by Box Set
And then I’m dancing, swept away by the music and the magic and Ryn’s arms guiding me. We spin graceful circles around the floor. Ryn lets go of me and I twirl beneath his arm, laughing at the same time. It’s so not me, and yet I find I’m actually enjoying it.
“See?” Ryn says. “This is easy. And you might possibly be having fun.”
The magic guides me as I step out of Ryn’s arms, twirl behind his back, and catch his hand. “You might possibly be right.”
He pulls me back into position. “Oh, I forgot to tell you something,” he says. He leans forward and his lips brush my ear as he whispers, “You are more beautiful than any other girl in this room.”
A shiver races down my spine and across my arms, and with it, the wall I built up to hide all the not-just-friends feelings I’ve had about Ryn cracks. Maybe it’s the rush of winning, or the unexpected joy of spinning around a dance floor, or the giddiness produced by Ryn’s whispered words, but all of a sudden I can’t hold it in anymore. A dam of emotions—those stupid, stupid things I do my best to stay away from—crashes through the wall and drenches me in everything I’ve been trying not to feel.
Instead of fighting it, I close my eyes and let myself go. I feel the muscles of his shoulder beneath my hand. The frame his arms create is strong, secure, but I want those arms tighter around me. Much tighter, much closer. I want there to be no space at all between us.
I. Want. Him. So. Badly.
I want to kiss him, laugh with him, cry with him, share every moment of my future with him, because no matter how many awful things he’s done in the past, I can’t shake the undeniable feeling that when his arms are around me, I’m home.
I’m also screwed because I’m never telling him any of that.
With a shuddering breath, I look up to find him watching me. A smile lifts the corner of his mouth as he leans forward once more and whispers, “I knew it.” For one heart-stopping second I’m certain he somehow knows everything I’m thinking and feeling, but then he adds, “I always knew Bran had a thing for that library assistant with the blonde and purple hair. See him over there, chatting her up?” He twirls me beneath his arm, and I catch a glimpse of Ryn’s mentor with his arm around the shoulders of the Guild’s library assistant.
“Oh, yeah.” I laugh, mainly because I’m so relieved that Ryn was talking about Bran and not the tumult of emotions coursing through me.
The dance floor begins to fill up as other couples join us. “This is getting boring,” Ryn says. “Let’s give the old people something to talk about, shall we?” And with that he pushes me away from him. I spin out, jerk to a halt with my hand still attached to his, then spin back. He catches me before my back hits his chest and dips me so low I can see the whole ballroom upside down. He swoops me around, my hair brushing the floor, then pulls me up, twirls me once more, and catches me around my waist. He lifts me up into the air and shouts, “Woohoo!”
“Ryn!” I gasp. Councilor Starkweather has a hand covering her mouth, and she isn’t the only one. Half the ballroom is staring at us in shock, and the other half appears to be suppressing laughter. “Are you insane?”
He places me gently on my feet just as the music morphs into a new dance. “Insane enough to ask if you’ll dance a second dance with me.”
I tilt my head to the side, considering it. “Apparently I’m insane enough to agree.”
Ryn’s dazzling smile sets butterflies off in my stomach. He takes a step toward me and holds his hands up, palms facing me. The spell of the music urges me to do the same thing. Our hands touch, and I’m not sure if the tingling I feel is real or imagined. My gaze is locked on his as we move slowly, rhythmically, in time to the music.
Backward, forward, twist under.
My face is hot. It’s probably red, but it’s not like I can do anything about it. I can’t even convince my eyes to look away from his. I wonder what he’s thinking. He’d probably be horrified if he knew I want to throw myself on top of him and tear his shirt off. I’m kind of horrified myself.
Step to the right, step to left, twist under.
He glances down for a second, and I wonder if he’s looking at the gold key or, well, at the part of my chest that my enchanted underwear has ‘enhanced.’ My skin burns hotter as my gaze moves down to his lips. I want to know if they feel as soft as they look.
Backward, forward—
Click.
A sudden realization strikes me. Something so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it hours ago. Ryn catches himself before standing on my feet, and I notice then that I’ve stopped moving.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, pulling me to the edge of the dance floor and out of the way.
“The key,” I say, touching it and staring unseeingly over his shoulder.
“Yes, what about it?”
“I know what it opens,” I say. I’m suddenly breathless with excitement, my eyes dancing across his face.
Ryn frowns. “I thought you said it didn’t open anything.”
“That’s what my father always told me, but tonight, while I was getting ready, your mother came to see me at Tora’s. She said my mother gave her a locked box to keep for me for when I graduated, but that it disappeared years ago. And you told me that the reason Reed was so desperate to visit me the day he died was because he wanted to give me a box he thought was important for some reason.”
Ryn’s grip tightens on my arms. “It’s the same box.”
I nod. “Reed must have found it, seen my name on it, and decided to return it to me. Now we just have to figure out where it is.”
“But how? The guardian leading the investigation never mentioned a box.”
“Well, maybe it was kept from you for some reason, or maybe it was never found.”
Ryn frowns. “You don’t honestly think it would still be out there in the forest where Reed fell, do you?”
I cross my arms and lift my shoulders. “I don’t know. I guess not. But where else do we start?”
Ryn leans his hip against the table we’re standing next to. It’s empty, all of its occupants currently having fun on the dance floor. “In the office of the guardian who led the investigation?”
“Okay. Maybe we can find the report that was written up after, you know, they found Reed.” I need to tread carefully here. I don’t want to upset Ryn. “Um, can you break into the office?”
“Of course.” Ryn gives me a look that tells me I should know that. He leans across the table and pulls a silver apple from the tree. He bites into it and crunches for several seconds. He swallows. “You want to go now?”
Idiot. He knows very well I want to go now. “No, Ryn, I thought we’d just stand here eating silver delicacies and wait until everyone is in their offices on Monday morning before trying to break in.”
“Hmm. That doesn’t sound like the best plan you’ve ever had.” He puts the partially-eaten apple down on someone’s plate and heads toward the ballroom’s main doors. “Come on.”
I hurry after him. The music and laughter grow faint as we head down a corridor toward the Guild’s main foyer. I hear an indistinct sort of rumble. Out of habit, I glance up at the foyer’s domed ceiling. I freeze when I see the swirling, flickering clouds of orange and red. Fear tightens my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Ryn asks, turning back. He watches me from the other side of the foyer, a hand pressed to his chest in that weird habit he has.
“The protective enchantments,” I whisper as I return my gaze to the ceiling. “They’re the wrong color.”
PART III
Eighteen
For a single moment that seems to last forever, Ryn and I stare at each other across the foyer, fear growing, rising, filling the space between us.
Then the lightning hits.
It strikes somewhere above us with such force that the foyer’s marble floor shudders beneath our feet. Ryn shouts my name, but the explosion of the domed ceiling swallows up his voice. A bolt of light shreds the air and st
rikes the floor between us, creating a huge zigzagging crack through the marble. A second later, broken pieces of ceiling begin to rain down on us.
I throw myself out of the way. The marble is a lot harder than anything else I’ve landed on recently, and my shoulder screams out in protest. I roll across the floor, pull myself up onto my knees, and throw my arm out toward the corridor we just came down. The flare of magic that leaves my hand is bright red. If anyone in the ballroom has any doubts as to where the explosion came from, they’ll know which way to go now.
I climb to my high-heeled feet to look for Ryn, but instead I see black figures dropping down from the open ceiling. Rain sprays across my face, and wind tangles my curls. Fear gives way to adrenaline as the thrill of an impending fight races through my veins.
I stand firm as my bow and arrow form between my outstretched arms. I pull back, let go, and watch the arrow zoom toward its target, sparks flying in its wake. The man—dressed all in black, complete with a cape, for goodness sake—goes down with a cry as the arrow embeds itself in his back. Pull back, release. Pull back, release. A new arrow materializes the moment the previous one is let loose.
A boulder hurtles toward me, along with sparks of magic. I dodge the magic, but the edge of the boulder catches my shoulder. I hit the floor once more, my bow and arrow disappearing the moment I let go. Rolling onto my back, I reach for the strap of my right shoe. I tug it loose—my amber slips to the floor—just as a faerie throws himself on top of me. I bring the shoe up and slice the heel across his neck. He clutches his throat, and I send my fist into his stomach. He doubles over. Blood splatters onto my face. With a heave, I push him away.
I kick my other shoe off, stuff my stylus into my enhanced cleavage, and get ready to fight the next faerie who wants to take me on. It seems I’m out of opponents, though. The foyer is full of guards, mentors, and guardians, and the only black figures I see are the ones lying dead on the floor.
Ryn. Is he okay?
I turn to the debris in the center of the foyer, pushing wet hair out of my face. A glittering whip snaps the air and disappears before I see him. He climbs off a boulder, jumps over the crack that now splits the foyer in two, and walks toward me. “Well,” he says, “that was an exciting end to graduation.”
* * *
“Idiots,” Adair, a senior guardian, says as he paces across the floor of Councilor Starkweather’s office. “Why did they choose to invade the Guild during graduation? Admittedly, there were fewer guards on duty than there normally are, but everyone was here because of the ceremony. We had hundreds of guardians ready to fight, and these idiot invaders numbered less than twenty. Were they really arrogant enough to think they could kill us all?”
I glance over at Ryn. The two of us are standing, dripping wet, in front of Councilor Starkweather’s desk. She summoned us to a private meeting with her and Adair once it was clear the Guild was no longer under attack. I think of Ryn’s suspicion that she may be Zell’s spy within the Guild. Unlikely, since she killed two of the invading faeries herself.
She taps her chin. “Could it be that they didn’t know graduation was taking place tonight?”
I shake my head. “They must have known. They have spies in the Guild, don’t they?” Ryn clears his throat, but I ignore him. “The purpose of this attack obviously wasn’t to take over the Guild.”
Adair stops pacing and narrows his eyes at me. “Why are these two here?”
“They’ve had close contact with members of the Unseelie Court,” Councilor Starkweather says. “Their input could be useful.”
“Do we even know whether it was an attack by the Unseelie Court?” Adair asks. “They weren’t wearing the Queen’s insignia.”
“They were definitely Unseelie faeries,” Ryn says. “I could feel the cold darkness behind their magic.”
“But they might not have been acting on the Queen’s orders,” Adair counters.
“No, they were most likely acting on Zell’s. The Unseelie Prince you guys have been investigating for ages.” I assume Adair is part of that investigation or he wouldn’t be in this office right now. “After what Ryn and I heard on our assignment, we know he’s working against his mother, and what we saw in his dungeon suggests he’s forming some kind of super army. He must have found a faerie who can create storms that are able to break through our protective enchantments.”
Ryn clears his throat again, but I refuse to name Nate. It would get me in a whole lot of trouble, and I don’t see the point in telling them about him when it’s already obvious that Zell is using someone who has power over the weather.
“Perhaps it was a test,” Councilor Starkweather says. “A test to see how easily they can get in and out.”
“Possibly.” Adair resumes his pacing. “Which means the purpose of the first lightning bolt several weeks ago was probably to see whether it was possible to break through the enchantments. But that still doesn’t explain why a Seer was murdered the same night.”
“We didn’t manage to capture any faeries tonight, did we?” Ryn asks.
“No,” Adair says. “Most of them managed to get out the way they came in—through the foyer’s ceiling. The few left behind are dead.”
“So we can’t even torture any information out of anyone,” mutters Councilor Starkweather.
The word ‘torture’ reminds me of something else that’s been on my mind for a while. “Councilor Starkweather,” I say carefully. “I was wondering if you were able to get inside Zell’s home and rescue the prisoners we found.”
She presses her lips together before answering. “I am not at liberty to discuss that investigation with you, Miss Fairdale. And you know you should not have been ‘wondering’ about it in the first place.”
I lower my gaze to the floor. If I had to guess, I’d say that was a ‘no,’ which means those people are still stuck in cages. The thought makes my pulse quicken and my blood heat up. I get that the Guild can’t just barge into the Unseelie Prince’s home and demand to see his dungeon, but seriously? Couldn’t they have figured something out by now?
Councilor Starkweather pinches the bridge of her nose. “I should have known something was going on the moment that tree on the table next to ours exploded earlier.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryn says. “A tree exploded?”
“Yes, while the two of you were dancing. The darn thing suddenly went up in flames.”
While we were dancing … I think of the ‘explosion’ of emotions I felt after Ryn whispered in my ear as well as the conversation I had with Raven about losing control of magic. Could that have been me?
“I’m sure that was unrelated,” Adair says. “Probably just some of the graduates playing around.”
“Well, anyway,” Councilor Starkweather says. “I need to make contact with the Unseelie Court, and you two need to prepare for your visit to the Seelie Court. You’ll be leaving tomorrow evening.”
“That’s still happening?” I ask. I was hoping Ryn and I would have time to search for the box Reed took.
“Of course it’s still happening. We wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression that this minor invasion has upset the way the Guild operates, would we?”
Minor invasion? Enchantments strong enough to protect the Guild for centuries have been shattered, and she calls it minor? “Um, no, Councilor. I suppose not.”
* * *
I drizzle chocolate sauce over my berries and pass the jug to Ryn. Tora invited me to lunch along with Raven and Flint, and I was stupid enough to ask Ryn to join us. Stupid because I can barely look him in the eyes with all the crazy feelings buzzing through me. Stupid because I was so desperate to be around him that I couldn’t wait until tonight when we leave for the Seelie Court.
“I’ve heard she can be rather mean sometimes,” Raven says, checking her hair in the reflective surface of a mirror berry before covering it with chocolate sauce.
“Only if you say the wrong thing to her,” Tora says. “Just like anyone else.�
�
“But unlike anyone else,” Ryn adds, “if you upset the Seelie Queen, she might start shrieking, ‘Off with their heads!’.” The four of us stare at him. He stares back. “What? It’s … from a book. Never mind.”
“But how will I know if I’m about to say the wrong thing?” I ask. “How am I supposed to know what upsets the Seelie Queen?”
“Okay, well, here’s what I’ve heard over the years,” Flint says. He finishes the last berries from his bowl before resting his elbows on the table. “Don’t look her in the eyes when speaking to her; she doesn’t like that. Don’t bring up pegasus polo; she’s really into it and if you don’t back her favorite teams … well, things will get uncomfortable for you. Oh, and never, ever mention the runaway princess. That probably would get your head chopped off.”
“Runaway princess?” Ryn asks.
“Oh, yes, I remember reading that somewhere.” I reach for the jug of sauce in the center of the table. “The current Seelie Queen has three children: a daughter—who’s obviously in line to become the next Queen—a son, and another daughter. About twenty or thirty years ago the younger daughter ran away.” I drizzle sauce onto my spoon and stick the spoon in my mouth.
“I take it they never found this runaway princess?” Ryn asks.
“I guess not,” I say around the spoon, “since the Queen gets upset if you bring it up.” I look at Flint for confirmation.
“No, they never found her,” he says. “The rumors from the palace guards were that the Queen never had a good relationship with her younger daughter. Everyone thought she was secretly glad to be rid of her.”
“That’s awful,” Tora says, “wanting to be rid of your own child.”