Long distances were a bitch for everyone. No one was spared the misery of a cramping back and wings that felt so heavy with the drag of the wind that just lifting them to get the air ruffling through your feathers felt like a mammoth task. We flew with magic, soaring at the same heights as planes for speed, but that only doubled down on our energy consumption. Soon, we’d be crashing. Without a doubt.
So, whatever had spared him that exhaustion, whatever was spurring him on and making him look as though he could make the return flight without a whimper, wasn’t a Fae trait, at least not one I’d come across before. I could only assume it was the bond, the fear that gave him the adrenaline he’d needed to make this trip, and a part of me was jealous. I wanted that extra boost, and wished, foolishly, that I hadn’t pulled away that day on the training arena. That I’d allowed the glow to overtake me.
Stupid?
Yeah. But I never said I was the smartest cookie in the jar, did I?
As we entered a room that was definitely a study—one I recognized from the video calls we’d had with Noa over the past couple of days—I wasn’t surprised when he led us over to a door that was etched with runes around the archway.
Runes were unusual magic. They were a part of Fae lore too. Witches could sometimes get a handle on them, but they were mostly a part of our legend, not theirs.
It was a dying magic, as was most things where our own talents were concerned. With the witches growing ever more powerful, and their population steadily increasing, we had more magic than we knew what to do with… it was a lazy attitude, one I didn’t necessarily approve of, even if I did recognize that there were more important things that required our attention more than learning dead magics.
When Noa sliced his hand against an etched rod that was tucked into the wainscoting, I wasn’t surprised when I scented blood. He rubbed his fingers in the wound he’d made on his palm, then reached up and tapped on some of the symbols. Even as his blood dried on the metal, becoming useless within no time at all, I watched as the runes flared to life, glowing a bright blue before flashing gold, and the door opened as though he’d twisted the doorknob.
Such a sight would have impressed me if my grandfather hadn’t had a talent with runes. It was quite common to come across him using them in Sealish, especially as our tithe from the Assembly had been cut short thanks to the shunning, but he’d never bothered teaching me how to use them myself. Not when I was destined to be a warrior in a troupe, and my magic tithe would surge in line with my new position.
What stunned me the most, however, was Daniel’s lack of surprise. He eyed the runes, his head tipped to the side, and the way his eyes narrowed? I had the sneaky suspicion that he was mesmerizing what was, evidently, a passkey to enter the vil der Luir’s cirque du freak.
I hadn’t thought runes would be something an admin caste would be comfortable with, but then, what they did and didn’t learn was beyond me. I probably sounded like an elitist prick, but the admin caste children and the warrior caste brats were taught at different levels, information and knowledge was prioritized in line with our fates—my education had leaned toward fighting, and undoubtedly, his had leaned toward politics and diplomacy—so Daniel’s awareness of an old magic did surprise me.
The doorway opened up into a dark corridor. Light coalesced in the palm of Noa’s hand and illuminated a panel on the side of the wall just beyond the entrance—more runes. He tapped the requisite ones and a line of ceiling lights made an appearance overhead.
The hall was more like a tunnel. It felt like we were going underground, even though I knew we weren’t, but there were no windows, and the lights were kind of grim, a kind of white/blue that drained the color and life from everything. Not that there was much to see.
The floor was hewn from stone and the walls were forged from brick.
Aside from that one panel, there was nothing else of interest. As we trudged down the corridor, I could literally feel the tension rising from Dan’s skin, and it was a relief to finally see some light at the end of the damn tunnel and get out of there.
We walked into a strange room. It was like a library, but there were heaps of chairs, some comfortable for lounging, others for working in. There were sofas, chaise lounges, too, and all around them were books. It was a bibliophile’s heaven.
On the walls, I recognized famous Fae artists—the originals, of course, nothing fake for the vil der Luirs. Not even in the Master of the line’s personal harem could there be anything other than authentic pieces of art…
The space had bookcases that soared twenty feet high, which I wasn’t altogether surprised by considering the older generations appreciated books more than the younger. My own grandfather had a similar library, he just didn’t have the women who were reading the books.
There were about two dozen of them in here, and you’d never know. They didn’t talk and they barely interacted. Some lazily drifted through books, the whisper of the pages echoing in the silence, while others stared into space. There were faint murmurs, I guessed, but if you took the size of the room into consideration, it was nothing. Sol, a group this size should have been making a racket.
What was it Noa had said?
These witches were all broken? With dead Virgo or worse?
I wasn’t sure what was worse than death, but I knew that was a naive question. After twenty years in the field, I felt sure I’d come face to face with the ins and outs of living hell, but for the moment, I’d take my naivete and embrace it. Riel was already shaking my world at its very core. I wasn’t certain I could deal with much more.
“Which one is Jyll?” Daniel asked, his voice gruff as he eyed the silent and somber females with unease.
Noa shot him a look, and I knew it was because there was very little politesse to the question. Noa, with his age and position in society, was used to a certain deference. I knew Daniel was aware of that. From his stock, he couldn’t not be, but his control was in tatters.
The thought had me blowing out a breath.
What the fuck was it with this bond between a witch and her Virgo?
How could Riel have so much power over us that we went through a complete three-sixty personality change and in no time at all?
Priorities shifted, needs morphed, and desires revolved entirely around her.
It was no wonder my grandfather had called stories of the Virgo bond fairytales, because it felt like something someone would come up with as a joke. But I wasn’t living a joke. Everything I was experiencing was beyond serious. My life had shifted, tilted on its head, and the worst thing of all? I didn’t have an ounce of resentment in me. I didn’t care that she’d rocked my world, I just cared that she’d been taken from me.
Stolen.
I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck where a tension headache was gathering. As I kneaded and used magic to grant the illusion of ease, Noa pointed to a female who was lazing back on a chaise lounge. Her legs were laid out along the tongue of the seat, neatly crossed at the ankles as she tilted on her side and stared down at a book she’d rested on a glass coffee table. Beside the hardback tome, there was a steaming concoction that looked like green tea.
Noa had said she was ‘brewing’ the spell. It appeared to me, I thought irritably, that all she’d been brewing was a cup of matcha.
“Jyll?”
At Noa’s call, the female tensed, any pleasure she was finding in the moment dissipating at Noa’s attention.
The sight made me wince, especially in line with my uncharitable thoughts, and guilt hit me square between the eyes, but we needed her help more than she needed to be nervous.
Yeah, that made me sound like a real shit, but I could deal with that.
She didn’t approach us, which Noa didn’t seem to find odd. If anything, he stepped toward her, ignoring the faint stirrings of some of the witches. Our path did cause some chittering, but a few barely reacted at all.
This place was downright odd and that just confirmed it. If housing r
andom female witches in one’s house wasn’t bizarre enough, that they were all cocooned in here like this was some kind of private asylum…
Sol.
Was that what this place was?
A kind of respite home?
My eyes darted around the room, trying to discern clues that would give me some answers, but I caught nothing that outright told me ‘yes’ or ‘no.’
When Noa took a seat on the edge of the chaise lounge, he patted her ankle in a way that didn’t give off creepy vibes. It wasn’t a ‘I own you and I’ve had you’ kind of touch, more like a grandfatherly tap if anything else.
Maybe he had messed around with all these women, and maybe that was why Elyza was such a sourpuss, but I doubted it. My mom didn’t give a fuck who my dad slept with, so long as it wasn’t her. And now he had the pox? Yup, I reckoned she’d be grateful his attentions went elsewhere, and I knew it would be the same with Seph’s parents.
“Jyll, this is my son and his troupe.” He glanced at us, pointing to us as he called out our names.
She dipped her chin, evading eye contact as she whispered her greeting, “May Gaia bless you.”
When Daniel squatted down beside the coffee table, she jerked in surprise, but considering the clusterfuck of emotions he was currently emitting, it was no wonder she calmed down when she got a good look at him. If this place was offering respite? Then Daniel appeared like he belonged here too. Frazzled wasn’t the word.
“Jyll, I’m sure Sire vil der Luir explained this to you already, but we’re Virgos, and our witch, our woman—” He broke off to clear his throat as he made fists with his hands. “She disappeared in a storm.”
The witch bit her lip as she pleated her fingers, knotting them at the knuckle before twisting them on her lap. She stayed silent, though. And silence was the last thing any of us needed.
“Can you help us? We have to find her,” he pressed, despair whispering through his words when she didn’t utter a word.
Her legs shuffled at that, and I wasn’t altogether surprised when she sat upright and tucked her knees into her chest, tightening her arms around them so she was like a ball. Noa sighed at the sight, and I had to wonder how he thought she was ready to help us. Every move she made rejected our entreaty.
“I-I don’t know,” she whispered at last when we just hovered there, desperation leaking from us like a bad smell.
We couldn’t have flown all this way, wasted time on a dead end, could we?
But Sol, what alternative did we have? I didn’t have a clue how to go about finding Riel, and I knew the others were just as lost. Just as—
“Please,” Seph beseeched, calling her attention his way and breaking the chain of my hopeless thoughts. The second their eyes clashed, she dipped her chin, breaking the point of contact. The woman was more on edge than Daniel—and that was really saying something. My troupe brother looked like he could leap into an Irish jig with the amount he was fidgeting. “I can sense your anxiety,” Seph attempted to reassure her, “but we’re anxious too. Just ninety minutes ago, she was with us. We were safe. Training. Then this storm blew out of nowhere and carried her away.”
Jyll’s dark chestnut hair had tumbled into her face as she moved into an upright ball, but at his statement, her head twisted to the side and she peered up at us through bright blue eyes that were lucid. That it came as a surprise to me was telling— I had no idea what the Sol was going on with these women, I just knew it was creepy.
“You were at sea?” she inquired softly.
I shook my head, answering, “No. We were at the Academy. Eight Wings, it’s where Fae go when they’re—”
A laugh escaped her, and I was surprised there was a bitter tang to it. “I know what Eight Wings is.”
“Oh, well, yeah, I guess you do.” I licked my lips and inwardly called myself a dumbass, then I murmured, “We were training, clouds rolled in, funnels formed, she even got struck by lightning. Then, out of nowhere, the funnel grabbed her and she was hurled down to the ground.”
“Didn’t she connect with the earth?”
“No,” Noa rasped. “She didn’t. I believe a Fae set up a portal—”
“I can’t help with that,” she interrupted instantly, shaking her head and pressing her spine deeper into the sofa as though trying to evade us.
“We don’t expect you to,” Noa said softly. “But my son is hoping that the witch who set the storm is working in conjunction with the Fae who crafted the portal. Perhaps, that way, we can identify where she may be.”
Jyll frowned, then asked, “I don’t discern a bond on you.”
My eyes widened at that. “You can tell?”
“Yes. Of course. There’s a—” She winced. “—a kind of glow about a Virgo. You don’t display that.”
“We only just found her recently,” I explained, then my tone darkened as I continued, “and then we lost her. All while we were trying to keep her safe.”
She contemplated us for a second, then looked pointedly at Noa. “It’s important I do this?”
“Imperative. For my son’s sake, and his troupe,” was Noa’s immediate reply, and his support came as a massive boon. He was evidently disapproving of our relationship with Riel, but he was willing to request help on our behalf and for that, I’d always be grateful.
She blew out a breath, then stared at us again, her gaze flickering over us. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but whatever the Sol it was, I just wanted her to find it. Every minute she tarried was a minute that Riel was more lost to us.
Then, she whispered, “Okay, I’ll help,” and I thanked Gaia for one thing going right today.
2
Riel
“Granddaughter, today is not your day to die.”
After landing in a fumbling, chaotic swirl of arms, legs, and wings, atop a bean bag of all things, I stared at the man who declared himself my grandfather, and wondered if the tornado that had just swept me up out of nowhere had addled my brain as well as my body.
My entire being felt like one huge bruise. My wings screamed with pain as though they’d been torn apart by the wind, the element that was usually my friend. My limbs ached from being wrenched this way and that as I plummeted dozens of feet toward the ground. And all of that was from before I connected with the earth.
I’d been on the training grounds of Eight Wings Academy, fighting with one of my Virgo in an attempt to prove to the instructor I’d stabbed in the foot, that my ability to fight had improved. Leopold, being the dick he was, had told us to carry on with our dueling bout even as the weather had turned into a storm chaser’s idea of porn.
As a result, I’d been ripped into the sky and out of their hold by a funnel, then hurled to the ground. Except, I hadn’t died.
“Why didn’t I die?” I whispered, blinking at the man who I knew but somehow didn’t.
His was a face I recognized, but could I put the face to a name?
No.
“Because you were never supposed to die today.”
His voice was smooth and calming. Like Leonard Nimoy or James Earl Jones. He could be a voiceover, that was how restful it was. Deep inside, where I was roiled up in the aftermath of what had just happened to me, he soothed me. And trust me, I shouldn’t be soothed. Whatever the Sol was going on was the antithesis of calming.
“What do you mean? The storm—” I swallowed. “It was sent for me. It was sent to hurt me.”
He shook his head. “No. If that were the case, it would have struck true, and you wouldn’t be here.” His face was lined with age, creased here and there, but his smile was gentle, and his eyes were still pure and glowing with life.
His hair was tawny, silver and gold swirling together as it tumbled down to his shoulders, curtaining a face that reminded me of Peter O’Toole—one of my abuela’s favorite actors.
I could see why now.
When he was younger, this man, this Fae, would have had the same baby-faced looks, but in his eyes? There was knowledg
e that was anything but pure. His brow was wide, his nose long and thin, and his lips were mobile and still fleshy despite his age. As I glanced at him, I saw he wore a robe that swathed him from head to toe. It had a kind of knit around the neckline that made me think it was a kaftan for guys.
“Why am I here?” I rasped, each hand clinging to the opposite elbow for comfort. The danger might have passed, but I was still in the dark. I was still hurting from what I’d gone through, and my body was one big bruise as I stared up at him from my position on the floor, a ragtag bundle of limbs and wings that didn’t have enough starch in them to stay upright. “And how do I know you?”
“We’ve spoken often,” he assured me, and his words had me sputtering.
“I’d remember you.”
He tutted. “You know me, you just don’t know how,” he corrected. “My name is Linford.” His lips twitched to the side as he held out his hand. “It is a pleasure to truly meet you, Granddaughter, and may Gaia greet you. On this occasion, I will not be wiping your memories of me.”
I gaped at him. “Huh?”
He reached for my hand, detaching it from the elbow I’d been clinging to, and forcibly shook it—not hard, just enough to follow the social niceties. I dropped my eyes to his crinkled hand and frowned at it.
“Gabriella always did drive the hardest of bargains,” he murmured as, with his other hand, he nudged me under the chin so he could look at me. “But by Gaia, now that I see you, I remember why she had that power over me.” He shook his head. “Your Virgo are fortunate men, dearling. We passed down good stock to you.”
My eyes rounded, and I wasn’t sure they could get much bigger if they tried. “Is this for real?”
“Quite assuredly, yes,” he stated, his tone cheerful.
“C-Can you, I mean, could you please explain what the Sol is happening?” My voice started out with a squeak before tumbling into a holler.
Faeling Hard: An Eight Wings Academy Novel: Book Two Page 3
