Chapter 32

Later that night after everyone else had gone to bed, I was in the study room, letting my body curve over the tome so that if anyone happened to barge in here for some late-night studying, they wouldn't see Ms. Pincette's hand-drawn map before I had a chance to snap it shut.

Nobody came, though, and the only sounds were of the crickets singing outside and the creak of the house settling. Coen himself had gone to bed early tonight since fifth-years would be the first to take their tests tomorrow at the crack of dawn, so my mind stretched with a cautious kind of silence as I soaked in the information.

Ms. Pincette had drawn the island of Eshol, a jagged shape like an egg turned sideways in the center of the whited-out page. I didn't pause to pore over the details there, the labels of all the villages, the Uninhabitable Zone, Bascite Mountain, or the Institute. Instead, I let my eyes bounce around to the three different landmasses around it.

One was significantly larger than the other two, bleeding off the top of the page and filled with the name ASMOD. The other two cloistered at the bottom, nearly touching each other and filled with the names SORRONIA and PLIYITH.

Asmod, Sorronia, and Pliyith. I mentally repeated the names and scanned the tinier labels dusted among each of them, cities and towns connected by roads and rivers. It didn't seem possible, that three entire continents loomed over and beneath us, but I didn't doubt Ms. Pincette's findings. I just couldn't fathom why this information had been kept from the island.

Until I read the descriptions crammed in each corner of the page, that was.

The longer I read those, the longer it took for each breath to fill my lungs.

Eshol, the island experiment: overseen by the Good Council and steeled by a dome of anti-power. No one survives going in or out.

"Except for Coen," I amended softly.

Coen and Garvis and Terrin and the twins had survived going through that dome of—I reread the description Ms. Pincette had used—anti-power. Coen had called it a disease or poison made solid, but Ms. Pincette obviously didn't know that.

Good. No one should know what Coen had told me in the cave. I moved on to the next description, still shivering from the whole "island experiment" label.

Pliyith, the nation of humans: split into seven provinces and steeled with weapons and technology. No magic. Homeland of the people of Eshol.

Homeland. Weapons. Technology. The terms circled through my mind like vultures preparing to feast on something I couldn't quite make sense of.

I moved on before I could stitch it together.

Sorronia, the faerie lands: a divided queendom steeled by long lifespans and individual magics. Magics aren't fully developed until the faerie reaches maturity.

I read that paragraph again. And again. But each time I re-read it, I felt like my eyes weren't giving me anything more than squiggles on a page. No comprehension beyond the fact that faeries still existed beyond the island's dome, faeries still existed beyond the island's dome, faeries still existed beyond the island's dome. Everything else was just meaningless syllables and ink splatters and sounds.

I moved on before I could hyperventilate.

Asmod, the vampire realm: ruled by one royal family and steeled by immortality and predatorial strength. No magic. Human blood slaves.

Vampires? Blood slaves? Immortality? Something in my chest wanted to streak away and hide, as if those terms could come to life and suck my blood right then and there.

"Whatcha reading this late?"

I jumped.

It was Willa, scuttling from beneath the windowsill and onto the desk. I knew mice couldn't read, but I still almost closed the tome when she sniffed the top of its spine.

"It's—I'm studying."

"Studying the writings of a five-year-old?"

I couldn't help but snort. Ms. Pincette did look like the kind of person who should probably have better penmanship. I trailed my fingertips over her words and came to a decision right then and there. If I couldn't trust Willa, who could I?

Lowering myself to her still-quivering nose, I pushed it out in the faintest breath I could manage—everything I had just read. When I was done, she did a lap around the desk and settled herself in the crook of my neck, panting heavily.

"I thoughtyoutold me Lord Arad was the last descendants of the vampires?"

Indeed, I'd told Willa everything that had happened in that abandoned classroom, but I wasn't sure…

"No," I said, straining to remember, "he said he and his children were the last of the tomb bats from the ancient Asmodeus Colony. Whatever that means. Maybe there was a colony here on the island before Dyonisia took over?"

"Or maybe he was just batshit," Willa quipped. "Literally. Listen, Rayna, you know what this means, right?" She put a paw on the landmass of Sorronia, situated right beneath Eshol's bottom right curve where the Institute sat.

Vaguely. I vaguely knew what it meant, but my brain was having trouble taking a step back to view the picture as a whole. Again, it was like I could only take in meaningless syllables and splatters and sounds.

"Magics aren't fully developed until the faerie reaches maturity," Willa repeated. "Your power—the innate one, the one the Good Council didn't give you—isn't developed yet because you haven't reached maturity. The pirates, your mother, half of your blood is—"

"I know," I whispered, nearly against my will.

Her little voice repeating it back to me did the trick. The syllables and sounds coagulated into pictures in my mind: faeries brimming with hazardous, shapeless powers until they reached a certain age and learned how to shape it. Hone it. Use it.

Perhaps everyone else on the island was fully human, but we—Coen, Garvis, Terrin, the twins, and I—must have come from Sorronia. Or at least our parents had. The faerie lands.

If Ms. Pincette's sources were right, if her descriptions were true, then that monster brimming in my veins… it wasn't a monster at all. It just had yet to take form.

Because I was half-faerie.