Asrai Water Fae.
“I can’t talk about this,” she says sharply, grimacing in response to a question I haven’t voiced. “Unless you want me to inadvertently summon a very fierce storm.” Her eyes flick toward the ceiling. “Right here. In the middle of this blasted Yule-fest.”
Before I can even attempt to say anything, Tierney turns on her heel and stalks out of the hall.
* * *
That evening, after spending a few hours with Uncle Edwin at his Verpax City lodging house, I set out to find Andras, eager to know what happened after he went off with the Lupines.
I push through the dark woods, a lantern in hand, picking my way over the icy ground toward Naga’s cave. The hostility from the trees is a chafing vibration at the edge of my mind, but I’m getting better at shutting them out.
The leaping flames of a bonfire up ahead come into view, and Andras’s voice filters back through the woods.
“So, you’re following me now, Mother?”
Mother?
Before I can ponder this further, Yvan appears, striding quietly toward me, cast in the forest’s darkness. I slow to a stop and take in Yvan’s cautionary look, his finger raised to his lips. His hand comes to my arm as he gestures at the fire with a tilt of his head.
Careful to tread quietly, I move slightly closer to the clearing until I can just make out Andras and his mother, Professor Volya, through the dark branches.
I’m filled with surprise at the dramatic change in Andras’s appearance. All of his Amaz rune pendants and metallic jewelry are gone, as well as his usual rune-marked scarlet tunic, replaced by simple Keltic attire. The only part of him that’s unaltered are the black rune-tattoos on his face.
Professor Volya is looking at her son with an expression of complete confusion as he sits by the fire, his hands tightly clasped on his knees, his head bowed. “Why are you dressed like that?” she demands worriedly. “Why did you leave everything...even your Goddess pendant...at our home?”
Andras is quiet for a long moment. “I met my son today, Mother,” he finally says.
“Your son?”
“With Sorcha Xanthippe.”
Professor Volya’s face fills with both censure and alarm. “The Amaz girl who flouted every rule of the fertility rites? The one you formed that unnatural attachment to?”
For a moment, Andras is speechless, as if stunned by her dismissal. “Did you hear anything I just told you? I have a son.”
Fierce remorse washes over his mother’s face. “And so my sins multiply themselves.” She looks around, as if searching for something in the woods. “Where is he? This son of yours?”
Andras glares at her, his jaw set tight. “The Lupines have taken him in. He’s one of them now. And I’m going to join them.”
She freezes, seeming stunned.
“For two years,” Andras tells her with forced calm, “they have raised my son as one of their own. And now they’ve invited me to become one of them, as well. I could be a father to my son. And someday, I could have a mate and a family.”
His mother flinches, as if struck. “You have a family,” she insists, her voice breaking.
“I know I do,” Andras says quietly. “I love you, Mother. And I know what you’ve sacrificed for me. But it’s not enough, living like this. Join the Lupines with me. They have already told me that, unlike your people, they would welcome you, as well.”
Fire flashes in her eyes. “No. Never.”
“Why?” Andras demands, suddenly incensed. “What do you really know of them?”
“I know enough!” she snarls. “Their ways are evil.” She makes a sweeping gesture with her arm, as if she’s slicing the air in front of her with a broadsword. “They slavishly follow their male alpha—”
“They have had female alphas, too.”
“Not for some time, Andras, and it is unforgivable. They are everything the Goddess despises. And after they die, it will be as if they had never existed, whereas we will go to the Goddesshaven.”
Andras shakes his head. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe any of it anymore.”
“What do you mean you don’t believe?”
“Every race—the Fae, the Lupines, the Elves, the Gardnerians, the Amaz—they all have completely different religious beliefs, but the one thing they all have in common is that they all believe their way is the only way, and everyone else is less worthy.”
“They are wrong!”
“Oh, I know,” Andras says bitterly. “Only the Amaz are right. Don’t you understand? I have no place with your people. Your every tradition says that, as a male, I am inferior and dangerous and worthless, except to be used to create more female Amaz. I don’t believe this. I am not vile, and I do not have some uncontrollable urge to enslave women.”
“Because we have repented!”
“No. Not because we have repented. Because it’s not true!”
“You do not know what you are doing!” Professor Volya cries, her voice taking on a desperate edge. “You will bring down the judgment of the Goddess on us both!”
“No, I won’t,” Andras says, adamant. “Because there is no Goddess.”
His mother seems overcome with shock. She glances at the sky as if expecting a lightning bolt to descend on them both at any minute. “Beg forgiveness now,” she pleads, her voice a strangled whisper.
“No,” Andras says. “I will not apologize to anyone for speaking the truth.”
Her face tightens with outrage. “If you continue down this cursed path, you will no longer be my son.”
Andras’s expression turns stony. “How convenient for you, Mother. Now you can go back to your own people, the people you really love.”
Professor Volya’s resolve seems to waver, her eyes tortured. “Andras...”
Andras suddenly flings his hand up, his fingers splayed open. “Look at my hand, Mother,” he demands. “I have just as many bones in my hand as you do. Contrary to the lies told in your people’s story of creation.”
“You will be damned by the Goddess,” she cries, her voice catching as her eyes turn glassy with tears. “You will die someday and be nothing more than a handful of ashes. And I will go to the Goddesshaven all alone. Before, maybe there was some chance the Goddess would take pity on us...but if you do this thing, my son... I will never see you again.”
“No, Mother,” Andras says quietly. “When we die, we will both be nothing but ash, just like everyone else. No matter how many stories are invented to try and deny this fact. And if this is the only life I get, I want more from it. I want a mate and children and acceptance. Something your people will never give to either of us.”
Professor Volya stands there in silence, tears streaking down her face.
“I am leaving the Amaz, Mother,” Andras tells her, compassion filling his tone. “But I’m not leaving you. You will always be family to me. I will be living in the wilds while I finish my commitment to help you with the care of the horses until the spring. After that, I will join the Southern Lupine pack and become one of them. And I hope that someday, you will turn your back on the lies your people have forced down your throat and join us, as well.”
She shakes her head, anguish streaking across her face. “Andras, no...”
“I’ve decided, Mother.” Andras cuts her off, sounding upset. “If you cannot accept that, then you need to go.”
“My son...”
“No,” Andras says, emphatic. “Leave me be.”
Professor Volya hesitates, looking distraught, then turns and pushes into the woods as Andras slumps down, his head falling into his hands.
Yvan and I wait until we can’t hear her anymore, and then we go to him, hesitantly approaching.
Andras doesn’t move as we quietly take a seat on either side of him.
“I’m sorry... We overheard,”
I tell him, placing my hand lightly on his broad back. “And...I’m sorry this is all so hard.”
Andras looks up at the crackling fire, his expression devastated, his cheeks slick with tears.
“I wish I could strip the runes from my skin,” he finally says, his voice rough with hurt.
I rub his back, desperate to find something to bolster him. “You know, you’ll have those incredible Lupine eyes soon enough,” I say encouragingly. “They’ll outshine the tattoos, believe me.”
Andras coughs out a laugh and shoots me a wan smile.
I reach up to put my hand on his broad shoulder. “Did you notice that your son looks like you?”
Andras’s small smile turns into a wider grin, but it soon falters. He looks back to the fire, his eyes tensing with conflict. “I want my mother to come with us. I don’t want to leave her. But she needs to accept my child, and I fear she never will.”
I let out a long sigh. “People can change, Andras. I used to be deathly afraid of Icarals. Now I steal food from the livestock barns for Ariel’s pets.” I spit out the trace of a laugh and stare at the glowing coals at the fire’s edge. “Your mother might come around yet. Especially when she meets your son.”
Andras nods tightly, but I can see him fighting back more tears. I glance past him to find Yvan watching me. I flush to find his eyes on me so intently—it’s unsettling to hold on to his green-eyed stare.
I take a deep, shuddering breath and look away.
MAGE COUNCIL
RULING
#211
Defacing or defaming The Book of the Ancients shall be punishable by execution.
CHAPTER TWELVE
SPIRALING DOWN
“Will that be enough to treat Naga’s wing?” Tierney whispers as I peer at the small jar of Asterbane.
Mage Ernoff’s out-of-the-way apothecary shop is a cluttered, lantern-lit disarray of bottles filled with powders and crushed leaves and tinctures and tonics. Dried lizards hang from the ceiling on rusty iron hooks, and black dragon talons fill large glass canisters that line the shelves along the back of the store.
I eyeball the vermillion powder, mentally gauging the amount. “It should be.”
Naga’s left wing has stubbornly refused to heal, despite the tireless efforts of Andras and Ariel. The tear in the soft tissues around her shoulder joint is too deep, but there’s a slim chance that the wound-closing properties of Asterbane might help.
Tierney holds up a russet tangle of bloodroot for my inspection as well, conveying everything she needs to with a blazing stare.
I nod silently. Yes, we’ll need that, too—to make more of the expensive Norfure tincture Jules requested for the refugees suffering from a vicious outbreak of the Red Grippe.
Anguish twists in me as I remember our visit to the refugees’ hiding place a few nights ago, when we delivered the first batch of tincture. An exhausted Jules had opened the door a crack, just wide enough to take each box of medicinal vials, giving us a wan smile. Over his shoulder, we’d caught only a brief glimpse of the isolated circular barn’s occupants.
The space was full of Smaragdalfar refugees—mostly children, with patterned emerald skin glinting in the dim light of a single lamp and green hair as mussed as their tattered clothes. Most were sitting on or collapsed against hay bales, the torn pages from The Book of the Ancients splayed out under their feet.
Shock and compassion rushed through me at the sight of them. They were all much too thin, marked with bloodshot eyes and a blistering, angry rash around their mouths—telltale symptoms of the Red Grippe.
Iris, Fernyllia, Bleddyn and Yvan were all there with Jules, helping care for the children alongside a few tough-looking Smaragdalfar women and my former Metallurgie professor, Fyon Hawkkyn. I was startled to see Fyon there—believing he’d fled the Western Realm weeks ago.
Muscular Bleddyn was down on one knee, consoling a child. She caught a glimpse of me and her face instantly contorted into a threatening glare with a clear message—get out!
I moved to close the door just as Yvan looked up from where he was sitting by a prone child, his hand on the little girl’s forehead. Our eyes met for a brief moment, a flash of his heat coursing through me, before the door shut.
As Tierney and I walked away from the barn and into the blackness of a starless night, I turned once.
Three Watchers were perched on the barn’s roof, like ghostly sentinels. They remained there for the span of a heartbeat, then disappeared into the cold, bleak night.
A tug on my sleeve draws me back to the present. “We should go,” Tierney says in a low voice.
Shaking my head slightly to clear it, I take the bloodroot from her, and together we make our way to the front of the shop.
The bearded, disheveled-looking apothecary is busy pulverizing a dragon’s talon into black powder with a mortar and pestle as we approach him nervously, hoping that he’ll just assume we need the ingredients for a class project. He hardly seems to notice what we’re buying as he pivots toward his transaction ledger, not even bothering to look up at us as he impatiently manages our purchase.
Thankful for the Mage’s distracted air and lack of curiosity, Tierney and I pack the supplies into our sacks, fasten our cloaks tightly and hastily leave the shop. The cold bites into our exposed skin and our breath fogs the air as soon as we step out into the frigid night. We hunker down against the chill wind and start back toward the University.
“Down that alley,” Tierney directs as we walk, pointing across the cobbled Spine-stone street. “That’s the way I always take.”
We move hurriedly in that direction, weaving behind a slow-moving wagon stocked with wooden barrels and stepping around a knot of Alfsigr Elves. I hastily follow Tierney as she makes for the alley, eagerly anticipating a blessed break from the wind.
A single lantern hangs from a small iron hook, illuminating the alley with a welcoming golden glow. But when we step into the narrow corridor, both Tierney and I freeze, aghast.
There are words scrawled all over the stone walls in dripping, bloodred paint.
REAP THE EVIL ONES
ERTHIA FOR GARDNERIANS
TAKE BACK THE WESTERN REALM
A mammoth, five-pointed blessing star is scrawled beside the last words, one point for each of the five Gardnerian affinities—earth, fire, water, air, light.
Tierney and I stare, unmoving. Ice crackles straight through my spine, and it’s not from the wintry cold. I glare at the wretched words, each line a cruel, well-aimed punch thrown at all of the people I care about.
“Ancient One,” I breathe, and look to Tierney, who has paled to a sickly, shimmering gray green.
Tierney swallows hard, her eyes transfixed by the bludgeoning wall of words, fear stark on her face. “It’s all spiraling completely out of control. Faster than we could have imagined.”
She’s right. Acts like this have become more and more common as the new Gardnerian majority on the Verpacian Council has approved increasingly alarming new policies. It’s had a chilling effect on the University—segregation is now formally allowed and even encouraged for housing and classes, and the archives are being purged of any texts the Council deems “hostile to Gardneria or Alfsigroth.” Some University newsprintings were initially critical of the new Verpacian Council edicts, but they’ve now been shut down, their writers expelled from the University.
And emboldened by the rapidly shifting political landscape, nighttime mob attacks have started, making the streets increasingly dangerous after sunset.
“Just today, they caught those Urisk who attacked the Gardnerian farmer,” Tierney tells me, her eyes bolted to the bloody words. “Those four young women were abused by that farmer for years. It doesn’t look good for them, though. The Verpacian Council wants to make an example out of them. They decide their fate tomorrow. I think that’s prompting
some of this—”
There’s a crash in the distance. A woman’s cry. Incoherent shouting. Our heads whip toward each other, and my heart kicks like a spooked horse.
More crashing, this time at the far end of the alley.
“We have to get out of here,” Tierney says, her voice quavering, but her warning comes too late.
A mob of cloaked and hooded Gardnerians sweeps into the alley, and I inhale sharply when I see that their wands are drawn. The silver stripes on their dark cloaks range from Level Two to Level Four, and they all sport white armbands that blare their support for High Mage Marcus Vogel.
Tierney and I reflexively step back. I’m closest to the approaching mob, so I grab Tierney’s arm and pull her slightly out of view behind me, scared she might inadvertently reveal her Fae power.
The men’s angry eyes home in on us, like raptors spotting prey. I can see them quickly assessing us, registering us as Gardnerian and taking in our white Vogel armbands. Two of the men nod to us, as if actively sparing us from grievous harm. Then the mob stomps past us, through the alley and onto the street.
More screams echo in the distance. Crashing. Shouting from both ends of the alley. Then a sudden flurry of snow.
I look up to find a dark, fitful storm cloud only a few hand spans above us. Alarm blasts through me as I swing around to face Tierney. She’s backed up against the wall, her whole body trembling.
I place a bolstering hand on her arm. “Tierney. Listen to me.” I glance up at the cloud. Oh, sweet Ancient One. They cannot discover she’s Water Fae. “You have to get a hold of yourself. I know it’s hard, but try to think about something pleasant—do you hear me?”
She nods jerkily, eyes wide as moons.
“Take a deep breath. Think about a beautiful lake in the Noi lands.” I struggle to keep my voice calm and soothing. “Gentle waves lapping. No problems anywhere. Can you do that for me? Can you concentrate only on that?”
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