Rising Silver Mist

by Olivia Wildenstein

  I scanned the shimmering immensity that no longer seemed as beautiful as it had a few moments ago. “You. I’ll let you carry me.”

  Dawson swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple jostled in his skinny throat. “Silas might be more—”

  “You.”

  “Okay.” He let out a wary sigh. “Okay,” he said more strongly. “Want to get on my back?”

  I didn’t laugh like I had the first time he’d made that suggestion. I nodded, and when he crouched before me, I climbed onto his back, looped both my legs around his narrow torso, and locked my arms around his neck.

  “Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  Dawson dropped my cape, then sprang high so dizzyingly fast, I let out a little squeal and crushed his throat.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  The field of adamans rushed beneath us, shining like a purple ocean. I squinted to make out the land bordering the meadow. In the north, blue cliffs rose from a vast stretch of sunset-colored earth—sand perhaps? And up ahead, glistening silver pools marbled the land, interspersed by giant lily pads and small trees with serrated branches that reminded me of aloe vera, if aloe vera were mustard-yellow. As we dove closer, I realized the lily pads were in fact giant iridescent flat shells and the trees weren’t planted into any soil. They floated over the silvery water, their roots reaching downward like tentacles, with only their tips immersed.

  Dawson slalomed around the trees before landing on one of the shells. It bobbed underneath our weight.

  “Welcome to the glades.”

  “Are those volitors?” I pointed to the tree nearest us, my index finger coming dangerously close to Silas’s fire-lit bug body. I yanked my hand back and kept it close to my side.

  “Yes!” Dawson said.

  The strange, serrated yellow branch curled onto itself, as though afraid of us.

  “They’re shy,” Dawson added.

  My eyebrow tipped up. “You mean, the trees?”

  His forehead ridged as though it were an odd question.

  I kneeled on the edge of the shell. Even though the light was muted, the water twinkled.

  “Are there any fish or other deadly creatures I should be worried about encountering?”

  “There’s nothing left down there but copper.”

  “Copper?”

  “Uh-huh. The bottom is solid metal. Plants don’t grow on metal. At least, not in Neverra.”

  I peered into the transparent water.

  “So, are you going to jump in?” Dawson asked.

  I wanted to, but what if scales formed on my skin? Would Silas kill me on the spot? “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Want me to go first?”

  Before I could answer, he launched off the shell and somersaulted into the water, splashing my hands in the process. I pulled them back from the edge of the shell. Heart hopping, I looked for the faerie guard and found him droning behind me.

  “Come on!” Dawson yelled.

  I twisted back toward the glade, casting a furtive glance toward my hands. The only thing that glowed on them was Ace’s brand. The shell seesawed again. Since there was nothing to grip onto, I backed away from the edge and bumped into legs. I assumed they were Silas’s, but when I tipped my face up, the eyes looking down at me weren’t gold.

  41

  Electric

  Recovering from the shock of seeing Cruz, I rose slowly. “You’re back.” I was trying to keep my voice steady, but raw fear made it waver.

  “I am. And just in time to see you swim in our waters. How exciting.”

  I dipped my chin toward my neck that vibrated with my frenzied pulse. “Why would that be exciting?”

  “Because the glades are special to us Seelies. They’re the last conquered territory in the kingdom.” Cruz stared beyond me at Dawson, who was treading water.

  His face was so red it seemed as though he were being boiled alive. “Was it okay that I took her here?”

  “More than okay.” Cruz smiled at him, white teeth gleaming between his parted lips. “Silas!”

  How he recognized the guard in his bug form was beyond me.

  The firefly morphed back into his delightful, brooding self. “Yes?”

  “You are relieved of your duty.”

  Silas nodded, then shifted back to his insect body and buzzed off.

  “You too, Dawson.”

  A breath snagged in my throat. “I’d like him to stay.”

  Cruz cocked his head to the side. “And I’d like to spend time alone with my fiancée.”

  My skin broke into goosebumps that made sweat bead on my upper lip. I licked the sweat off, then swiped my tongue over my lips, which felt chapped and raw. If I begged for Dawson to stay, Cruz might hurt him…or worse, make me hurt him like he’d made me hurt Ace.

  My stomach tightened as Dawson soared out of the water, steaming as droplets evaporated off his skin and clothes.

  An awkward grin bent his lips. “Sure thing, boss.”

  Geez. Did he think I was excited to see Cruz?

  Cruz wrapped a hand around my waist. “Thanks for showing her around. Oh, and, Dawson, I left something for you at your house.”

  Dawson’s eyes went wide. “What is it?”

  “A surprise.” When Cruz smiled at him, his smile unsettled me because it seemed warm and genuine.

  Dawson shoved his almost dry hair back so many times, I was surprised he had any left. “A good surprise or a—”

  Cruz rolled his eyes. “Just go home already.”

  Their interaction was strange, so devoid of the venom and calculated stares Cruz cast on everyone else.

  Dawson bobbed his head in giddy nods, then levitated off the shell. I curled my fingers into my palms to stop myself from reaching out to him. I didn’t want him to leave me, but how could I show him how unsafe I felt in the care of a man he clearly admired?

  Once Dawson was gone, Cruz focused his entire attention on me. “Let’s swim.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because you made me come.”

  “I don’t mean in Neverra.”

  I knew he’d meant the glades. “I wanted to visit your world. My first choice was seeing the Hareni, but Silas said I wasn’t allowed there.”

  “Did he now? How rude.”

  “I can go?”

  Cruz nodded, and a black curl fell into his eyes. “Of course. I believe it’s important to know where you truly come from. And I’ll take you there as soon as we’re done swimming.”

  “I told you I didn’t want to—”

  His palm twinkled as dust rose from his skin.

  I jolted backward. “Why are you bringing out your dust?”

  The ribbons twirled and fused into a pocket knife. He seized my hand and sliced my palm. I staggered, not out of pain, but out of shock. Using my moment of confusion against me, he grabbed me and jumped, dunking both our bodies into the water. I gasped, but shut my mouth when the warm, metallic-tasting water snuck past my lips, past my teeth and into my throat.

  I writhed, and his arms fell away from my body. I slammed my palms into his chest, then kicked until I broke the surface. My blood raced through my veins, raging with indignation.

  How dare he!

  The second he told me how to save Lily, I. Would. Kill. Him.

  The water slapped my face, its glassy surface no longer smooth. Seething, I forded toward the flat shell that was rocking like a kayak. I tried to grab onto it and hoist myself up, but my fingers slid. Cursing, I threw my foot up, but it skidded off, and I toppled right back into the careening surf. I looked for other options, but the volitors, as though apprehensive of losing their delicate balance, had lifted higher, their roots dangling several feet over the surface, out of my reach.

  My last option was the faerie who’d dunked me in. I twisted around, my wet hair slapping my cheek. Cruz didn’t bob next to me. I flicked my gaze upward, imagining him flying overhead, enjoying the spectac
le of my struggle. He wasn’t there, either. I blinked as water sprayed my eyes. Had he abandoned me? Fear crashed against my eardrums and foamed inside my belly as a stronger wave washed over my head, shoving me down toward a dark form that drifted as sluggishly as a jellyfish.

  But it wasn’t a jellyfish.

  It was a body.

  Cruz’s body.

  I squinted even though my eyesight wasn’t blurry. Like everything else in this place, water here wasn’t like water back home. Sealing my lips to preserve my breath, I waited for his body to writhe, for his hands to move, for his fingers to spread. Nothing besides his hair moved. Like seaweed, it undulated around his expressionless face.

  My lungs seized as I ran out of air. I kicked back upward. As soon as my head broke the surface, I gulped air. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I ducked my head back under, surveying Cruz’s listless form. Was he dead, or pretending to find out if I would save him?

  A bolt of electricity hit my spine, making me yelp and arch. Had I run into something? I spun, my mind awash with utter terror. Nothing was behind me. The taste of metal filled my mouth and coated my palate. I twisted back toward Cruz.

  “Shit!” I said out loud, forgetting I was submerged. The word rang out through the water almost as clearly as if I were speaking into air. I yelled Cruz’s name. That too echoed limpidly against the gleaming copper floor.

  Fear jammed into my throat like a wad of gum. Fear, but also resolve. However much I wanted Cruz dead, I still needed him to tell me how to get Lily back inside Neverra.

  I dove and cut through the water toward him. Hooking my arms underneath his, I hauled him up. The silver spray still whipped my face, but the water had calmed. I took off toward the shell that no longer bobbed frantically, swimming hard. Harder than I’d ever swum before in my entire life because Cruz’s body felt as heavy as my car.

  When I reached the shell, I gritted my teeth and heaved his dead weight over. His head knocked against the iridescent surface so roughly I expected his skull to have cracked.

  “Help me out here, Cruz.”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t help.

  Panting, I put my shoulders underneath his torso, clutched his knees with my hands, and shoved him hard again, using the slickness of the shell in my favor. Calling on every last ounce of strength, I pushed and didn’t stop until his entire body flopped onto our pale life raft.

  My chest throbbed with confusion and my arms shook with exertion as I heaved myself out of the glade and crawled toward Cruz’s motionless form. Water steamed off the faerie’s body and hair, hissing as it puffed and dissipated in the brisk air.

  I raked my stringy hair out of my eyes, then placed the heel of my hand on his chest, pressed my other hand on top, and began to pump. Water trickled down my neck, snaked around my collarbone, and fell against Cruz’s unmoving jaw, sizzling like oil in a hot pan.

  Could faeries really drown?

  “Cruz?”

  No answer.

  “If this is a test, it’s not funny.”

  Nothing.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” I bent over his inert body and released two rescue breaths inside his mouth, then resumed the compressions.

  Something fluttered underneath my fingertips. A heartbeat.

  I shoved my hair out of my eyes again and was about to resume the compressions, when I caught sight of my skin. Blood roaring between my ears, I lifted my hands and flipped them in front of my face.

  Cruz’s body spasmed next to me.

  Blanching, I shoved my hands underneath my thighs.

  His eyes opened.

  My heart careened around my chest.

  He stared at my face.

  I froze.

  He smiled.

  42

  The Half-Sister

  Cruz’s forehead creased as his body spasmed again. When he squeezed his eyes shut, I reached up and touched my face.

  Did it look like my hands?

  My cheek felt smooth, like peach fuzz, but my jaw… My jaw didn’t feel like my skin. My jaw felt like the skin of a lizard I’d caught one summer.

  Fear cinched my ribs and blackened the edge of my vision.

  Fuck.

  Had I signed my own death warrant by saving his life?

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  I rose and paced the small space, then eyed the glade and contemplated jumping in.

  Lily was right.

  I couldn’t believe she was right.

  I was going to die now.

  Cruz was going to kill me.

  My eyes swam with tears as I stared at the copper floor that gleamed beneath the glade. My watery grave.

  A soft voice rose behind me. Cruz’s. “Ley was right.”

  My attention jerked back toward him. He sat up, complexion wan but eyes incandescent. “What do you mean Ley was right?” The heat in my voice blazed over the shell’s smooth surface, skidded over the glades, and hit the floating trees. Their yellow branches curled onto themselves like octopus tentacles.

  He rubbed his chest. “She could’ve mentioned I’d get electrocuted in the process of awakening your gene.”

  My muscles went rigid. “I don’t— I don’t…understand…Ley?”

  Cruz scanned the sky around us. Was someone coming? Oh Great Spirit, was this a setup to prove I was the enemy? Was his mother on her way to arrest me? Shove me into one of her chastening birdcages?

  I craned my neck, and although my eyeballs ached, I searched every last piece of land and sky for another person’s presence. There was no one.

  We were alone.

  “I know you found out Ley wasn’t part of your family, Catori,” Cruz said softly.

  My neck cracked as it bent back toward him. “How?”

  “Lily told me.”

  “Lily? You spoke with Lily? She spoke to you after what you—”

  “Shh…”

  My throat clenched.

  His gaze roamed the sky again. I didn’t have to follow his line of sight to know we were still alone. He looked back at me, or more precisely at my arms that were locked at my sides.

  “I’ve never met a real-life Daneelie,” he said, his voice low and a little breathy.

  I jerked my gaze down to my fists. My skin still glimmered with tiny scales, but they weren’t as pronounced as before. “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Kill you?”

  “Am I not your worst enemy?”

  His lips quirked into a smile.

  “Why are you grinning?”

  “Oh, Catori…” He inhaled a long, deep breath, then patted the spot next to him. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. You should sit.”

  “I’m fine standing.”

  “Cat—”

  “Did you hurt Lily to make her tell you about the DNA results?”

  His dark eyebrows slanted, darkened his eyes. “I would never hurt Lily.”

  “Never hurt her? You had her thrown out of Neverra.”

  “It’s not what you think…” His voice was a mere whisper.

  “Not what I think?”

  “Please, Cat. Calm down and sit beside me.” His gaze slid over the back of my hand, that was lit up like the sky on the fourth of July. “If Ace comes, I won’t be able to tell you the truth about what’s happening.”

  “The truth?” My words were more echo than sound.

  He nodded to the spot next to him. I didn’t go to that spot. But I sat. And not because he’d asked me to, but because my knees were weak with confusion.

  “Talk.”

  His complexion was no longer waxen, yet he still seemed drained.

  “How did Ley know what I was, and why would she tell you?”

  “Ley knew because Adette confided in her, and she told me because I was her last living relative.”

  “You?”

  He nodded. “Ley was my father’s half-sister.”

  Like drying blood over an open wound, his words coagulated inside my mind, finally stoppering my gushing mystification. “His half-sis
…?” I couldn’t even form the entire word. Ley was Jacobiah Vega’s sister? She was Cruz’s aunt?

  “My grandfather had an affair with a mortal woman a long time ago.”

  “A hunter?”

  He shook his head. “Not a hunter. Just a human woman. He couldn’t bring her here or recognize his daughter because—”

  “She would’ve been killed. I heard what they do to extramarital children. Yet, she must’ve come here if she knew Adette, since my ancestor died in 1875. Unless Holly—I mean Ley—unless she was going on two hundred.” She’d been old, but surely not that old.

  “She lived here a couple years at a time, but she always returned to Rowan.” His teeth dug into his bottom lip.

  “So Adette was a…she was like me?”

  He freed his lip. “No.”

  My brow creased.

  “Adette wasn’t part Unseelie,” he said. “You are.”

  “She was all Daneelie?” I murmured the last word.

  He nodded.

  “But she lived on Earth?”

  He nodded again.

  “How did she survive outside of Neverra?”

  “Daneelies aren’t made of fire like Seelies. They are made of blood and water. Why do you think Maximus wanted to exterminate them, Catori? They were the most resilient caste, the strongest one, and that scared him.”

  “If they were so resilient and strong, shouldn’t they have survived?”

  “They did.” His gaze brushed over my collarbone. “You’re here.”

  I shivered, stared down at my hands. My skin still glimmered but was smooth again. Well, as smooth as skin covered in goosebumps could be.

  “I’m sorry about your hand, but I needed your blood to touch the water to provoke the change.”

  In the madness, I’d forgotten all about the cut on my palm. Not even a faint line remained to mark the spot Cruz had slashed. “That’s how it works?”

  “That’s how humans with Seelie ancestry turn their blood to fire when they enter Neverra.”

  I closed my fingers, then spread them out and stretched them. Like the rest of my body, they felt stiff. “Am I also part Seelie?”