Chapter 28

Where are you?

It was Coen, brushing his presence against my mind, tasting my shock and anger and fear. He must have just got out of his last class, but I couldn't believe an eternity hadn't passed since I'd first unfolded Fabian's letter.

What happened? What's wrong?

I replayed everything Lord Arad and Velika had said. A curious numbness had slunk through me, lining the inside of my skin with its tingling. Beside me, Emelle had gone still and silent, and I had no idea what she thought of this. Would she tell someone, despite her promise not to? Would she think of me as… tainted, now that she knew I was the daughter of a pirate spy and a traitor?

Because that's exactly what Fabian would be considered to everyone else—a traitor. Someone who'd fallen in love with a threat to the entire island. A lady of the sea. I couldn't help the shudder that went through me, as if my body were trying to shake away the numbness and the truth of my birth all in one.

Jagaros tacked his narrowed pupils onto my face.

"You didn't happen to find a map, did you?"

Something about his tone—it made me think he had a personal interest in such a thing, so I felt like I'd somehow failed him when I had to shake my head.

"No."

His whiskers twitched in distaste. But… what had he said earlier? That birds had an annoying knack to pass stories down from generation to generation? Obviously, these bats were as far from birds as they could get, but perhaps their ability to fly, to see the world from above, meant they held a unique view of the world.

I straightened my spine and shot upward, "Do you know what's beyond this island? If there are other islands or land masses out there? Other people?"

Lord Arad only paused for a sliver of a second.

"No. We don't care to see beyond the horizon."

Okay. So perhaps I had to narrow my questions. My mother had to have come from somewhere, so I asked, "Did she have any magic, this woman? Maybe Shifting or Manipulating?"

"No, no magic as definable as that," Lord Arad said, and his tone told me he was tiring of this conversation. "Something else. Are we done, now?"

Coen, still loitering in my mind and observing everything through my eyes, actually growled in my head at the same time that Jagaros did. But I ignored them.

"Yes," I said. "We're done."

"Good," Lord Arad said, "because you have woken us from a very, very long sleep with your tedious questions, and we are rather hungry when we wake."

I hadn't realized the bats dropping to the floor one by one until now, when Jagaros backed his hind quarters into Emelle and me and unleashed his most vicious snarl yet. But there they were, sixty or seventy black, leathery figures stretching their fingers and lengthening their spines, until they faced us in distorted, vaguely humanoid forms. The last descendants of the ancient vampires…

Who hadn't quite devolved back into pure bats. Who were still half-vampires, mutant bloodsuckers that limped closer to the three of us, their eyes flashing red, their fangs suddenly bared.

Rayna? Coen asked urgently. You're going blank on me. What's happening?

I could barely feel the shape of my own mouth, let alone properly process what was happening for Coen's sake. When Emelle gave a whimper and Jagaros raised his hackles, it was all I could do to take control of my own tongue again.

"Stop." I stumbled back, but one of the mutants had flipped the door shut with a claw-tipped wing. "You didn't eat the lady of the sea or the boy all those years ago." I tried to keep my voice steady. "Why develop a taste for humans now?"

"The lady of the sea brought us offerings every day," Lord Arad said, unruffled. "You have brought nothing but yourselves."

Apparently, his fear of Jagaros had been feigned, a mere attempt to keep us distracted while his children slowly morphed into their other forms in preparation. They had limped so close now, I could see the gleam of their tongues in all those crooked, gaping mouths, could feel the heat of their decaying breaths.

Jagaros crouched. In the lowest chuff, he whispered to Emelle and me, "Stay down. Cover your eyes. This might get messy."

I couldn't close my eyes, though, even as Emelle pressed her face into my shoulder, her entire frame trembling against mine. I couldn't close my eyes as I felt Coen's presence snap from my head back to his own, as I heard his pounding footsteps barge through the rot-cloaked door behind us and—

The vampire mutants pounced…

Then froze.

Coen jolted to a halt next to me, panting but otherwise so, so still as he extended his hands in concentration, forcing the bats to freeze. Even Lord Arad had gone utterly immobile, still hanging upside-down like a cocoon made of tar.

Jagaros didn't hesitate. While Coen kept them locked in place, commanding them not to move, the tiger began tearing into their necks, ripping those mutant heads from their hulking bodies as if they were nothing but mud.

One by one, he made his rounds, his muscles rippling beneath that black and white coat, black blood dribbling down his maw.

Finally, Jagaros raised himself on his hind legs and…

"No!" I cried. "Not her!" But too late.

Velika managed a last squeak before he ripped her into leathery ribbons.

Then Jagaros turned to Lord Arad himself, who was wide-eyed and drooling with rage, but unable to break from Coen's magic grip.

"Didn't your ancestors warn you not to mess with the faerie king of old?" Jagaros grumbled. "No? That's really too bad.I hate the taste of your kind." He turned back toward Coen and said, "Release it. I want to make it slow."

To my shock, Coen nodded as if he understood the tiger's growls. He grabbed Emelle and me by the shoulders and muttered, "C'mon. Let's go."

When the three of us stumbled back out into the mossy green light of the jungle, Coen released his hold on the last heir of the ancient Asmodeus Colony.

And the sounds of Lord Arad's shrieks began.

"You can talk to animals?" I demanded.

We had just stumbled back onto campus, where the courtyard still crawled with vendors and buyers and monkeys, even under the purple tint of dusk. Apparently, the Cardina marketplace wouldn't disband until the last good had sold.

Coen stopped Emelle and me on the edge of the Summoner sector, facing us with folded arms and glancing between us with unnerving speed.

"No, I can't talk to animals, not in the way you can. But when you froze with panic and I couldn't get a straight answer out of you, I had to use alternative methods of communication."

His mind, I realized with a touch of unease. I'd always known Manipulators could control animals, but for Coen to have entered Jagaros's mind and plan an attack with him… it was different, somehow. He must have done it while sprinting toward our location from the moment I'd relayed Lord Arad and Velika's story to him.

It would explain the sweat curling the edges of his hair, at least.

I've never ran so fast in my life, Coen confirmed in my head, then jerked his gaze toward Emelle. She knows everything, then?

Yes. I didn't know whether to feel sorry or defensive about that. Emelle… she still hadn't said anything. Was still silent and shaking by the knees.

I trust your judgment, Coen said. Just please don't tell her about the others.

Of course. I hated the pleading note to his tone. Garvis, Terrin, and the twins—their histories weren't mine to tell, anyways.

I turned to Emelle, letting the clamoring sounds of the marketplace camouflage the whisper of my voice.

"Are you okay, Melle?"

She blinked at me. Rubbed her eyes. Blinked again.

"You're asking me if I'm okay? Oh, Rayna."

And she dragged me into a hug that cracked the tension in my back.

"I'm afraid for you," she whispered back. "But I'm not afraid of you."

It meant more than she'd ever know, those words. I let myself sink into the warmth of her embrace until she quit trembling, until my own heart had eased.

Coen watched us, a faint look of contemplation on his face.

We'll talk later? I asked him.

I wasn't particularly interested in talking about my mother right now. Or about how Fabian… Fabian had stolen me from her. I was interested, however, in hearing about the logistics of Coen's communication with Jagaros—Jagaros, whom we'd left in that collapsing hellhole so that he could play with his prey in peace. I hadn't expected it, that viciousness from the faerie king.

The faerie king of old.

I'd pulled those words out of my ass, but Lord Arad had seemed to believe them, despite his family's ploy to attack us anyway. And Jagaros had proven that he wasn't to be messed with, hadn't he?

Animal minds are usually filled with mist as thick as mud, hard for me to wade through. But his mind was like ice and fire, Coen murmured into my head, shuddering. Crystal clear and blazing hot.

Out loud, he said, "I believe you have a dress to pick up from Grandma Gretel's Gown tent near the fountain. For the Element Wielder formal."

"What?" I cocked an eyebrow at him.

Coen cocked an eyebrow back. "She's the best dressmaker from Cardina. I went straight to her tent after my last class and bought a dress for you. You don't have to wear it if you don't end up liking it," he added, almost rushing through his words.

I stared at him. I'd never seen a shy version of Coen before.

"You bought me a dress for the formal?"

"Well, yeah."

I was all too aware of Emelle watching our exchange.

"Does that mean you're asking me to go with you?"

All that shyness vanished from his face within an instant.

"Only if you're going to say yes."

Then he winked at me and strutted off into the crowd without answering. From the way his hands slipped into his pockets as if he hadn't a care in the world, you'd never know he'd just disabled a roomful of mutant vampires ten minutes ago.

"Wow." Emelle stared after him. "He really likes you. Like, a lot."

I had a feeling she was returning to a surface-level topic as a coping mechanism, and I clung to it furiously, looping my arms through hers so that we could barge into the crowd together. After what had just happened and what she'd said to me afterward, I didn't want to separate from Emelle for the next several hours.

"I just hope the dress he bought actually fits me," I managed to say.