As though his mind grasped what I was about to do, his hands shot through the bars of the cage.
The cage coasted away from the garden.
Focusing on his extended hands, I leaped off the edge.
If I missed, if I fell, my body would shatter against the mist-soaked marsh below.
I caught the bottom rung of the cupola, which seesawed from my weight.
Ace’s body banged against the bars of his prison. He blinked.
My clammy fingers skidded over the metal. “Ace!”
The cage tipped again, and one of my hands slid off. The fingers of my good arm remained curled around the metal bars. Cringing, I clenched them tighter as the cage ascended into the sky.
I wouldn’t survive the fall.
The cage shook, and my fingers almost slid off.
But they didn’t.
They didn’t.
Ace curled his fingers around my hand. “Cat, watch out!”
A lucionaga was hurtling straight for me, hands stretched in front of him, ribbons of dust dancing over his palms.
I thought about my own dust, and lifted my palm to my neck, but I didn’t have time to extricate it before he tossed his at me.
I squeezed my eyes, plugged my nose, and squashed my lips, praying he’d miss, praying a hunter would shoot him before he could fly into me. But that didn’t happen.
The guard hit me, hard, and the blow tore my fingers out from Ace’s.
“NO!” Ace’s roar accompanied my fall, his petrified blue eyes my beacon in the darkest of nights.
I flailed as I fell away from the man I loved.
64
Rage
I hadn’t been able to save Ace.
I hadn’t been able to save anyone.
I hadn’t been able to save myself.
If only fire burned inside my veins.
If only…
In midair, I stopped falling.
A glittery navy cloud had caught me, cushioned me, and now carried me delicately back down to the foggy ground.
Spectral voices murmured my name, murmured words that didn’t sound like any I knew.
Unseelie bodies had knit together, had crafted substance where there was none.
They rested me gently onto the marsh floor, then rose and formed a wall around me to fend off more attacks.
None came.
I pressed my weight onto my forearms, then, teeth grinding, I lurched onto to my hands and knees. My red gown spilled around me like fresh blood. Legs trembling, I bit down on my lip as I pushed myself onto my feet.
Feet that were so cold and numb, they barely kept me upright.
I felt broken.
Devastated.
A howling wail surged from the cage.
I lifted my gaze. Found Ace’s starlit face pressed against the golden bars, lips hitched, teeth bared.
Anger swelled behind my breastbone. My blood roiled, my hands itched, and my fingers glowed with blue light. Magic rushed through me like a cresting wave, pounded into my skin, and then…
And then it finally broke loose.
Like an earthquake, the ground around me shook. The mist rippled away, carrying off the bodies of unsuspecting faeries.
Another wave cracked out of me like a whip.
The ground shook harder as I pulled the mist from under the stone palace like magicians wrenched tablecloths from underneath laden tables.
The stone arch creaked as it tipped, buckled, and burst into a thousand brilliant pink shards around me.
I sped away as a column ripped from the massive white stone facade and punched the ground I’d been standing on. Moss peeled off the collapsing turrets, then pummeled the scattering crowd with clumps of tawny-green sludge. The rose quartz orbs that crowned the palace rocketed toward the crowd like cannon balls.
The garden held, but the windows sparkled like sequins as they cracked and sprayed the land. The colossal golden doors ripped from their thick hinges and banged onto the wreckage like leaden butterfly wings.
Another surge of magic, and the mist scurried farther.
Away from the ruined castle.
Away from the fringe of giant calimbors.
Away from the field of tinkling adamans.
I dragged air into my burning lungs and sent my magic hurtling out of me again.
My body formed ferocious waves of magic that splashed against my bones and escaped through the barrier of my luminescent skin.
Relentlessly, they struck the isle. If only one of those waves could carry me skyward, if only one of them could fracture Ace’s cage, but my magic wasn’t made for the skies.
It was made for the ground and the water and the cloying, shifting mist.
65
Quiescence
When the waves of my anger ebbed, a terrible silence draped over the land.
Over the people who sat huddled in clumps over the debris of my marriage.
Some brave souls moved around, lifting the fallen, feeling for pulses on the bodies that hadn’t disintegrated into smoke.
Metal chains clanked. A shadowy group of men and women not dressed in Neverrian fashion looked my way.
I met Gwenelda’s familiar gaze, and although she’d never been my favorite person, I had the urge to run to her and throw myself into her arms.
I didn’t.
I was too spent, too shell-shocked to move.
Next to Gwen stood her tall, broad-bodied mate, whose path I’d crossed on the battlefield. He nodded to me, then went back to coiling a length of iron chain.
I looked for Kajika, but he wasn’t among them. I scanned the cleared land for his tall frame but found only faeries hobbling or hovering. Some wore torn gowns, others wore soiled white tunics. The chill of the chaos I’d unleashed deepened inside my bones, numbed my core, and froze my beating heart.
Tears pooled behind my gummy lids. I wiped them away as I searched the night for the golden cage. It sat on the ground, door swung open. I searched for a body, but found none.
Had he—
Had his fire—
The gut-wrenching thought cleaved a hole so large in my chest, my heart threatened to lurch out and crumble onto the sodden ground like the grand, spoiled palace.
“Cat.” A voice brushed my bare shoulder, sliding against the shell of my ear.
Holding my breath, I spun, and when I stopped, my head was still spinning.
Before me, against the violet sky frosted with stars, stood the man I’d fought so hard to save.
I ran my hands over his jaw, his eyes, his hair, his neck, to make sure he was real.
Really standing in front of me.
Not an illusion cast by my desperate mind to ease the chasm of pain blooming within me.
Ace grabbed the sides of my face, a smile curving his beautiful mouth. A mouth that could still pull in lungfuls of air, that could still create words, that could still show feelings. “You did it.”
Did it? A harsh breath snuck through my teeth. I let my hands tumble away from his face. “How did you…how did you get out?”
“The door wasn’t locked. My imprisonment, it wasn’t real.”
Tears flowed down my cheeks, streamed around his pulsing fingers, and steamed between his face and mine. “But Cruz locked you—” My voice broke. “He locked you in the…” I couldn’t get myself to pronounce the word.
“It wasn’t real,” he repeated.
I blinked. Just blinked.
“We needed to get you angry.”
My brow crumpled, and I stepped back, breaking his hold on my face.
He approached me, and began raising his hands, but I slapped both away, and then I slapped him.
The smack echoed in the abysmal night.
“Do you know…” My chest constricted with violent breaths. “What it did to me…to see you…in there?”
“I’m sorry, Cat. I’m so sorry.”
A sob broke from my mouth as I sank to my knees and pressed my hands against my face as emotions
tumbled through me like dirty laundry. I was humiliated. Angry. Terrorized. Pained.
Cold mud slopped against my bare forearms as Ace dropped to his knees and wrenched my hands off my face. “Shh…”
I wanted to hit him again, but he held my wrists back, his grip gentle yet unyielding.
“I was so…so scared,” I cried.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. So fucking sorry.” He gathered me in his arms and dragged me against his chest. His tattered nerves thudded against my ear in the form of a raging pulse, a mirror of my own heartbeat.
He scrubbed his broad palm against my back until my sobs slowed and subsided, until I could almost catch my breath again. Then his fingers thumbed the slope of my neck and tangled in my windblown, mud-clumped hair, pulling it away from my face.
“Massin,” someone called to him. “You are needed for—”
“Not now.” Ace’s gaze didn’t leave my face as he answered.
“Massin? You are— Your father is…?”
He nodded, not even a hint of sadness slickening his eyes. “You were incredible tonight. Fierce. Strong. Magnificent.”
I felt his declaration in my stomach, under my ribs.
“My extraordinary wife.”
Wife.
I was Ace’s wife.
I craned my neck, lifted my heavy eyelashes, and hunted his face with my swollen eyes.
He cupped my jaw. Gazed down at me adoringly. My blood felt laced with mallow. His features swirled and blurred. He kissed my salted lips, but then I pressed him away.
“Where is Cruz?”
My answer came in the form of a feral roar.
I whipped around. Cruz was crouched over the fallen draca, his back to me. For a moment, I didn’t move. And then my feet were covering ground almost as fast as they’d sprinted to get to Ace’s cage. As though he sensed me approach, he turned.
I punched him in the chest, right at the spot where his heart beat.
Where it was supposed to beat if he had one.
Instead of a scowl, amusement flickered over his features.
“You asshole!”
That got people talking. Three different languages buzzed and tangled around me. Cruz’s gaze moved to someone behind me. I knew it was Ace without having to turn around. His scent was imprinted in me.
Ace let out a low chuckle. “Only fair you get a beating too.”
“Yes, but I’m sure you got a kiss to make it all better.”
How could they joke about this!
Someone called out my name. Gwenelda. Her hair hung in a thick braid against her shoulder, speared through with yellow feathers—Mom’s favorite color. Gwen smiled. And it was arresting, because I was almost certain it was the first time I’d ever seen her smile.
The man who resembled Kajika towered over her. Her mate.
He dipped his head. “Catori. It is an honor to meet you.”
I recoiled from the word honor. And then I wondered if perhaps he’d absorbed a human with a strange way of speaking. But that made me wince, so I banished the thought.
Someone pushed past him, a slender girl with cheekbones as high as mine, hair as black as mine but cut just below her ears, and skin as sun-kissed as my own. “I am Magena.”
The huntress I’d dreamed about.
The one who’d chased after a bluebird.
Ishtu’s oldest sister.
Had she communicated with me from her coffin, or had the vision of her come from the Unseelie locked in Negongwa’s body?
Her eyes were shiny, but crinkled with a smile. Blake used to say I had feline eyes because they tipped up on the side. Magena had the same eyes.
“It is true. Your resemblance to Ishtu”—she fingered the wide suede strap holding her quiver—“is astonishing.”
Someone squeezed my hand. Ace. He knew how much it bothered me to be compared to the huntress Lyoh Vega had ruthlessly killed. I closed my fingers around his, then sought out the heinous murderer’s gaze. Found her elongated green pupils on me. Thin plumes of smoke wafted from her nostrils.
“Why is she still alive?”
“Because I’m trying to decide how to kill her,” Cruz said.
66
The Faceoff
Gregor and Silas and a handful of lucionaga in human form stood around the fallen dragon. Their expressions were guarded, wary, as they took in Cruz’s cool, calculating gaze.
Around me, Ace and Cruz formed two solid walls.
“Ace,” Cruz said.
I swung my head between the two. Was Cruz asking Ace to kill the draca?
Ace crouched and pressed his hand against the draca’s chest. Magic quivered around his fingers and made his hand spark a striking white. And then bones cracked, animal hide turned into skin, fangs shrank, and claws receded.
Hand still aglow, he rose and turned toward the lucionaga with the ponytail—Silas—and placed his hand on the man’s chest, right over his heart. Threads of light frolicked around his fingers and penetrated through the black cloth, into the muscled chest.
Silas threw his head back, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth. When Ace removed his hand, Silas dropped to one knee and bowed deeply. Spoke words in Faeli. Probably a pledge of loyalty to the new sovereign. And then he turned toward Gregor and repeated similar words.
When Ace rose again, I whispered, “You made Silas draca?”
“Remember how I told you I had two friends in Neverra?” His voice was so low, it was barely audible. “The first was Pietro. The second is Silas.”
“What about…what about Cruz?”
“Cruz is more than a friend. He’s my brother, Cat.”
“That’s not what I meant. Why didn’t you make him draca?”
“Because I have no such ambition,” Cruz responded.
The scent of charred flesh wafted sickeningly in the air. Although Lyoh gritted her human teeth, she bore the pain of the iron chains in silence.
Ace tipped his face toward a small man framed by two Unseelies. “Negongwa’s back, Cruz.”
Negongwa.
The father of hunters.
I took in the brown, crosshatched face and the salt-and-pepper-colored hair held back in a queue. My oldest living ancestor. The man who’d been made, who’d then made a tribe of powerful beings.
“Catori…extraordinary Catori. Nilwa nockwad. Defeater of the mist.” His voice, his words gave me shivers. He raised both his palms, then lowered them slowly. “Blessed child of mine.”
Goosebumps scampered over my arms, over my chest, inside my chest.
Along with the Unseelies whose skulls tipped low, Negongwa dipped his head in a bow. Why were they bowing to me? It felt wrong. I didn’t deserve to be bowed to.
“Please…” I started, but stopped. Would asking them not to bow embarrass them? “I never thought we’d have the pleasure to meet, Negongwa.”
He smiled, and it crinkled every swatch of leathery skin. “Never underestimate the resilience of a Gottwa mixed with an Unseelie.”
“Excuse my candor. I am still learning.”
“And so you shall never stop. Wisdom is acquired until the day one passes into the next realm.”
I bit my lip, then released it. I really didn’t feel like dwelling on death, so I asked, “Where’s Kajika?”
“He stayed in Rowan,” Gwen answered, her eyes flashing to Ace’s. “To ensure Lily Wood’s safety.”
“Lily couldn’t— The book didn’t get her through?”
Thick shadows obliterated all the light from Cruz’s face. I knew, without him having to speak, that it hadn’t worked. Still he confirmed it in a quiet voice. “It did not let her pass.”
A deep tremble seized my bones.
“Hey…it’s going to be all right.” He touched my arm.
All right? Lily was stuck outside Neverra. How was that all right? The only way to get her back in would be for him to die. How was that all right?
I felt anger simmer beneath my skin. Blue sparks crackled in my fingers. Two lu
cionaga stepped back.
Scared.
They were scared of me. I would’ve laughed had I not been so anguished about Lily’s situation.
“Breathe,” Ace said.
And so I did. And the magic receded. “Will you return to Rowan now?” I asked Gwenelda.
Paper rustled between Negongwa’s knobby fingers—pages from Ley’s book. “We cannot.”
“The pages do not unlock the Neverrian portals, Father?” Gwen asked.
He shook his weathered face.
I blanched.
Negongwa rested a papery hand on my forearm. “But we knew it was a possibility, Catori.”
“What about a portal stamp?” I suggested.
“They don’t take on hunter skin.” Ace’s mouth was set in a grim line. “Gregor tried.”
I thought about Kajika then. He’d just gotten his family back and now they’d left him again. I needed to return to Rowan fast, so I could take his place at Lily’s side, so he could be free to join his tribe.
“The bluffs over the Hareni are yours until we find the lock,” Ace said.
“Thank you, Massin,” Negongwa inclined his head. “You are most generous.”
I craned my neck to take in the rocky blue cliffs surrounded by water, under which had sprawled the Hareni. Was it still there, under the liquefied mist?
“And they shall stay yours even after the lock is unearthed,” Ace said slowly. “Neverra belongs to faeries, all faeries. Seelie, Unseelie, and Daneelie.”
No one added the word hunters to the list, which meant they all knew what they were…which meant Kajika knew. I wondered how he’d reacted to that.
“Will the portal stamp take to my skin?” I asked.
“You are Daneelie,” Ace said, “so it should.”
“Mishipeshu.” Gwen smiled as she shook her head. “Incredible. Simply incredible.”
Metal clanged as Lyoh managed to toss one of the chains off her body. Before I could blink, Menawa was crouched and tethering the other restraints, even though too much iron crisscrossed her limbs for her to escape.
“Menawa, remove the chains,” Cruz said.
I hiked an eyebrow. “I thought you were going to kill her.”
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