Both Ace and Cruz looked my way. My gaze dropped to the hand I had plunged into the glade. The skin still glimmered. Not as noticeably as earlier, but still different enough to arouse suspicion. Ace rocketed out of his crouch and yanked his shirt off. Before my next breath, he’d dropped it over my head. And then he rubbed my arms, pretending to warm me.
Terror pounded in my veins and ignited my brand. It burned bright on the palm that was still frictioning my frozen body.
The draca landed on its clawed paws, folded its rubbery wings against its immense body. Smoke sparkled around it as it morphed into its human form. Lyoh’s body was barely distinguishable in the darkness, like a chameleon against a leaf. No, that wasn’t true. Except for her face and bare hands, Lyoh Vega was darker than the darkness.
Over Ace’s shoulder, I caught the gleam of her green eyes. They traveled over my face, down Ace’s bare back, then toward her son who’d pushed himself up. Blue flames slicked his hands as they moved over his face, repairing his injuries.
“You found them,” she said.
Ace spun, shielding me with his rigid body. “With all due respect, go back to your perch in the sky, Lyoh. This is none of your business.”
His familiarity startled me. I doubted many people dared address the draca in such a manner. I doubted many survived if they did.
“You broke a law, Ace, and you also embarrassed my son, so it has everything to do with me. As your draca and as his mother.”
He snorted. “Right. You care about him now.”
The air changed, turned denser as though the mist were descending. I checked the sky to make sure it wasn’t. Even though the plan was to destroy it, we had to wait for the Night of Mist. Cruz feared that destroying it before then would permanently lock the Hareni. Perhaps it would permanently destroy it, but why risk it?
If I could even take on the vaporous mess my ancestors had left behind. What if I only succeeded at poking a hole into it? What good would that do?
Ace’s body quaked with anger. “Catori, can you please enlighten our draca and inform her that you propositioned me?”
I drew my gaze off the mist, leveling it on Cruz. I didn’t want to stare at Lyoh. Even though Cruz had promised she needed to make contact with a body to draw its thoughts, I didn’t want to risk her seeing what was going through my head.
“I thought cheating was the norm up here.” My voice was incredibly steady. “Was I not allowed to sleep with Ace, draca Vega?”
“It was truly your idea, girl?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed one of her eyes shut a little. “After a mute, a whore.”
“Don’t you dare talk about Catori or my sister that way!” Ace’s arms flexed. Before he could move toward the draca, I slid my hands out of the tunic and wrapped them around his biceps. I felt his breath hitch, saw Cruz’s eyes widen. I released Ace immediately and dragged my hands back underneath his shirt. Was my skin still scaled and shiny?
Silence rushed over us like the glades’ limpid waters and submerged us.
“Maybe I should cast you out of Neverra until Catori and I are married,” Cruz said, “so my bride-to-be isn’t tempted to cheat on me again.”
“How your reasoning pleases me, son.” A cruel smile snaked over Lyoh’s mouth. “Imagine all the quality time you’ll get to spend with your darling sister before her fire burns out.”
Ace snarled at her.
“Did you hear she’s become taken with a hunter?” Lyoh continued. “Do you approve?”
Cruz’s features stiffened.
“You must, considering you covet Catori. Unlike my son, who’s marrying her for political gain, what exactly are you gaining from bedding a huntress?”
The tendons of Ace’s neck shifted like mooring cords.
Lyoh approached him, hand suspended in the air, index and middle fingers extended. Fear catapulted through me. Without dwelling on how much trouble this would get me into, I planted the hand that hadn’t touched the water on my neck, waiting for the dust to stick to my sweat-slickened fingers, and stepped in front of Ace.
Lyoh paused, fingers inches away from my forehead now. Cruz’s eyes were so wide, white appeared around his irises. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
“Touch him and I kill you,” I spat out.
One of Lyoh’s eyebrows quirked up disbelievingly. “You’ll kill me?” She laughed. “Correct me if I’m mistaken, but you’re all out of rowan wood sticks and iron.”
My lips parted in a smile to match her own as I slowly drew my fingers off my neck.
Her hand catapulted down to her side, and she stepped back, attention locked on the ribbons of dust fluttering off my palm.
“I hear wita is pretty lethal.”
Someone gasped. Maybe they all gasped. How I wasn’t gasping was beyond me.
“Imagine if I shape a blade, wet it with my blood, and pierce your black heart with it. I did it to Borgo. Don’t think for a second I would hesitate to do it to you.”
Lyoh spoke to Cruz in Faeli. I caught the words wita and Stella. She was probably asking if he knew I could manipulate the stolen dust.
He shook his head.
She turned back to me, features as sharp as broken glass. “I suppose my son failed to inform you that threatening the draca is punishable by law. What is the punishment again, Cruz? One night in a cupola, or is it longer?”
I kept my jaw locked to silence my chattering teeth. For some reason, I thought of Kajika and of Lily, and how they’d called me reckless.
I was. So. Damn. Reckless.
I imagined them rolling their eyes at me, and somehow that eased my hammering pulse.
Blake used to say my mouth would get me in trouble someday. How right he’d been.
Ace shoved me aside. “I forbid it.”
“You are not the king. You are also not the wariff. You have no political jurisdiction whatsoever. Only they have the power to pardon her, but if you ask me, keeping her little party trick away from her fiancé, from all of us, will win her extra time in the cupola. How do they say in your world, Catori? Two strikes and you’re out?”
“Three.” Why was I answering her? Because I was obviously stupid. The dust still sparkled in my hand. I turned my gaze toward it, wondering how to get it from my hand into the draca’s mouth. How had I done it with Stella? Did I just toss it? Or did I have to shape it into something first?
Lyoh’s finger swept over my brow. I pitched backward just as Ace cinched Lyoh’s neck with his long fingers.
“How my father could think giving you additional powers was a good idea,” Ace growled. “You are a tyrant, Lyoh.”
“I am faithful to the kingdom. A trait you are desperately lacking. To think you might be our next sovereign.” She freed her head from his grasp. “I hope your father lives a terribly long life and that yours will be terribly short.” Her green eyes slid back over to me. “Interesting thoughts, Catori.”
My mind scrambled to remember what I’d been thinking of when she’d touched me.
“So you didn’t only confiscate her dust, but you gassed Gregor’s little concubine. He’s going to love that.”
Fear plopped against my skin like raindrops and ran down the runnel of my spine. “It was an accident.”
“I don’t really care. If you ask me, Stella Sakar was a nuisance.”
“She killed my father.”
“Well, at least she had a purpose then.”
A soft wind grew and blew my hair into my face. The water in the glades splashed the mossy embankment, sprayed my legs, splashed Ace’s bare back.
Lyoh smiled thinly before smoke billowed around her, distorted her hourglass form, and bloated her limbs. “Have a most pleasant evening, children.” Bones cracked as they realigned in her body, fibrous black skin stretched over her human one. And then she was in the air, her enormous wings sifting the darkness, carrying her upward through the mist.
When she was gone, Cruz snapped, “What the hell is wrong
with you? Threatening my mother? And when were you going to tell me about being able to use your dust?”
Back in the forest the day he’d claimed his gajoï, he’d swiped my palm off my neck. “I assumed you knew.”
Ace turned on me. “Don’t ever defend me again! No one can touch me because of who I am. You, on the other hand, have no status here!”
My hand flopped so fast against my side that the dust returned to its fleshy tracks. My hair settled limply around my face as the wind died. “Your father hurt Lily, yet she was his daughter.”
“Because Lily wasn’t marrying his concubine!” Ace tossed his hands in the air. “My father could have you killed. Killed!” He grabbed onto my arms and shook me.
“Lay off her, Ace,” Cruz growled.
I pressed my trembling lips together.
“She won’t make it an hour in a cupola,” Ace snapped.
“I’ll find a way to keep her out of one. But you have to go. You have to leave Neverra.”
“If you think I’m going anywhere now, then you’re as delusional as your fucking mother.”
Cruz’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Fine. But stay away from Catori and Lyoh. And you”—he wagged his finger at me—“never return to the glades. Never touch the water.”
“Was my hand still…still different?”
“No.” Cruz’s black curls fell into his eyes. “Why couldn’t you have kept your mouth shut?”
I wasn’t sure if he meant the secrets I’d told Ace or the threat I’d made to his mother. Probably both. For the first time in my life, I wished I were mute like Lily. It would save me a heap of trouble. But since I could talk, I asked, “Is it true what you said before she arrived?”
“About what?” he barked.
Ace frowned.
“About Lily,” I murmured.
Her name dispelled some of the tightness around his eyes. “Maybe. Maybe not. Right now, I don’t feel like sharing anything with either one of you.”
“Maybe I won’t help you then.”
“Let’s wait and see if you’ll be alive long enough to even try.” Cruz snatched my arm, tossed me over his shoulder like a burlap bag, and sprang off the ground.
As we soared upward, I kept my gaze locked on Ace’s upturned one. He didn’t follow us. He stayed planted to the ground like an adamans flower, eyes glittering as wildly as their swaying, chinking petals.
46
Wrong Colors
For an entire day that felt longer than all the other days I’d spent in Neverra, I paced Cruz’s apartment. Veroli tried making conversation, asking me about home, but I couldn’t get my mind to switch off what was being discussed in the palace.
The following morning, when still no news had reached me, I stepped out of the apartment. I wasn’t planning on going far—anywhere for that matter. I just needed to get outside, breathe air that wasn’t tainted with fire and ash. I sat on the platform outside the front door, propping the door open with a heavy book so that it wouldn’t lock me out.
How could a place feel like a prison and a safe haven all at once?
I closed my eyes and rested my head back. The morning sun beat against my face, warming the anxieties that made every nerve in my body tick, but not melting them. Not even the gentle brush of leaves on the large branches jutting around me helped settle my mind. It did fill it with sounds other than the perpetually rewinding version of my confrontation with the draca.
My forehead tickled as something scampered over my skin. I opened my eyes and brushed it off. A little beetle with an iridescent shell plopped on the platform next to me. It didn’t move. Had I killed it? Its legs twitched, and then the air burst with a musky, floral scent. I leaned over to have a closer look at the bug when it sprayed its perfume again. Right into my face. “Ah…” I yelped, digging my hands into my eyes that stung and watered.
It took several minutes for the sting to subside, and when it did, I looked for the tiny creature, but it had scuttled away. What a nifty little weapon it wielded inside its diminutive body, both lure and toxin.
As though to remind an assailant of its escape, its delectable scent lingered long after it had gone.
Something tinkled, and then a shy “Hey,” sounded beside me. Belly parallel to the ground, Dawson rose, and then a large, yellow basket appeared beneath him. Cheeks flushed, Veroli beamed at me from within the runa.
I stood up, walked over to the basket, and stroked it as Veroli clambered out. “When did this happen?” I asked excitedly.
“Cruz gave it to me! And then I got my license yesterday.”
“I’ll get set up.” As she walked past me, Veroli cast a disapproving look at my jeans—my good old human jeans—and her fingers tightened on the fabric bag that surely held today’s gauzy, impractical outfit. Her repulsion amused me. She seemed to love everything Earthly except for its fashion.
I stroked the volitor leaves that had been braided to form a sturdy shell. “How many volitors are needed to make one basket?”
“A lot. But their branches grow back real fast.”
“You mean, you don’t kill the trees to get the branches?”
“Of course not. We’d have no more volitors if we did that. They don’t reproduce very fast.”
“Does it hurt them?” I felt certifiable asking if a tree ached from being pruned, but volitors seemed skittish, more fauna than flora.
“They hum real angrily when we chop off their branches, but I don’t think it hurts them. They don’t bleed or nothing.”
“Absence of blood doesn’t mean absence of pain.”
He pursed his lips and glanced at his runa. “Now I feel bad.”
I touched his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Maybe they don’t feel anything.”
“What if they do?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “When faeries come at them, they curl up and try to float away.”
“Maybe they just enjoy playing hard to get.”
Dawson raised anxious eyes to me.
“If their branches grow back, it must not be that painful.” That was to assuage Dawson’s tangible guilt. Why did I have to rain on people’s parades? “Can you become my official carrier from now on?”
His skin turned crimson. “I’ve only been doing this a day. Maybe you should wait ’til I get better at it.”
I smiled. “I’m sure you’re already terrific at it.”
“I do got good reflexes.” His blush began to recede, patches of white skin supplanting patches of red.
I smiled. “Is that a yes?”
“If Cruz says okay, then yeah, I’ll be your personal carrier.”
He would say okay, not that I needed his permission. “Question, how’d you get your name?”
“Mom gave it to me.”
I rolled my eyes. “I assumed that much. What I meant was, is it…I don’t know…common?”
“No. I’m the only Dawson in Neverra. I don’t know how she came up with it exactly. She said it came to her in a dream. I was almost named Jack.” He grinned, that sheepish grin of his. “You know any Dawsons back on Earth?”
“A guy I met during orientation week in college was called Dawson. There are lots of Jacks, though. More common.”
“I’d really like to stay and chat, but I should probably check with the boss to see if he’s got more fares for me.”
I patted the runa. “Of course. Go.”
After adjusting the leather harness hooked over his back, he waved and took off.
“Bye, Jack Dawson.”
He chuckled.
I waited until he’d vanished from view before retreating into the apartment. Jack Dawson. Why did that sound familiar? It hit me the second I crossed the threshold. “You named your son after the hero in Titanic?”
Veroli’s face turned as pale pink as the dress clutched in her fingers. She zipped toward the door and shut it fast.
“What? Is it an offense to speak of movies here?”
“Not if you’re a caligosupra. Th
ey have access to movies and books; caligosubi don’t. Apparently human distractions risk putting mutinous ideas into our heads.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded briskly.
“That’s stupid.”
“Tell that to our draca.” Her forehead ridged in sudden anguish. “Actually, don’t! Don’t tell her anything. Please. I don’t want another person getting hurt because of me.” Her chin quivered as though she were about to cry. In the end, she didn’t.
I touched Veroli’s shoulder. “Who did she hurt?”
She hung her head and shook it. “Ace.”
“Ace?”
“A neighbor snitched on me, and then lucionaga stormed my house. When they found the battery-powered DVD-player in my apartment, they were going to lock me in a cupola, but Ace told them he’d supplied me with the movies and apparatus. He insisted he should be the one punished.” She swiped a tear off her cheek.
My breaths stilled. “So he was locked in a cupola?”
“It was far worse than that.”
What could be worse than a magical torture chamber?
She sniffled. “Linus locked him into a marriage. He had the Cauldron bind them that very night.”
My fingers froze on Veroli’s heaving shoulders.
“Now he’s stuck marrying someone he hates because of me. I tried pleading with the wariff to lock me up in a cupola instead, but Ace told his father not to listen to me.”
“I’m sure Ace wouldn’t want you to feel guilty, Veroli.”
She sobbed harder.
“Besides, if I’ve understood Neverrian politics, he would’ve eventually been locked into another marriage.”
She blotted her eyes on the sleeves of her green tunic.
“And Angelina’s not so bad.”
She let out a small snort that told me she didn’t approve of Ace’s fiancée.
“Why don’t you move to Earth, Veroli? You’re a calidum. You could survive there—”
Her lids snapped over her eyes like windshield wipers. “And leave my children? They need me.”
Rising Silver Mist Page 27
