“Old?” Iba pinched my waist. “He’s younger than yours truly.”
“Ancient, then,” I shot back.
He pinched me again, and I giggled. He smiled, and it shooed away some of the worry lines around his mouth and eyes.
I squeezed Nima’s shoulder. “Why don’t you comm her up? I’m dying to know how it went.”
She regarded me with that deep, dark stare of hers. The same she’d used on me when I was younger and she was trying to decipher if I’d had a good day in school. More often than not, my days weren’t good. Especially after Remo warned the Seelie students that a drop of my blood could turn them into a pile of ashes. Giya, ever the righteous fae, had tried to dismantle the rumor. When that hadn’t worked, she’d told Nima, who’d come to school with my father to demonstrate that Remo’s claim was false. An assembly had been called in thecalimbor’s gymnasium. Surrounded by the entire student body, my parents had cut their hands and pressed them together. Although it had veined Iba’s arm a little gray, the Unseelie magic in Nima’s blood had eventually receded and his skin had turned nice and golden again.
I crouched and whispered, “I promise I’m okay. Just period cramps.”
“Do you need some medicine? I must have some in here.” She swiped through her Infinity.
“Nima.”
She kept swiping. Had she uploaded an entire pharmacy into her band?Probably.Even though she’d never become a human doctor, she had become a skilled fae healer.
The words:20 mg of Drosaniol, appeared on my Infinity.
“Take it. It’ll help.”
A long press on the medication’s name released it straight into my bloodstream. “I feel better already.”
No medication worked that fast, so of course my comment made Nima tilt her head to the side. “You’ll tell me the truth later, right?”
A faerie lie detector, that’s what my mother was. “Right.” I kissed her cheek, then returned to the dim space beneath the pavilion—again, guard-free.
I considered dusting my face to hide my identity, but what if I brought out Karsyn’switainstead of my own and asphyxiated myself with it? That wasn’t possible, was it? If I stayed low to the ground, no wandering fae orlucionagawould notice a figure cloaked in black snaking through the tall stalks ofadamans. I’d be like a spy from one of the human movies my cousins and I had watched at the cineplex Iba had created sometime after his coronation. Apparently, no human pastimes had been allowed under my grandfather because they’d been deemed propaganda.
I unhooked the heavy earrings, beamed them back to my bedroom using my Infinity, then threaded myself through the slats and rocketed, belly to the ground, around the slender stalks, the jagged purple petals tinkling overhead.
Guards hovered high above the field, but most were conversing or scanning the humid air instead of looking downward. A hiss had my breath catching. I lurched backward and swore as amikosdarted its ridiculously long forked tongue in my direction.
If I hadn’t been on a covert mission, I would’ve roasted the snake with my fire, but flames would attract attention. So I changed course and flew more carefully around the stalks, on the lookout for other reptiles. Neverrian snakes weren’t venomous, butdileswere, and they loved nothing more than thick vegetation.
Thankfully, I encountered neither. Still, my heart pounded, and kept pounding long after I’d crawled out of the field and bolted into the forest ofcalimborswhere I became one with the shadows. Faeries were out and about—some flew, some walked. I gave them all a wide berth, reaching the Duciba without incident.
Insects droned around the thick branches. I squinted to make out if any of them glowed. I really didn’t feel like answering tolucionagaabout why I needed to visit the government facility in the middle of the night. Since sensitive files weren’t stored inside, the place was neither locked nor guarded. Which led me to believe there was no secret portal. Wouldn’t Gregor employ at least one person from Neverra’s vast army to protect it?
I twisted the handle, and the heavy latch clicked. I dragged it out just enough to slip inside, then summoned up shallow flames that danced over the smooth surface of my borrowed glove. As quietly as the stripedtigrithat prowled the uninhabited jungle beyond the Glades, I jumped into the darkness, rising through the hull cautiously. When I reached the ceiling, I circled the golden crown, holding my fiery palm up to illuminate the painted leaves.
Josh’s source had told him the paint rippled if you stared long enough at it. None of the leaves seemed to undulate. They were all perfectly flat and golden. I drifted down and conjured up a brighter flame, then leaned back until my body was parallel to the ceiling. I stared at the mural till my eyes watered. Josh’s informantwas either a liar or crazy, perhaps both knowing the type of people the Daneelie frequented.
For good measure, my gaze cycled around the crown of leaves one last time. I was about to draw up my Infinity to inform Josh that if a portal existed, it wasn’t here, when something shifted in my peripheral vision. Something golden. I blinked and focused on the spot, then rose up to inspect it more closely. The paint was static. Hesitantly, I touched it, but the surface was grainy and hard and stayed grainy and hard. My weary mind must have imagined the movement.
I grazed the spot behind my ear and commed a message over to Josh, then started to fly back down when my Infinity beamed his answer.
JOSH:Touch every leaf. And don’t forget the salt.
ME:Feeling up the Duciba’s ceiling wasn’t part of the bargain, Locklear.
JOSH:Wasn’t it? :)
Out of nowhere, a pang so violent cramped my stomach that I muttered, “Bagwa,” before drifting back up. I suddenly hated Josh more than Remo but less than Karsyn. Karsyn’s homicidal tendency had won him top place onAmara’s Most Loathed Faelist.
I purchased a packet of salt on my Infinity, which materialized in the beam of my band, then sliced it open, grabbed a handful of grains, and ran my knuckles along the paint. Halfway around the circlet, something moved again in my periphery, something that glittered, not on the mural but lower. Had I loosened a fleck of paint?
Keeping my gaze affixed to the space that had sparkled, I continued my slow loop. Suddenly my knuckles sank into something gelatinous, as though the ceiling’s consistency had morphed from wood to sea sponge. Before I could snatch my hand back, the leaf slurped it up.
