Eli flinches, and I almost feel guilty for forgetting how good their hearing is. The cool touch of Illusion magic brushes against my forearm. I swat it away.They will keep more from me—because I am not one of them. I never will be, even when I sleep in their beds.
“We will know more when she wakes,” Eli says. “But for now, I want you to know that there are faeries and fae out there who are born without or lose a limb, and they go on to live and experience and love. It will be difficult, but she is not alone. We are all here, waiting to support her.”
“When may I see her?”
“When she is awake.”
“Why?” I croak. “Why can’t I see her?”
Eli watches me with a detached curiosity. “Your injuries were also severe, and yet you’re practically healed.”
“Your Healer came.”
“To Heal is to know, and I do not know you, Avery. And you are not willing to share.”
“Eli.” Kassandra crosses her arms. “I don’t know if that’s fair.”
“Isn’t it? Ever since Avery showed up to Reign, there has been much violence. Lila has served Maxian for decades and she’s never been on the receiving end of—”
“Do not pretend to care for her!” I snarl. “How dare you—”
“Quiet, both of you.” Kassandra rubs her temples.
Face and eyes burning, I grumble an apology.
“It’s been a long few days,” Eli mutters. “I’m grateful you got her out.”
“I’m grateful you took her in.” I pause, thinking of the white bird that visited me in my dream, the same bird that built nests in the boughs of the chestnut tree. I clear my throat. “It was not just your Healer.”
“Who visited you?”
“We would’ve known if someone else were here,” Briar says.
I exhale. “It was while I slept. A white bird in my dreams drew the illness out of me and into itself. We spoke. It…spoke to me.”
Eli’s arms drop by his sides. “You were visited by the calabris.”
“The calabris?”
“The bird of House Healing. A myth, practically, for it only visits the dying in their dreams.”
“She had a very high fever,” Kassandra says flatly.
He turns. “We have reports of the calabris going back thousands of years. The same visions of the same bird, Healing a select few, helping them return to the earthly plane.” Eli faces me again. “It would not even visit my father, no matter how much I prayed at his side. No matter how many fae he Healed over his many centuries. So I suppose I am confused as to why it would visit you.”
The room falls silent, the air thin, the plane warming. As thetwo fae watch me, I should claim confusion, or perhaps confess that my genius now connects to consciousnesses that others do not know exist in the wood of a door, in the screaming beneath the palace, in the darkness of the king’s mind. But then, Briar speaks, low and gentle.
“Avery is a faerie,” she says. “We are nature, like soil and the roots that grow in it. Creatures of the earth, it’s where our magic excels.”
The fae miss her implication, a compliment I cling to—not that faeries can only perform root magic, but that we are better with root magic than they are.
Eli slowly nods. “I shall be back in two days to take you to Healing, but only if you swear the oath to the House. I cannot have you revealing our protections and methods.”
Kassandra starts. “She already has two—”
“The Healing oath is not violent like the others.”
“I’ll do it,” I say.
