The Faerie War (25 page)

Eventually—has it been hours yet?—I take off my jacket and transform it into a mattress big enough for me to curl up on. I lie next to the bars so that I’ll be the first to hear it if Ryn makes a noise. I don’t think it’ll be possible for me to fall asleep—and I don’t think I
should
sleep, what with Ryn close to death next door—but the next thing I know, I’m opening my eyes to the sound of disappearing footsteps, realizing I didn’t hear them approaching in the first place.

I guess I fell asleep, but whether it was for two minutes or two hours or more, I have no way of telling. “Ryn?” I tap on a metal bar with my knuckle, then call his name again.

Still nothing.

I notice a different smell in the air. Something like food. I sit up and find a bowl of soup at my feet. Vegetable chunks float in a pool of brownish liquid. It doesn’t look particularly appetizing, but the smell draws me closer. I guess it’s not in the bounty hunters’ best interests to starve their prisoners. I’m sure strong, healthy faeries fetch a better price than malnourished ones.

The last thing I want to do is accept food from these people, and the thought of Ryn lying seriously injured—or worse—next door turns my stomach. But I also know it’s not in
my
best interest either to starve myself. When the time comes to take that trip to the Unseelie Court, we
will
fight our way out of here. So I take the bowl of soup in my hands and start eating.

When one of the tattooed faeries returns to take my bowl, I jump up. “The guy next door,” I say. “Is he okay? Is he . . . is he still alive?”

The faerie smirks at me, bends to take the bowl from beneath the gate, and leaves without saying a word.

“Wait!” I shout after him. “Just answer me, dammit!”

I sink back onto my mattress. Maybe I should have asked nicely. Begged or used the word ‘please,’ at least. As disgusting as it would make me feel, I could try begging next time he comes by. This is about Ryn, after all, and he’s more important than my pride.

I realize my headache has passed. I examine my hands and see that the crisscross of red burns has healed, which explains why my back doesn’t hurt anymore. Maybe I was asleep for quite a long time. Which means . . .

Why hasn’t Ryn woken up yet?

I resume my pacing and my silent begging.
Please, please, please be okay.
I shake the bars and bang on the walls a few times to release some frustration. It doesn’t really work, but it does reveal to me that there’s a tiny hole in the wall that divides Ryn’s cell from mine. It’s at the level of my hip and can’t be bigger than a pinhead.
The crater
, I remember suddenly. It must have broken almost right through the wall.

I kneel down and press my eye to the hole, but of course I can’t see anything. I drag my mattress over and sit next to the hole. This will be better than shouting into the passage when Ryn wakes up.

Because he will wake up.

I lean against the wall and tilt my head back. I lift my hand and blow air gently over it until a bubble forms. It floats off my hand and into the air. I create more bubbles, trying to fashion each one into a different shape. It passes the time and helps to relax me. Instead of thinking about Ryn never waking up, I think about telling him all the complex shapes I was able to create when he
does
wake up.

I’ve just blown a bubble that looks like a rabbit when I hear a dull thud through the wall behind me. I freeze with my hand in the air.

“V? You there?”

Relief explodes within me like warm, golden rays of sunlight. I scramble around and speak into the hole. “Ryn! You’re alive!”

“Of course I’m alive,” he croaks. “No manticore-riding, bald guys stand a chance against me, right?”

My words sound so weak repeated back to me now, but I’m so happy he’s alive that I laugh anyway.

“Are you okay?” he asks me.

“Am
I
okay? Ryn, you got hit by lightning. Are
you
okay?”

“Yeah. What’s the word? Peachy. I’m totally peachy.”

I shake my head, but I can’t help smiling. When I said it, I made sure to put as much sarcasm behind the word as possible, but the way Ryn says it tells me he’s
not
peachy but doesn’t want me to know. I place both hands against the wall. “You can’t possibly be peachy, Ryn. Tell me how you really are.”

“Well, there might have been a hole in my chest at some point, but it seems to be healing. I don’t think the lightning that hit me was as powerful as the one that hit the wall.”

A hole in his chest? And he survived that?

“Anyway, you didn’t answer me,” he continues. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Bored and frustrated—”
and terrified you were dead
“—but otherwise fine.”

“Good. Uh, there’s a bowl of cold soup on my floor. Do you know if it’s safe?”

“Well, I ate mine a few hours ago, and I’m still alive.”

I wait for him to fetch his bowl. When a shadow moves past the hole, I assume that means he’s returned to the wall. I remember my promise about no awkward silences and decide to fill the quiet before it becomes awkward. “I was thinking about what that guy said about taking us to the Unseelie Court. That must mean Draven is based there.”

“Probably. Although it sounded like we’ll be handed over to Draven’s men, not directly to the
lord
. The prisoner we had at our base for a while—the one who’s now been cured—told us Draven was probably using the Unseelie Court as his base, but she didn’t know for sure.”

“Well, as much as I want to see Draven up close and put an end to all this, we can’t do that until we find the Star.”

“No. We need to get away long before we reach the Unseelie Court.” He goes quiet, probably eating his cold soup. After a minute or so he says, “I hope Arthur’s okay. Oliver certainly isn’t going to be happy with me when he finds out I lost his dragon.”

“Well, he can comfort himself with the fact that Arthur will be happier in the wild than locked up in a cramped enclosure.”

“Arthur is a shrinking dragon, V. Space was never a problem as long as he was in his shrunken form.”

“Oh. A shrinking dragon? That . . . sounds vaguely familiar. Did we learn about them at school?”

“Yeah. Junior school. And one of our early group assignments involved a shrinking dragon.”

“Oh.” I lean sideways against the wall and twist a piece of hair around my finger. If I have to find something positive in this situation, it’s that I can learn more about my past.

“You know, I was thinking about something before that explosion at the base.” Ryn’s voice sounds a little further away, as if he’s lying down now. “Why can’t you remember any of your assignments? It’s not like you loved the creatures you had to fight.”

Good point, but I stopped trying to figure out my memory problems a while ago. “Um, I do remember brief flashes of fighting various creatures,” I say, “so I haven’t forgotten them entirely.”

“I suppose the potion got confused,” he says. “You didn’t love those creatures, so you shouldn’t forget them. But you were performing a guardian duty in fighting them, and you’ve always loved the life of a guardian.”

“I must have really loved it if I’ve forgotten so much about my life,” I say quietly. Did I love it
too
much? Was I obsessed?

“You did, but only because you had nothing else. And I think the reason you’ve forgotten so much is because nothing in life is isolated. Everything is interlinked somehow. The things we care about are always mixed up with things we don’t care about.”

I close my eyes. “Getting all philosophical on that side of the wall, are you?” I tease.

“Well, there isn’t much else to do on this side. You telling me your side’s more exciting?”

“Totally. I’ve got loads of entertainment here. A pink troll riding a unicycle and juggling fire sprites.”

“Hmm. Sounds like you need some sleep, V.”

“Now that you mention it, I could do with another nap. Turns out worrying about people is more exhausting than I thought.”

“Oh? And why were you worrying about me?”

My eyelids spring apart.
Oops.
He wasn’t supposed to know just how scared I was that he hadn’t survived that lightning strike. “Come on, Ryn,” I say quietly. “You got blown across the room by
lightning
. What do you think I was worried about?”

Instead of answering me, he goes quiet. I start to feel uncomfortable. Dammit, what happened to there being no more awkward silences?

“V?” he says. “I need to tell you something.”

“Uh, okay.” I shift a little closer to the hole.

“And it would be great if you didn’t get mad.”

“Why would I get mad?”

“The last time I told you this, you kicked me out of your house.”

“Well, I can’t exactly do that this time, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I’m more concerned about the part where you might get upset and stop talking to me. I imagine it could get quite lonely in this cell with no one to talk to.”

I pause, then say, “Is what you have to tell me really that bad?”

“Not exactly. I just . . . should have told you a lot sooner last time. I don’t want to make the same mistake this time around. I didn’t want to freak you out with too much info when you first got to the base, but I really don’t want to keep it from you any longer.”

“Okaay,” I say.

“So . . . you know how you have extra magic that helps you find people?”

“Yeah.”

“I have extra magic too. And my extra magic makes me feel whatever people around me are feeling.”

I open my mouth, but I honestly can’t think of a single thing to say to that. My first thought is to try to figure out what I’m currently feeling and whether it’s telling him anything embarrassing about me.
Oh, crap.
Each time he’s given me that smile that’s made my stomach flip over weirdly, did he
know
that? Did he feel it because I was feeling it? I try to remember how many times it’s happened, but I seem to be freaking out a little too much to come up with an answer.

“Yeah, I know, most people would freak out and feel like I’m invading their privacy,” Ryn says, “which seems to be what you’re feeling now. That’s why I don’t generally tell people. But I had to tell
you
because you knew everything else about me before, and I couldn’t keep it from you any longer. And now I’m telling you again because I don’t ever want you to feel like I’ve lied to you.”

I still don’t know what to say. Even though there’s a wall between us, I feel as exposed as if Ryn were looking into my soul. But it can’t be
that
bad, right? I mean, how much can he really know just from a person’s feelings? It’s not as though he can hear thoughts. That would be highly embarrassing.

“And . . . now would be a good time for you to say something.”

“Um . . .” I stare up at the ceiling. “Well, I’m not mad.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Right. Of course he does. “And I’m not going to kick you out of your cell or stop talking to you.”

“Wow.” He sounds impressed. “You know what? I think the new you might be less inclined to overreact than the old you.”

“Then aren’t you lucky you’re locked up with the new me instead of the old me?”

“I’d be lucky either way.”

I roll my eyes and mutter, “Such a suck-up.”

“I learned from the best,” he says, and I can imagine his smirk.

I ignore the jibe and say, “So tell me something no one else knows about me.”

“Finally,” he says. “We’ve reached the part of the conversation where I get to share embarrassing stories about you.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“And you know it’s going to happen anyway.”

We launch into a discussion that feels something like a weird first date, where I ask questions for both of us, and he answers for both of us. Our favorite foods. Our best and worst assignments. The best tricks we ever played on each other. Our secret fears when we were little.

Hours later, when my head is slipping to the side and I’m starting to fall asleep, I force my eyes open and ask the question I’ve been avoiding since our conversation began. “Ryn? Does my father know about me? Does he know that you found me and took me back to the base?”

“No. I didn’t know how to contact him. He’s with the Seelie Queen, and no one knows where she is.”

So it isn’t that he didn’t care enough about me to come and see me at the base. He just didn’t know I was there.

Obviously picking up on my relief, Ryn adds, “He cares about you, V. A lot. It broke his heart to leave you when he had to fake his death and go undercover. But he did it to keep you safe. It’s a long story, but . . . just know that he did it because your life was in danger and it was the only way he knew how to keep you safe.”

I definitely want to know more about
that
story, but maybe another time. Ryn needs to rest to keep healing, and for some strange reason, I seem to be sleepy too. It could be from all my worrying about him earlier, but my last thought before I slide away from the wall and onto my mattress is whether the bounty hunters spiked our soup with something.

Something to relax us . . .

Something to keep us from getting too violent . . .

Something . . .