I quirk a brow, nod toward the black powder.
“This is different,” she says.
“Because I wiped down the glass this morning?”
Even before the end of my sentence, my lips are tugging up into a smile. She gives me another gentle nudge, and I quite like being pushed around by a bratty fae in this way.
“Okay,” she asserts, wiping her eyes with her free hand, Briar’s note still in the other.
“Okay,” I repeat.
“We need every advantage,” she says, almost more to herself than to me.
It affects your genius directly,Carter had said.
“If they use this to hold us down, then we can use it to break their grip.”
Kassandra nods, forming two small lines of black ash. Rolling up Briar’s note, she hovers over one line, then snorts. Tipping her head back, she sniffs, blinking.
“How do you feel?” I ask after a moment.
“Fine.”
When Kassandra glances at me, her eyes dilated to black,terror pierces my chest. With a sinking feeling, I recognize this expression. How many times have I seen it on Maxian, Dominik, Hector, and other High Fae of the Upper Court? I thought it was simply the look of violence, but now I understand it to be something else: unnatural power.
Kassandra hands me the rolled-up note, and I position one end over the black line, the other by my nose. Then I sniff, too.
My nose burns, as if I’ve inhaled ash, as if smoke expands my lungs.
“Breathe through it,” Kassandra says.
I try, but the thick, oily sensation wriggles up my sinuses and into my brain like Reign magic. My heart pumps harder as my blood thickens to muck, my genius struggling to flap the oily magic off its wings. This is not the merriment of the mirthroot, the giddiness of hemp, the sultry seduction of wine. This isn’t even the racing feeling of coca powder.
“Open your eyes,” Kassandra demands.
The room bombards me with a myriad of brilliant, sharp colors. I inhale, and I can smell the soup in the kitchens below, hear the pulsing of Kassandra’s heart next to mine, feel the spiderweb of veins beneath my skin, pinpoint the crumb of bread beneath one of my knees, crushed into the carpet. When I reach for my genius, it shoots through me, a black raptor with heaving, beating wings.
It is so muchmore.
And I experienceeverything.
Kassandra rises. Her tawny dress now radiates like a star, my black tunic a pit I could fall into.
“Would you like to take a stroll in the courtyards, my lady?” I ask.
“It’s such a lovely day.” She licks her lips. “I would love to.”
—
The outside isoverwhelming. The emerald trees pop; the red flowers resemble droplets of blood.
Kassandra brings her parasol, shading herself from the sun. I tug at my tunic, thick and dark and entrapping.
“Stop tweaking,” she grits out through shining teeth.
“I’m not—”
We pass by an Illusion guard to whom she gives a smile. I smile as well, though it feels more like a grimace. We promenade around a hedge, crunch down a path that winds toward Dominik’s wing. We reach the northern wall, which casts a dark, cool shade across the plant life and the garden of Kassandra and the king’s first date.
