Part of me wants to keep the answer to myself. I feel like I’m baring too much. Yet I did agree to answer her questions if she sent her companions away. “Horns and wings mark our unseelie forms, though some of us are beautiful in appearance while others are grotesque. We are persuasive without using compulsion. And since we are part human, we can lie. All of those things combined make us frightening. Dangerous. You can see why we were aptly named.”
“I suppose,” she says. Then, “How did your family fall asleep?”
This is what I least want to tell her. Not because I fear her having the information, but because this story hurts me the most. And it won’t just pain me. It will add another layer of darkness over the bright fantasy she’s turned her parents into. I suppose that makes it fair.
“Fifteen years ago,” I say, “the feud between our families was mostly fought between gangs formed to defend each clan. Rarely did our parents or family members interact face to face. Only your cousin Ned refused to be swayed. He enjoyed the fights and wanted to be part of them, despite the risk to his life or the curse.”
Briony curls her hands around the railing she’s sitting against in her illusion of the rooftop balcony, her jaw set as if she’s fighting not to defend her unknown family member. Or perhaps she’s trying to steady herself for what I’m about to say.
“Ned was a nightwind,” I explain. “He was born long before the isle’s unification, so he aged slowly like the fae of long ago. Despite his hundred or so years, he was more like a teenager, and just as rebellious. While he didn’t have the power to invade dreams like most of his relatives, he had his own unique traits and was desperate to prove himself worthy as a Briar. He could send icy air into the slightest of cracks and freeze people in their sleep. He could control wind and air pressure. That was how he tricked me into seeing beneath my mother’s veil, lifting it with the wind from afar while I smiled up at her.
“One day, my mother’s secretary was captured, tortured, and forced to reveal Morgana’s whereabouts. Ned took the opportunity to attack her directly. She was at the modiste with my two young sisters. I was eleven at the time, an ornery child. I would have no part in a dressmaker’s shop, so I made Trentas take me to the confectioner. I managed to give him the slip afterward and went off on my own with a bag full of sweets. When I finally deigned to return to the modiste, I could hear their screams. My mother’s. My sisters’. The dressmaker’s. The other shop patrons’. The shop was surrounded by people trying to get in, but a violent wind pushed everyone back, sealing the doors on both sides, preventing anyone from breaking the windows. One of the nearby spectators whispered that they saw a young man throw a cylindrical object inside the shop before darting away. A bomb, they assumed.”
Nausea turns my stomach. I focus on the falling stars and try to say the next part with as little feeling as possible.
“But I knew what it was. I’d heard about Ned’s grenades. They were filled with powdered iron, a substance your cousin could only have obtained under illegal circumstances. A substance he risked his life even to experiment with. But experiment he did, on my clan’s gang again and again, and now finally on my mother and sisters themselves. His previous experiments had been fatal, the iron circulating through his chosen space with his control over air, invading his fae victims’ lungs, eyes. The iron burning. Choking.”
I intake a sharp breath, failing at my determination to remain detached from my story. For a moment I feel small again. That same eleven-year-old boy, listening to the sounds of my mother, my two little siblings, crying for help. Gasping. All I could do was stand there.
The dreamscape falters, the night sky flickering to reveal the train compartment. It shocks me out of my emotions, giving me a chance to reel them in. To breathe. To gather my composure. I feel a slight tug on my form, a loosening of Briony’s control over the daydream. Should I want to, I could wake up. Leave.
Instead, I stay in place.
After a few more flickering beats between the two scenes, Briony regains control over her dreamscape. A blanket of night spreads above us once more, the rooftop balcony beneath it. The meteor shower resumes and stars fall once again. My gaze dips to her, but her face is averted. “Go on,” she whispers.
I swallow hard before I can find my voice. “I knew there was only one thing I could do. One way to save them. Ned had to be close by, particularly somewhere he could witness what was happening at the shop, where he could keep people back with his gusts of wind while ensuring the pressure on the exits remained fixed. I darted across the street and found Ned in one of the alleys. I didn’t hesitate. I leaped upon him and slammed my skull into his nose. Blood splattered my face and I heard my mother’s and sister’s screams cut off, but I didn’t stop hitting him. I struck and struck, drawing more and more blood. Trentas found me then, hauled me off the body, and finished what I’d begun, severing your cousin’s head from his neck to ensure the boy’s silence. After that, Trentas took me to my father and let everyone believe I’d fallen under the sleeping spell with the rest of my family and thathe’dbeen the one to initiate the curse.”
Briony turns her face slightly toward me. I catch sight of her lower lip wobbling before she speaks. “Your mother and sisters, are they…”
“I don’t know. The sleeping spell could have saved them, allowing them to heal in painless slumber for the last fifteen years. Or it could be prolonging the inevitable. They could already be dead.” My voice is barely above a whisper when I say the last part. So badly do I hope it isn’t true.
“Damn you,” Briony utters between her teeth. Then louder. “Fucking glittering hell, I hate that you’ve made me feel bad for you.” She swipes at her cheeks where fresh tears have begun to stream, reflecting the multihued stars falling in her dreamscape.
“Don’t,” I say, tone firm. “That’s not what this is about. I told you the truth because you asked. Because you wanted to know if there was anyone left who would do you harm. The answer is no. Trentas seeks the throne, not your death.”
A flash of guilt weighs down my stomach. At first, I think I just feel bad for flinging a threat to her father’s throne in her face, but it’s more than that. My mind shifts to a letter I sent just before we boarded the train, one I penned in secret to Trentas. I haven’t seen him in person since the day he brought me to my father, but we’ve kept in contact. He maintains a vast network of spies, which is the reason we learned about the Briars’ attempts on the catacombs. The letter contained a brief and coded message informing him that he’d have a chance at defeating Horus Briar and taking the throne after the princess’ wedding. I penned the letter almost mindlessly, automatically, as we’ve regularly exchanged updates and intel over the last fifteen years. Our relationship isn’t as warm or as strong as it was when he was posing as my father, but I still respect him. He’s still my family’s ally.
So why do I feel so guilty for having sent him that letter? Shouldn’t I feel guiltier that I didn’t say more? That I purposefully avoided mentioning anything about our bargain or that I succeeded at putting the Briars to sleep?
Yes, I most certainly should feel guiltier about that, for Trentas deserves to know everything. Besides, Briony told me about the bargain her parents made. She willingly gave me the information that would ensure our task benefits my family—an essential component in breaking the curse.
Still, I get the strangest feeling that sending that letter was a betrayal. What the hell is that about?
She sniffles, then wipes more aggressively at her eyes. “And after we break the curse? Will anyone in your family seek to hurt me? Will everything go back to the way it was before the Lemurias fell asleep? Gang wars, blood in the streets, children suffering?”
I give her the answer she deserves. The truth. “I don’t know.”
She glowers at me. “This task of ours is supposed to prove to the magic that fuels the curse that we aren’t enemies anymore.”
My lips curl into a smile I don’t feel. One that only makes my chest feel tighter. Heavier. “Perhaps by the time our bargain is complete, we won’t be.”
“Doubtful,” she says.
“Doubtful,” I agree. Yet somewhere deep inside, a crack forms, a splinter in stone. I’ve known this all along, but this is the first time I’m ready to admit it out loud. “I’d rather you weren’t my enemy.”
She rises to her feet and plants herself before the railing I’m perched upon in her dreamscape. Her expression is closed-off. Cold. Her countenance betrayed only by the sheen still coating her eyes. Extending her hand, she says, “Then let’s settle for false friends. For two weeks, at least.”
I give her an equally cold nod and clasp her hand. It feels so small in mine, warm even though we’re not really touching. It is only my dream form that interacts with her now. I squeeze her palm tight in mine. “False friends.”
