by N. M. Howell
At the same time, how could she be with someone like that? Dark Fae cruelty was legendary, but to see it up close sent her into shivers. So far, she’d managed to avoid him. She wouldn’t take his calls at the store. She dropped his class. She ignored him on campus. Raina wanted to keep it that way.
She hated the academy more than even the first time she’d laid eyes on the atrocity. Raina couldn’t leave, no matter how much she wanted to. Not when she was actually getting close to answers. More importantly, dropping out might draw undue attention. Keeping herself disconnected from the Light Fae attacks came only slightly secondary to finding a way to reopen the gate to Oreálle.
Trini caught up with her in the main corridor.
“Okay, Friend, time for the real schooling to start.”
Raina’s depression deepened. “Not today, Trini, okay? I’m just not in the mood.”
The half-fae girl gestured, and Raina found herself turning toward the stairs. “Come on, Trini, cut it out!”
“Listen. Thanks to you, I’ve been able to get a little more information about what’s going on around here. There’s a suite of rooms in the university upstairs that not even I’ve been able to get into. The headmaster, Merit Sharp, is one of the splinter group. I’m sure of it. The ones who brought down the portal. I’ve seen him warding the halls of the north wing upstairs—lethal wards, not the screeching, annoying kind. Dangerous stuff.”
“Why thanks to me?”
“Well.” Trini hesitated as they descended to the basement. “I found out that one of the people who can pass those dangerous wards is Jax.”
Raina didn’t like this. “Meaning?”
“He’s in on it, in some way. I know they’ve been pulling him from his awful lectures, and when they do, he’s up on the university level. I also know that he has meetings on Saturday mornings with Sharp, that ugly-ass nurse Ernella Crick, and a bunch of Dark Fae I’ve never seen before. Lotta suits and sunglasses—that type.”
“What does that prove?”
“Nothing by itself. But the time you went on your first date with Jax, I tossed his room.”
Raina scowled at her. “What?”
“He’s got grimoires in his room, real ancient stuff. I can’t read the old-school glyphs very well, but from what I could understand, these are books of Fray Spells. Not the ground troops version, either—this is heavy duty assault magic. The kind that requires full armor and group-cast spells.”
The night of the portal attack appeared sharply in her mind. Armored Dark Fae, standing together to cast a group spell powerful enough to decimate the portal into dust and rubble. They had done it the same way the guards had cast the Stroke Flaxen together. By itself, such a spell would weaken any magical construction over time. But cast simultaneously by a group, it had melted the armor like butter on a griddle.
Jax had ordered that spell.
“So what are they up to?” Raina asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve been able to search a few more instructors’ rooms. The ones who are like Jax, employed as both teachers and security. All of them had the old books. Some about battle tactics with nithedrakes and wyverns, decimation tactics. The raid should’ve let me scale the outside wall of the upper level without being seen. But Jax made short work of ten guys. Damn it, you should’ve taken him to the Bronx Zoo, or Coney Island or Rockaway Beach. That’s what all the tourists do on dates.”
Raina stopped in the basement hall. “Look, Trini, the next time you plan on a diversion with Jax out of the picture, you should probably let me in on it!”
“Whoa, girl, rein in the anger pony! I didn’t tell you because you couldn’t act weird and suspicious if you didn’t know. I’m not blaming you.”
Raina closed her eyes and drew a breath. “Sorry. I’m on edge.”
“Don’t worry. After a couple hours, I’ll dull that edge blunt, Friend.”
Resigned, Raina trailed Trini into the sub-basement and to the abandoned water pump station. “I don’t get it. Why bother with all this full-on devastation magic? The portal’s closed. There’s no one left to fight. It’s not like you can use magic against an army, not with all the steel. Have you found anything about that?”
“Nothing. But you don’t prep for something this big without a plan. They must know some way to reopen it. Even if it is to send in the death squads.”
Raina went cold at the words.
“Which is why you need to be prepared as well. For whatever.” Trini led into the pillared darkness of the former Pumping Apparatus Number 4. As had happened the last three days, Raina heard whispered voices and feet retreating into the dim recesses.
Trini caught her expression. “There are always confraternity members down here. Don’t worry about it.”
They crossed to a spread of mats stolen from the academy gym.
“Okay, let’s keep on with easy Fray Spells. Give me a Static Lunge.”
Raina held her palms an inch apart, and arced her hands across each other from the wrist.
Trini fisted her hips. “That’s what you call a Static Lunge?”
“I can’t do it without magic, Trini. I’ve tried to explain this to you,” Raina said with a grunt.
Trini patted her stomach. “Do it again. Okay. Focus. Give me one in the gut.”
Raina focused. She made the same motion of her palms. Nothing happened, of course. “This is stupid! You can’t do magic by waving your hands. It’s just a thing you do, like shrugging your shoulders when you don’t care. Or rolling your eyes.”
Trini rolled her eyes as Raina said this. Then she frowned. With a deep breath, she raised her hands, bringing the palms an inch apart. When she crossed the palms over each other in opposite arcs, a spark of pink light formed and flew across the mat. When it struck Raina, she was knocked off her feet.
“No fair!” Raina wheezed. “I can’t do your Dark Fae crap!”
“Crap? So why do you hold your hands like that when I ask you to perform a simple Static Lunge?”
“Like I said, it’s like shrugging or rolling your eyes.” Raina dragged herself to her feet. Her stomach hurt, and she felt like crying. Not that she ever would in front of Trini. “You just do it!”
Trini blew her lips like a horse. “Okay, fine. You’re a delicate flower. You get your magic from the portal like a delicate flower gets it from the sun. I’m a toadstool, right? I have to drag my magic out of cow turds and mud. But it’s the same damn magic. It does the same stuff. It makes you want to perform the same gesticulations. Your gesticulations are like, who cares? Where’s the intent? What color is behind your eyes? What sound is behind your ears? Come on, Friend. Dig in a little. Gods and comets, don’t be such a wuss.”
Gritting her teeth, taking a breath, Raina spread her feet into a stance.
“Are your feet wide enough apart?”
Raina looked down at her feet. “I guess.”
“You guess?” Trini made an abrupt motion with her right hand. Raina yelped as she felt her ass get spanked.
“Ow!”
“Every time you lose focus, you get an Intent Transitive spank. My father used to do this to me across the room when I misbehaved. The human world frowned on spanking, but Dad is pretty old school. So. Static Lunge. Bring it.” Trini made a come here gesture with the fingers of both hands.
Damn it. Raina concentrated. Was there a color in her eyes when she performed a Static Lunge? She thought hard, and came up with a deep shade of green, the kind you would find in the depths of a forest. And a sound, did she ever hear a sound? Yes, yes she had. Like a single chirp of a robin, but drawn out.
Keeping these in mind, she placed her feet in what felt like a natural position. She held the thoughts, focused her intent, gesticulated with her hands. Was that a glow between her palms? Raina let it fly. As she watched, Trini’s blouse wrinkled. Slightly.
Trini closed her eyes, lips pouched, head tilted. “Okay. I kinda felt that.”
Raina bent over, hands on her knees, breath
ragged. “I did it.”
“Sure. Yeah. Yay for you. Do it again, but actually try to cause me some harm this time. This is offensive Fray Spelling.”
“Just give me—”Raina sucked air “—one second.”
Trini’s hand twitched. Raina jerked with the pain.
“Ow!”
“Static Lunge! Right now!”
Raina tried to recall the shade of green, the elongated chirp, the body placement.
Slap!
“Ow-ah!” She rubbed her flank. “Stop it, you sadist!”
“You’re gonna get a lot worse than a spank in the middle of a fray.”
“A fray? How can you possibly fight when you have to remember all this stuff?”
Trini smirked. “Practice.”
“Forget it! I can’t do this! You can spank me all you want but I don’t have any magic.” Raina sat on the mat, elbows on her knees, face in her hands. After a few moments, she heard voices somewhere deep in the chamber. She scoped the room, but it was too large, too shadowy to see anything. “Who’s back there?”
Trini walked over. “Something big is going down pretty soon. The confraternity is making plans, they’re down here all hours. We need to worry about you. You need to learn to protect yourself.”
She reached out a hand to Raina. Expecting a trick, Raina hesitated. Then she allowed herself to be drawn to her feet.
“Maybe I’m doing this all wrong,” Trini said. “However you Bright Fae do your magic, it looks the same. Same motions, same gesticulations, same results. Maybe magic directs you, instead of you directing the magic. So let’s get down to basics. Real simple basic kiddie magic. Intent Transitive—I make a motion that I want carried out at a distance. It’s not truly a Fray Spell, because I get back as much as I give. For example, when I spank your butt, my hand stings.”
Raina thought about it. “I never considered this a spell. There’s no Light Fae term like Intent Transitive. It’s just something we do when we’re babies. We have to learn to control it.”
“Let’s try it. Here’s how it goes. The color behind your eyes is the pale bright blue of the sky on a spring morning. The sound behind your ears is a sudden, brisk wind through the trees. The gesture is right handed, thumb bent all the way down, fingers curled in. Your intent is how quickly you snap your fingers straight—keep the thumb down. Ready?”
They took their places on the mat. Raina concentrated hard, bringing the color and sound solidly in her mind. She raised her curled hand up, and snapped the fingers straight.
“Ow!” Raina cried, shaking out her hand.
Trini didn’t say anything. She lay on the concrete beyond the mat, unconscious.
22
For the next few days, Raina threw herself into relearning spells in the Dark Fae manner. It felt good to give a little back. Trini did away with the kid gloves. Raina rose to the challenge. One by one, she learned how to produce each Fray Spell by a combination of mental images and sounds coupled by precise gesticulations.
Initially, she hit her spells about half the time, but as the days went by, she became more and more accurate. The problem became her control. Raina couldn’t say why her spells were amplified so much, but it became worrisome as she consistently smashed through Trini’s Adargo Dires and Targes Viridescent.
Trini, bruised, winded and hesitant, turned to teaching Raina more basic spells, Impels, Precipitations and Phazes. When one of Raina’s attempts at Impel Oblige, the moving of inanimate objects, nearly knocked down one of the pillars holding up the ceiling, Trini made a T with her hands.
“Time.” Trini coughed out concrete dust. Gravel rained down around them. Both she and Raina turned eyes on the ceiling. When it seemed stable enough, Trini folded her arms. “Well, I guess there’s something I can’t teach you, but you really need to learn. That’s how to pull it back a little. I’ve never had a problem with too much power, so I don’t know what to tell you.”
In the same unseen corner of the room, voices argued, the echo making them unintelligible. When Raina scowled toward the sound, the voices stopped.
“Okay, Trini, tell me who’s back there. I can tell they’re talking about me.”
“The Egalitarian Confraternity is formulating—”
Raina dropped her head and stared Trini down. “I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had enough of whispering behind my back. I want to know who’s back there watching us.”
“Just people!” Trini wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Raina blew out her cheeks. “We’re not doing this anymore until I know what’s going on.”
Argument broke out again in the distant dark, this time growing closer. From behind the black pillars, a group of men and women walked toward Raina and Trini. All but one of them stopped short. He strode nearer, features becoming clearer as he moved into the glow of the light orbs.
An undefinable feeling of dread filled Raina like icy water.
“I’ve been watching you.” The voice was very deep, slightly rough with age, though his progress through the chamber was straight-backed and purposeful. “The confraternity and myself have gone back and forth about our meeting.”
At first, the man looked bland, unremarkable features so plain that you wouldn’t remember the man even moments after being introduced. Raina realized it was more than that. It was so deft a Phaze that she didn’t want to remember the face. She’d seen it before. On the subway. The janitor at the school. Even on the day the portal was attacked. As he neared, the blandness receded. He grew taller, complexion darker. The color of his eyes shifted from muddy brown to deep purple. His brows arched, cheekbones rose, hair going nearly black from a sandy brown.
Finally, they stood face to face. Every part of her wanted to deny what she saw. Except she couldn’t. She looked at a man she had seen before. Most recently, she’d seen his image drawn in watercolor, gilt and ink. This was the man from the book. The man standing next to her mother, the image captured long, long ago.
Raina felt a quiver run through her. “I don’t think so.”
The man nodded. “You know me.”
“I’m done.” She held up her hands. “I’m so done.”
With quick steps, Raina headed out of the vast pump station. Before she reached the doorway, the man stepped in front of her out of the shadows.
“Raina.” He entreated her with kindly eyes, a slight smile.
“It’s not true!” she shouted in his face.
He held his hands out to her. She spun away. “Get out of my face! I don’t believe it!”
“Raina, please.”
Tears blurred her vision as she ran. Her foot caught the edge of the practice mat, and she tripped. Lying face down, she let the tears come. Deep sobs racked her body. She covered her head with her arms. “No, no, no, no, no…”
“Gods beyond,” the man breathed. “Is she all right?”
“Give her a moment.”
Raina felt the man’s presence as he crouched down, but rose at the sound of Melchior’s voice. She left her head buried. After a while, she cried herself out. She still couldn’t find the energy to lift her head.
“I see the connection.” Derek’s voice. What was he doing here?
“The eyes, the cheeks,” Trini agreed in a whisper. “Definitely related.”
She rolled over, swiping at her eyes. “Shut up, you two.”
Melchior stood with Belle, Derek and Trini. And the man.
Raina sat up. “Who are you? Really.”
She braced herself. Raina already knew the answer. There was always a vague thread of it, running through her life: her interest in the human world, so alien to her family: her mother, teaching her Dark Fae magic, even if Raina never knew that that’s what it was: her ability to survive beyond the life giving magic no longer flowing from the portal.
The idea that she was not Oliver Raille’s daughter felt so repugnant, even though it felt so much like the truth.
We’ve been dishonest with you, Raina.
He
r mother’s voice echoed in her head. Was this man the dishonesty? If so, he was a pretty freaking big lie.
“My name is Kraevek.” The man crouched down again until they were nearly eye to eye. “Fae Lord Kraevek, or at least I was a long time ago. As to who I am really—”
Don’t say it, don’t say it, the words repeated in her brain.
We’ve been dishonest with you, Raina.
“I’m your father, Raina.”
No, no, no, no, no…
We’ve been dishonest with you, Raina.
“You, Raina, are my only child. My daughter.”
Kraevek rose, offering his hand as he did. After a long hesitation, Raina took the hand and let herself be lifted to her feet.
“I don’t want to believe it.” Raina heard a shudder in her voice.
Kraevek’s features fell. “I understand that. Oliver raised you as his own. He remains your father in nearly every sense of the word. If not for him, both your mother and I would be dead. Perhaps you as well.”
“The Dark Fae wanted to kill you? Kill Mom?”
“Dark and Light both, Raina.”
Both? “I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”
“You aren’t meant to. Each side of our converging species has been fighting the inevitable for eons. Both Light and Dark Fae leadership suppresses this information, that our two separate species are evolving through magic to become something different. Our secret histories have taught us that the creatures we are all to become are powerful beyond reckoning.”
Raina’s features went hard. “Creatures like you?”
“Yes.” He angled his head toward her. “Creatures like your mother. Creatures like you.”
The few gathered Egalitarian Confraternity looked on, not speaking. Human, Dark Fae, half-fae, all hung on Kraevek’s words. Expectant eyes fell on Raina.
“If you will walk with me, we have much to talk about,” the Fae Lord said.
Raina was fairly certain she did not want to hear what the man had to say—what her father had to say. Heart heavy, she understood that she needed to know more. Somewhere in this confused mess lay the key to Oreálle.