by Kirah Nyx
“Are you ok?” she asked, waving the waiter away. He took the tip and left.
Felix fastened his suit jacket at the front and avoided her calculative eyes.
“Felix,” she said reproachfully. “What’s wrong? Look at me.”
He reluctantly lifted his uneasy gaze to hers. She noticed that his fingers still fiddled with the buttons on his jacket, despite that it was already fastened. An anxious habit they shared.
“Is this about what you and Samael have been getting up to?” she whispered, stepping closer to him. Bafflement briefly passed through his eyes. “Don’t deny it,” she said. “With all that Banshee hair you’ve been collecting and magic you’ve been stealing, I know you’re both planning something big. Penny said you were draining the Springs of magic, Felix. You’re scheming together, I know it.”
“I won’t deny that,” he said quietly. “But this has nothing to do with stolen Fae magic.”
“Then why are you so nervous?”
Felix scratched his black manicured nails against his chin. “I’m not supposed to tell you—”
“When have rules ever stopped you, Felix?” she interrupted crossly.
Bowing his head, almost sheepishly, Felix kicked the tiled floor. “Everyone wants it to be a surprise, but … I think you should be prepared.”
Ivy lit up immediately. Her eyes shone, a half-smile parted her lips, and her posture straightened. “A surprise?” she repeated excitedly. “A birthday present?”
“No,” he mumbled. “More like a Day of the Dead spook.”
Deflated, she hummed and puckered her lips.
“I’ll tell you,” he whispered. “But you have to promise to be surprised, ok?”
Ivy shrugged lazily. “I swear on Foxy’s tails.”
“Ivory, dear!” said Anouk. Ivy and Felix jerked their heads to face her as she came down the steps. “Come, now. We have speeches to make.”
Felix swore under his breath. Ivy reluctantly followed Queen Anouk to the balcony with Felix. As she stepped onto the stone terrace, Ivy felt all eyes pierce into her face. Edmund raised a flute of champagne blood and cleared his throat.
“Ivory Skylar,” he began fondly, “My one and only daughter.”
The others raised their glasses. Ivy looked at the floor; she truly despised speeches. They were almost as intolerable as a birthday serenade.
“Words cannot express how proud I am to call you my child,” he continued. “You are strong girl, Ivy, and it is a delight to watch you blossom into the vibrant young woman you are. You face no fear in voicing your opinions, your compassion is matched only by your ability to outrun a cheetah, and each time I see you, I am astounded by your beauty; inside and out.”
Ivy smiled sweetly.
The memory the cheetah seeped into her mind. It was her mother’s cheetah, and it had gotten loose. Ivy had only been four years old when it had chased her for three hours in the woods.
Eventually, Edmund found her and had been forced to kill the beast, but he’d been impressed by her speed. A proud day it had been.
“I admit,” he said, “that I have stalled in arranging a marriage for you. Not because I think you unworthy, but because every man in this world unworthy of you. You are bright, smart, and strong in many ways. It’s only right that you receive the best. For you, my dearest Ivory, are the best.”
The smile slowly dropped from her lips. A wooden spoon stirred her tummy like a boiling, bubbling cauldron. She had an idea where her dad was going with this.
“With that said, I give the floor to Prince Samael.” Her father raised his glass once more before he joined Eveline.
No, she thought. Not him. Please, no…
Ivy’s legs trembled behind the curtain of cream silk she wore. The ground shook beneath her numb toes, but she couldn’t move. Samael stole her vision as he stepped in front of her. Her cheeks burned, and an icy chill clutched onto her every fibre of being.
Samael removed a white box from his suit pocket.
Her eyes stung.
He dropped to one knee.
Bile crept up her throat.
His lips parted to ask the question of her nightmares.
Hers parted, too, and she blurted the word that screamed in her mind like a deafening foghorn.
“No.”
17
The deafening silence crushed her. Samael stared up at her, his veiled eyes as hard as marble. Edmund and Eveline gaped in shock; Anouk and Lucian glared in outrage. Felix cleared his throat awkwardly, and looked down at his flute..
“I won’t,” she said loudly. Conviction and courage had found their way into her voice. “I won’t marry you.”
“Ivy,” said Samael. His sharp tone struck her with a shiver. He opened the box, revealing a purple rock fastened to a white gold band. It was beautiful, but tainted by the man who held it. “I am afraid that you misunderstand,” he said and slipped the ring from the box. “I am not asking.”
Samael reached out for her hand. She pulled away. “No,” she gritted out through clenched teeth.
Edmund stepped forward. “Ivy, Prince Samael is correct. He is not requesting your hand; it is done.”
Samael rose to his feet, his steely stare never wavering from hers. “It isn’t called an arranged marriage for nothing,” he drawled.
“I bet you got a say in it,” she barked. “But me? Nobody told me shit!”
Eveline gasped. “Ivy! How dare you!”
“How dare I?” she shrilled and rounded on her parents. “You go behind my back and arrange a bloody marriage to the person I hate the most in this world! You ambushed me, and you betrayed me!” Ivy stomped her foot and pointed manically at the stoic Samael. “I know he had a say in this. He got to choose who he’d marry. I didn’t! How dare you!”
Ivy’s shrill shouts had caught the attention of the diners inside. Every patron gawked at the balcony, enthralled by the scene. But Ivy didn’t feel their eyes on her. The boiling rage brewing within every vein of her body consumed her entirely.
Slowly, she slid her slitted eyes to Samael.
“I’d rather rip out my fangs than marry you,” she spat.
Samael shrugged indifferently and tucked the box back into his jacket pocket.
“Wear the ring, or do not,” he said. “It’s merely a formality. The ring doesn’t need to be on your finger for our contracts to proceed.” He took a step toward her, but she defiantly stood her ground.
Looking down at her, he added, “Whether you want to or not, Ivy, we will be married once you graduate.”
Ivy raised her chin and hissed, “Bite me, asshat.”
Samael brushed his knuckles over her pointed chin. “Not until we are married.”
Crack!
The blow of the slap echoed. The patrons inside saw it, but even if they hadn’t, they would’ve heard it.
A red tinge spread over Samael’s turned cheek. Ivy clenched her hand, ignoring the sting on her palm, and sniffed haughtily.
“Enough,” whispered Edmund, stunned. Shakily, he approached Ivy, but kept his wary eyes on the Prince.
Samael didn’t take the bait.
He only rolled his jaw and stepped back.
Ivy didn’t think he’d ever been slapped before. Then again, not many people had the courage — or the stupidity — to slap a Prince.
“I think we’re done for the evening,” announced King Lucian.
Ivy glanced at him as he saluted his glass.
“Congratulations to the happy…” He paused and cleared his throat. “To the newly engaged couple.”
*
Ivy hadn’t gotten any sleep that night.
The moment they’d returned to the Academy, she’d sprinted back to the den and hid in her dorm room.
Samael was not pleased with her by any means, so she made sure to stay away from him. Though, sleep was difficult to come by. Penny, sound asleep in her own bed, talked and talked and talked about garbled nonsense again.
“Brick by
brick,” mumbled Penny.
Ivy groaned loudly into her pillow, but the sound was muffled. Addie slept in the same bed as Penny, and Ivy truly desired to know her secret. Maybe she was taking nightshade to help her sleep through the chatter?
“Slip by slip.”
Huffing, Ivy flipped onto her back and glowered up at the pink drapes. As if her day hadn’t been dreadful enough, Penny had to interfere with her sleep. A perfect way to end the misery of Domenic’s rejection and Samael’s unwanted courtship.
“Falling down,” said Penny. Ivy scowled at the sleeping girl. “Walls … they’re falling down. Get out. Get out. Get out.”
The creased lines on Ivy’s face faded. The scowl was quickly replaced by a slackened pensive expression.
Walls, she mimicked inwardly. Bricks and walls.
They resonated with her, those words, as if she’d heard them before.
Of course, she knew that she’d heard them before, they were common words. But something churned in her mind, gnawed at her brain, tugged on her subconscious.
“They’re here,” whispered Penny. “In the walls. Past the bricks. On the soil.”
Ivy blinked at her curiously.
“It’s in the crypts,” said Penny. “What they seek will be stolen. Through the bricks, slip by slip, to the crypts.”
“Bricks,” repeated Ivy pensively. She frowned at Penny for a moment before it struck her.
Ivy jumped up from the bed. As she tried to scramble off the mattress, the sheets tangled around her legs. Grunting, she landed on the floor, but quickly unburied herself and shot to her feet.
She snatched her schoolbag and scurried over to Penny. Her hands gripped her sweaty shoulders and shook lightly.
“Penny,” she whispered. “Get up.”
Penny’s eyelids fluttered as a heavy groan escaped her chapped lips.
“Wake up, it’s important.”
Penny yawned and stretched her arms above her head. Addie rolled onto her side and flittered back into a deep sleep.
“C’mon,” said Ivy as she grabbed Penny’s arm and dragged her out of bed.
“Where are we going?” she asked through a yawn, and plucked a dress out from the pile of discarded clothes on her nightstand.
Ivy snatched the dress out of her hand. “There’s no time,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Ivy and Penny left the dorms for the library in their pyjamas.
On their way, they dodged a few Videer Knights, slinked by grumbling Imps who were scrubbing the walls, and dashed through moaning Bodachs who mourned their troubles from past lives.
Ivy’s bare feet padded against the cold floors as she led the way to the tabloid section. When she reached it, she immediately began to snatch several recent copies of the Chronicle from the shelves.
“Don’t just stand there,” she said as Penny swayed tiredly on the spot. “Help me.”
“Maybe if I knew what we were looking for, I could,” she yawned.
Ivy threw her schoolbag and the copies of the Chronicle onto a table. As she riffled through them, she replied, “You take the left side, I’ll go through these. Tell me when you find anything that mentions Bodachs.” She paused and shoved a mountain of scrolls to the side of the table. Penny sighed and picked up the first one. “If you find an article about Bodach deaths, that’s even better,” said Ivy.
“And why do we care about Bodachs? Besides, they’re technically already dead, aren’t they? They’re just apparitions.”
“Apparitions that we can touch and kill,” said Ivy, already on her fifth scroll. “We’re interested in their deaths because of their hair.”
Penny dropped into a seat. “You want to store Fae magic, now?”
“I don’t. But I think the Rebellion are doing it.”
Penny peered over the top of an uncurled scroll. “You do know that the Rebellion is made up of Shifters, right?”
“So?”
“So, they can’t harvest or store Fae magic. It’s not within their abilities.”
Tearing through her own pile frantically, Ivy said, “No. But Vampires can. And the Rebellion have two Vampires that we know of.”
“What are you saying?”
Ivy grunted as she dropped the useless copy of the Chronicle. “If someone had enough Banshee hair, they could store the amount of Fae magic needed to tear down a ward. But only Vampires can do that, right?”
Penny nodded as her brows furrowed.
Ivy continued, “That’s how the Shifters have been breaching the cities. They’ve been using their prisoners, Laundelle and Clover, to tear down the wards.”
“The strength of the magic in the wards is too much for a Vampire to drain,” pondered Penny aloud. “It’s a solid magic, a force field, not an energy supply. The magic can’t be drained.”
Ivy smiled knowingly. “They’re not draining it. The only way to dismantle the wards would be to use stolen magic and decay the bricks piece by piece. A lot of magic; more than what one Vampire could hold in its body—the amount of magic that only hundred of thousands of Banshee hair strands can hold.”
Penny’s eyes widened in wonder. Though, Ivy saw the fleeting flash of envy in them. Penny scoffed and said, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. How did you figure it out?”
“Something the King said at dinner about wards being invisible brick walls,” replied Ivy. “And in your sleep you said ‘brick by brick’ and ‘slip by slip’. I think you were dreaming about the Rebellion disassembling the wards.”
Blankly, Penny stared at her. “I dreamt that?” she asked disbelievingly. “I don’t … I don’t remember.”
“When you’re asleep,” said Ivy, “your powers seem to be at their strongest.”
“Well,” said Penny, “we have a lot of scrolls to get through. Let’s start.”
Penny tore into the Chronicles with a burst of determination. Her fingers uncurled the scrolls swiftly, and her eyes darted over the articles so quickly that they moved in a white blur.
Within half an hour, she finally declared, “Got it!”
Ivy clutched her scroll tightly and waited.
Penny read the article, “Earlier this week, the shores of the Isle of Lewis were smeared with Banshee corpses, washed up from the sea. Banshees are not native to Scotland, the mainland of the Isle. Experts suggest that the bodies travelled in the seas from Iceland. The bodies were shaved of all hair.”
Ivy glimpsed at the parchment crinkled in her own hands. “I found one, too,” she said. “It’s three months old.”
“The Rebellion kidnapped Canyon Clover three months ago,” said Penny. “What does the article say?”
Ivy cleared her throat. “Many Banshee bodies located in the depths of the Boreal Forest were found early yesterday morning. The estimated body count is thirty at present. Authorities have dismissed the report as hunting practices of the Vampires.”
“Same as the other article,” said Penny. “Not much to go on.”
“We know enough,” she disagreed. “The Shifters are using Banshee hair and their prisoners to break through the wards. Laundelle and Clover are obviously helping them—most people would to save their own lives.”
“But, how did the Rebellion get to Laundelle in the first place?”
Ivy tilted her head questioningly.
“Think about it,” said Penny. “To get into Stonehenge Village, they would’ve needed a Vampire to break through the wards.”
“Maybe they already had a Vampire prisoner,” suggested Ivy. “Before they took Laundelle and Clover, I mean.”
“There hasn’t been another report about a missing person,” said Penny. “But, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a Vampire.”
“If they didn’t have a prisoner, but were able to get through the wards to the village, then—”
“—They might have had a willing Vampire with them from the start. And they needed more to break stronger wards. One Vampire isn’t enough. Not when it comes to the wards around citie
s and schools.”
Ivy fiddled with the curled corner of the parchment piece and reread the article. Chewing her bottom lip, she scanned the rest of the paper until her gaze jerked back to a tiny article, easily overlooked.
“Solstice,” whispered Ivy.
“What?”
A crease formed between her brows as she lifted the Chronicle closer to her narrowed eyes.
Aloud, she read, “Barrow Solstice, chair member of the Committee, celebrated his thousandth birthday on June 14th. As the representative of the Fae Conclave — the ancient organisation of the elders — he is expected to rescind his authority to a relative of his choosing.
“The policies of the Committee do not allow chair members to retain their seats after nine-hundred years of service. It is rumoured that Barrow Solstice is awaiting his great-great-great-grandson’s graduation from the Arcane Academy to take his place on the Committee.
“River Ridge, Barrow Solstice’s rumoured replacement, is scheduled to graduate in June next year, and is celebrated among the Fae community for his abilities to manipulate the stars, and pitied for the tragic death of his mother during childbirth, eighteen years ago. River Ridge’s younger sister did not survive the birth, and his father lost his life during a magical experiment three years later, leaving River as the obvious option for Barrow Solstice’s successor.”
Ivy released the parchment and let it flitter to the pile on the table. Her swarming white eyes gawked at Penny’s baffled stare.
Suddenly, Ivy lunged at her bag, dove her hands inside and rummaged around. “You spoke about the solstice in your sleep,” she said, and riffled through her belongings. “And, when I was in the woods hallucinating … I heard your voice. You warned me about the solstice.”
She tugged out her copy of Arcane’s Astrology and flicked through the pages.
Ivy rambled on, “Domenic told me that it had something to do with the sun, and that it weakened Fae magic, you dreamt about it, and it just so happens to be the ancestral name of River Ridge? I believe in coincidences, Penny, but this … this is a lot more than just a coincidence, don’t you think? It’s connected”
Ivy found the page and dragged her sharp fingernail down to the excerpt about the earth’s movements. She read it to Penny, “December solstice has the Earth’s North Pole tilted away from the sun. This takes place between the 20th and 23rd of December, depending on the year.”