes, like he’s viewing a miraculous mirage. “I thought you couldn’t break it...”
“Oh, you can break it,” Trystan says, slyly, “if you freeze it first.”
Understanding lights Yvan’s expression. So incredibly simple. So obvious.
Trystan’s eyes take on a dark, mischievous glint. “I don’t know about you two,” he whispers, still grinning, “but I’m in the mood for breaking cages.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ice
After my shift ends, I rush back to the North Tower, a spring in my step that even my heavy book bag can’t weigh down. I’m elated by Trystan’s discovery, only half aware of my surroundings. Thoughts of dragon rescue whir excitedly in my mind.
Saved. Everyone who’ll need to get out as good as saved. Wynter. Ariel. Tierney. Yvan. We’ll rescue Yvan’s dragon, and no one will have to be afraid anymore.
It’s dark and winter-quiet on the broad field leading up to the tower, and a sickle moon hangs overhead.
The wind picks up and whistles through the nearby forest. The eerie sound highlights a deeper silence, the surrounding wilds a tangle of bare branches.
Watching me.
I slow, then stop, suddenly rooted to my place on this broad expanse of sloping field. The walk from the University city to the North Tower is long and solitary, far away from everything. The wind shudders through the trees.
I swear I can feel eyes on me.
The hairs on the back of my neck go up, and I glance uneasily around.
The North Tower is still a distance away, a dim light shining from its upstairs window. The lower half of the tower has an odd glint, as if it’s glazed with a thin layer of spun sugar.
Ice.
Alarmed, I stop and turn clear around, the lights of the University city mere pinpricks in the distance. From here, the mammoth stone buildings are as small as a child’s toys. My heart picks up speed.
Movement by a solitary tree catches my eye, halfway between me and the wilds. I squint and make out the dark silhouette of a woman.
She steps toward me, moonlight flooding over her. Panicked recognition sweeps over me.
Fallon Bane.
Ancient One, no. No, please no. Not here. She can’t be here.
I’m frantically aware of the North Tower at my back as danger floods my mind.
Marina. Marina. Marina.
My heart thuds high in my chest as Fallon approaches. My palms go moist as the wind whistles around us both and digs its icy claws into me.
Where’s her guard? She never goes anywhere without her guard.
I nervously peer into the distance and can just make the four men out, waiting at the base of the field, quietly watching us.
I can barely think around the blood thudding in my temples.
She’s come for revenge, I sickeningly realize. Revenge for Lukas gifting me with the violin.
Desperate, I go on the offensive, wanting to drive Fallon and her guards clear back from this field, away from the tower.
“What are you doing here?” I demand as I drop my book bag to the ground and stomp toward her on shaky legs. I shoot her a mocking scowl as I come to a stop just before her. “Did someone leave your cage open?”
Fallon coughs out an incredulous laugh and smiles broadly. “Oh, I’m not the one who needs a cage,” she purrs. She flicks the tip of her wand idly toward the North Tower. “I think the Icarals are the ones who need a cage, don’t you?” She tilts her head and cocks her brow expectantly at me. Then she inhales sharply, as if surprised. “Oh, wait. I forgot.” Her cloying sarcasm quickly morphs to venom. “They’re your friends, aren’t they?”
Marina. Marina. Marina.
An image of Marina screaming as Fallon and her guard drag her away flashes through my mind. Wynter, Ariel and I dragged away, too, and jailed for thievery.
And Diana—what if Diana’s there? She’ll kill both Fallon and her guard before she’ll let them take any of us.
I take a threatening step toward Fallon and jab my finger at the ice-coated base of the North Tower. “What have you done to my lodging?”
“Just playing,” she says, thrusting her lower lip out in mock apology. Eyes on me, she raises her wand, murmurs a spell and sends a thin stream of ice coursing through the air. It lands at the North Tower’s base in a glimmering rope.
“Stop it,” I demand, outraged. I lunge forward and push her wand arm roughly away. The rope of ice lassoes outward and falls to the field in a crystalline shatter.
Fallon is quick as a snake. Her hand comes around my arm, hard as a vise, her wand at my throat. I gasp and shrink back from the madness in her eyes.
“Or you’ll do what, exactly, Mage Elloren Gardner?” She gives me a hard shove, sending me falling backward to the icy ground. Then she steps back, circles her wand toward my chest and hisses out a spell through gritted teeth.
Ice shoots from her wand and collides with the invisible shield just above my clothing, my tunic rubbed with Professor Hawkkyn’s metal powder.
Metal to block ice.
Fallon’s eyes fly open then narrow tightly with understanding. Her eyes dart toward the North Tower, then back to me with a knowing gleam. “Is the beast up there, too?”
“What beast?” I ask casually, my heart thumping. Marina Marina Marina Marina.
Fallon’s mouth twists into a lascivious grin. “You know exactly who I mean. The Snake Elf.” Her eyes widen. “You’ve got him up there, don’t you? Along with all the other creatures you’re collecting.”
My mind reels with confusion.
Of course, I realize. The metal shield. She actually thinks I could be hiding Professor Hawkkyn.
I spit out a stupefied laugh and glare at her, my anger spiking. “No, no Elves. Just my Icaral roommates.” I flash a hard, taunting grin. “And my new violin.”
I regret the words as soon as they leave my lips.
Ice blasts from her wand, and I cry out as my boots freeze to the ground, the cold searing my toes.
“Forgot to shield your boots, did you?” she crows, her eyes bright with hate. She circles around me, a hard gleam in her eyes as I frantically try to tug my boots free. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Elloren Gardner,” she says with a sneer, as I manage to crack one boot off the icy ground. “Icarals. Lupines. The big Amaz. Elves. Maybe even a Snake Elf who’s slipped by my watch.” Her eyes flick toward the tower like a cat who’s caught her mouse. “All coming and going. At odd hours, too.” She stops, shakes her head and tsk-tsks at me. “Why, I wonder. And then I think...” She glances up at the tower thoughtfully. “What could you possibly have up there that’s so interesting?” She smiles wide with manic glee. “Let’s find out!”
She makes for the North Tower, and I cry out, desperately trying to grab her.
Just as my fingers grasp the silk of her tunic, her uniform bursts into illumination. Strange runes glow a fierce white all over her tunic and cloak, sending their light out onto the field like small searchlights.
Confusion barrels through me. Where did those come from?
Fallon looks down at the clothing, then to me with rising horror.
One of her guards yells out an oath, and each man sets off at a fast clip up the field. A silver streak whistles through the air to my right and slams straight into Fallon.
It’s a huge knife, now impaling the side of her chest.
The moment slows and stretches out as Fallon’s head jerks up and she sucks in a loud, whistling gasp of air. She falls backward to the ground with a sickening thud.
I take it all in, my eyes and mouth opening wide in stunned disbelief.
Terror, like a hot iron, sears into my chest, and the nightmare snaps back to vivid life with bracing speed.
Fallon grasps at her chest
, her breath labored and wheezing. She lifts her wand, grits her teeth and sends up a bright, crystalline dome of ice over us, thin lines of blue light coursing over the translucent shield like small, crackling lightning, the air chilling to frigid. I’m awed by her skill as well as her fierce tenacity, even when seriously wounded.
I flinch back as another knife collides against the shield in a shower of ice crystals, its terrifying point piercing the ice.
Two men burst from the wilds. They’re large men, all in shadows, black-garbed with dark fabric wrapped around their heads and faces. They raise curved swords marked with glowing gold runes as they run toward us. Two large shapes explode from the woods on either side of them and take flight with compact wings that send air currents down with powerful, rhythmic whooshes.
Dragons!
But like no dragons I’ve ever seen before—they’re the size of large dogs, boxy and muscular, one black, one red.
The runic light from Fallon’s clothing reflects off the collective riot of weapons, teeth, claws and wild eyes all hurtling straight for us.
A black terror swamps over me, and I frantically pull at the laces of my frozen boot with shaking hands.
Everything descends into chaos.
Fallon’s guards frantically yell to each other as streaks of their wand fire spear through the air with staccato bursts of golden light. Fallon hurls out javelins of ice toward the assassins and the dragons, the spears scything straight through her ice shield as if it were mere air.
Breathless, I cower near the ground.
Fallon’s guard runs toward the men and the dragons, wands raised as they continue to throw lines of fire out that are easily deflected by the assassins’ curved swords. The black dragon swoops down and collides with one of our soldiers. I gasp in horror as the beast latches onto his throat and the soldier sends up a gurgling scream. Another soldier thrusts his sword into the beast’s neck, the creature sending up a jagged shriek before slumping to the ground.
The red dragon crashes into our shield with an earsplitting shatter, the dome cracking apart. Ice rains down on us in a shower of frigid, clinking shards as the beast thumps down beside us, red-scaled belly up, eyes rolled back.
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