“It doesn’t have to be forever.”
“There is no other way of leaving Neverra for a calidum.”
“You mean, if you leave, you can never come back?”
“If I were a caligosupra, it would be different.” She shrugged her drooping shoulders. “But I could never be a caligosupra. Dawson might be someday. That would be a good day.” She knuckled a tear out of her eye. “Now let’s get you into something…nicer.”
I smiled. “Jeans are nice.”
She grimaced.
“Fine.”
As I unrolled my jeans, the door flew open. I froze. Cruz walked over to me as though in a trance. His face looked almost as ghostly as when I’d fished him out of the glade.
My nerves fizzed as though thousands of tiny bubbles were pop-popping inside my extremities. “My punishment’s been decided?”
“Punishment?” Veroli said.
Cruz’s tension soured the air inside the apartment.
“Okay,” I said, “now you’re scaring me.”
His face morphed before my eyes, his features shifting then realigning. “One hour inside a cupola.”
Veroli clapped a palm over her mouth.
I swallowed. “That’s not so bad. Here I was expecting death by wita.”
He jolted out of his stupor. “Not so bad! Catori, an hour is five where you come from! Five hours of reliving each one of your worst nightmares.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.” I hoped.
Cruz began pacing.
“Has no one survived an hour?”
He stopped and jutted his head up. “A few, but the only reason they survived was because they were pure Seelies. Because cupola magic is painful to pure Seelies, but not lethal.”
“Isn’t Catori mixed?” Veroli’s face was a quilt of tiny lines, but her voice was hopeful.
Cruz turned his eyes on me. They were as bright as traffic lights.
Not the right mix. “Maybe it’ll affect me differently because of my…heritage.”
“You can’t even resist captis, but you think you can resist a magical torture chamber?”
“Does it work the same?”
“Does what work the same?” His chest was still heaving with ragged breaths.
“Captis and cupolas?”
“Why?” he barked.
“Don’t bite my head off. It was just a question.”
He seized my shoulders. “Can you resist captis?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Threads of heat leaked through his fingers and wrapped around my arms like the softest of silks. I shivered. The intensity of his gaze was jarring. I felt like I should lean away from him, but found myself leaning toward him. Waves of warmth spilled out of him and fogged the air between us.
As though he were a lit wick and I was a trail of gasoline, his fire ignited me, seeped through the tingling barrier of my skin, enflamed my organs, warmed places inside of me hands couldn’t reach.
I trailed my fingertips over the soft fabric of his tunic, feeling every thread, every fiber, the weight of the black dye, the scent of musk and soap. I felt all these things with my fingers but also with my mind.
When my fingers reached the hem of his tunic, I blinked, momentarily confused as to why I was feeling fabric. I lifted my gaze back to the face looking down at me.
Black and green, not blond and blue.
My fingers dipped underneath the fabric, set on Cruz’s hot, hard stomach.
Not the right colors.
I blinked.
Like a whip made of nails, reality struck, whacked the gooey texture of my blood, liquefied it. Heart thundering beneath my ribs, I yanked my hands away from Cruz.
Cold sweat slickened my upper lip. Tearing my gaze from the faerie’s face, I licked it away, then scraped all salty traces of fear with my teeth.
For a long moment, the room was achingly quiet.
He’d used captis on me.
What I felt, what I did…it wasn’t real. I still felt incredibly stupid.
Without meeting Cruz’s eyes, I asked, “Did you stop, or did I?”
“You did,” he spoke slowly.
I inhaled deeply. Relief strummed over my frayed nerves. How I wished captis didn’t work on me. Fantasizing about undressing faeries was all sorts of embarrassing. “You swear it? I was the one to stop?”
For the first time since he’d stepped into the apartment, his frown was replaced with something else. Not a smile, just something else. He gathered my clammy hands in both of his and squeezed them. “I swear it.”
“Will that help me in the cupola?”
“If you can remember how you did it.”
I nibbled on my lower lip.
“How did you do it?” Veroli asked, forehead scrunched.
“His color was wrong.”
“My color?” Cruz’s eyebrows slanted while my cheeks smoldered. Maybe he understood, or maybe he sensed I didn’t want to elaborate. Whatever it was, he let it go. “Cling to that once you’re inside. Focus on finding colors that are awry and details that are amiss.”
47
Blackmail
The palace’s pink arch swam in front of my eyes, and beyond it, the white marble courtyard filled with bodies. Had they come to support me or watch? Excitement shivered through the courtiers, where smiles glittered as blindingly as attire and jewels.
A frisson went through me as Cruz flew me down. I would get no support from this crowd. This was purely entertainment for them.
What a cruel, cruel world.
Not unlike my own.
When my bare feet touched the polished stone, the caligosupra hushed. And then they split into two columns so I could make my way inside the palace, where Linus waited on his carved tree.
As we’d discussed, Cruz wrapped a hand around my upper arm and pulled me after him inside the palace as though I were a baleful child. I expected the crowd to trail us, but four green-clad faeries shut the heavy golden doors after us, locking the others out.
Framed by the draca, the wariff, and a row of hulking lucionaga in human form, Linus sat, regal with his back straight, his face stern, and his wreath glinting. What would Neverra be like if Ace sat at his father’s place, if Cruz were the wariff, and Dawson or Lily the draca?
Would it turn wondrous overnight? Would cupolas and the caste system be abolished? Would peace reign supreme throughout the land? A small thrill ran through my veins as the dream of a place ruled by people with hearts solidified into a goal.
It was dangerous to harbor such thoughts in the presence of someone who could read minds, so I focused on the tiny plan I’d hatched as Veroli wrapped a band of powder-pink fabric around my body and secured it with a broach inlaid with a sea of tourmalines.
I’d been tempted to discuss it with Cruz, but in the end, I kept it to myself. I wanted him to look surprised; thus I needed him to be surprised.
While he’d briefed me about what to say and how to act so my sentence wasn’t extended, Veroli had stayed quiet, her reddened eyes barely making contact with mine.
Cruz and I stopped several feet from the dais.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Then Gregor stepped toward the edge of the platform. “Catori Price, you’ve been found guilty of wielding wita to nefarious ends. How do you plead?” His face was a collection of hard planes interspersed by the thinnest of wrinkles, the face of a man who didn’t allow himself to feel. “I repeat…how do you plead?”
I cleared my throat. “Guilty.”
Cruz didn’t stiffen beside me. He didn’t soften either. We’d been through this part a hundred times.
“Your cupola awaits, then, ventor.” Gregor smiled, which accentuated his narrow nose.
Linus sighed, and it resonated in the vast, empty throne room. “I was so looking forward to your wedding.”
“But not anymore, Massin?” I asked.
Cruz’s fingers stiffened around my arm. Speaking my mind wasn’t part of th
e plan, but I wasn’t sticking to the plan.
Linus’s thick, pale lips parted.
“I’m hurt that you have such little faith in my tenacity, Massin.”
“Catori, dear”—the king shifted on his throne, readjusting his royal-blue tunic—“if you make it out unscathed, I will throw you the most lavish of parties.”
I squeezed a smile onto my lips. “Your kindness knows no bounds.”
Cruz made a small sound that was a cross between a cough, a growl, and a gasp.
A warning.
But I wasn’t done. “Massin, before I am locked in a cage, there’s a matter I would like to discuss with your wariff.”
Interest sparked, Linus leaned forward.
Lyoh’s black eyelashes fluttered over her emerald eyes. “If it concerns Stella Sakar—”
“It does not.”
I sensed Cruz stare at me, surprise rolling off him in supple waves.
Good.
His astonishment would reassure his mother that Cruz and I were not allies. Allies didn’t keep secrets from each other.
Gregor cleared his throat. “This matter will wait until—”
“It cannot wait. From what I hear, cupolas scramble minds. I wouldn’t want to forget what it is I needed to discuss with you. Besides, you wouldn’t want me to forget it. It will only take five minutes. Five human minutes. What does that equate to here? A single minute? Can you not spare a minute to hear me out?”
Come on. Bite already.
I swept my high ponytail over one shoulder.
Linus flapped his hand. “Allow the girl her minute, Wariff.”
Gregor nodded to Linus, then soared off the dais and landed inches from me.
I shrugged my arm out of Cruz’s fingers and followed Gregor. A lucionaga detached himself from the wall of others protecting the king and tailed us around the dais, through a courtyard lined with slabs of mirror that gleamed like immense sequins. I noticed handles on many of the slabs—doors.
Gregor gestured toward one of the doors and pressed it open before a green-clad faerie could assist him. He shooed the young girl away and waited for me to step inside.
I paused on the landing. “Tell your guard to wait outside.”
Gregor evaluated me, as though trying to guess my next move. “Bind her hands.”
I frowned, but didn’t protest when the lucionaga ripped a liana from a nearby column and wound it tightly around my wrists. In truth, I was a little flattered. Flattered that Gregor regarded me as dangerous. No one had ever considered me dangerous.
After the liana was knotted, I walked inside the room and Gregor closed the door behind us. Inside was all carved wood and shelves filled with glass jars holding various strange creatures, a jawbone with four rows of needle-sharp teeth, hairless rodents, snakes coated in sharp quills, black scorpions the size of my palm with globular eyes.
“The most dangerous creatures in Neverra.” Gregor’s voice was so close to my ear, the hairs on the nape of my neck lifted.
“You give them too much credit and yourself too little.”
Silence. And then, laughter.
His, not mine.
I was serious.
Like metal coins tumbling down a slot machine, it clanked out of his stretched lips and grated against the glass jars. “Linus is right. You are rather delightful.” There was something slippery about the way he spoke the compliment, like an eel slithering among rocks, scenting the water for its next prey. He circled around until he faced me, then ran one of his hands down my arm to my elbow. “Have you come to beg for my forgiveness or for my mercy?” His rancid breath scorched the tip of my nose.
“Neither.”
Gregor crooked my chin up with his free hand. I jerked my face to the side and my chin glided off. His eyes locked on mine, then slid up and down my body in a way that made me want to shower in Clorox. “A gajoï then?”
“I’ve come to blackmail you.”
His fingers fell away from my skin and he grinned, a wide, lurid grin so at odds with his severe features. “Blackmail?”
“I know about your daughter.”
“My daughter?” The grin faded like ink under sunlight. “I don’t have children.”
“You do. Her name is Faith. She runs her grandmother’s bakery back in Rowan and is due to have a daughter of her own in a few months.”
“Faith is Stella’s daughter. Not mine.”
“Oh, she’s yours all right. Right down to your inimitable charm.”
Gregor’s complexion ripened, reddened, hardened. “Implications like these can hurt innocents. It could get this girl killed.”
“Doesn’t matter to me.” Thankfully Gregor wasn’t graced with Lyoh’s power of stealing thoughts or he would’ve discerned that I did care. “But surely it matters to you?”
Please, let it matter to you.
“No.” His tone was harsh, yet wavered. “Not in the least.”
“I wonder if it’ll matter to your wife.”
Uncertainty churned in the hazel depths of his irises.
“I wrote her a letter and entrusted it to someone who will deliver it if my sentence isn’t trimmed down.”
His jaw tightened. “You’re bluffing.”
“Am I? Why don’t you ask Lyoh Vega to check if I’m bluffing?”
Gregor gripped my jaw with one hand and squeezed. “I could kill you. Right now. I could kill you.”
“But you won’t, because then Ace would kill you in retribution. I’m his to kill, am I not? But let’s say he spares your life. Linus would surely demote you. I’m an interesting, shiny new toy, am I not? A little dangerous even. Just the sort of toys you enjoy playing with.”
In a voice so low I had to strain to hear it, he hissed, “Does anyone else know?”
“No.” A lie. Lily knew. For the first time in forever, I was glad she wasn’t in Neverra.
He freed me so forcefully I skittered backward, almost tripping on the thick rug. “I’ll shave off fifteen minutes.”
I cocked a brow. “That’s not very generous.”
“More will look suspicious.”
“Halve my time, or I let Lyoh touch my forehead and find out what we discussed in here.”
A rough breath puffed his cheeks. “Fine.”
The liana seemed to tighten around my skin.
“But, Catori, if anyone finds out, I’ll lock you an entire night in a cupola.”
“Understood.”
“I lessened your sentence because you serviced me.”
“Of course.” Bile rose in my throat. “Who wouldn’t want to?”
“Careful, or as soon as you’re married, I’ll use captis to play with the court’s shiny new toy.”
I’d kill him first. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”
He leered at me, then thrust the door open and shoved me out.
48
Not Cinderella
The second we stepped back inside the throne room, the second Gregor announced my reduced sentence, Cruz’s face rippled with relief, until Lyoh enquired what could possibly have changed the wariff’s mind. Gregor insinuated we’d shared a most pleasant moment. Shock—or was it disgust?—sheeted off Cruz. The fact that he believed I would debase myself bothered me. Would Ace also think I touched Gregor in intimate ways?
Lyoh’s raised voice interrupted my wretched musings. “Why the skies gave you a brain if you don’t utilize it is beyond me!” The rest of her blistering diatribe was in Faeli.
Linus listened. Smiled. She fell silent then. Here she’d been looking for support, and instead received amusement. In a flourish of smoke, she transformed into her black-winged alter ego and flew straight for the doors that the green-clad faeries scrambled to open.
Linus chuckled, then descended from his perch to join us. His lucionaga converged around him, gold eyes shifting unabashedly between their wariff and myself.
“Gregor isn’t one to cut anything in half,” Linus said. “Well…besides marsh-dwellers from tim
e to time.”
I grimaced.
A sly grin curved a side of his thick mouth. “I take it you must be quite good. I can’t wait to find out for myself.” He winked at me and then, feet not touching the ground, he soared out of his throne room. Two lucionaga preceded him, two flanked him, and two trailed him.
Gregor waited for us to follow, as though not trusting the promise I’d made of keeping his little secret.
Cruz’s jaw was so stiff, he reminded me of the wooden puppets Cass and I built back in high school. Cass. I wondered what she was doing. And then I wondered if my birthday had passed. How long had I been in Neverra?
“What day is it back on Earth?” I asked Cruz.
His somber eyes shifted toward me. “May 29th.”
I lowered my gaze to the smooth, pale stone underneath my bare feet. In two Neverrian days—nine human days—I would turn twenty.
My sentence had been cut in half, but would I survive a half hour in a cupola? Would I manage to swim through the nightmares and come out unscathed, or would I drown in the cupola?
Would I get to be a year older?
Would I ever get to see my father again?
Would I ever get to tell Ace how much he meant to me?
Misery crawled up my backbone, weighing heavily on my spine.
I didn’t look around me as we walked out onto the terrace, but I did raise my chin and look up.
Straight at the gleaming, golden cage that was propped open, awaiting me like a chariot awaited Cinderella. This carriage wouldn’t carry me to a grand ball, though. Where I was going, only specters awaited. And although faeries swarmed around me, none of them were a magical godmother who’d whisk me to safety.
I kept my eyes open as I stepped inside. I would need them to see once my world went dark.
49
The Cage Of Nightmares
The cage floated smoothly away from the palace. Floated over the mist that had drifted lower, uncovering dozens of thin slices displaying images of Earth. I wrapped my fingers around the slender bars, wishing that one of the portals would display my father’s face, but the only images that floated over the flat surfaces were of foreign faces and places.
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