Rise of the Fey (24 page)

I heave at the thought, spilling my dinner all over the grass, tears prickling my eyes.

Irene was right, I realize, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, they should’ve kept me locked up.

I jump as something soft and warm rubs itself against my ankles with a purr as loud as a motorcycle engine. I look down to find a black cat twirling about my feet, its tail brushing against my legs.

“You shouldn’t come near me!” I snarl, shoving the feline away with my foot. “I put everyone near me in danger, I—”

My voice breaks and the cat perks its ears up, its tail swishing back and forth like a metronome. It meows once, pads away then sits down by a large boulder and looks back at me.

“Don’t be stupid!” I shout, grabbing a rock to throw at it. “I said to stay away! Do you want to die?”

The cat burbles plaintively and I freeze, my hand in mid-air.

Only now do I realize I’m standing at the edge of the school’s perimeter, with no guard in sight. My eyes travel automatically
to the jagged horizon line, the milky way shining brightly over the forest as if showing me the path to take.

“Avalon,” I whisper, the rock dropping from my limp fingers.

A dazzling light flashes in my vision, forcing me to look away. When I gaze back, I find that there’s a soft glow coming from behind the school’s large stone ward.

“Morgan?” a soft voice calls out.

My heart skips a beat as a small shape detaches itself from the massive boulder.

“Hurry, princess,” the childlike voice says. “We don’t have much time.”

I take a tentative step forward and let out a gasp as the strange glow hits the child’s face straight on.

“The spiky-toothed fairy!” I breathe, remembering the Fey boy who helped Nibs escape.

“It’s Pigfain,” the small Fey tells me, miffed. “And I’m
not
a fairy!
I
am the mighty Master of the Gates, and I—”

Something round and furry rams into him and a squeal of surprise escapes Pigfain’s lips.

“Puck!” I cry out when the furry ball untangles itself from around the Fey’s legs and the hobgoblin hops back up.

But instead of bouncing over to me like he usually does, Puck zooms off to the side, tongue lolling out of his mouth. Suddenly, there’s a loud, warning hiss as the cat faces the hobgoblin, hackles raised and claws out. Puck slides to a stop a few feet away, then starts grazing, chomping on large clumps of grass, having seemingly lost all interest in the feline. But, as the cat slowly backs away, Puck suddenly dives.

“Princess,
please
,” Pigfain entreats me as I watch Puck face-plant on the ground. “It’s too dangerous for you to stay here, you’ve got to believe me! If they get their hands on you—”

“You wait for me, you spy!” someone yells from behind us, interrupting Pigfain again.

My initial instinct is to duck out of sight, until I catch a disheveled figure pelting up the hill.

I watch, stunned, as Myrdwinn, the school’s senile director, hurtles after Puck and the cat, his long grizzled beard flowing down between his naked, knobby legs and trailing after him like a long, fluffy white tail. I look back to Pigfain but find that he’s already disappeared, the glow of his magic circle and my chance to escape both gone with him.

“Got ye, ye old beast!” Myrdwinn yells triumphantly as the cat, cornered between the boulder, Puck and Myrdwinn hisses furiously.

For a second, all three seem to be suspended in time, then Puck and Myrdwinn both leap together, landing in a confusion of hairy limbs. I watch the cat extricate itself deftly from the mess then quickly slink away towards the forest.

“Oh, dear,” Lady Vivian says, startling me.

“I-I didn’t hear you come,” I say, panicking for a second at the thought of being punished for straying too far from school in the middle of the night.

Lady Vivian’s inclines her head. “What happened here?” she asks.

“Uh, they were both trying to catch a stray cat,” I say, glad the pressure’s off me.

“Were they?” Lady Vivian asks, her silver eyes reflecting the moon’s bright scythe up in the sky-lake.

“And I would’ve gotten it if it weren’t for your varmint here,” Myrdwinn says, lying upside-down, feet up against the boulder.

Puck, still looking for the cat, grabs a fistful of the director’s beard and shakes it hard.

“Off with ye, beast!” Myrdwinn spits, rolling over sideways and pushing the hobgoblin away.

“Come over here, Puck,” Lady Vivian says.

Puck looks up, momentarily confused, then hops over to his mistress eagerly. Muttering to himself, Myrdwinn gets back up then slowly unknots the bottom of his robe so it can cover his legs again.

“What were you going to do with that cat?” Lady Vivian asks him. Though her tone is light, I detect a note of worry.

Myrdwinn looks at her and gives her a toothy smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” he says. He spits on the ground but with so little strength that the saliva gets caught in his beard.

I stifle back a laugh at Myrdwinn’s disconcerted look. He looks back at us then, his eyes brimming with tears.

“It’s alright,” Lady Vivian says with a sad smile. “Just go on back to the school and you can get yourself cleaned up. Puck, if you could?”

The hobgoblin nods vigorously, his horns bobbing up and down, then dashes over to the old man. I watch Puck grab the bottom of Myrdwinn’s robe in his tiny hand then lead the director back to Lake High.

“Pain can drive one to madness,” Lady Vivian whispers, so low I’m not sure I actually heard her properly. She brushes her long curls back. “You should take care of your friends so they don’t go down the same path,” she says. “And as for you, young lady, remember that it is your thoughts and actions that matter, not what blood happens to course down your veins. What happened tonight can, and should, be avoided.”

“Y-You already know?” I say, blushing furiously.

“You have to learn to control your emotions,” Lady Vivian says sternly. “Otherwise, even a small annoyance such as a fly buzzing about your ears could be a trigger.”

“Control my emotions?” I repeat dumbly.

“That’s right,” Lady Vivian says, patting my cheek. “And a great way to achieve that is to make sure you get plenty of sleep.”

I nod. “Goodnight, Lady Vivian,” I say, before retracing my steps back to the school, my heart turning cold with dread. For if there’s one thing I know for sure about myself, it’s that I have a very short fuse. And if Lady Vivian’s right, that means things about me are likely to quickly go KABOUM!

Maintaining my cool certainly doesn’t come easy, and my self-restraint keeps being tested over the next few days as word of my ‘minor’ incident spreads through the school like wildfire.

“Hey, demon spawn!” someone yells in the hallway as Keva, Bri and I make our way to Lore class.

A rotten apple skims my face and splatters against the wall.

“That’s foul,” Keva says, covering her nose at the sweet yet pungent smell that’s sprayed over me.

I swing around just in time to see a knight and his squire fist-bump. I fight back my urge to retaliate as the knight swaggers over to me, an oily smile stuck to his equally oily face.

Just keep calm, I tell myself, breathing furiously through my nose.

“You know what the repercussions are for going against someone of higher rank,” the knight says with a grin. “So you better keep your filthy eyes down.”

“That rule goes out the window if there is abuse, though,” Bri says. “So I’d keep my distances if I were you.”

“I don’t see how anything we do to the changeling could be called abuse,” the knight’s portly squire retorts, his stringy hair falling into his eyes.

“We’ll see what KORT has to say about that,” Keva sniffs disdainfully.

To our surprise, the knight’s grin only widens at her threat. “Do it, why don’t you?” he taunts. “Let’s see how popular your precious President will be when word of his pet gone rogue comes out.” He steps forward, forcing the three of us to back into the wall. “At which point, I doubt anyone will mind if he’s fragged.”

I blink at the boy. “Is that supposed to be an insult?” I ask.

The knight and his squire burst out laughing.

“That’s sedition!” Keva shouts as the hour bell rings and both boys scamper away. “I’ll have you reported!” she yells again, but her words don’t hold much conviction.

“I still don’t get it,” I say, as Bri drags us to class.

“It means they may intend to kill him off,” Keva says darkly, “by placing him in danger every chance they get. Deliberately.”

I repress a shiver. Surely they can’t seriously want to lynch Arthur, he’s one of them! But that midnight vote between the KORT knights and Lance’s warning right after trot back to the front of my mind, and I can’t help but wonder if Arthur’s position at school really is that precarious, or that dangerous.

“To your desks, quickly now!” Sir Lincoln snaps as Keva, Bri, and I arrive last. “We do not have a single minute to spare. As if it wasn’t enough that my class has been reduced to an hour a week! Don’t they understand that history is just as important as EM training? How are we to evolve if we have no basis to compare our actions to?”

“I’m sure those demons would love it if I went after them with my Lore book,” Daniel says.

Brockton and Ross snigger in their corner.

“Perhaps we should try it on the one we have in class,” Daniel continues. “Might as well prove herself useful for once.”

My face heats up. If I could only punch the simpleton without potentially blowing the whole classroom up, I’d totally go for it.

“Shut up, Daniel,” Keva says. “We all know you’re better with a book than you are with a sword, so if you already suck at that—”

“Enough!” Sir Lincoln shouts, spittle flying from his thin, dry lips. The outburst is so uncharacteristic of him that everyone immediately quiets down. “We’ll start where we left off last week: How to act if you find yourself in the presence of Fey while unarmed. Adams, please read.”

I throw a surreptitious look in Daniel’s corner, and catch him staring at me. Instead of looking away, however, he points at me then draws his thumb across his neck, and I quickly look back down to my book, suddenly afraid—afraid of what people may do to me, but mostly afraid of what I may accidentally do to them.

In an effort to calm myself down, I force my eyes to trace each and every word on my textbook page as Laura reads them out loud.

To avoid the unhappy chance of falling in the Fey
’
s bad graces, one must be aware
—
and respect
—
a certain code of conduct amongst these somewhat fickle beings. For not only are they immortal, but they can hold grudges spanning what would equate to us humans as generations upon generations.

Therefore, one should remember the following two key points while in the presence of the Fey:

First, a Fey would rather die than to be dishonored, or preferably kill the one guilty of the affront.

Second, there are no free gifts
—
should you receive something from them,
anything
, they expect something of equal, if not greater, value in return.

It is important to note here that one
’
s pulchritude
²³
is oftentimes directly related to how willing the Fey are to give out favours.

Though many have tried to subdivide the Fey into different classes and groups, or even courts, and therefore ascribe different codes of conduct to each, one must remember that, at their basic level, the Fey are all the same
—
angels who have fallen from grace. So no matter how innocent some of them may seem, one ought always remember their unspoken motto:

Nothing is certain in this world, not even one
’
s immortality.

The latter of which the Fey are willing to do anything to preserve.

“You hear that, Morgan?” Daniel says in a mock whisper. “Doesn’t matter how innocent you look, we all know what’s hiding inside you!”

“Bet we all know why Arthur wanted her, huh?” Brockton says.

Ross nods. “Heard your mama was a whore!”

“We still haven’t figured out which kind,” Daniel says calmly. “Perhaps an empousai?”

“What the hell is that?” Ross asks.

“A demon who likes to kill men,” Daniel responds. “Easy to detect if you look down though, they apparently have donkey feet.”

Understanding dawns on Ross’s face and he chortles. “Yeah, and we all know how much of an ass
she
is.”

“Bet her dad died of shame,” Brockton adds.

Pure, unabated rage pumps through my veins like arsenic, burning through the last tendrils of my control. My hands stiffen around my open textbook, crumpling the pages.

I take an unsteady breath, trying to refocus my eyes on the lesson, but my vision remains blurry.

“I certainly would’ve killed myself too,” Daniel says, “if I knew I’d created a freak like her!”

“For heaven’s sake, Daniel!” Bri explodes. “We all know you’re a virg—”

Keva yelps. I have a dim sense of her and Bri stumbling away from me. I shut my eyes—I need to calm down….