I’d climb up onto my bathroom counter and lean into the mirror glass until my nose was only inches from it. I knew that the difference in color could be small, a hint of green or a shade darker blue, so I had to look very carefully.
But when the change came, it was obvious. One morning when I checked in the mirror, three months after my seventh birthday, there were two silver eyes staring back at me.
My knees slipped on the granite, and I fell off the counter with a yelp.
“What was that?” my foster mother called from down in the kitchen.
I sat up. Pain shot up my back, but I hardly noticed. “My eyes turned!” I yelled.
Something crashed downstairs; a second later, the thump-thump of footsteps was thundering up to the bathroom. My mother wrenched open the door with a frying pan still in her hand. She fell to her knees beside me on the linoleum and grabbed my cheeks, turning my head roughly to face her. I whimpered, surprised.
She examined me for a moment, then let out a deep sigh of relief. “Oh, thank the Goddess,” she breathed, hugging me tightly and planting a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m going to call your father, okay?” She pulled her phone from her pocket, flipped it open, and fumbled with the buttons, her hands shaking so hard she had to dial the number twice.
“I’m in a meeting, honey,” my foster father’s voice crackled out from the phone.
“Keira’s eyes turned, Stefen,” my mother told him, her voice shaking even more than her hands. A tear inched down the side of her cheek. “Silver. She’s all right.”
4 October: Keira
“I’ll drive,” the faedra guy says once we reach Basil’s car, holding out his hand. He’s put his sunglasses back on, thank the Goddess. “Who has the keys?” I point back to Baz.
“I’m not handing my car over to some invisible shifter freak I don’t know anything about,” Baz says resolutely. “Even if he did just help break us out of a cage. We don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Feolan.”
“Okay, well, that doesn’t actually tell us anything.”
“Look, I’m trying to help you,” he insists, wiggling his fingers. “Keira told me your plan; you’re trying to get to New Fauske, but you don’t even have ice-glass to hide your auras.”
“I used to have ice-glass,” I mutter. “Before some asshole vamps stole it from me.”
“Well, I’ve got a whole collection of it back at my place. I’ll take you there—it’s in the direction you’re headed, and as long as we can outpace the Sentries we just fought off, I can guarantee we won’t pass by any Shade camps or patrol routes on the way.”
Baz and Wes exchange a glance. “You have ice-glass?” Wes asks tentatively. In response, Feolan shows him his bracelet: a golden band that creeps over the back of his hand to form a point just beneath the knuckle of his middle finger, with a small piece of ice-glass embedded in its metal.
Wes clenches his jaw and nods; sighing, Baz unzips his backpack and hands Feolan the keys.
I take shotgun, leaving Baz and Wes to climb in the back. “This is the second time today we’re being chauffeured around by a couple of shifters,” Baz mutters.
“No gun on us this time, though,” Wes points out.
Feolan slams on the gas and yanks the car back onto the road, driving as fast as Baz’s Malibu will let him. There’s really no need to rush at all—no Sentries are going to come after us. En route to the guard station, I’d managed to send Caphian a quick mind-link message to tell the border guards to let us rescue the Wardens. They’d done a pretty good job of faking the fight, at least until the end.
“All right,” I say, leaning forward towards Feolan. “Now that we’re out of that mess, I think it’s about time you told us what your deal is. How are you a not-dead adult faedra, and how the hell did you turn yourself invisible?”
Feolan swerves to avoid a dead deer splayed out on the street, going precariously fast considering the size of the roads. The Sentry detector now resting against the dashboard shows no shifter auras chasing after us; hopefully he’ll realize soon that he can slow down a bit.
“Hold on a second,” Basil says from the back. “What even is a faedra?”
“A shifter whose eyes turn black,” I tell him. “They’re supposed to be thrown out in the woods to die as soon as their eyes change.”
“Shit,” Basil mutters. “What the hell for?”
“To a Nixa-worshipper,” Feolan says, “a faedra is an abomination, worthy of only a slow and painful end. When my eyes turned, my foster parents left me for dead like all good Sentry parents are supposed to do.”
“But you didn’t die,” Wes says.
“No,” he agrees, “I didn’t die. I was born in Nepal, in the Eastern Province’s capital, just north of the border into jnani India. A few days after I was abandoned, a group of jnani living in the mountains found me and took me in.”
“So you were raised by jnani,” I say, skeptical. “A bunch of creepy mind-readers that hate everyone who isn’t part of their cult.”
“The jnani hate the Nixans and Wardens, yes,” Feolan says; “but not abandoned seven-year-old shifter boys. They didn’t blame me for everything the Sentries have put them through.” He smirks. “I learned so much more from them than I ever could’ve learned from Sentry parents. They’re the ones who taught me to turn myself invisible, using Old Magic.”
“The jnani can’t use Old Magic,” I say. “Or you. That makes no sense.” Only Nixan priests are supposed to be able to. Then again, he had turned himself invisible, and unless that’s a faedra thing, Old Magic seems like the only possible explanation. I clutch at my head, already feeling a headache coming on.
“Anyone can use Old Magic,” says Feolan. “Even a Sen, if they were trained. It’s not some exclusive holy Nixan power—all you need is ice-glass to channel it.” He taps the stone on his bracelet.
I shake my head. I’d been wearing ice-glass for years; does that mean I could’ve been using Old Magic all that time? Had I been using it already without realizing it, every time my pendant helped me in a fight? Or is Feolan just spouting bullshit? The last option seems the most likely.
“Okay, enough with Keira,” Wes cuts in. “I have some questions, too.” He pulls Ferignis from his bag and unsheathes it, right there in the car. “Take a look at this.”
Feolan grabs the sword, turning it over and studying it with a smile on his face. “Whoa,” I say, grabbing the wheel as we begin to creep into the wrong lane.
“I know this sword,” Feolan says. “It was a gift from the jnani.” He looks at me. “Is this what you wanted to kill the duke with?”
“Yes,” Wes answers when I don’t respond. “It works, right? The magic curse thing?”
Feolan raises his eyebrows. “You think the jnani gave you a magic cursed sword? They’re just mind-readers.”
“Well, that’s what they told us. Don’t they have special jnani magic, though?”
“The jnani have no magic but Old Magic,” Feolan says, shaking his head. “And Old Magic can’t curse anything—all it can do is manipulate the senses and create illusions. Fenella Shirey might think this is a powerful weapon, but it’s no different than any other sword—Duke Fenris and his priests know that as well as I do. You could kill the duke with it, sure, but it would be a lot easier to just use your fire-guns.” He gives the sword back to Wes and finally returns his hands to the steering wheel.
I press my head against the car window, more confused than ever. There’s no way this guy could be telling the truth. Fenris wouldn’t send me across the country to bring him a magic sword that he knows isn’t actually a magic sword. “Even if the sword isn’t cursed,” I say slowly, “how would Fenris know that? He seemed pretty worried when he found out about it.”
“He knows,” Feolan insists. “The jnani have far-casters observing him. His High Priestess has told him much more than she was meant to about the secrets of Old Magic. He knows what’s real and what’s not.”
<
br /> “Well, I think it makes perfect sense,” Wes says angrily. “Wouldn’t Fenris want people to think that he’s the only thing between them and some evil curse?”
“It doesn’t make perfect sense,” I mutter. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
“Why not?” Wes wonders. “You believe what a bunch of Nixans and Sentries brainwashed you into thinking instead of a shifter raised by mind-readers?”
I spin around to face him and Baz. “Well, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of us being here, then, doesn’t it? If Ferignis can’t curse the Nixans?” Why are they buying into this guy so easily? I guess the fact that the two of them have come this far on the word of one of their sworn enemies testifies to their moronic level of gullibility, but still.
“Oh, screw Ferignis.” Wes tosses the sword aside, nearly cutting off Basil’s thumb. “We’ve made it this far; we’re going to New Fauske to get my sister and kill Fenris, curse or no curse.”
“Do you really not believe me?” Feolan asks, lifting his glasses to study me with his faedra-black eyes. I shudder. “I just proved that shifters can do things the Nixans have always claimed we can’t—doesn’t that make you wonder, at least?”
“He’s got a point,” says some little voice deep in my thoughts. Feolan did turn himself invisible right before my eyes, twice, and he’s an alive adult faedra—both of those are things I wouldn’t have thought possible yesterday. And it’s not like the duke has ever been very trustworthy; he wants to exile his own daughter, after all. But I can’t believe Feolan, because that would negate the whole reason for my being here. I squeeze shut my eyes, holding back a groan as all the conflicting thoughts swirl around my head like hyperactive ballerinas.
I really, really wish I’d never run into this guy.
4 October: Cassatia
My father leads me down the hall to the prisoners’ cell, his hand a fist in the small of my back. Artificial lights glare down at us, turning the stark white walls blindingly bright. My heart pounds in my throat; I’ve never been allowed to see the infidel prisoners before, and that had always been perfectly fine with me.
I can hear noises up ahead, distant like they’re coming from underwater. I can’t make out what they are, which is probably a good thing.
As we walk, the noises grow louder and louder, echoing in my ears. Eventually I can’t take it anymore: I stop at the end of the hall, the blood cold in my veins. “We don’t have to see them,” I say quietly.
Fenris nods. “We do,” he says. “It’s the only way you’ll understand.” He guides me around the corner, and we come face-to-face with a thick glass wall enclosing a space about the size of my bedroom.
Crouched beside the far wall is a dark-haired, olive-skinned girl—a Warden girl—hiding her head between her knees and shaking. Beside her kneels a man with electricity dancing between his fingers.
“A llyre.”
My father nods. “We brought him in a few weeks ago.”
A few yards away is the other prisoner—a dustie boy, a little younger than Aren, with a patch covering his scarred left eye socket—and a Nixan man standing over him with an ice-whip. Both of them have their gazes fixed on the girl.
The llyre says something to her, his voice low and muffled by the glass wall. She shakes her head, not looking up from between her knees. Even from here, I can see the welts and scars running up and down her arms. The llyre says something else; this time, she raises her head to meet him eye-to-eye, trembling, and spits in his face.
The llyre’s electric hand immediately catches her arm, and she lets out an ear-splitting, inhuman shriek, her body lurching at least a foot in the air. The dustie boy cries out and tries to run to her—the Nixan behind him snaps his whip hard against his back, and the boy falls flat onto his stomach and stops moving.
My mouth goes dry. “Is he dead?”
My father gives a little chuckle. “He wishes he were. They both do.”
The girl, pulling herself off the floor and shaking even harder than before, locks eyes suddenly with me. I stiffen. Her eyes narrow, and she forces herself onto her feet; her wobbling legs give out twice before she can stand up. She stumbles over towards the glass wall, and the llyre man does nothing to stop her. I wish he would, even if it meant another scream.
She stops right in front of me and puts her hands against the glass. I quickly look down, but my father grabs me by the jaw and forces me to meet her eyes. “Look at her,” he urges.
The Warden girl has bones for arms and legs, and not an inch of skin unmarred. Her clothes have been torn to shreds, and her teeth are yellow and rotten. But her eyes are bright, lit by a fiery hatred directed right at me. The eyes alone I know will give me nightmares for many days to come.
“She and the boy have been here a year and a half now. Every day, we give them the chance to tell us what we want to hear. If either of them did, we would give them a quick death—we would even cremate them like their people prefer. But every day, they refuse.” The Warden’s eyes grow harder, brighter; I wonder if she can understand my father through the glass. “We’ve tried everything to get them to speak, but neither of them has offered information any more important than the whereabouts of a useless jnani sword. It was two months before we even learned their names.” My father’s breath is hot against my ear. “They have endured incomprehensible pain to help their side. They would rather become living corpses than tell us anything that could hurt their people. And you refuse to bond with a prince to help yours.” He releases my jaw, looking me right in the eyes. “Do you understand now?”
The llyre finally grabs the Warden girl, pulling her back by the arm. She struggles, screaming; he slams a fist against her temple.
Something breaks inside me—I can’t do this anymore. Maybe the infidel prisoners can keep their resolve, but I can’t. I’m too weak.
“All right,” I say, choking on the words. “I’ll do what you want.”
Fenris pulls the ring box out from under his arm and opens it. “Put this on.” The Warden girl lets out another shriek, somehow higher and louder than the last.
I take out the ring, turning it over in my trembling hands, and slide it onto my middle finger. It fits perfectly. “Can we go now?”
“We can.” My father drapes an arm around my shoulders and leads me away from the glass, back around the corner and down the hall, with the screams growing louder and louder the farther away we get.
4 October: Westrey
We get to Feolan’s place late in the afternoon, a little one-story house in eastern Ohio sitting back in the woods across from an elementary school. It looks like it could use some fixing up—the grass is jungle-thick, and half the roof shingles have fallen off—but Feolan doesn’t seem like the kind of person who puts much thought into how his home looks.
He parks Baz’s car in his rock-strewn driveway and ushers us in the front door. It smells like incense inside, and Hindi inscriptions cover the walls. A picture propped on top of a wraparound kitchen counter shows Feolan surrounded by half-smiling Indian men and women; I point it out to Keira. “Well, it looks like he was right about being raised by jnani,” I murmur to her. She shakes her head in response.
I don’t know why she’s so reluctant to believe Feolan. The jnani have always been willing to lie to us; they probably thought that giving us a fake-magic sword as a gift would keep the Wardens from demanding anything else from them after we helped save them from Sentry invaders. And it worked. It pisses me off, of course, that Baz and I put all that effort into stealing the sword for nothing, but it was never about the sword for me—Keira’s the one who insisted we bring it. We’re going to rescue Freya from New Fauske either way, especially if we have Feolan’s ice-glass to help us.
“Wait here.” Feolan leaves us by his kitchen table and runs off into another room, returning with a plain wooden box. He sets it in front of us, and Baz opens it up to reveal a full chest of jewelry—rings, necklaces, bracelets, even earrings. Each has a piec
e of ice-glass hanging from it or embedded somewhere in its metal.
“All three of you need to put something on,” Feolan says. “You can take as much as you want—I only need my bracelet.”
“Is there anything we can wear other than jewelry?” Basil wonders.
“Nixan priests have their ice-glass implanted in the backs of their necks,” Feolan says. “Would you prefer that?”
Basil ends up choosing a bracelet that looks just like Feolan’s—I go with a simple gold ring, and Keira, sighing, digs through the box until she finds a necklace like the one she lost. She puts in on, fingering its pendant with a frown.
“Can you teach us how to do the invisible thing before we leave?” Basil asks Feolan. “Or come with us and do it for us?”
Feolan laughs, shaking his head. “It’s not something you can pick up overnight. And I’m not going anywhere near New Fauske.” He pulls a tattered atlas off the shelf beside his table and begins to flip through it. “But there is someone on your way who might be able to help you out with that.” He finds a page depicting North Dakota and bends the atlas to show it to us. The page is covered in markings and circles, showing Sentry patrol routes and Shade camps and Sylvan villages. Feolan points to a circle somewhere in the middle of the state. “There’s a Shade camp here called Manssi. A girl lives there who knows almost as much about Old Magic as I do.”
“And she’d help us?” I ask. “And the Shades would let us in their camp?”
“She should. She wants revenge on Fenris and his Sentries more than anyone. And last I heard, her camp is on the verge of rebellion against the Nixa-worshippers.” Feolan runs his fingers across the map. “I can put the camp’s coordinates into your phone, if you want. It’s a long drive, but if you leave now you should make it there by tomorrow night.”
“Thank you,” I say gratefully. “For everything.”
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