Once the door shut, I sidled against the rough bark and shut my eyes. What had I done? Making such heroic promises to offset the family’s misery was downright cruel if I couldn’t fulfill them…
Could I really take down this kingdom, or would this kingdom take me down and make a fool of me and my promises?
44
The Truth
The door of Sarsay’s apartment opened and slammed shut a moment later.
Ace rounded on me, pinning his palms to the bark on either side of my head. “What the hell, Catori?”
Like the captive dust in my neck, I squirmed.
“What are you up to?” His fuming whisper touched the tip of my nose.
“Can you call Dawson? I need to get ba—”
He snatched me around the waist, then dove off the three flights that separated the landing from the ground. My belly hardened and rose from the abrupt fall. After we landed, he clutched my arm and yanked me past gaping calidums, through the squeaking swing doors of a place that resembled a Wild West saloon with a wooden bar, cow-hide barstools, wooden tables, and strange, curled antlers that hung from nails over the bar. Scantily-clad women preened around tables full of men in green tunics. Everyone looked up when Ace dragged me inside. Conversations died and curved lips flattened.
He exchanged Faeli words with the owner, who tipped his head toward another set of doors. Fear slicked down my spine as Ace hauled me through them and into a corridor lined with more doors. When we reached the furthest one, he drew it open and shoved me inside.
I stumbled onto a low stack of hay.
He flung the door shut, then stalked toward me. Without an ounce of gentleness he rammed me until I was flat on my back and he was on top of me, his big hands pinning my wrists over my head. I tried to shake him off, but he simply tightened his grip.
“Start talking, Cat,” he growled.
“Get off of me.”
“What the hell are you up to?”
“I’m not telling you until you get off me,” I muttered. “Besides I’ve already said too much.”
“Too much?” He snorted. “You said nothing that made any sense up there. You haven’t made any sense for weeks now.”
I stared up into Ace’s livid face. His proximity made my pulse skitter, but not out of fear. Definitely not out of fear. I licked my lips, trying to calm the heat whizzing through my body. Now wasn’t the time to get hot and bothered over a faerie who’d surely rather kill me than kiss me. As though sensing my erratic nerves, he added distance between his body and mine, but didn’t release me.
“I don’t play games, but you do apparently. What game are you playing now, Cat?”
Cat.
Not Catori.
Not Kitty Cat either, though.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
I licked my lips again, this time out of nervousness. “If I tell you, you’ll need to leave Neverra and swear not to return until the Night of Mist.”
His temper spiked. “I’m not going anywhere. Now talk!”
“Swear you’ll go, or I won’t say a word more than those you heard up in Sarsay’s apartment.”
His pupils throbbed. “Fine. I’ll leave.”
My heart gave an involuntary shudder. Neverra without him would feel more hostile than it already was, but it was a small price to pay to make sure he stayed safe. “Marrying Cruz was a gajoï.”
“I knew it,” he muttered under his breath. “Did he make you break up with me too?”
I didn’t answer. Indirectly he had, but the decision had been mine.
“I’m going to kill him.”
“No you’re not.”
Ace shook his head. “He made you marry him after he tossed my sister on her ass, and you’re defending him?”
“Keep your voice down.”
He untangled his fingers from my wrists and started to push up, but I latched onto his shoulders to keep him close, so I didn’t have to yell. “Your sister’s in on it.”
A nerve jumped in his jaw. He didn’t say anything for so long I thought he didn’t believe me. I could still hardly believe it myself. If I hadn’t received Ley’s test results, if I hadn’t morphed into a strange water beast, I would’ve had trouble believing Cruz’s story. But facts were facts, and feelings were feelings, and as much as I questioned the swiftness with which feelings could alter facts and facts could alter feelings, I trusted Cruz.
“What exactly is my sister in on?”
I lifted my head up so my mouth was a hair’s breadth away from the shell of his ear. “Destroying the mist,” I whispered. “Killing the draca, getting rid of the wariff, and toppling your father.”
A tremor passed through him when the side of his knees touched the sides of my thighs. I laid my head back in the hay and looked up at him. His eyes were closed. I studied the long black lashes lining his lids, the chiseled jaw obscured by stubble, the thick eyebrows several shades darker than his hair.
His eyes opened. Settled over mine. He was tense against me. The brooding sort of tense that told me he was weighing my words, deciding whether he could trust them.
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“With Cruz?” I squeaked.
“No, with Gregor.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course, with Cruz.”
“No.” I shook my head, and pieces of straw poked my scalp. “No.”
“I saw you kiss him.”
“I haven’t kissed him since he brought Gwenelda back to life.”
“I’m not talking about months ago. I’m talking about three days ago.”
“I didn’t kiss him three days ago.”
“I saw you.”
“You must’ve seen someone else.”
He snorted and rose, then paced the small, dank, musty room. “You expect me to trust you when you lie to my face?”
I pressed myself up on my elbows, alarm rocketing up my spine. “I di—”
“Stop denying it. Stop lying!” He made a fist with one hand and pressed his other on top, crunching his knuckles until they cracked. “I saw you in the glades. I saw you kiss him.”
I almost smiled. I definitely sighed. “What you saw was me giving Cruz rescue breaths.”
He stopped pacing, glowered. “Rescue breaths?”
I bit my lip. “I thought he’d drowned and I was trying to save him.”
“Faeries can’t drown.”
My ears burned, which reignited the ache in my lobe where the skin was torn. I touched one to see if it had stopped bleeding and winced at the contact. Ace followed my fingers’ ascent, and then he loomed over me and shoved my fingers away. In seconds, blue flames engulfed his hand and knitted my torn skin. I gritted my teeth at the searing pain, sweat beading on my upper lip.
“You’ll have to get new holes.”
“Thank you.”
“I caused you the pain in the first place, so don’t thank me. When people hurt you, you don’t thank them. You don’t defend them.” I could tell this wasn’t just about my earlobes. This was about a whole lot of other things. “Tell me the truth now, Cat. The real truth.” His tone was pure steel.
“Is this a gajoï?”
“A gajoï? No. You didn’t ask me to fix you.”
“The day I sliced open my throat, I didn’t ask you to fix me, yet I owed you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I felt it. In my stomach—”
“That was guilt.”
“You said it was a gajoï.”
“I lied. Once. I lied once. I was hurt. Shoot me. How many times have you lied to me, huh?”
I bit my lip.
“Now tell me the fucking truth.”
“I really did think Cruz had drowned. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. I had to fish him out of the glades.”
Ace bent at the waist and slammed his palms on the straw on either side of my elbows. His mouth was inches from mine. “Faeries. Don’t. Drown.”
I flinched
. “I know that now, but I didn’t know it then.”
“So what? Cruz pretended to have died so you’d kiss him?”
“No.”
“Then what the fuck happened out there? Why were you giving a fucking faerie mouth-to-mouth?”
I raised my chin. Ace had a right to be angry about a lot of things, but that didn’t mean he should act like a dick just because he didn’t understand. “I performed CPR on him because I didn’t know what was wrong. But if you’d actually let me finish talking, I would tell you the rest of the story.”
“Finish talking.”
“Well, that really makes me want to talk now.”
He gripped my chin. “What happened?”
I pulled my chin out of his hand, but kept my face angled toward his. “I stunned him. I electrocuted him.”
“With what?”
A hefty dose of sobriety chilled my core. When we’d met, he’d thought poorly of hunters. What if he detested Daneelies like his brethren? True, he’d accepted me knowing I was half-hunter, but that was when he’d thought me half-Seelie. Would he accept me if he knew my other half wasn’t Seelie?
I sighed. I was tired of altering the truth. “I’m mixed, Ace, but my other half is not Seelie.”
He regarded me cautiously.
“When my blood mixed with the glade, I sent a charge through the water.”
His pupils devoured his irises. “You mean to say that you’re…you’re…?”
I nodded.
“Impossible.”
“Do you hate me even more now?”
“Why would I hate you more?”
“Because of what I am.”
“I never cared about what you were, Cat. The only thing I’ve ever cared about was who you were.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. What and who I was were so intimately connected that I wasn’t sure there was a way to pick one without picking both, like removing chocolate from a brownie.
“Show me.”
“Right now?” Sweat salted my lips.
“Right now.”
“And then you’ll leave Neverra?”
“Yes.”
He rose, then extended his hand, and I took it. Once standing, I removed my hand from his.
“Is there another way out of this place than through the bar area?”
“No.”
“What will people think?”
Ace picked blades of straw out of my hair. “They’ll think we slept together.”
“Isn’t that forbidden now that I’m engaged?”
“It’s forbidden to seduce an engaged woman. It’s not forbidden to sleep with a woman who willingly gives her body to you.”
“You dragged me inside. No one will believe I willingly gave you my body.”
Ace smirked. “Leave them with a good impression, then. Pretend you just had the ride of a lifetime.” I must’ve blushed, because he added in a muted voice, “It’s better they think we had wild sex than they wonder what we actually did in this room.”
My pulse quickened underneath my skin, and I swallowed but it didn’t help settle my nerves.
“Take my hand and stay close.”
Hesitantly, I took his hand. Unlike when he brought me inside, his touch was delicate, as though my fingers were crafted from porcelain.
Or maybe he didn’t crush my fingers because he thought them toxic.
45
The Proof
The land around the glades was tranquil at night. Dark and glittery, rocked by the tinkling of adamans petals, the low gurgle of water, and the soft folding and unfolding of volitor branches as the trees bobbed over the coppery liquid body beneath them.
As Ace flew me over, he didn’t speak. Didn’t even look at me. Tension billowed within me, hardening my muscles but softening my bones. When he set me down and his arms came away from my body, my legs threatened to give out. Thankfully, they held. I locked my knees and inhaled calming breaths that did little to calm me.
Neither of us spoke for a long moment, both of us busy scanning the sky for an unwelcome presence. No firefly spangled the darkness, no calidum crouched in the tall stalks of glassflowers.
When he nodded, I crossed the embankment, the soft soles of the shoes Veroli had procured for me dampening in the dank moss.
Even though the dress I wore tonight had long sleeves, the fabric wasn’t thick enough to ward off the chill of the Neverrian night.
I kneeled by the water and began tugging on the intricate bow Veroli had tied to keep the bodice of my dress closed. How I longed for zippers and spandex. Such trivial yearnings. I thought of Cass then. She’d probably love everything about Neverrian fashion…about Neverra.
A pang of nostalgia hit me dead center. Cruz said he’d been sending my father regular text messages, but it didn’t make the distance, the absence of his voice any easier. My fingers trembled as they worked on the knot.
Ace crouched beside me and coaxed the ribbon out of my fingers. Goosebumps rose where his warm knuckles brushed my bare skin. “You don’t have to jump in, Cat. Just dip your hand.”
Of course.
Silly me.
I bit my bottom lip, keeping my unfocused gaze on the shimmery water lapping against the mossy ridge.
Ace retied the ribbon so slowly I wondered if it was the first time he’d tied a ribbon. After he was done, I pushed my billowy mint-green sleeve up over my elbow and inched my hand toward the glade. When my fingertips connected with the water, the surface swirled. I lowered my hand further until the water coated my wrist. Unlike the air, the water was tepid and silky, like warmed oil.
The gentle current brushed through my fingers. I breathed evenly, waiting for my skin to change. I wondered if the water would affect my entire body or only the immersed part.
What if no scales appeared at all?
Ace would deem me a liar then.
When a minute had passed and nothing happened, I contemplated slicing my finger. I’d begun retracting my hand when my skin prickled.
Prickled and shimmered.
Shimmered and crackled.
I kept it submerged until my hand looked foreign, until it looked like it belonged on another body, one that wasn’t human.
Once it gleamed like the copper basin, I lifted it out.
Ace didn’t speak. Neither did I.
Water dribbled off my fingers, trickled down my wrist, down my forearm, bringing forth a change wherever it made contact. Soon my exposed arm was striated with tiny copper scales.
“Believe me now?” I asked softly.
He blinked. Once, twice, three times. And then his expression changed, his features smoothed and creased in endless ripples as he stared from my hand to my face. Deep grooves flourished between his eyebrows.
Ace had looked at me in thousands of ways, but never before in apprehension. Yet that was the emotion rolling off him: dread, dread mixed with hesitation.
“What are you doing, Catori?” The new voice punctured the night like one of Kajika’s arrows.
Ace shot to his feet while I rose slowly, drawing my sleeve back down.
“Hi, Cruz,” I answered, without explaining what I was doing. I believed it quite obvious.
“I was right to worry when Dawson couldn’t find you. You’ve had a pleasant night?” There was an edge to his question that made me frown. We’d discussed telling Ace. Cruz had warned me to be cautious with our secrets, but said that ultimately it was my choice. “May I suggest that the next time you feel like frolicking, choose a less popular bar. Word about my loose fiancée has already traveled to the palace.”
“We didn’t—” I was about to tell him that our stint in the saloon was not in the least bit amorous when Ace zipped toward Cruz and flung a fist into his nose.
Cruz’s head jerked back. No blood spurted from his nostrils, but the cartilage looked nonetheless mashed. Considering the force of the blow, it probably was.
A chill crept over me as soft as the fur cape Ace had given me during Middle Month
. What I wouldn’t give to have it draped over my shoulders.
Ace swung his fist again. Punched Cruz hard, this time in the jaw. And then he pounced on him, and they fell to the ground, a blur of swinging arms and ragged grunts. He straddled Cruz and pummeled him over and over. Faeries didn’t bleed and they didn’t break, yet I felt like Cruz wouldn’t survive Ace’s beating.
“Asshole! I trusted you!”
I touched Ace’s shoulder. He flinched.
“Stop,” I asked him gently.
He whipped his fevered gaze to me. His mouth, his shoulders, his entire body quivered with rage. He shot me such a brutal look that I stepped back. “I should kill you, Cruz. For what you did to Cat…to Lily…to me.”
Cruz watched his friend in charged silence. “Did you tell him everything?”
“Yes.”
A small frown gusted over Cruz’s ruined face. I tried not to wince at the sight of his torn skin, his shattered nose, his crooked jaw. He would heal quickly, I reminded myself. His bones would knit, his cartilage would mend, his skin would smooth out.
“There’s still one thing I don’t get, though.” Ace’s voice was as sharp as the scent of moss on the brisk night air. “How the fuck did you get Cat to keep it all a secret from me, huh? How?”
I pulled in a breath and locked it inside my lungs.
Cruz observed me through half-lidded eyes. “I bought her silence with a promise.”
Ace stared at Cruz, into Cruz, through Cruz. “What promise?”
“I told her I could get Lily back inside Neverra.”
“You can get her back in?” Ace’s entire back straightened, as though each one of his vertebrae were clicking into place.
Cruz’s swollen lids rose further, and he narrowed his gaze. “I lied, though. There’s no way back inside.”
I jerked.
Cruz’s lips bent. Ace smacked away his smile with a hard jab. All the blood that should’ve poured out of Cruz’s body felt like it was pouring out of mine. I shivered, just as a piece of moonless sky shifted over us. The air stirred and the scent of burnt logs frolicked over the adamans field, fluttering through my hair as great black wings brushed the cold air.
Rising Silver Mist Page 26
