by N. M. Howell
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Really?” Trini lifted the first two fingers and thumbs of both hands, raising them to frame Raina in her vision. “You must be Fae. Only the main floor of this facility allows human passage. Was there some indiscretion in your family tree, a little secret tryst between grandma and the big bad Dark Fae from the woods?”
Raina held her breath. She felt nothing. Could Trini see her slight hold on magic, her ancestry, both Light Fae and full royal blood?
Trini grunted and stamped a foot. She let her hands down. “I can’t see any power in you at all. Nothing. But I can’t sense any humanity in you at all, either. And that just can’t be. What are you, Friend? Where did you come from? Why are you here?”
“None of your darn business.”
The half-fae stepped closer. “Uh-unh, no way. None of the school wards react to you. You see things you shouldn’t possibly be able to see. And Jax—I’ve never seen Jax look twice at the most beautiful human woman. Derek clings to you nearly as hard as he does to me. So tell me, Friend. What are you?”
Raina swallowed. Trini was treading way too close to the truth.
Now, they were standing inches apart. Raina wanted to back away. Trini held her with a stare.
“No magic. Not human. Yet readily accepted by our protections as one of us.” Trini smiled. “It can only mean one thing, Friend. You must be… Bright Fae.”
The words struck like a sucker punch to the gut. Raina whirled away, but Trini gripped her shoulders.
“I’m not Fae, I’m human! I’m totally human! Look at me, do I look Fae?” Raina babbled, struggling in Trini’s grip.
“How stupid am I?” Trini laughed.
“You’re not stupid, it’s not true!”
“It was making me so crazy!” Trini continued. “How could you see through my Phaze? Only a powerful Fae could break the Disregard. Only a Fae could cloak herself from the guards, the wards.”
“No, it’s something else.” Raina couldn’t think of what else it could be. Trini knew. Why hadn’t Raina been more careful? She couldn’t let Trini kill those men in front of her, even if that wasn’t her intent. What a fool she’d been!
Trini studied her closely. “Those huge eyes, always with the sunglasses. All that pancake makeup—I thought you had an acne problem. Your roots—they’re not blonde, not gray, they’re transparent. Your ugly black clothes, so loose and baggy, the heels on your boots almost make you human height. I’m a moron for not seeing it before.
“Sweet Gods beyond, how are you still alive, Bright Fae girl? Five years without magic. How are you still alive?”
Raina couldn’t speak. She could hardly breathe. Truth was, she had no idea. It didn’t take long after she’d run to safety that she realized all other Light Fae within he human realm had disappeared when the portal fell. Whether they fled, were summoned home by the portal’s magic, or simply perished when the magic was cut off, she had no idea. All she knew is that she was likely the only one of her kind remaining on this side of the portal.
Or perhaps even the other side, though she refused to think about that just then.
“Still, our protections allow only Shadow Fae to pass. It’s not like anyone believed a Bright Fae still lived, but still, the glyphs exist from the dark times. They should be screaming like banshees when you pass by. This is… amazing. And confusing as hell. Who the hell are you?”
Distantly, the bell rang. The start of class. Had she only been down here that short a time? Raina felt the tug and moved toward the door. Trini held her firmly.
“Uh-uh-uh, no school for you today, Friend.” The half-fae brought her hands up, waving them in semi-circles beside Raina’s ears. Immediately, the summons of the bell lost urgency. “It’s nearly time for the guards to change shift. When they enter to check on the prisoners, I’ll fold you in my Phaze and we’ll get out of here. Unless you want to show me your own little trick for becoming unnoticed.”
Raina, already balking under Trini’s scrutiny, shook her head. “I’ll go with you.”
“We’ll have to move slow. It’s tough enough to Phaze myself from prying eyes.”
“Move slow to where?”
Trini took her by the arm and led her to stand beside the door. “To a place where we can hide you out, at least for the time being.”
Bolts clacked and Trini threw up her Phaze of Disregard as the four uniformed Dark Fae entered the room. One of them, a guard who Raina and Trini had slipped past not long before, cast a glance over his shoulder at them. With a confused twist of his brow and a shrug, he moved toward the others, who set to work rousing the prisoners. The prisoners who now had no memory of why they were there.
Trini tugged her, and the two of them walked down the hall.
17
Shoulders pressed together, Light and Dark Fae moved as one down the hallway to a set of stairs leading to a sub-basement carved from solid bedrock, down a longer hall. Behind a warded door, a room of pumps stood, their mechanic roar muted. Muted until Trini opened a door in the floor. Descending rusty rungs, they emerged into utter darkness. Trini gestured one of those pulsing orange orbs into her hand.
They stood in a corridor so jammed with pipes they had to move down it sideways. Damp dripped, and their footsteps echoed wetly and weirdly. It seemed they were now far away from the campus. Where the hell was Trini taking her?
A narrow passage snaked from the pipe corridor, looking like a natural fissure in the bones of Manhattan. Trini shoved through a rusted gate. They now walked along more pipes, but these seemed much older. This hallway was nearly silent. Above, the rough ceiling was only a few inches over Trini’s head.
“Iron pipes,” Trini pointed a thumb at the black tubes covered with rust and verdigris. “Keeps scrying eyes away.”
“Where are we going?”
“Here.” Trini stopped. “Watch your step.”
A black doorway led through an arch of broken brick and crumbling mortar. Beyond, the floor fell away more than a story. Trini waved to a rickety bridge that crossed the ten-foot chasm. It was made of mossy wood with no rails. It groaned beneath their feet.
Voices and light came from the end of a short arched hallway. Trini led the way. Wooden pillars stood six feet apart, a forest holding up the ceiling. The walls were dotted with black circles and the jutting end of cut pipes. A faded stencil on one of the lintels read: Pumping Apparatus Level Four. Rotted hulks of old machinery huddled against a few walls. At the end of the low room, a group of men sat at a makeshift table of sawhorses and rough, filthy planks. Dark Fae globes of orange lay on the boards and floated in the air.
A form moved quickly from the pillar shadows.
Derek?
“Is it done, Trini? Did they see you—Raina?” Derek took a step back as he saw her.
“Raina.” Trini slapped her head. “Rainara is your cover name? Who thought of that stupid name?”
Derek cleared his throat.
“What the hell are you doing down here?” Raina asked.
Derek’s eyes shifted between her and Trini.
“You know who she is?” He asked.
Trini tossed her hair, hands on her hips. “Apparently not Rainara. Obviously not human.”
He nodded. “Come on.”
Raina followed to the men at the table. None of them spoke. All of them studied her with intense eyes. Many were human men, their hulking physiques giving them away. She spotted two human females as well. The rest were Dark Fae, men and women both. She didn’t recognize any of them.
“We are the Egalitarian Confraternity,” Derek said by way of introduction. “The modern version, anyway.”
Raina took in the people in the ancient, crumbling room. “Seriously?”
In her career with Human-Fae relations, she knew well the history. While humans had encountered the Fae, both Light and Dark, for millennia, the formal introductions had taken place only two hundred years ago or so. The Light Fae Court p
resented itself to the federal government of the United States in its new Washington, DC home, meanwhile the Dark Fae Warlords presented to First Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, in Paris. It was Thomas Jefferson who first convened the Egalitarian Confraternity, a first effort for all three races to embrace each other. This, even though the United States would soon go to war against Britain, France campaigned to rule the world, and the Blood Days raged on between Light and Dark Fae as they had for centuries.
Eventually, the Egalitarian Confraternity ended the Blood Days, even if humans continued to war on. The portal was constructed in Central Park as part of the reconciliation, allowing the Dark Fae unhindered access to the human world as the Light Fae turned from combative magic to erect a perpetual gateway for emigration to Oreálle.
As far as Raina knew, the confraternity had ceased activities ever since.
“During the years the great truce was in place, there wasn’t a need for the confraternity. But since the attack on the portal, on the Bright Fae, we’ve resurfaced.” Derek cast self-conscious eyes around the hole in the ground. “Or, at least, reconvened.”
“We believe a splinter group in the Shadow Fae leadership launched the attack on the portal. We haven’t been able to single out the members as of yet.” An older Dark Fae man stood up. “The theory is that this splinter group harkens back to the banished bloodlines of the Warlord class.”
“Warlords?” The name raised the hairs on Raina’s arms. Under Warlord leadership, the Dark Fae armies were out for more than blood or territory. They were out for genocide.
“With the portal destroyed, and the world absent any Bright Fae influence, we feel this splinter group is moving forward with more overreaching goals. Perhaps global domination.”
“You’re being overdramatic, Melchior,” Trini said.
“Am I? Their so-called solidarity campaign? After destroying the Light Fae, they’ve managed to gain human sympathy for that very act. The Light Fae never understood how susceptible human culture is to media. They use that symbol, on signs, in television commercials. On the one hand, it can be interpreted as solidarity. But the peculiar embellishments make it look suspiciously like the ancient banner of the Warlords. Become one with us by killing the Light.”
“Hang on, hang on.” Derek interrupted. “We can debate the supposed Warlords’ actual intentions all we want, but that never gets us anywhere. What we need in information on how they took out the portal and restore it. There could still be Bright Fae in this dimension, suffering, dying.”
Melchior huffed. “Light Fae without a constant source of magic? While my heart is heavy with the thought, there are no more Light Fae left in this realm.”
“There’s at least one,” Raina said.
Again, she was caught by intense gazes.
“I’m Raina of the bloodline Raeyelle, princess and heir to the Light Fae Court.” Intense gazes dropped to astonishment or disbelief.
“It’s not possible,” Melchior said.
Raina removed her hoodie, freeing herself of the prison those stupid sleeves had come to represent. While they did not glow any more, the faint pink lines of her brand of service to Human-Fae Relations was still visible, even in the dull orange luminance of the Dark Fae orbs.
“I’ve come to reopen the portal to Oreálle. To save my people.” The words loosened a vise around her spirit. She felt like she was finally able to breathe after five long years. She then paused, swallowing dryly. “If there are still people and a realm to save.”
A tremulous tension fell from her as she related her story since the attack on the portal. Her days and nights on the run, constantly moving so that she couldn’t easily be tracked by the magical brand on her forearm, her months in the wilderness, the urgency to put distance between her and New York, and finally, her return to the scene of the crime, it all took but a few minutes to tell. Raina decided to leave out most of the trials of her self-ostracism.
“But how did you survive without magic from the portal?” Melchoir asked.
Raina shrugged. “I don’t know. There are aspects of Oreálle here in this dimension—flowers and nectar, honey and shaded glens, meadows and streams.” She didn’t mention that, as time went on, she depended more and more on human sustenance, less and less on honey and meadows.
She went on to describe her experiences since returning. The gathered Confraternity listened intently about her dream-wandering to Central Park. Derek stopped her when she mentioned confronting the nithedrake in The Ramble.
“No way, a real live dragon in Central Park?”
A few of the Dark Fae murmured to each other.
Raina shrugged. “It wasn’t very big. Not that I’ve ever seen one, but from what I’ve read—”
“How did you get away? Nithedrake are bred to attack and feed on Bright Fae. They have senses like a shark, but tuned to Bright Fae magic. The more you try to cast yourself out of danger, the easier they could, well, smell you.” Derek shrugged. “Or whatever.”
“The Glow-Getter is right,” the Dark Fae woman to the left of Melchior said. “Forgive us for past sins, Princess, but the nithedrake were bred specifically to hunt and devour Bright Fae by sensing your neurological control of free magic. Spelling you way from a ’drake’s clutches would be like scaring off moths with a flashlight.”
“Yet here I am. I got away from it. It didn’t eat me. Do you think I’m lying about it?” Raina frowned at the shadowy figures.
Another person, a blonde human man with huge shoulders, leaned forward. “What kind of magic did you use against the creature? Was it a Phaze of Indifference or Disregard? Fray magic, perhaps?”
“I can’t, that is—” How much should she reveal about her lack of power to this group? Even if Derek had thrown in with him, his behavior as of late didn’t put him in the best light. “It was a child’s rhyme.”
The Dark Fae couple sitting together shared an expression. The man nodded. “Go ahead, Belle.”
The woman recited:
“Nithedrake, o nithedrake/not a sense shall I awake.”
Astonished, trying not to let it show, Raina asked, “How do you know that?”
The woman tilted her head in thought. “It is a Dark Fae nursery rhyme from the time of the wyvern and ’drake breeders. My question is, how would you know it, and how could you use an incantation? It is magic drawn of sound, of words, of rhythm and song, not the control of free magic. It is fully Dark Fae in origin, and in manner.”
“It was something I learned when I was a girl. From my mother. A hide-and-seek song.”
“No.” The woman folded her arms. “It is a protective spell all breeders taught their children, so as not to draw the unwanted attention of the least intelligent of dragons. Nithedrakes might hunt Bright Fae by instinct, but they are as opportunistic as wolves. It had to be guarded against. The incantation is powerful, an anti-warding that requires practice and skill. Yet you said it from memory, and escaped a ferocious predator.”
Raina couldn’t figure out what the difference was.
Apparently, Melchior read her expression. “My child, the Bright Fae are born into magic, filled with magic. In their lives, they become sculptors, shaping that massive block of energy into useful and beautiful things. Shadow Fae children are born starving for magic. They can sense it all around, and have nothing but the desire to use it. But it comes to them in pieces. Imagine the block of granite a Bright child is born with powdered to dust. Dark Fae must gather it, shape it. In their lives, they become potters, building magic up from the sifting of sand, of clay.
“It is a practice, a constant self-teaching, to remember the intonation of incantations, the proper figure to hold the hands, the phrases and colors to keep in the back of the mind, the ancient phrases with only instinctive meaning. To cease practice is to lose control, to diminish in power.”
Raina thought about the gestures she’d seen Trini use, and Jax. Their hand figures were consistent. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought
about.
“The physical control of magic is outside the realm of the Bright Fae. There are some gifted humans who have managed it to a small degree. That’s why the academy was built. As a Light Fae, I’m sure you’ve found the classes meaningless.”
She nodded. That was true. Raina remained silent, wondering what they were getting at. Derek voiced it.
“So she must have Shadow Fae blood.”
The sentence rocked her. “Are you out of your mind, Moth-Boy?” She was the daughter of the reigning king and queen of Oreálle, a bloodline that extended back millennia. The thought that she was one of these evil, night-loving creatures made her gorge rise.
“I’m not suggesting that at all,” Melchior said. “Royal blood. Do you know how royal bloodlines were initially established? It’s from our prehistory, the stories handed down, never written. Over time, they’ve become twisted by both sides of the Fae, to match the widening gap in philosophies.
“Our original royal line, for both the Bright and Shadow Fae, is an example of our convergent evolution—two separate species evolving in very similar ways to become intelligent, magic-using beings. The first Lord Fae, predating warlords and warladies, kings and queens, possessed features of both Dark and Light Fae. To put it in modern, human terms, their genome was something in between Light and Dark, and compatible with both. Dusk Fae, we call them—Dawn Fae was the word used by the Light. These unique individuals united the Fae long, long ago.”
Derek marveled at this. “Fae saviors, bringing peace to both races.”
Melchior let out a mocking laugh. “Peace? War? These are human concepts. Dark and Light Fae are two sides of a coin, ever opposite, ever attached. What the Lord Fae brought was balance. But we’ve lost that sense of balance, a circumstance of Dark Fae mingling with humans in this realm, and the retreat of the Light Fae to their sunlit dimension. Human emotions, greed, covetousness, pain, fear, misery, these feed the Dark Fae as they forever toil at their magic in darkness. Separation, aloofness, superiority are the Light Fae traits as they withdraw more and more into that supernatural realm.
