Page 89

I couldn’t allow her to sense the truth of my deception if that was the case, so I thought back to that moment in Hallow’s Perch when I’d pushed my crescent knife into Coen’s chest and let my anguish burst forth again.

Warmth gushed over my hand. The sound of his body hitting the cobblestone was like a crack to my senses. I stared at the dead, blank-eyed form of him at my feet, and I’d never felt less like myself: hollow and cold. Oh, so very cold.

Apparently satisfied with whatever emotion had overcome my face, Dyonisia raised a few fingers in farewell. “I look forward to seeing your progress.”

And with that, she picked her way through the piles of clutter and left just as quickly as she’d come, that shroud of her antipower fading into the night.

“Are you okay?” Fabian asked as soon as she’d left.

“Am… am I okay?” With a wobbly laugh, I sunk to my knees before him again. “I should be asking you that. What happened?” I raised a hand to lightly touch one of his cheeks below that gash.

Fabian closed his eyes. In the lantern light, I could see the new wrinkles that had sprouted on his face since the last time I’d bid him goodbye. His mop of blonde curls had grown even duller in the last two years, now streaked with silvery gray. I’d spied him through his kitchen window last year with Coen, but I hadn’t seen him up close. Now, it was apparent how much he’d truly aged since I’d been gone.

Yet his warmth, the comfort that radiated from him, was still the same.

“Some elites came for me,” Fabian finally said. “But they didn’t tell me why they were taking me until I got here. I didn’t know they were taking me to you. All I knew was that one moment I was forging some new fire pokers in the shop with Don and the next second they barged in and started dragging me away.”

Don. Now I was the one who closed my eyes, imagining my other father with his stubborn temperament and ruddy face. He would have gone feral in the face of anyone who tried to take Fabian away like that, would have brandished every chisel and hammer and pair of tongs in the vicinity to save him.

“Is he…” I could barely form the words. “Is Don alive?”

Fabian swallowed once. Twice. “I don’t know, Rayna. I don’t know. The last thing I saw was him fighting two elites before something hit my head and I blacked out. I woke up in a carriage hours later.” His chains rattled as he lifted his arms to wrap them around me. “But I am so glad to see you alive and whole in front of me now, my sweet girl. I’ve missed you more than I can say.”

I sunk into his embrace. Every hardship I’d endured over the last two years, every terror and heartbreak—it all melted off me as Fabian rocked me on the floor of that classroom. He smelled like coal and cookies and home, and even though I hated, hated, hated Dyonisia for using him in this way, I couldn’t deny I’d needed this. This childhood comfort I hadn’t been sure I’d ever get again, let alone in my third year.

Fabian pulled me back by the shoulders to search my face.

“What did she mean…” His eyes darted to the door where Dyonisia had left, and he lowered his voice. “By you ‘stabbed your lover in the heart’?”

I gave him a wobbly smile and touched the necklace against my chest, each smooth pearl a reminder of how many times Coen had come back for me. With a quick sweep of my Wild Whispering magic to make sure no animals were spying and another sweep of my Mind Manipulating magic to make sure there wasn’t anyone in the vicinity who could possibly eavesdrop, I let the words fall out.

“I met a boy, Dad.”

I’d hardly ever called him that. Using Fabian and Don’s first names had always been the norm during my childhood, the three of us more like a trio of best friends than anything else. But now Fabian’s gaze was pure fatherly devotion as he stroked my curls, listening to me tell my story of my time at the Esholian Institute so far, from the moment Jagaros had stalked up to me on that stage to when my crescent knife had sunk into the Shape Shifted replica of Coen’s heart.

That was when I switched to mind-to-mind communication to tell him everything that came after. Coen is still alive. He is bound to Mydusia, and I am bound to Dyonisia, but we are fighting to free ourselves and to save the island.

When I was finished, Fabian nodded slowly, taking it all in… but even after learning about the faeries who had survived and the queen across the sea and the prison at the top of the island’s tallest mountain, he only seemed to care about me.

“You are part-faerie?”

“Yes. You truly didn’t know my mother was….” I trailed off at the way Fabian’s eyes clouded over. Coen had already scoured his mind and found a lapse in his memories, so I didn’t believe he was lying to me on purpose anymore. But I could tell that the subject pained him. Not necessarily because he still felt a deep-rooted emotion for my mother, but because trying to remember something when it had been ripped from your brain felt like fissures in your skull. I would know.

“And you really have three brands?” Fabian whispered.

“Yes.” I absentmindedly touched my right arm. “But Dyonisia only thinks I have two, and I don’t know how to control all of them. I can’t… I can’t handle Object Summoning like you and Don can. I don’t know how you do it.”

The desperation had crept back into my voice, and Fabian pulled me into another hug. “It’s okay, Rayna. That’s what I’m here for now. I want you to close your eyes and tell me what you feel. Not with your heart or head, but with your hands.”

My hands. The Object Summoning ones.

I did as he said, closing my eyes and focusing on the physical objects piled up behind my back. Even without looking at them, it was like their shapes and sizes and textures lay just beyond my reach, ready for me to snatch at any moment.

“I feel… a key,” I started. I felt many keys, to be exact, but when I really tried to focus, I could narrow it down to one random key in particular.

“And what does it feel like?”

“It’s small. Cold. Slightly rusted.” My Object Summoning hands grazed the spiraling surface. “With three little wards and… I think a heart-shaped bow.”