7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Our secrets were supposed to keep us safe. Now our secrets are lost, and there is nothing to be done for us. All we can hope is that the lost line can be found.

~Queen Brenna, personal journals

There's a little known fact about Fae that no one tells humans. They're completely silent. I'm not even talking about how they don't make noise when they walk. They just don't talk. I'm positive that there are plants that are better conversationalists than Cole.

It shouldn't be an issue. I've spent my life mostly alone, but when the day was done and the supper fire was lit, I always had someone to talk to. Cole is just staring at the fire again. I did as I'd promised, and while he was building the fire, I went off in search of rabbits. This section of forest hasn't been hunted nearly as much as the area closer to Blackgrove, and I quickly speared two.

Which seemed to surprise Cole. I even received an, "Oh. I didn't think you'd manage, Wyrdling," out of him. Then it was silence again. Hours and hours of nothing is the most boring thing I can imagine when all you're doing is walking.

Even I, a shunned Wyrdling, know that conversation makes the miles pass more quickly.

"How do you walk without breaking any branches?" I finally ask while we sit at the evening fire. I can't take it any longer. There are too many questions, and he has all the answers.

His head slowly turns toward me. Those cold blue eyes are near-expressionless. His lips move, but the look he gives me says that his mind isn't on the topic. "I'm nearly weightless when I walk."

What? He doesn't seem to think I need to know any more than that, and he turns back to the flames. It's been a very hard two days, and I need answers that make sense. Especially when Cole is right here with all of them in that stupidly beautiful head of his.

"Are you serious, Cole? You're literally the first Fae I've interacted with that hasn't tried to kill me. I didn't even know I was a Wyrdling. Until yesterday, I'd thought I was just a normal human. I lived my entire life in a world where magic and Fae and harpies were nightmares you told to children, and now the fire gets lit by magic and my traveling companion is a Fae and I get attacked randomly by monsters while I'm sleeping at an inn. This transition is incredibly difficult, and you are the only person who can help. What's the harm in answering a few questions?"

He sighs as if I'm inconveniencing him more than he can handle. Surprisingly, he stands up and turns to me, though. "Look at my feet," he says.

I do as he says and focus on his booted feet. He slowly rises onto his toes, his heels raising into the air, and then… his toes raise as well. He floats barely half an inch above the ground. He doesn't weigh anything when we walks because he's floating. Somehow, this surprises me more than half rotten harpies did.

"How are you doing that?" I gasp. "Can I do that?"

Then he grins. For the first time since the Tilted Mug, there's something other than annoyance on his face. He takes a step between me and the fire, and that's when I see them. Massive, nearly transparent wings that are the same ice-blue color as his eyes which move so fast they remind me of hummingbird wings. Silent and almost impossible to see, it's no wonder I hadn't noticed them before. "I can't smell any House of Steel magic on you, so I doubt it," he says.

"What's the House of Steel?" You'd think that humans would have some sort of understanding of Fae magic, but they don't. Even Vesta never explained it in detail.

Cole lifts his hand, and a wheel made of fire appears in the air. Four spokes divide it into four quarters, and at the end of each spoke, a symbol appears. At the top, the image of a chalice holding a flame burns red-hot. Clockwise from that, a mountain is carved into a tree, and while the image is still made of fire, it seems almost solid. At the bottom of the wheel, a cloak flickers in and out of sight, and my mind immediately connects it to the Shade's cloak. Finally, on the fourth spoke, a gleaming sword over a shield appears.

"There are four Great Houses, each of whom was given their magic directly from a dragon at the end of the last age. My house, the House of Flame," he says as he points at the top image. His hand moves clockwise, and he says, "Then there's the House of Earth. Then the House of Shadow. Finally, the House of Steel."

The wings on his back stop moving suddenly and immediately disappear, and he drops the half an inch to the ground, a movement that's barely noticeable. "Each Great House has its own strengths and weaknesses. My house, the House of Flame, can control fire just as easily as you would wield a knife, but we're smaller, slower, and relatively weak. We're still far faster, larger, and stronger than a human, but compared to other Immortals such as the House of Steel, we're inferior, physically speaking."

He takes a deep breath, and the wheel turns, all the pieces moving in time with each other. "The House of Earth is stronger, physically, than the House of Flame. They're… complicated. They aren't the greatest warriors, nor are they the greatest magic-wielders. But they built Draenyth and created many of the greatest works of art. There are many secrets in that House, and unlike the others, they refused to allow outside Houses to breed with them. Thus, their secrets stayed hidden."

The wheel spins again, and the cloak comes to the top, still flickering in and out of sight. "The House of Shadows is the house of assassins, of secrets, of debts, and of deals. Even humans have heard of the Shade, haven't you?"

I nod to him, not wanting to say anything lest I give too much about my dealings with the Shade away. He continues, "The Shade is the personification of the House of Shadows. And then, there is the House of Steel."

He pauses for a moment as the wheel turns one more time. "The House of Steel is unlike any of the others. Where the House of Flame can set a tree on fire or the House of Shadows can hide that same tree in plain sight, the House of Steel can't affect that tree at all with magic. Their powers only work on themselves."

I think back on what he'd said about the wings. "They can… do magic on themselves?"

Cole nods. "They manipulate their own form. I was not born with those wings. I'm using magic to create them and then dismiss them. If I want to fly a long distance, I create the wings of an eagle or owl rather than the wings of a pixie." He raises his hand and takes another deep breath. I watch as the skin of his hand slowly transforms into shiny black stone that reminds me of his sword blade. It stays like that for a moment and then it returns to normal.

"Wait. I thought you were from the House of Flames?"

He chuckles. "Excellent breeding is the answer to that question. My mother is from the House of Steel. My father is from the House of Flames. I can use my House of Flames bloodline naturally, but my mother's powers are… difficult."

That makes sense. "And I smell like shadows?"

"Yes, but barely. It's like your mother was a Wyrdling herself. It's rare that they have children since they rarely master their powers. Wyrdlings tend to kill their families if their immortal parent isn't there to teach them how to wield their powers. Just like you, Immortal parents rarely stick around." He says that last bit as if it were a given rather than a tragedy.

Again, I nod. Everyone has seen a Fae, but they're always passing through. I was always told to ignore them. Note them, be wary, and pretend like they're not even there. And never ever fall for one. They're nothing but trouble.

"But… I have magic," I say. "I nearly killed my cousin. That's why I'm going to Draenyth. I need to find a cure."

Just like when he picked up my spear, he looks at me with confusion written all over his face. "Do you know how unusual you are, Wyrdling? You walk around carrying an enchanted spear, yet you didn't know you have a magical bloodline. You smell of almost no magic, yet you say you nearly killed your cousin only a short time ago. What is it about you that you don't know? Or aren't telling me?"

It feels like I'm the stupidest person in the world right now. "I would love to know why I'm confusing. It would be fantastic if I wasn't a Wyrdling at all. I just want to sleep in my bed and spend time in my own woods. Traipsing around the country with a Fae who grumbles about everything I do was never a dream of mine."

I say that, and then I pause as I process what he said. "An enchanted spear? What do you mean?"

He nods his head toward my spear, completely ignoring my comment about the grumbling Fae. It's a spear that Vesta made me when I was still living with my father. "That spear is imbued with shadow energy," he says. "I think it's to harden the wood and pull it toward its target, but I'm not an enchanter, and the House of Flame is the worst of all Houses to do something like that. Our magic doesn't work for enchanting very well. Most of the time, the magic has as much chance to burn the item up as it does to imbue an item with flames."

His last comment is lost on me, as I can't stop thinking about the spear I've used since I was barely large enough to hold it. Vesta made that spear. I reach for it, and my thumb goes to the little black mark on the shaft. The glyph that's been there my entire life. When she taught me to wield it, she told me to always keep my thumb there, that it gave my thrusts force. What if it was for another reason?

"My tutor made it," I say softly. "I remember when she took me into the woods one morning, and instead of lessons, I watched her as she shaped the shaft and burned the tip." The memory floods my mind.

Vesta was constantly around from my very first memories. I know her as my tutor, but I think she helped raise me when my mother left. She certainly was there when I was learning to walk and talk. Unlike my father, who laughed and played with me, all she cared about was teaching me and making sure I grew up strong enough to take care of myself. I don't think she ever smiled. Not even once.

She was a tall woman, a little taller than my father, and lithe. With long, light brown hair that she always kept in a braid, she was my constant companion until I turned seventeen. Every day, she taught Hazel and me in the morning. We read from old books and learned our three R's: reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.

Then, she'd take us into the woods and teach us how to walk quietly or climb trees quickly or find the tracks of animals. Hazel stopped coming on these trips by the time I was ten after Aunt Prudence and Vesta got into a fight about it.

The day she made my spear was before my father disappeared. We skipped our lessons that day, and she took me out before the sun rose. She picked a long and stout yew branch. The entire time, she had hummed a singular rhythm. I'd caught on and hummed along with her.

She built a fire, and we'd fire-hardened the tip. Nothing was unusual except for the humming.

I remember the way she'd looked that day. Shining and shimmering, it was almost like she was different. Like she wasn't quite there. The smoke had swirled around us while we'd hummed that song together, and the wind had been so loud. Then again, the wind used to be louder than it is now. It used to be so loud that I was sure it was speaking to me back then.

Memories I'd forgotten until right now flash through my mind. She'd pulled her belt knife out, the same one I wear now, and she'd poked my thumb, the same thumb that I press against the little glyph on the spear.

She pressed my thumb into place then. When she'd pulled it away, I'd expected to see a thumbprint in blood, but that little black glyph had been there instead.

I hadn't remembered any of that until now, and when I look up at Cole, he's staring at me. Once again, I wonder if he can tell what I'm thinking just by looking at me like that. "She was Fae, wasn't she?"

Cole sits down on the log and stares into the fire again. "I'd assume so. Few human mages tutor young Wyrdlings, and even fewer mages could hide the enchantment that well."

Vesta was Fae. That's why she didn't shy away from my oddities. That's why she knew to teach me to roam in the forests and why she'd talked to me about the Fae so often. Thinking back on her, it should have been obvious.

Maybe it was. Especially with how she always got her way with Aunt Prudence when it came to me.

"If my tutor was Fae, what does that even mean?"

Cole shrugs. "I wouldn't know. Most Immortals in Draenyth have multiple tutors. Especially those who are from the Great Houses. Now that you mention it, I don't know if I've ever heard of another Wyrdling being given an Immortal tutor. That doesn't seem very common. Your tutor was obviously hired by your mother as your father wouldn't have been able to afford an Immortal."

It feels like so much of my past has been a lie. Or at least secrets. Why would my mother hire a tutor for me but not stay with me? Why didn't my father just tell me my mother was Fae? Why hadn't Vesta told me I was a Wyrdling or that she was Fae?

Someone should have told me the truth. Maybe then I wouldn't have gotten so angry with Hazel yesterday. Vesta knew what I was capable of. She should have told me.

But she did warn me . She'd warned me, over and over again, to not let anyone make me emotional. It was one of the few things she pushed on me almost daily. Emotions are the storms of humanity. They're loud and messy and rarely have any benefit, and if you let them steer your course, you'll almost certainly end up capsized. Hold tight to the rudder when the storms of emotions cross your path. Seek the quiet of the forest and let them pass without ever giving them control.

She had warned me.

I turn to face the fire just as Cole is. Vesta had been Fae. My mother had planned to have someone take care of me, someone who knew what I was. But why'd my mother leave? Why hadn't they just told me what I was?

My whole life has been a lie, but does that change anything? I don't know. Maybe it changes nothing, or maybe it changes everything.