Ace clutched one of my hands. “Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. You got to take it easy.”
As I looked into his face, I thought of the cupola, of how I’d watched him disintegrate, of how angry it had made me, of how viciously I’d punished Cruz for what he’d done.
As though sensing where my thoughts had gone, Ace let go of my hand and swiped a finger over my brow. “You’re safe.”
It wasn’t my safety I was worried about. I was worried about his, Cruz’s, Lily’s, my father’s…
My father!
I’d slept through an entire earthly month, so I’d missed my birthday. Knowing my father, he must’ve called me a thousand times. He always phoned me for my birthday. “Cruz?”
“Yes?”
“Have you been sending my father messages?”
“Lily has your phone, Cat. She’s been covering for you.”
I let myself fall back against the mattress. The pillow puffed around my face. “Okay. Good…” Although I wished I could scrape away my imprisonment, forget everything from that day, it was now a part of me, as much as Stella’s dust. Another scar. “Ace, promise me that when you become king, you will destroy the cupolas.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed in his cleanly-shaven throat. “If I bec—”
I rolled back up and gripped his fingers. “When, not if.”
His gaze didn’t leave mine as he amended his answer. “When I become sovereign, it’ll be my first order of business.”
“I better get up then. I can’t help take down a world lying down.”
“Cat…” Ace started as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. My knees knocked together. They looked so huge compared to the rest of my thighs.
“I think I’ll take you up on that ten-course meal.”
A smile snuck over Ace’s lips. “How about we start with a bowl of pasta with…what was it again? Ketchup?”
Emotion rose inside of me. Although it had been months since we’d discussed favorite comfort foods, he remembered. I clasped my hands together in my scrawny lap. “I…I wanted to tell you both something.” I stared between their expectant faces. “I didn’t”—I dropped my voice—“I didn’t touch Gregor.” I wrinkled my nose. When neither said anything, I repeated, “I didn’t.”
Ace splayed a warm, soft palm on my knee. “I know.”
“How did you get him to reduce your sentence then?” Suspicion limned Cruz’s tone.
“I know one of his secrets.”
Cruz’s arms slid out of their tight knot while Ace asked, “You blackmailed him?”
I nodded.
Cruz’s black eyebrows slanted. “A secret we aren’t aware of?”
I nodded.
“Will you tell us?” Ace asked.
I recalled Gregor’s warning and shook my head again.
“Must be one hell of a secret,” Ace said.
“It is.”
“I need to go to the palace,” Cruz said. “Report that you’re awake and that the marriage can take place.”
As he walked toward the door, I asked, “When I was in the…in the…cupola”—the very word tasted bitter—“did you toss the cage?”
“I did.”
A thin gasp escaped me. “Why?”
“Because it was sinking into the mist, which causes your skin to…change.”
My lips drew further apart. “You mean, I get scales?”
“Not scales, but you get glimmery.”
“Really?”
“I first noticed it when I took you to Sarsay’s house.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Try to stay away from the mist for the next couple days, okay?”
I bobbed my head in a nod. “How was my party by the way?”
Cruz paused, hand on the doorknob. “What party?”
“The one to celebrate my survival.”
Shadows glanced over his face. “It didn’t happen.”
“Must’ve disappointed quite a few people.”
“They were much too busy gossiping about the other happenings to ponder your party.” A slash of white illuminated his dark face.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Ace will fill you in.” He opened the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
Once he was gone, I turned toward Ace, who was still crouched in front of me, face leveled on mine. My heart thumped, spreading goosebumps and heat into places that had felt numb and cold since I’d emerged from the cage.
We observed each other in silence for a long moment. Then, “I was so scared,” he said, at the same time I said, “You don’t hate me?”
His lips quirked into a crooked smile. “No, and that’s not for lack of trying.”
I returned his smile, then flicked his chest. He caught my hand. Wound his fingers through mine. Pressed his forehead against mine.
I felt his breath on the tip of my nose, on my parted lips, on my teeth. “I’m sorry for everything,” I whispered.
He pushed a strand of hair off my face and tucked it behind my ear. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
I squashed my lips together.
As though he felt I didn’t believe him, he took a seat on the bed next to me and dragged my weak body against his, then stroked my shoulder that jutted out of the loose tunic someone had dressed me in.
As his fingers moved, my gaze roamed over the room and settled on the chair in the corner. “Is that— Did you—”
“I took it from your attic. Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy getting it through the portal.” He smiled sheepishly. “Your father won’t get angry, will he?”
I blinked at him.
Just blinked.
“I thought it would make this place a bit…homier.”
Pulse strumming, I stared at the chair so at odds with the neutral, natural palette of Cruz’s interior, the same way I must look to Neverrians. “So…what happened while I was sleeping?”
“Actually it happened while you were awake.”
I glanced away from my grandfather’s daffodil-colored rocking chair.
“The mist shifted when you were in the cage.” The lustrium hanging in the amethyst sky painted the side of his face silver. “Depressions appeared in it. It thinned out in places.”
“While I was in the cage?”
“While you were in the cage.”
“Did I…?” I let my voice trail off, not daring to fully speak the question.
“You got terribly angry at some point. Cruz believes anger triggers some sort of connection with your Daneelie power.”
A beat passed. “And everyone noticed?”
“Some noticed. Most were too entranced by your show.” He bit down so hard on his lip, a wisp of smoke curled out. He licked the gash and it sealed up.
“Those who noticed, did they link it to me?”
“No. Ever since the book went missing, Gregor and Lyoh have been convinced the Unseelies are preparing an attack. They assumed it was their first move.”
I pressed my cheek to his shoulder blade. “My wedding will be such a bloodbath.”
His arm curled around me again, his hand splayed on my waist. “A smoke bath. Not many of us bleed.”
Even though I knew he was trying to distract me with humor, I couldn’t smile. “Don’t come to the wedding. Go to Earth and wait there.”
“And miss you exchanging vows with another man?”
“I’m serious, Ace.”
His fingers hardened, creasing the fabric of my tunic. “If you were serious, then you wouldn’t seriously ask me to stay away and hide. What sort of man do you think I am?”
“The type who deserves to rule all of this.” I gestured toward the window. “But you can’t do that as a house plant.”
I felt him smile against my hair. “Come on…a plant? At the very least, I’ll be a tree. I suspect a calimbor.”
“Calimbors are…are dead faeries?”
He chuckled. “Humans are so gullible.”
His laughter frayed the steely fabric that had enveloped me since my br
utal punishment and began to unravel it, one thread after the other.
52
Invisible Ink
The following night, Veroli was getting me ready for a party.
My party.
While bathing me, she’d frowned a great many times at the subdued sparkle of my skin, which I passed off as an effect of the Neverrian sun on hunter skin.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cruz insisted, peering over my shoulder at my reflection.
Veroli gathered my hair and twisted it, then pinned it in a simple knot, pulling out tendrils to frame my face, which she’d left almost makeup free. The only hints of color were a thin coat of mascara and scarlet lipstick.
“I’m proving a point by attending.”
He folded his arms in front of his navy tunic. “And what point would that be?” he asked, as Veroli clasped a choker around my neck. Obsidians as black as my eyes winked in their silver settings.
The necklace almost entirely covered my tattoo. I wasn’t sure I wanted it covered, but then I didn’t intend to fight tonight. What I intended to do was prove I was alive and well. “That they can’t break me.”
His green eyes gleamed in the mirror. “It doesn’t matter what they believe.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter what they believe. What does matter is what the calidum believe. I want those who are afraid of Gregor and Lyoh and Linus to see that I am not.”
Veroli’s hands slid down to my shoulders and gave a short squeeze. “I could tell them.”
I smiled at her. “Telling them is not the same as showing.”
Cruz grumbled something underneath his breath, then, “Is she ready?”
Veroli nodded, but fussed with the tendrils of hair around my face.
I rose from the chair she’d set in the bathroom and returned to the bedroom. Cruz walked up to his bookshelf and grabbed a book, flicked through its pages, tossed it aside, then picked another.
I cocked an eyebrow. “What are you looking for?”
“I wanted to show you something.”
“Okay…”
He flipped through it. “Where did Ace put it?” he muttered, turning the book over and shaking it.
A folded sheet drifted out like a feather. He bent to pick it up, to smooth it out.
“Ace told me you saw words on this, but I know your sight has changed since you’ve been here.” He held the paper out. “Do you still see something?”
I blinked at the sheet. “Was that the page from my book?”
He nodded. “So? Do you see anything?”
I touched the paper where the imprint’s name had been, where the rendering of the rowan tree had been. “There’s nothing.”
“You’re telling me the truth?”
I bristled. “Yes. I’m telling you the truth. Why would I lie?”
His eyes landed on something behind my shoulder. Veroli. Although she was picking up odds and ends, she seemed to do so extremely slowly. “Veroli, would you mind giving Catori and me some privacy?”
She stopped what she was doing. “I want to help. Let me help you.”
“Help us with what?” Cruz refolded the paper his adoptive mother was ogling.
Veroli planted her hands on her squat hips. “With what you’re planning.”
“We’re not planning anything besides our nuptials.”
Veroli raised her weak chin. “Have you forgotten who raised you, Cruz? I know you. I know Ace. I know these nuptials”—she pointed between me and Cruz—“are part of something else…something bigger.”
“You know nothing, Veroli.”
Her cheeks became the color of rare beef.
“Cruz,” I said reproachfully.
“What?” he snapped. His tone brooked no argument. “You asked me to marry you, and I said yes. We do not love each other. It’s a political alliance, a peace treaty with the Unseelies.”
Veroli shook her head frenetically. “You take me for a fool, Cruz. I’m no fool.”
“Leave us.” His voice was infinitesimally milder. “Please.”
Still shaking her head, she grabbed her fabric bag and zipped for the front door, which she shut with a bang.
I turned on Cruz. “How can you speak to her that way?”
“Speaking to her any other way would lead her to believe she could help, and she can’t. At least not without risking her life. Would you rather I risked her life?”
I pursed my lips. “Of course not.”
“Then don’t involve her. Don’t involve Dawson. Don’t involve anyone you’re not ready to lose.”
I thought of Ace then. How I’d involved him. I wasn’t ready to lose him, and yet I’d put him in harm’s way. “Why did you want to know about the ink?”
He folded the sheet and refolded it. “Because I’ve had no contact with the forma since the Hareni was sealed off, so I haven’t been able to give them the paper. But if you can’t read it, then they probably can’t either. Which will make their travel through portals on the Night of Mist impossible. Although there’s the possibility that even though it looks invisible, the ink is still there.”
“Ace told you everything?”
He nodded.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Is that the plan? To set them free outside Neverra?”
“They want bodies.”
I wrinkled my nose. Even though I understood—well, sort of—how being insubstantial could be upsetting, taking over human bodies sounded creepy, like something out of the Exorcist. “Maximus escorted the Unseelie who ended up lodging itself in Negongwa’s body through a portal, right?”
“Right.”
“So why can’t you escort them out one by one?”
“Because after that happened, Maximus changed the magic of the portals.”
“Change the magic back then.”
He snorted. “It’s not so simple, Catori. As you might be aware, now that your knowledge of our history has increased, Maximus was cunning. He had the faerie who changed the magical algorithm killed.”
“And what? No one can undo what he did? If you lose the key, change the lock.”
“To change the lock, we’d need to figure out where the lock is. And what it looks like. It could be anywhere in Neverra and could look like anything…a leaf, a cup, a piece of straw.”
“You’re kidding.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, faeries love their little games as much as they enjoy tricking people.”
Oh, how I knew. “So how do you rid people of their portal stamps if you don’t know where the lock is?”
“A portal stamp is like a light switch, not a key. They can be turned on and off.”
“So all we need to do is turn Lily’s stamp back on? Who do we have to convince? Gregor?”
“Lily’s stamp wasn’t turned off, Catori. It was altered, so the portals will repel Lily, with or without an escort.”
“So how do we change it back?”
“It can only change back if the cause for its alteration expires.”
“Meaning?”
He raked his hand through his hair. “Meaning, when I die, so do all the bonds—live or broken—associated with me.”
A racket exploded in my chest, brassy, shrill. “That’s— That cannot be the— Was that your solution?”
Cruz’s face was a patchwork of strained planes that creased where they joined. “No. I’m hoping”—he flicked the folded sheet of paper still clutched in his hands—“I’m hoping this will get her through.”
Silence drenched the apartment and stilled my pounding heart. He hoped a piece of paper could somehow counter Lily’s tainted stamp. “What if it doesn’t work?” My pragmatic side reared its head.
“Then I’ll kill myself.”
“For a mastermind, that’s a lousy solution. Lousy.”
He growled softly. “You have a better one?”
“I do actually. Let’s destroy the Cauldron.”
He snorted. “You can’t destroy the Cauldron.”
A barbed smile tugged at Cruz’s lips. “Where do you think Neverra rose from? The Cauldron is the birthplace of every single thing and being here. You destroy the Cauldron, you destroy Neverra.”
I felt my eyebrows pull up toward my hairline. “Still, there must be another way…”
“Welcome to my crusade. I warn you, it’s infuriating. Every road I explore leads to a new wall. You’re the first crack I’ve found, and I’ve been on the lookout for cracks a long time.”
“There were others before me. Why didn’t you use Mewari or Chatwa or Iya or my mother? Or Aylen?” I should probably not have reminded Cruz about Aylen. Odds were, he hadn’t forgotten about her, but still.
“My father entertained the idea of bringing a Daneelie into Neverra, but my mother murdered him before he could convince Adette and Mewari to return. After he died, no one considered expunging the mist. In school, we were taught it protected us from the evil forma. Why would we want to destroy a shield? But then I learned the truth, and his crusade for peace and justice became mine.” He drew in a long breath. “Ley was the one who taught me the forma weren’t our enemies. She was the one who told me about my father’s intentions and about the book that would help hunters travel to Neverra. She believed that bringing them here would break the mist’s hold on the Hareni. Sadly, it didn’t work.”
“What do you mean it didn’t work? The pages didn’t work?”
“The pages worked. Chatwa traveled through a portal but—”
I gasped. “Chatwa’s here?” She didn’t drown!
“She was here. Back in 1938. But her presence didn’t break the mist. And before she could reach the glades and activate her other nature, she was executed. A hunter in Neverra? You can imagine how my mother reacted to that.” Cruz’s eyes seemed to glaze over at the recollection.
“She’s dead?” I murmured, realizing that I’d held out hope that somehow, somewhere, she was still alive.
“It was a public execution. My mother charred your great-grandmother’s body with her dragon fire, then gassed her.” His chest rose, as though a cresting wave of nausea were rising inside of him. “After that, our relationship with the forma became tenuous. And that’s saying it nicely. On the Nights of Mist, Seelies were told to stay inside their homes and splash lemon juice or vinegar onto their doors. The palace was doused in vinegar. It reeked of it. Neverra reeked of it for ages.” He grimaced. “Only recently have we been able to interact agreeably with them, and that’s only because faeries stayed away from your family and their graveyard. Apparently the Unseelie locked in Negongwa’s body can communicate with them and has been reporting to them.”
Rising Silver Mist Page 30