by Melissa Marr
“I was just”—she gestured behind her—“taking a walk.”
“And stepped through a hedge wall without a scratch? However did you manage that?”
She looked back at him as he buttoned the top button on his jeans. He didn’t sound as friendly as he had at her party, and she had exactly zero experience in being challenged. She kept her lips pressed together.
“Is this the part where you injure yourself by lying again or admit that you’re a fae-blood like me?”
She stared at him, consciously holding his gaze and not letting her attention drift to his bare skin.
Abernathy Commandment #6: Never confess your vulnerabilities if you can avoid it.
“Neither.” She smiled then, letting a little of her temper into it. “I don’t see the need to answer that question.”
Creed laughed. He was dangerous in ways she didn’t understand. Growing up with criminals had prepared her for a lot of things, but not this. She felt the urge to flee just as she had the first time she’d seen a mountain lion in the woods.
However, she knew enough to know how to protect herself a little. The fae were known to stand by their word—their literal word, but still, it was better than humanity, which could be treacherous for so many foolish, selfish reasons.
“Do you mean me harm, Creed Morrison?” she asked. It wasn’t a perfect request, but she’d spoken his name as she knew it, and the intent was there. She’d never attempted to elicit a fae bargain before because of the risks of exposure, but he already knew what she was.
Creed’s eyes glimmered in approval. “On my blood, I do not.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he spoke over her. “And do you, Lilywhite Abernathy, daughter of Iana, mean me harm?”
They were alone in the garden. There were no witnesses, no one to hear her words or his. She sat down on the ground.
He matched her movements.
Slowly, not looking away from him, she spread her hands out over the ground. Tendrils of vines snapped to her like whips. They curled around her from wrists to biceps. It wasn’t the extent of her relationship with the things that lived within the soil, but it was enough to point out that she wasn’t defenseless even in their isolation. The knife in her pocket and the one strapped to her leg were a secret, and she opted to keep it that way. Her affinity with the earth she would admit, partly because her fae-blood nature wasn’t a secret from him and partly because she needed the touch of earth.
“I mean you no harm on this day and until such time as you mean harm to me or mine,” she vowed.
“Thorough,” he said mildly.
“Contracts and negotiations are familiar territory. My father is a crime lord.”
“The crime lord,” he corrected.
Lily shrugged. She’d reached her limit of admissions for the moment. The vines on her wrists slithered away, and she stroked her fingers over the soil, not lingering long enough that the plants would share their most recent memories. Seeing the full image of a naked Creed Morrison was a tempting idea, but definitely not a good one. Her memory flashed back to the photos with the blurred sections.
After a moment when it felt like the air became perfectly still, he sang, “Deadly girl. All I’ve ever wanted was a girl like you, a girl who kills me a little more every day.” His words touched her skin with each breath, despite how far apart they sat. “Sun-kissed skin and bloodstained heart. All I ever wanted was you.”
She shivered.
“All I need is a deadly girl, a—”
“So air,” she interrupted. “Your affinity is for the air.”
“It is,” he agreed.
Without meaning to, she lifted her hand to touch her skin where she’d felt his words. A small voice reminded her that Erik could never do what Creed just did, that choosing to be with a human would mean sacrificing parts of herself. Logic silenced that voice quickly. Her life was already going to be risky enough without adding the dangers of being with another fae-blood.
Creed watched her like he was counting the beats of her heart. Maybe he was. She wasn’t as familiar with the aspects of working with the air. It didn’t come to her easily so far.
He sang softly, “Knife-tipped fingers and rose-petal kisses. All I need is—”
“Stop.” She pushed the air back toward him as forcefully as she could. Her eyes fell closed and she concentrated on not calling soil or stone to her defense.
After several moments, Creed asked, “I thought you liked my singing, Lily?”
She wasn’t going to lie, but she wasn’t going to listen to him as his voice brushed against the skin low on her throat either. Lily opened her eyes and said, “You know it wasn’t your singing that I was stopping.”
“I’ve never done that with anyone else,” he said, his voice casual. “Not on purpose at least. Not until you.”
She wasn’t even sure she believed him. He’d already proven that he was capable of overcoming the fae aversion to lying. Everyone was very clear that fae-blood couldn’t do so, and she’d always wondered if she was less fae-blood because she herself could lie. Then again, the fact that she had multiple affinities, strong ones, made her suspect that she was actually of purer lineage rather than being less fae.
She wasn’t sure what to say, but before she could figure it out, Creed said, “No one knows I met you.” He kept his voice emotionless.
Lily stared at him. He kept tossing her things that she didn’t know how to catch. Sure, they’d had a spark when they met, and yes, she’d had a tabloid crush on him for years. That shouldn’t mean that they dive headfirst into disaster. “Why are you telling me this?”
He sprawled out on the ground. “It will matter later. If it was about my reputation, I’d have found a way to get pictures out to the media. I didn’t tell anyone though. And I’m glad I didn’t. There are . . . others to consider.”
It was easy to figure out who Creed meant. The welcome-to-Belfoure bombing was a pretty big clue. The kiss was another. And if there were any doubts, Zephyr’s own admissions vanquished those.
“I met him today,” she said, sinking to her knees on the ground to face Creed. “Zephyr. That’s who you meant, right?”
She watched Creed as she said it, but he wasn’t as easy to read as she’d like. For someone whose every emotion appeared to be on his face in the hundreds of pictures that cropped up everywhere, Creed’s expressions one-to-one were implacable. She wondered how much of his media persona was cultivated. How much of the careless charm was his, and how much was a persona?
When he remained silent, Lily added, “I met him a couple hours ago in town.”
All he said in reply to her announcement was, “I know.”
She paused, hoping things weren’t going to get more awkward. If Creed knew that she’d met Zephyr, that meant that Zephyr would’ve had to have seen Creed immediately after meeting her.
“So you know what happened? Between us?”
Creed nodded. “Why do I think there was more to the story than what Zephyr told me?”
“Claimed he was waiting for me. Explosion. No one hurt. I pulled a knife. He kissed me. Accused me of being Seelie,” she summarized bluntly. It was a tactic she’d seen her father use to great effect: state the facts and move on.
“Zephyr left out the kiss,” Creed said flatly. “And the knife.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “I was taught never to be unarmed. Using weapons helps me keep from drawing on an affinity and revealing myself.”
“And the kiss?”
“. . . is not the important point,” she said.
They stared at each other, and she felt the bizarre urge to apologize. They weren’t a couple. Creed had been hired by her father to sing to her. They’d talked. They weren’t even friends. They’d flirted . . . and then he went on to be photographed with no less than four girls between that day and now.
Creed simply watched her.
The tension was growing thicker the longer the silence dragged on, so she steer
ed the conversation back to his earlier remarks. “Zephyr is the other person, right? The one you’re concerned about. You’re friends, and obviously both fae-blood. How did either of you know about me though?”
Rather than answer, Creed closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sky like he was asking some unseen being to give him strength. If she hadn’t known he was a fae-blood, she would have suspected that’s precisely what he was doing, but she’d felt the way he moved the air near her when he sang. He wasn’t praying. Creed was literally drawing strength from the air above them, or more accurately, from the sun. In a voice so low Lily had to strain to hear it, he said, “I want to tell you everything, every secret, every good and bad thing I know, but I can’t.” His eyes were still closed. “I want to, but Zeph . . .”
“What?”
“It’s complicated,” Creed offered weakly, as if that was any kind of an answer.
“He blew up a ship. He’s a terrorist, isn’t he? That’s the secret. You’re not just fae-blood. You’re sympathizers.”
Creed laughed, a bitter, almost mean sound. “I’m not a sympathizer, not even a little.”
“Have you bombed anything?”
“No.”
His tone was hesitant enough that Lily prompted, “But?”
“I can’t answer that.” He stared at her, looking more lost than rock stars with bad attitudes ever should. “I wish things were simple. I wish no one could issue me orders. What I can tell you is that if people knew we were talking, if Zephyr knew we were talking, it would be bad. I broke a lot of rules coming to your house. I’m breaking more every moment we speak.”
“I’m glad you’re not opposed to breaking those rules,” she admitted. Then, she nodded and sent the vines that had been tangled around her skin earlier out toward Creed. They slithered toward him like serpents, and he looked at them in wonder. It felt intimate to share her fae-blood traits with him. She’d never let even Daidí see the extent of what she could do.
She wanted to show Creed though, to confess her secrets to him. She wanted to have him look at her the way he was watching the leafy tendrils gliding toward his skin. Maybe all fae-blood could manipulate their affinity elements as she could, but from the way Creed watched the vines, she suspected yet again that she was more fae than even those who had been arrested and convicted. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought it, but it wasn’t a truth she liked to ponder.
As Creed stared at the vines that were twining their way over his body, Lily asked, “Does it always feel intense when another fae-blood touches you?”
“Zephyr’s kiss?” he asked bitterly. “He’s experienced.”
“Not Zephyr,” she interrupted.
Creed’s attention snapped to her, but she refused to be embarrassed, not by the kiss, not by the question, and not by her next words.
She clarified, “When I met you . . . it felt different. Just having you stare at me . . . and then the kiss on my cheek.”
As her words trailed off, Creed failed to completely hide a grin. “No. It’s not usually like that.”
Lily nodded. “But you’re not supposed to know me?”
“No,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m even allowed to speak to you once classes start. There are rules, Lily.”
She felt like pieces of the secrets were clicking into place. He and Zephyr were tied into the same group, and for some reason Zephyr had a personal interest in her. “So you knew what I was before we met?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s not why you wanted to talk to me? Not that . . . or anything to do with my father?”
Creed made no attempt to hide his expression, making it clear that he wasn’t lying as he said, “I’ve listened to stories about the missing Lilywhite for years, so maybe it was part of it, but when I met you? I wished you weren’t fae-blood at all. Then you could be free of this.”
She could hear things in the spaces between the words he was uttering aloud, and she knew that he was very carefully trying to adhere to the letter of the rules he was under. It was a very fae approach. Even so, what he did admit told her enough. Whatever secrets Creed had, whatever secrets they shared now, it centered around the fae and Zephyr. Coming to St. Columba’s suddenly felt more than dangerous; it felt like a conspiracy, and getting tangled up in fae-blood conspiracies was both illegal and deadly.
“I don’t run, and I don’t let anyone decide my path but me.” She let the vines retract, pulling them back from where they had begun to twist over his calves and knees, and stood.
Abernathy Commandment #5: Be bold.
With every bit of poise her father had taught her, Lily looked down at Creed. He hadn’t stood.
“I’ve spent my life not getting mixed up in anything political. I haven’t attended school, gone anywhere without a guard. I like my privacy.” She let a little of her public facade down and smiled. “You’re tempting, but temptation isn’t enough reason for me to get mixed up in whatever mess you and Zephyr are in.”
“It’s not that easy,” Creed started.
Lily laughed. “I’m Nick Abernathy’s only child. It truly is that easy. To disappear. To eliminate anyone who tries to stop me from doing so. My father has taught me more about being ruthless than I ever want people to see.”
And with that warning to the fae-blood, she walked away from him and realized that it was a reminder to herself as well. She wasn’t going to be pushed around by a couple of tabloid darlings with penchants for drama. She was Lilywhite Abernathy, and no one, fae or human, was going to control her.
thirteen
ZEPHYR
When Zephyr realized that Alkamy hadn’t come outside all day, he went to check on her. He told himself it was because he had a duty to all of the cell members. He told himself it was because Alkamy wasn’t good at being bored. It simply wasn’t something she did. If there wasn’t entertainment, she created some. If there wasn’t anyone to amuse her, she found someone.
Zephyr wasn’t jealous. He couldn’t be. She wasn’t his. She was his best friend though, and he had been responsible for her since the day they’d met. She never demanded it of him, never reminded him when he failed. She was patient and tolerant with him as she was with no one else. It was a rare gift to be cared for by Alkamy Adams, one he’d let lead them both astray a few times.
When Zephyr met her in one of her many, many classes, he became an accessory. He didn’t mind. She was amazing. Hapless instructors would tell her rock star daddy that she was a very talented young woman, but had trouble with authority. Zephyr was the perfect boyfriend for that girl.
By the time she was twelve, she could play everything from the lute to synthesizer, tribal drums to cello. Any instrument was a perfect fit in her hands. By sixteen, her father had her in studios performing like a trained monkey. Zephyr wanted to beat the man for not noticing how hard Alkamy tried to get his attention. He was clueless, never even suspecting that her inhuman gift for music was fae or questioning her unearthly beauty when she became a teenager. Alkamy’s handler had noticed though and began to teach her how to feed lies to the media so she seemed that she had to work at looking like a doll. Without her handler, Alkamy would’ve been outed as fae before she was thirteen. Since then, Zephyr had helped, as had his handler, who was now their shared liaison with the courts.
He opened the door to her suite and looked around. Alkamy was stretched out inside the soil she stored inside her sofa. The sofa cushions were on the floor, revealing a bed of soil where Alkamy was currently half-submerged and mostly naked. She did, at least, have underwear on.
“No roommate yet then, Kamy?” he asked. It wasn’t something she did in front of suitemates.
“Why don’t you ever knock?” She flung a handful of soil at him. “What if I were naked? Or sleeping? Or naked and sleeping?”
He stepped into the soil and tilted his face upward like he was stepping under a water shower. Then, he leaned down and kissed her forehead. “You are naked, by the way.”
> “I am not. Underwear means not naked.” She rolled over and wiggled her hips a little so she sank deeper.
Relieved that she had moved so he wasn’t trying to talk to her without letting his gaze drop to her bare chest, Zephyr started scooping soil over her back. He didn’t comment on the fact that she needed so much soil-time every single time she returned to campus. They’d fought about it enough to know all the lines already.
You need to tell him to keep his cigarettes and cigarette-smoking friends out of the house.
That’s not my character.
You’re not a character, Kamy. You’re a person.
I’m a person whose father is a whisky-drinking, cigarette-smoking rock star. If I want him to be sympathetic to me, if I want to avoid being detained as fae, I need to be the daughter he wants. You know that.
What I know is that you need to stop drinking.
Zephyr didn’t ask if she ever smoked too. Alkamy had enough self-induced sickening all on her own, and Zephyr didn’t want to add to it.
“You could try being my public girlfriend again. Go vegan and organic because you’re so into me.” He rubbed the soil into her back, never once letting his hands even brush the top seam of her underwear. “Stop drinking, at least. Pretend like I do.”
Even though Zephyr flirted, slept around like the spoiled New Hollywood child he was thought to be, and had publicly admitted to choosing dates to coordinate with his clothes, he’d always treated Alkamy with respect. Now that they were platonic, she nagged him that he didn’t show that kind of respect to other girls.
Of course, there was Vi. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure that he respected her as much as feared her. Her element was fire. In theory, an earth-aligned fae would balance her, but Zephyr wasn’t sure there was a faery born who could balance her. She was volatility in motion. He respected her, but he gave her wide berth when possible. Now there was the third female member of their cell.