“It’s not a matter of being able to handle it.” The words came out of Peri without conscious thought. Though it was a memory, she was an active participant rather than merely a spectator.
“Then what’s the problem?” Orfin looked at her with derision.
“You four,” Peri snapped. “You have inferiority complexes that won’t allow you to accept that females have a place in the academy and on the battlefield. We wield magic just the same as you. We wield blades just the same as you. And you are threatened by us. Why?”
Xoltan threw his head back and laughed. He looked as psychotic as Alston had in his last years alive. The five femaleswatched them. Peri noticed the other four looked bored, but rage radiated from them. The worst thing you could do with males like the ones before them was show a lack of emotional control. They’d see it as weakness and think they’d gained some sort of victory. Peri never wanted to give them any power over her.
“Threatened?” Xoltan scoffed. “Are you serious?”
“No,” Nissa said coolly. “Peri is never serious. Everything is a joke to her. Especially you four.”
Peri inwardly laughed. Nissa might seem mild mannered, but she could cut someone down at the knees with her words when she felt the need to speak. Though not as quiet as Cyn, she had always been pretty tight-lipped.
“Enough.”
Peri recognized the male voice which called out. A chill ran down her spine as her head turned to look at the fae council. There, amongst the seven, was Alston. He looked exactly as he had when she’d last seen him. How had she served on the very same council with this male for so long and not seen the evil in him? She could see it clearly in that moment. Was this also something that had been blocked from her mind?
“Though there is some validity to what my son and his comrades have presented to us,” Alston continued.
“Are you serious?” Lavlia, one of the fae female council members, huffed.
Alston shot her a look, one Lavlia returned with a fierceness Peri respected.
“I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t serious,” Alston bit out, his eyes blazing with anger. He appeared to catch himself, as if he realized he’d let his mask slip. All those centuries he’d worn a mask. He’d waited like the most patient hunter for the perfect moment to strike, and he’d truly hit them hard. Why hadn’t she killed him when she’d been a student? It’s not as if anyone actually liked him.
“I can’t believe we forgot what an ass he was.” Nissa echoed Peri’s thoughts.
“Serapha, you have much to answer for.”Peri mentally reached out to the draheim.
“Focus,”the draheim replied.
Peri kept her attention on Alston, her eyes darting back and forth between him and the four horsemen, whom she didn’t trust as far as she could spit, which wasn’t very far. Peri now remembered she and the other three girls standing with her had had a competition one night when they’d snuck out to hang out by the shimmering lake. She wanted to smile at the memory, but she had to stay vigilant while in the viper’s den.
“This is the way of things, boys,” Alston said to the males. “You will obey the rules until they change. Rest assured, they will.”
The two female fae on the council looked as if they might just kill Alston right then. Peri wished they had. So many lives could have been saved if they’d struck him down.
“Get back to your studies. You’ve wasted enough of your time.” Alston looked at the females with disdain, before turning back to his son. “See me before you go to training.”
The room started spinning again. Peri reached out and grabbed Nissa’s hand, even though she was pretty sure they wouldn’t be separated. The world whipped around them—blue sky, green trees, fall leaves, and then snowy, white winter. Everything stopped, and Nissa and Peri were standing on the frozen, shimmering lake. They slid around laughing, refusing to use their magic to keep their balance. Instead, they let themselves stumble around like humans. Fae were naturally graceful, even on frozen surfaces. But Nissa and Peri had always been fascinated by humans and the hardships they faced because of their lack of magical ability.
Though it was chilly, they didn’t feel the cold the way humans did. So being out in the snow, or on a frozen lake, falling down like idiots, was no hardship. “Holy crap, I forgot how fun this was.” Peri panted as she laid back on the icy surface, looking up at the bleak winter sky.
“Me, too. We should take the females ice skating.”
Peri knew Nissa was speaking of the females in their current lives, not the ones in this memory. Their females were the ones whom they loved and had become family to them, females they’d built so many memories with and would hopefully have time to build more.
“Jen will figure out a way to make Thia into a little bowling ball on the ice to knock everyone over.” The image made Peri laugh.
“No doubt. Thia is going to be fierce. Maybe even more so than you.”
Peri glanced over at Nissa. “I hope so. She’s going to need to be. Our world has gotten rough. Though I’d prefer if she’s a little saner than her mother.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“Here they are,” a male voice called out.
Peri and Nissa turned to see Xoltan walking out of the barren woods.
