Reflection Pond (7 page)

They crept through the silent palace, passing rooms full of sleeping fae, just splashes of bright color lit by lightning. The storm rumbled again and Callie gripped his arm tighter. Her heartbeat pounded in her fingertips and rattled against his skin.

“I didn’t do it,” she said again. And then quieter, “Why can’t I remember?”

Rowan didn’t have a good answer for her. He could tell her the truth—that faerie wine leaves your mind riddled with holes, a block of Swiss cheese. He didn’t think it sounded reassuring.

They were in the foyer now. The ceiling stretched above them, carved with gold leaves. The storm flickered against the windows, casting dancing shadows on the floor and walls. They’d almost made it outside, but then the heavy double doors opened and Ash stumbled in, soaking wet and shivering. His gaze went to Rowan and then to Callie, back to Rowan.

Rowan saw the other boy’s mind trying to piece it together. “Where have you been?” he asked, heading off Ash’s inevitable questions.

“The wards were breached. I heard Jack and Hawthorne answer the alarm and—why is she covered in blood?”

Rowan’s mouth moved, but no words came out. This was the effect of Sapphire using his true name. He could have all the good intentions he wanted, but he couldn’t break her order. Rowan frowned and rubbed his forehead—it was the last thing he needed. If it weren’t Sapphire, he would be pissed. She had not used his name lightly. The prophetess was the ruler’s last mode of control over the city. The fae had free will, to a point, but the final word always came from the leader.

In their case, Hazel.

“I didn’t do it,” Callie said.

“I took Callie back to my cottage when the party disbanded,” Rowan said.
Verbatim.
Damn faerie law.

Ash gave Rowan a withering glare and turned to Callie. “Are you hurt? Do you need a healer?” He reached for her hand but she flinched away.

“Why don’t I remember?” Callie asked. “Oh god, oh god.” She hid her face in Rowan’s shoulder.

“I took Callie back to my cottage when the party disbanded.” This time, Rowan met Ash’s gaze and held it. “You should find Sapphire.” He tugged on Callie, leading her to the entrance.

“Rowan,” Ash said, but Rowan didn’t stop. Through the doors. Into the storm.

***

Callie sat at Rowan’s table, shivering in her wet clothes. They’d waded through the whipping wind and pellets of stinging rain, sticking to the shadows. Rowan muttered the entire way, but he hadn’t let go of her hand until they reached his cottage, a tiny two-room wooden structure. Candles lit the inside and a warm, cheery fire burned in one corner.

Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the vacant stare of the woman—the prophetess, they’d called her—and the blood dripping from her lips. Though it wasn’t same as the last time she’d experienced a tragedy, Callie felt helpless and small, a leaf in a raging river.

Rowan handed her a mug of tea. The warmth seeped into her fingers as she frowned into it.

“You should change,” he said. He’d already taken off his shirt and hung it by the fire. Rainwater clung to his eyelashes and dripped onto his shoulders. The dark hair at the nape of his neck curled.

Callie pressed the mug to her face, warming her cheeks. She kept trying to remember the night before, but her mind was blank as a sheet of paper. There were no hints, no flashes. She swallowed hard and set the tea on the table.

The
what if
was the worst part.

“Did I kill her?” She looked up then, catching annoyance on Rowan’s face.

Instead of answering, he went to a closet and returned with a towel and change of clothes. “They’ll probably be too big, but at least they’re dry.” When she didn’t take them, he dropped them next to the tea.

“Why won’t you answer me?” She picked up the towel and wiped her face.

“Because I don’t know, and I can’t lie.” He slumped in the chair across from her and ran a hand over his face. “No, I don’t think you killed her, but I can’t say for certain. Hazel isn’t careful. She thinks she has
Eirensae
on lockdown, but—”

“What was that, yesterday? You healed me with your hands—with
magic.
What are you?” Callie’s heart thumped in her throat. She had a massive headache and her fingers were frozen. She’d never wanted to go home more in her life. She missed the tiny room she shared with her foster sisters and the knowing she was safe—sort of. She even missed Nate. The consistency of disappointment was comforting.

“We’re fae—faeries.”

Callie’s gaze flew to his face. “Faeries?”

He smirked. It wasn’t a cocky expression, more self-deprecating. He sat back in the chair and picked up her discarded towel, pulling at the threads. “We’re just one big happy family beneath the reflection pond.”

His tone made Callie shiver.

“You should change,” he said again, pushing the clothes to her.

The rain had washed away the stains, but Callie could still smell the blood—floral, sweet. Wrong. Her pulse picked up again. “You’ll tell them I didn’t do it, right? I didn’t. I mean, I can’t remember and if I killed someone—”

“Sapphire thinks you didn’t do it. You can trust her judgment.”

Callie tried to distance herself from the situation. It was too unbelievable for her to wrap her head around it.
Faeries, murder, magic.
How the hell did she end up in the middle of it?

“I still don’t understand why...or what…what you are.”

“What
we
are,” Rowan said. “You’re fae, too.”

“Oh, god.”
Callie shook her head. She closed her eyes.
Wake up, wake up, wake up!
“I don’t believe you.” She cracked one eyelid.

Rowan lifted a shoulder. “Believe it, don’t believe, doesn’t really matter. It’s still true. Besides, you’ve got Sapphire. If you can’t believe that she’s your sister, then you’re stupider than I thought.”

There was
that
. Callie picked up the clothes but didn’t move to change. For as long as she could remember, she’d wanted a sibling. A
sister.
She’d had foster siblings, so many she’d lost count, but there was an unspoken rule amongst fosters. They never got too close because you never knew what tomorrow would bring.

It was easier being alone, not
feeling.
Because feelings always led to hurt.

Callie had her future all planned out. She had exactly eleven months and twenty-three days until her eighteenth birthday, the day she
would be tossed into the world as a legal adult.

She’d longed for that day since she was little, right about the time she’d started elementary school and realized that not all children had stand-in parents. Not all kids were fosters—some had parents who loved them.

Callie had tried to love her foster parents, but with eleven homes in seventeen years, it was hard to grow attached to anyone. Even harder after her third home. She was the one who was abused, yet her record stated that she was a “problem case,” as though those two words could sum up the horrid scars.

At eighteen, she could change her name, change her
everything
. She could move to New York or California, become a new person. And maybe eventually, she would believe it, too.

If Rowan was telling the truth,
if
—and it was a
big
if—she belonged in
Eirensae
, then how had she ended up as a foster? Her file was sealed. Callie had always assumed she’d come from a rape victim or a maybe a prisoner. She’d wanted to think that her birth mother had loved her, and that’s why she’d given Callie up, because life as a foster was better than what Callie’s life would’ve been.

Her mother had been wrong, of course, but the best intentions didn’t always yield the best results.

“If I’m a faerie, or fae, or whatever, then why am I just now finding out about it?” Callie asked.

Rowan stared at her for a long time. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Holy shit.”
He sat back hard, gaze never leaving her face.

“What?” she said, glancing at the door, certain that someone would come bursting through it, ready to charge her with
murder. Did they have police in faerieland?

“Get changed,” Rowan said. “We need to see Sapphire.”

***

“Callie is seventeen,” Rowan said to Ash as soon as Callie and Sapphire were out of earshot.

Ash shrugged. “So what? Is that too young for you?”

Rowan held open the door to one of the many unused bedrooms in the palace and the two boys stepped inside. “She’s still a child, vulnerable to the Fallen. The last thing we need is another
Immortal wandering around.”

“That’s unheard of, Row. There hasn’t been an Immortal in decades. Not since before the fae diverged into the four cities.”

Rowan went to the window. The city was awake now. The message of the prophetess’s murder had spread like a disease. The fae rushed to the palace in the rain, clutching each other, crying. Rowan knew it would rain for days.

He flattened a hand over his stomach, remembering. It was like seeing his life through someone else’s eyes.
It wasn’t Rowan who laid on the floor bleeding out, but some weaker, lesser being. Rowan would’ve known better,
should’ve
known better. He would’ve saved a life instead of taken one. Seeing the prophetess had sharpened the edges of his memory until the cuts were fresh again. “It’s not as unlikely as you think,” he said.

“I’ve researched Immortals and the Fallen. Their numbers are few.”

“Immortals are immensely powerful, Ash. Just because they aren’t in the recorded history doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Regardless, Callie is a target, here inside the city and now in the human world. She’s not safe anywhere.”

“But Hazel—”

“Is useless,” Rowan said. He watched two unglamoured faeries kiss before entering the palace. The man tangled his fingers into the woman’s thistle hair. Blood stained his hands, her hair, the ruins of their clothes. Rowan wondered what it would be like to be in love so deeply that you wouldn’t notice the pain.

“Why the change of heart?
Yesterday you wanted to ship her back to the humans…and suddenly you care?” Ash stood now, joined Rowan at the window. The two lovers had entered into the palace, holding hands.

“I don’t—”
care,
he wanted to say, but the lie lodged in Rowan’s throat and choked him. “I just don’t think it’s fair,” he amended. Life would be so much easier if he could lie. It was exhausting to plot every word into truth. Now he had Sapphire’s command hanging over his head like a sword.

“So we’ll talk to Hazel.”

Rowan could see Ash’s concerned face in the window’s reflection. It pissed him off. “That’ll be great,” he said with a sneer. “The unimprinted non-member and a
teacher.
Maybe you can teach Hazel the ways of our past, too, counsel her on how a faerie leader is
supposed
to act because you’re certainly not going to defend the city against the Fallen.”

Ash flinched.

“I didn’t mean—” Rowan said, regretting his words, but they both knew he
had
meant it. Ash’s imprint made him an educator, and much like in the human world, it was a thankless job. He taught the incoming fae the histories and how to control their powers. But Ash really wanted to be a warrior. Ash had tried to learn after Rowan had returned to
Eirensae.

Rowan could fight,
both with weapons and his bare hands, but no matter how many times Rowan went over a block or a kick or patiently explained how to hold a quarterstaff, Ash never got it right. He was always too slow, too uncoordinated. Eventually Ash had abandoned fighting, and the two boys had focused on their mutual love of information. But it hadn’t taken long for Rowan’s knowledge to surpass Ash’s.

“You know what? You’re right.” Ash said, heading for the door.
He paused, hand on the knob. “I’ll never be like you,” he said softly, not looking at his friend, “but you’ll never be like me, either.”

Even though Rowan could fight, Ash still had one thing up on him.
One, giant, unequivocally important thing. Ash was imprinted. A full, permanent member of the city, whereas Rowan, without his amulet or imprint, was nothing more than a meaningless child, voiceless,
worthless.

Ash slammed the door and it was Rowan’s turn to flinch. It was the first time Ash had thrown Rowan’s status back in his face.

***

Callie leaned into Sapphire’s embrace, letting her eyes close, and for the first time, she didn’t see the dead face of the prophetess. Sapphire smelled of blood and despair, but also something soft and familiar. Callie didn’t trust any of them, but she mistrusted Sapphire the least. The memories were heavy, not of the murder, but of the past.
The filled up Callie’s head, struggling to break free and bring her to her knees. In this moment, she needed Sapphire. She needed anyone.