Dawson smiled and stopped rubbing his earlobe. “So how, um…should I…? How do you want to be carried? Piggyback?”
I laughed, but pressed a fist to my mouth when he grimaced. “Sorry,” I breathed.
He scrunched up his mouth. “Help me out. How should I carry you?”
I laughed again as an image of me riding on a faerie boy’s back cropped up in my mind.
“Don’t pick on Dawson,” a gruff voice rising from the darkness said.
My laughter withered like a rose in autumn.
I searched the darkness for the owner of the voice. Found him hovering inches from the platform. His face didn’t glow here. Or maybe I couldn’t see its glow, yet another confirmation that I’d lost my sight.
“Oh hey, Ace,” Dawson said, as Ace landed on the platform.
His dark gaze swept over me. Not once. Not twice. But many…many times. Goosebumps unfurled over every inch of my body.
“I’ve got it,” he said. “I’ve got her.”
How I wished he really had…me.
Ace patted the boy’s shoulder. “Go and get yourself a good spot. The palace is jam-packed.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Vade!” Ace said.
After Dawson dove off the platform, neither Ace nor I spoke for excruciatingly long seconds.
Finally Ace extended both his arms. “Shall we?”
“Why did you come?”
He paused, evaluating my question. “Because it was either see you walk down an aisle or never see you walk at all. I don’t trust Cruz, but I also don’t trust Dawson to fly you over, Pietro’s dead, and my other friend among the lucionaga was busy, so I have no one else to delegate your safety to.” His arms were still extended. “Consider helping you survive your first day in Neverra my engagement gift.”
Hesitantly, I made my way toward him, but stopped a hair’s breadth away from his fingertips. “Are you still very angry with me?”
“Disappointed. Confused.” His arms arced down. “When I talked about bringing you to Neverra, you looked like it was the worst idea in the world. Now, I think you just didn’t want to come here with me.”
My pulse throbbed at my temples. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
“But I also don’t think you like Cruz, so I’m not really sure why you’re here.” His blue gaze dug deep into mine. So deep I thought he would see right through me. I lowered my eyes, terrified he would, and Cruz wouldn’t uphold his end of the deal. “Is it to make me jealous? Because if it is—”
I raised my gaze back to his, pitched an eyebrow up. Finish the sentence, Ace.
“If it is, then you succeeded.”
My heart fluttered softly.
A frown touched his lips. “But if that was your plan, Catori, then I feel incredibly relieved, because I don’t like girls who play games and pit one boy against another. You call me childish, but trying to make someone jealous is immature and cruel. I don’t need a person like that in my life.”
Misery hit me dead center, spreading like a toxin through the rest of my body.
“Anyway”—he rubbed the back of his neck—“I don’t want things to be strange between us now that you’re here to stay. I’d like to think we could possibly be civil. I don’t expect or want friendship, but I already have a long list of people I dislike, and I’d rather not have to add one more name. Can we move past our…past?”
My lungs felt compressed by the overwhelming loss brought on by Ace’s analysis. I’d lost so much because of Cruz.
So damn much.
My hatred for him grew into something solid that hardened inside my heart and my throat, and blackened all my thoughts. “I don’t intend to hurt you again, Ace.”
A smile as limp as the arms he extended again wobbled over his lips. “Cruz will send someone else to fetch you if we don’t leave now.”
I walked into his arms on legs that didn’t feel attached to my body. One arm slid underneath my knees, the other underneath my back. Although he didn’t cradle me against his chest, he held me steadily.
The purpling evening flogged my dry, cold cheeks as Ace soared soundlessly around the massive trunks of the calimbors. At some point, I raised my eyes and watched him watch everything but my face. “Was…Pietro…only there for Lily?”
His Adam’s apple jostled in his stubbly throat. “He was looking out for the two of you.”
I touched the edge of his jaw. “Why did you lie about it?”
His jaw flexed as though he was about to answer, but he didn’t. At least not for a long moment. “So what did you think of my father? Charming man, huh?”
“He’s”—I searched for the right word—“intimidating.”
Ace grunted. “He’s far worse than that.” His blue eyes burned a path over my face.
Before I could ask what he meant, our bodies dipped, and then he was unhooking his arms from underneath me. My bare feet met cool, buffed stone.
“Was traffic bad?” The gravelly voice snaked out of the shadows. Then green eyes alighted on me.
Ace glowered at Cruz, lowered his eyes to my face, scraped a finger across my jaw, and then walked into the cavernous mouth of the palace.
35
The First Ceremony
“Did you tell him anything?” Cruz asked, after Ace had disappeared inside the palace.
Animated with voices and flickering lights, the palace looked more inviting than it had this morning, yet I longed to go anywhere but inside.
“And lose the ability to bring Lily home?” I shook my head. “I am way more desperate than I am dumb.”
Cruz’s eyes glowed like twin lanterns against his shadowy features as he scrutinized my face for longer than necessary. In the end, he said drily, “Hold my arm.”
“You don’t want me any more than I want you, so why the hell are we doing this?”
“Arm,” he repeated.
Now that really made me want to hold him.
“I’ve already explained my reasons to you, Catori.”
“Revenge? I think that’s done and out of the way.”
“It’s just beginning.” There was something ominous about his tone, something unsettling about the glassy look on his face.
What else did he have in store for me? For Ace? Was marrying me really a fuck you to his closest friends, almost siblings? Or was it somehow part of a bigger plan?
He blinked, and it wiped the brooding glint in his eyes. “As for you, you’re doing this for Lily. My arm, Catori. Now.”
When I still didn’t place my fingers around the sleeve of his purple tunic, which looked designed for a maharajah, Cruz plucked my fist from my side, lifted it, and crushed it against his arm.
He jerked me forward. I almost tripped on the hem of my dress. Lifting the soft material with my free hand, I adjusted my strides to match his hurried ones.
Flames hovered over a crowd that put a Super Bowl stadium to shame. I yanked my gaze from Cruz to the sea of faces surrounding me. Even though shadows dappled the bejeweled mass of bodies, the faeries’ eyes shone as bright as the gems hooked into their ears, looped around their throats, and woven into their hair.
The floating flames shifted and assembled over Cruz and me. They wreathed our heads as we walked down the aisle, approaching the throne tree on which Linus sat with his gilded, leafy crown, bracketed by his wife and Lyoh Vega. All three wore black, but it seemed almost different shades. Addison’s dress was sheer and glittery, Lyoh’s tight and glossy, and Linus’s tunic resembled Cruz’s, strict but cut from a swath of satin.
Ace and Angelina stood on one side of the raised dais, bodies parallel but not touching. If anything, they leaned away from each other, and his arms were crossed. I’d expected Ace to have downplayed his dislike of his future bride, but his body language confirmed everything he’d told me.
Although I didn’t want to look away from him, I remembered people were staring at me. Which meant they would follow my line of sight. What would cross their minds if they saw me sta
ring at their prince on the day of my engagement?
The other side of the dais was occupied by a single body. A man of average size and average build with hawk-like features, light eyes, and autumn-colored hair. When he caught me looking, I lowered my gaze to the purple fabric that swirled around my ankles.
Cruz’s hand was a manacle. I felt like a prisoner being led to her execution. In a way, I was a prisoner and this was an execution—the slaughter of my freedom.
Lost in thought, I didn’t realize Cruz stopped walking until he jerked me backward. I stumbled. Looked up. First at Cruz and then at the spot before us where tendrils of black smoke were knitting together to form an object.
My eyelashes hit the arch of my eyebrows when the smoke stopped shifting and revealed a gleaming black cauldron.
Silence filled the room and buzzed in my eardrums, and then that silence was replaced by a chant. Every faerie was chanting. My frenzied mind attempted to make sense of their song, but my grasp of Faeli was too poor. Confused and more agitated than when I’d stepped into the palace, I inched backward. Cruz tightened his hold on me.
The contents of the cauldron began to glow as tendrils of glittery green smoke bubbled over its thick, dark lip.
The chanting stopped so suddenly that my ears rang from the deafening silence. Without explaining, without asking, Cruz dragged my hand toward the faerie vessel. I tucked my fingers into my palm so hard little crescents of self-inflicted pain bloomed on my skin.
“Place your hand inside,” he murmured.
I turned wide, terror-filled eyes on him. Was he crazy? Whatever it contained was bubbling, boiling. Maybe he was impervious to heat but I wasn’t.
“Now.” Jaw clenched, he added, “Please.”
As though a please would sway me.
It didn’t.
It absolutely didn’t.
The cauldron’s contents cast moving shadows across his face. Without further ado, Cruz yanked on my hand and plunged it inside.
I hissed even though it didn’t burn, and then I wrenched my arm back, but my hand had fused to whatever was inside. I felt my pulse everywhere, in my ears, my throat, my jaw, the spot between my eyes.
Cruz sank his hand inside beside mine.
Scintillating strands of magic rose and snaked around both our forearms, sizzling where they made contact with skin. Like when I’d pressed my hand over a lightbulb as a child to examine the map of veins irrigating my body, my skin turned translucent. Instead of opaque and red, the blood in my veins shimmered as the strange light inside the cauldron traveled up my arm and into my shoulder blade, and spread into my chest.
The same was happening to Cruz. Even through his tunic, the path of magic was visible.
A new sonorous chant eddied from the crowd. My veins prickled, and I hissed out a breath. When the slow burn of the W lit up my other hand, I sought Ace out. He had his arms folded stiffly in front of him, and the most intent expression marred his handsome features.
The chanting stopped, the threads of magic scampered back inside the cauldron like vines, and then the whole thing puffed into oblivion.
Blinking wildly, I dragged my hand into my chest and massaged my palm. It didn’t hurt, but felt funny, like anesthetized skin.
A clap, as loud as a shotgun, resounded in the grand hall. And then more clapping ensued, filling the space with a thunderous din. The applause made my stomach knot and roll.
“You could’ve warned me about the process,” I muttered.
Cruz took my arm as ungently as the last time. “It’s done.”
I shook my head. What had happened to make him so bitter? Was it Borgo’s death?
He spun me around. “We must open the festivities.”
As he tugged me back through the rows of ogling, joyous faeries, I asked, “What was inside the cauldron?”
“All the bonds ever established in Neverra.” His mouth was set with a rigid smile. I wondered if anyone could mistake it for a true one.
“How do you break a bond?”
Cruz glanced at me. “You call on the Cauldron and place your hand inside. It’ll exact a price for removing your promise.”
“Leaving Neverra.”
He nodded.
I thought of Lily, of how terrifying the decision must’ve been for her. “What is expected of us now?”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight, and in the next seventeen days.”
“Tonight, we revel. Then in a week or so, there will be the duobosi—”
“I’m not sleeping with you!” I hissed. Not in front of an audience and not in the privacy of an apartment. “And don’t you dare use your third bargain to make me,” I added in a low, threatening voice.
Cruz had the audacity to smirk. “We’ll discuss it when the time comes.”
Revulsion crawled through my veins. I wouldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it. Could I? How far would I be willing to debase myself to save a friend’s life? Then again, if he used his last gajoï, I wouldn’t have a choice. At that moment, my hatred for him deepened again.
“There’ll be a couple other parties to celebrate us,” he continued.
When we emerged on the lustrium-lit terrace, Cruz wrapped his hands around my waist. Air swished beneath my feet as he flew me up and deposited me on the overhanging terrace, next to one of the silvery basins. He released me but stayed close to my side, eyes riveted on the twinkling spheres bobbing on the basin’s strange surface.
The waterfalls behind me didn’t roar like waterfalls on Earth. On closer inspection, it wasn’t water that poured down the side of the palace, but a denser, almost liquid mist.
Faeries began streaming onto the mossy terrace, and the fire that had festooned the grand hall now settled in the trees. Although their trunks were similar to the calimbors, their crowns were made of violet, cotton-candy-like swirls.
“Mallow trees,” a voice explained.
I snapped my attention away from the fluffy leaves and met a pair of hazel eyes.
I had a picture of those eyes and that face on my phone.
36
The Envoy
“Stella hasn’t been able to retrieve her dust, I see.”
Gregor Farrow—Faith’s father and Neverra’s wariff—didn’t know his mistress was dead. I side-eyed Cruz. What game was he playing? Keeping some secrets from Gregor, yet feeding him others?
Lyoh Vega brushed past Gregor to join us.
“I hope you do not plan on capturing any more faerie dust, Catori,” Lyoh said.
“I didn’t come to police your world.” My voice didn’t rattle even though every last organ in my body trembled from the proximity of so much power.
She began lifting her hands to my forehead, but I stepped back.
“If you have nothing to hide, then you will let me read your thoughts.”
“Why don’t you read your son’s thoughts?” I answered. “He’ll show you my intentions for coming to Neverra were noble.” I wanted to expose Cruz, expose his true intentions, since he wouldn’t share them with me. But as soon as I said this, I thought about Lily and how it might work against me.
“My son’s mind is the only mind I cannot access. Didn’t he share this with you?”
I blinked up at Cruz, whose expression was so rigid his face seemed made of plaster instead of skin.
“One thing I have learned from you, mother, is the importance of secrecy and the unnecessity of sharing information that doesn’t concern another person. I strongly believed, and still do for that matter, that my imperviousness to your skill didn’t concern my future bride.”
Lyoh’s eyebrows dipped as she observed her son. It seemed as though she couldn’t decide what to make of his reasoning.
From the corner of my eye, I spied Ace speaking with his mother. He towered over the small blonde, whose hand was settled on her son’s forearm. Serpent-like diamond rings gleamed on each one of her fingers.
After a while, she lowered her hand and her glossy red lips fell, and then h
er shiny gaze slid over Cruz, over me. She crushed one hand to her chest, wrinkling the funeral-black fabric of her dress, and backed away from her son before taking flight. She soared a story high where two hovering faeries pushed open another set of golden doors to let her in. Once inside, they closed the doors and remained stationed next to them like gargoyles.
When I looked back, Ace was gone.
“Can I have a word with you, Catori?” Gregor asked.
Although wary, I nodded. He tipped his head to a path shaded by a trellis covered in glittery rose lianas, and knotted his hands behind his back. I stared at the roses that reminded me of Holly. Were these flowers born of faerie ashes too?
“So you’re the wariff, huh?”
“Until I die.”
“What does a wariff do?”
“Everything your president does. I’m the commander of the army, and I enforce punishments. I’m the guy you don’t want to mess with. And don’t believe for a second that being the draca’s daughter-in-law will spare you from punishment if you commit an infraction. Only the royal family gets free passes. From time to time.”
“Lily didn’t get a free pass.”
Gregor flicked his eyes over me. “She stole a dangerous book and handed it over to our enemies.”
“A blank book is hardly dangerous.”
Gregor stopped walking and pivoted to face me. He was a little shorter than I was but didn’t try to compensate by adding inches of air beneath his bare feet. He did puff out his chest like a frigatebird, though. “You see, this is the part I don’t believe. Stella told me you tried to have it reprinted, and that your aunt read passages out to her. So unless your aunt has a knack for improvisational theater, there were words inside the book. Words that you read. And I’d like to know what they were to understand what your people are planning to do to mine.”
“My people are humans. Not bodiless faeries.”
“I should perhaps involve the draca in this little conversation.”
“I’d rather we don’t. However lovely she is.” I gave him a saccharine smile. “Allow Lily to come home, and I’ll tell you if I saw anything in the book.”
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