Gabriella scowled at him. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
“Spoken like a terrorist,” Linford instantly retorted, his brow furrowed. “Before her Virgo, your grandmother did things that most people would be ashamed to confess to a priest.”
“In the name of our cause,” Gabriella instantly dismissed. “You Fae have manhandled us for long enough and you know it, so don’t think about arguing. Not when you’re on our side now.”
“I’m trying to provide a balanced picture,” Linford rejoined, spreading his hands wide as he leaned back against the spindly kitchen chair. “How can I do that if I allow everything you say to be sugar-coated?”
He had a point.
I shot him a look and was amazed to notice the stubborn tilt to his jaw, that twist to his mouth was pure Riel. Or, I guessed, the other way around. But still. The similarities were there, and they weren’t just skin deep. Apparently, obstinacy could skip a generation.
“When it comes down to it, for all the shit they’ve pulled, who would you trust? The AFata or the Assembly?” Gabriella challenged, thrusting a spoon at her Virgo as she made the demand.
Linford didn’t cower in the face of her fiery Latina temper. If anything, I could see she amused him, especially as her pure American tones were suddenly marred by a rolling of her r’s and a thick sultriness that came from her irritation, making her accent suddenly bleed thicker than before.
He hitched a shoulder. “The AFata. Without a doubt.”
She scowled at him. “So why the arguing?”
“Because I can’t always let you get your own way.”
A snort escaped her as she twisted around to sort out the coffee. “Because that happens all the time.”
“You know it does,” he countered smoothly, but there was a small smile on his lips that told me this was a common argument.
Deciding we needed to get things back on track, especially since Linford was eying his suddenly much younger mate with an expression I really didn’t want to focus on, I cleared my throat. “You’d truly turn your back on your own kind?”
“I did a long time ago,” Linford countered. “The second I began helping Gabriella hide herself away, in fact.”
“You were hiding her from the AFata then,” Riel pointed out.
“Yes, but that involved turning my back on the Fae.” He shrugged. “Of course, it culminated with the AFata wanting to recruit a young witch born Fae to spy on my people. That spy was my kin. I wasn’t about to let that happen. Not through manipulation.”
“So what’s changed? Why would you trust the AFata over the Fae now?” Daniel grilled, his brow puckered with confusion as he leaned forward, his elbows rubbing against the Formica as he slouched over.
“She’s changed.” He gestured to Gabriella. “Look at her. Look what Riel did to her. Riel is no longer just a witch born Fae. She’s no longer just a student who’s trying to get through the Academy. She’s a powerful creature who just managed to fell a battalion of Fae troupes without even having to get her hands dirty.” Linford snorted. “If, assuming her plan is to overtake the AFata and use them to overthrow the Assembly, she wishes to, she could easily manipulate the AFata to do her bidding.”
“Is that your intention?” I rasped, staring at my mate. “You want a coup?”
My voice was hoarse because what she was suggesting was insane. Truly insane.
“I do,” she admitted. “But not the way you think. I’m not saying I wish to overthrow the Assembly, but I want to approach them with a balance of power that’s in our favor.
“You have to understand, Seph, we’re in danger now. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we’re under threat, and I have to think that all this has happened for a reason.” She bit her lip then blurted out, “Why me? Why us? Why all the hiding and the lying and the secrets if we weren’t supposed to change shit?
“All the other witch born Fae have blended into the background. Linford says they’ve become Instructors and that’s it. I, we, weren’t meant for that.”
“You were meant to be in Hawaii on that date,” Gabriella said firmly. “Your tatarabuela saw you touching it.”
“Not catching it,” Linford clarified dryly, “but the devil’s in the details as the humans say.”
I shot him a look, and even though I’d been expecting it, the sudden ironing out of the heavy wrinkles on his forehead was pronounced.
He was starting to rejuvenate.
The sight was both creepy as hell and fantastic. Like watching a miracle… also, kind of like watching one of those creepy time shot videos that showed a corpse decaying and morphing into a skeleton, but in reverse.
Because I knew I was staring, I forced myself to look at the pot of mud Gabriella placed in front of me. Hooking the sugar jar my way, I poured nearly half of it into the mug and stirred the thick brew.
“If that’s the case,” Riel began slowly, her frown telling me she was pondering the situation carefully, “then I have to believe I was always supposed to get one of these powers. Perhaps not all of them, but at least one. And for a reason. My Virgo too, otherwise they wouldn’t be a part of this entire farce, would they?”
“Everything happens for a reason,” Gabriella intoned. “You know you’re not supposed to leave the Academy until you’ve graduated.”
“Or been tossed out,” Riel muttered, her wistful tone a reminder that she’d longed to be thrown out not long ago.
“Exactly. Which means you would never have been in Hawaii in the first place if the AFata hadn’t tried to bring you to them.” Gabriella sank down into her seat with a sigh. “It’s bizarre how things turn full circle and suddenly, everything makes sense.”
“Nothing makes sense,” I countered.
“It does,” she reasoned. “Every instance brought us to this moment, and this moment will lead us to a resolution.
“Riel is right. I’m not saying she’s the second coming or anything like that, but she was supposed to be there for a reason. Just as the battalion was there for a reason. We have to assume that change is on the horizon, and it’s easy to believe that she might be the instigator of that. The catalyst.”
Riel reached up and rubbed her bottom lip. “Does the AFata have a manifesto?” she asked quietly, seemingly ignoring her grandmother’s statement as her gaze was drawn inward, her attitude pensive.
I felt like she was leaving Linford and Gabriella to argue around her while she contemplated our next move.
Not having been raised to be so passive, to take the backseat, I didn’t appreciate the way Matt, Dan, and I were being pushed out of the decision-making process, but I also had to admit that I knew that was my ego talking. We knew jack shit about the AFata, knew nothing about this situation, and it sucked.
Hard.
“Of course, they have a manifesto,” Gabriella retorted. “What political group doesn’t have a manifesto?”
Daniel snorted out a laugh. “She has a point.”
Riel rolled her eyes. “Okay, so what is it?”
“To redistribute the balance of power back to the witches. We’re the most powerful of the three species and yet, somehow, we’re in the middle with the Fae in charge.”
“That’s it? That’s their goal?” Riel argued, her words beyond disappointed.
“No,” Linford replied, “it’s what they want to happen, but their goal is to make the Fae pay for their magic.”
My eyes widened at that. “Impossible!”
“Never gonna happen,” Matt agreed.
But Riel’s smile was slow. “Then that’s exactly what we need to change.”
I sputtered, “What? Didn’t you just hear me? The Assembly will never go for that!”
She grinned. “Trust me. I have a plan.”
❖
Riel
The portal dropped us right in the center of the AFata’s Havana HQ.
The sight of us had screams of surprise stirring from different points of the large quarters
, but I ignored them, intent on looking around.
My grandmother was at the head of our group, and from what she’d said, her ex was still the leader of this bunch of ragtag witches and we were hoping he was going to be our in.
The room was about the size of a small café, and there was barely anything to it. Thirty by twenty feet max. On the front door, there were political slogans that were anti-communist—American agenda, which from what my grandparents had said told me that the Fae were pro-communist—and other posters and graffiti illustrations that made this place look like a grassroots political party.
The walls were painted white, but there were water stains on the ceiling, and all the corners were moldy from dampness. There were about twenty desks, ten to a row, filing down the front of the building, and then there was a kitchen area and a door, which I assumed led to a back office.
In the kitchen area, there were four witches who were knocked out.
“Your work, I guess,” Matt whispered, the words dropping into my ear and making me shiver as his breath trailed along the sensitive flesh there.
“I think so,” I agreed, eying the way they were slumped over, their faces pale, and their bodies twitching every now and then as though an electrical current was being passed through their limbs.
I felt no guilt, not when they’d been trying to sabotage me. But here I was, offering a truce. On my terms, of course.
There were many things I didn’t understand about what was happening, but what I did know was that we’d never have any peace, and that was all I wanted. I didn’t want to be at war, didn’t want to be a fugitive, and in all honesty, I could only see this situation panning out into an all-out battle if I didn’t take charge now and stop the bleeding from the source.
I was no Seer, but I knew I could call an army to me. How couldn’t I? I just had to offer youth and good health to dying men to have soldiers who would lay down their lives for me—because I could make them live again. Why wouldn’t they join my fight?
But I didn’t want that.
That way would lead to disaster.
Linford wasn’t wrong. Well, he wasn’t right either. I didn’t have to worry about my powers being drained, at least not on a small scale, so en masse, there could be an issue, but more than that I did have to worry about their repercussions.
To fight the Fae, I’d need to make a lot of witches and humans young once more, and that would screw with the planet’s population dynamics if we were to fight the Fae on all fronts. The Earth was overpopulated enough as it was without tens of thousands of people suddenly reverting to child-bearing age once more!
So, no, I didn’t want to go to war. Not only because I didn’t want to go down the road of making my own soldiers, but also because I wasn’t a warrior.
Never had been, never would be.
It wasn’t in my nature, and even though it was in my Virgos’, I had a feeling that wasn’t our path. We were a troupe, after all, before we’d been anything else, we’d been a unit, but real Fae warriors went to war. They weren’t peacekeepers. I knew that like I’d once known my face in the mirror. Huh. I really needed to get better acquainted with the new me. It was like going Goth. Except with blond hair and no piercings.
Approaching the AFata would give us numbers. Linford said there was an AFata group in every nation, sometimes several groups, so they’d be our means of inviting change in every country, and they had a manifesto that made sense—fair trade between the species.
I was certain there’d be a lot of other crackpot shit. When wasn’t there with these extremist groups? But I could tame that, just as I’d tame the Assembly.
I knew it was bigshot talk for a little witch born Fae, but fuck, I had to fake it until I made it, right?
The barrage of Spanish finally slowed, but I knew the second I retracted the pink glow surrounding us, the witches that had approached us would take advantage and attack. There were twenty in all—including the four felled ones who had to be the wind witches—and they were eying my silvery pink shield with wide eyes, even as they were hurling very inventive insults at my grandmother.
When the back door to the office opened and an older man stepped through, his mouth dropped at the sight of my abuela.
“Gabriella?” he whispered, his voice misty and wistful as well as bewildered. “Am I the only one who sees her?”
“You old fool,” a woman snapped at him, as she waved a fan in front of her. The lack of air conditioning in the building was definitely evident, even through my shield, and the gleam of sweat covered us all. “Of course she’s there.”
“But she’s—”
“Carlos, we need to talk,” my grandmother murmured, her voice husky.
If I thought about it, I’d probably call that her come-to-bed voice, but yeah, no granddaughter needed to go down that route. I already knew way too much about her sex life, thank you very much.
“If you need to talk, then you can do so in front of us,” the woman with the fan snarled, her hands dropped to her denim-clad hips. She wore a baggy white t-shirt that covered a rounded belly and was damp at her throat and armpits.
In my ear, Seph whispered, “The witch who helped us, the one from my father’s cirque du freak, she told us a woman led the magic behind the raven and the storm that came for you. That she was the leader.”
My brow puckered. “You didn’t think to tell me this before?”
He shrugged. “I forgot.”
Casting all my males glowers, and receiving sheepish grins for my pains, I rolled my eyes but took the information to heart. Carlos wasn’t in charge, but the lady with the fan.
A flurry of Spanish escaped her, so fast even I couldn’t understand it, then she ground out, “This is another level of sorcery.” With the butt of the abanico, she pointed to the women who were slumped over on the kitchen table. “You’re responsible for this, I assume?”
“No, I am,” I declared, not willing to allow my grandmother to take the blame for something she definitely hadn’t done.
The woman narrowed her eyes as she cut me a glare then glanced at my abuela. “You’re the granddaughter.”
Not a question. A statement. And it figured, considering how alike we looked. “Sí, I am.”
“You come here of your own volition after nearly killing our witches?” Carlos murmured, his eyes still loaded with confusion as he traced them over Gabriella.
“You thought I was just going to let you take me hostage?” I retorted angrily, irritated at their myopic stance.
What did they expect me to do? Thank them for trying not once, not twice, but three times to snatch me away?
Yeah, like that was going to happen.
“We wanted to talk to you. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“The witches don’t understand the witch born Fae, Riel,” Linford reminded me calmly. “They didn’t know their magic would react differently around you.”
I huffed as I folded my arms across my chest. “If you say so, Abuelo.”
A ghost of a smile whispered over Linford’s mouth. “I do.”
Rolling my eyes, I ticked off on my hand. “Your raven nearly blinded me, and then the initial storm you sent to snatch me almost killed me. If it weren’t for the fact that I had safeguards in place”—I didn’t want them to know about Linford’s ability with portals. Not unless the AFata member of staff who had infiltrated the Academy had told them first—”I’d have smashed into the ground. I highly doubt I’d have survived such a fall.”
“We just wanted to talk to you,” Carlos argued stubbornly.
“Sway her to the group’s way of thinking,” my abuela retorted. “Manipulate her and use her. Put her in danger—”
“We’re all in danger in the AFata. You know that, Gabriella. We put our lives on the line so that the next generation might have more freedom than we do ourselves,” the woman interjected, glaring at my abuela.
She narrowed her eyes at the woman’s pious tone. Each word was punctuated with a t
wist of her fan that had her coal dark hair flopping in a limp breeze. “You always were melodramatic, Josefa.”
I reached for my grandmother and squeezed her arm. “Tranquila,” I whispered, but she just huffed and shot me a disgruntled look.
“I never thought to see the day you’d be back here, Gabriella,” Carlos mumbled, evidently still taken aback despite the argument going on.
It was quite clear to me that he was still as in love with her as he’d ever been, and it was also clear that Josefa and Carlos were together now…
Awkward.
“Full circle, no, Carlos?” Her lips twitched.
“What happened to you? Is this a—”
“No magic. Not regular magic anyway.”
“Sorcery,” Josefa snarled, her fan quivering in her hand, almost in time to her outrage if she had a heart that shivered and shook like that.
“Sorcery is nonsense,” Gabriella snapped. “You always were tonta.”
Josefa stepped forward, her mouth curling in a snarl until one of the other females grabbed a firm hold of her and held her back.
“Call me stupid one more time and I’ll start casting some sorcery of my own.”
“I’m shaking in my boots over here, Josefa,” Gabriella countered, her eyes darkening a second with her irritation before she twisted and grabbed my hand. “Riel is my granddaughter. She managed to touch a lodestone.”
A lodestone?
I frowned at her—she’d never called it that in my presence before now. My tatarabuela had called it Sol’s stone. At least, she’d called it that in her vision. Within my vision… Sheesh. Talk about Inception. This shit would have confused even Leonardo DiCaprio. But still, that was a new one on me.
“A lodestone? Madre de Dios,” Carlos rasped, his eyes wide as he strode closer to us. When my glow didn’t dissipate—if anything, it spread farther out, oozing like it could sense an inherent danger—he came to a halt about eight or so feet away. “What talents did she pick up?”
“Aside from the same gifts a plastic surgeon has,” Josefa spit.
Finally Faeling: An Eight Wings Academy Novel: Book Three Page 9