Chapter Sixteen
Lessons
The dreams I had then were the most dreadful I’d ever had. I jolted awake and shuddered for several minutes at the images I could not beat down.
Ruby was there, waiting for me.
“Where are the others?” I asked, voice hoarse.
“They’ve set up a perimeter.”
It was all I had to say for the moment. I felt empty, alone. It was dark; even with the dust I’d not slept through the night. I sat up, curling my legs against my chest, and wrapped my arms around them, pulling tightly in.
Though I didn’t speak, I occasionally glanced, or glared, at Ruby. She sat, immobile, watching me.
It was morning before she broke. “You have your fire back.”
It hadn’t occurred to me. I held my hand out and flicked a flame above my palm, then promptly extinguished it. I tried moving a stone from the ground to no avail. Just fire. I sighed. But Ruby looked hopeful.
The group approached warily, keeping their eyes on me. Chevelle hung farther back, avoiding my gaze as he hovered near the edge of the mist. Steed led my horse to me. I didn’t think I blamed him—he seemed to be involved by chance—but I hadn’t fully decided yet.
As we rode wordlessly through the cold stone landscape, my thoughts twisted and writhed as if a pit of vipers. In the end, I’d decided I wasn’t really that shocked about being half-human. It explained so much about myself. Clumsiness, lack of skill, never quite fitting in. What took me by surprise was the betrayal I felt. All the years I’d lived in the village, I’d never counted on anyone the way I had done with this group, Chevelle especially. The feeling in my chest was so thick and heavy it burned.
Struggling with my reactions kept me distracted from the ride. It was steep now, rocky, a haze hanging in the few spiky trees. When we stopped for the evening, the men quietly set up a perimeter. Except for Chevelle. He was watching me as I glared back at him. Why had I expected more from him? He was my watcher. He’d volunteered to help council bind me. But it didn’t stop the hostile stare I was sending his way.
Ruby stepped in front of him. “I’ll stay with her.”
He didn’t reply; he merely turned from her to walk into the haze.
I was still fuming when she faced me, wearing a self-satisfied smile. She practically danced forward to plop down in front of me. “I have something for you, Frey.”
I simply stared at her. She was harder to stay mad at. I expected her to be a pain—it wasn’t as difficult to accept she’d kept the truth from me.
She extracted a small package from beneath her cloak and passed it to me. I pulled the material aside and saw the V etched into the cover. I wondered what Chevelle would do if he knew she’d given it to me.
She answered my curious gaze. “It’s yours, and I think you should be able to read it.”
I could do nothing but nod. It didn’t matter. Her expression made it clear she considered herself forgiven. She turned, facing the direction Chevelle had gone, and left me to my discoveries.
I expected fury from my father. He never failed to disappoint me. He saw the child, as he called her, as an opportunity. I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, had he not stolen my mother for precisely the same purpose, experimenting with power? He did, however, concern himself with where I’d found a human.
I refused to tell. It was the only gift I could give Noble, his safety. I laughed as I remembered that was how I’d convinced him to stay, promising him protection. A false promise.
Eventually, one of the servants slipped, revealing they had seen me following my sister. And just like that, she was to blame for the entire ordeal, even though she’d never known. She’d been still searching the empty camp. At least I was off the hook.
I surprised myself by being so slow. Of course, her sister would have been Aunt Fannie. For a flash, I felt sympathy for Fannie… but it passed. Just because life had given her sour grapes didn’t mean she had to stomp them into wine and get drunk.
Had Fannie known all along? I couldn’t answer that. But she had been bound, as I was.
The elders were a different story altogether. My father had given them orders to protect me and the child, and even though they followed through with them, they persisted in chattering about their concerns. The humans frightened them unreasonably. They constantly fretted, wanting to keep her, and me, from contaminating anyone else.
I attempted to reason with them, but they turned on me. “You don’t understand, you never will! They will consume you. The humans will consume us all.” Their hands shook as they spat out the words.
I didn’t argue after that. I wouldn’t have been allowed to leave the castle anyway. Besides, it kept her from being paraded in front of so many visitors.
I stopped again. I had been born in a castle. I sat with the journal for a long moment. There was no way to reconcile this information with my own thoughts, no way to fill in what the bonds had taken. It hurt to read this, but there was no not finishing it. I decided the only way to keep going was if I did it as I had before I’d known it was my mother, as if I were an uninvolved reader.
My Freya has grown into a stubborn and willful child. She’s prone to fits of screaming or crying. The emotion frightens the elders. It comes from her father, yes, but I can’t see how it will harm her. The humans seemed to live their lives fine, controlling it well enough.