Page 69 of Avalon Tower

The veil bites at my wrist. “Ow!” I scream. Yanking my hand out, I massage my throbbing hand, and a chill racks my body. My teeth chatter, and I lean away from the box. “It was working until you told me to focus on my other power.” Pain pierces my hand, and I feel irrationally annoyed with Raphael.

He holds out his hand. Glowering, I slide mine into his palm, and his healing magic immediately washes over my hand in a soothing pulse. I lick my lips. “I think it’s better if I just focus on the dark red magic.”

“We’ll keep working on it, but I think you have to be able to completely smother your telepathy skills in order to master control of what we need.”

“Yeah,” I answer hollowly, my chest tight. I keep thinking about what I glimpsed in Tana’s thoughts. The encroaching darkness, the tiny drop of water that gleamed in the shadows, the agonized screams that chilled me to the bone.

Everything depends on my ability to control this power.

A little part of me considers telling Raphael about the vision, but I keep my mouth shut. Tana seemed sure it was a secret I needed to keep.

“Do you really think I can pass the other tests in the Culling?” I ask. “Fighting, spycraft?”

Raphael shrugs slowly. “You don’t have to be worried about the fighting test. Viviane told me you’re pretty good with a bow, and as long as you demonstrate some rudimentary abilities with a knife and a sword, it will be good enough. Not all spies are fighters. And as for spycraft, you happen to be very skilled at delivering to people the story they want to hear. Back during our first mission, that sergeant wanted you to be a timid and naïve girl, and you sold him that story beautifully. It’s the only reason your accent didn’t matter at all. It was your instinct, Nia, to give him what he craved.” He’s looking down at the table, and I can see the shadow of his long eyelashes on his cheeks. “And that will be part of your test. You’ll have to persuade someone to give you something they wouldn’t normally want to give up.” His gaze lifts, and my heart races at the intensity of those silver eyes.

“I am good at telling people what they want to hear. I never realized that living with a highly volatile addict would prepare me to be a good spy, but here we are.”

He arches an eyebrow. “With most people, you tell them what they want to hear. You’re not always quite so flattering with me.”

“Well, Raphael, I worry that if your ego gets any bigger, it will need its own magical realm.”

He leans closer to me. “But why is it, exactly, that I am the only one to whom you show your real self?”

My heart is beating faster. “Because there’s no point pretending with you, is there? I heard what you thought of me. Trash was the word that got me, actually. You referred to my mother and me as trash. Yes, this was a long time ago, and no, I’m not over it. I overheard everything. And I don’t blame you, not after one of my mother’s spectacles, but I don’t see why I had to be included.”

After all this time, I can’t quite believe I’m letting it all out.

He sits back. “I never said that. I wouldn’t have.”

My chest tightens. “But I remember it. Right after mother got drunk again. She was falling down the stairs, and you had to help carry her back to our room. You had already stopped speaking to me…” I’m dangerously close to mentioning our kiss, and I really don’t want to betray how much I’d thought about that single kiss over the past ten years, and we already know I’m terrible at lying. “Anyway, you’d stopped speaking to me. But Mom was drunk, and you and your rich friend helped carry her to our room at the château. And the next day, I overheard you talking to your posh friend about how we were trash.”

“I wouldn’t have said that.”

Anger flickers through me. “Not in English, but in French. ‘Des ordures.’ One of you said, ‘People like us don’t spend time with people like that,’ and the other one said, ‘Yes, isn’t she trash? She and her mother.’”

He nods, frowning. “Ah, guilty as charged, in part. I did say, ‘People like us don’t spend time around people like them.’”

I stare at him. “I’m not sure I see how that’s much better. What do you mean, ‘people like them’? You’ve been making digs at me like that since I first saw you on the dock in the south of France. You said I should be getting drunk on champagne at the beach, or that you don’t expect much from people like me. It’s not really much better than saying trash, is it? What’s the fucking difference?”

My pulse is racing out of control. No one in the world makes me feel unhinged quite like Raphael does, and it really doesn’t help that he never displays a single freaking flicker of emotion. That I’m yelling at a robot.

He breathes in sharply, then swallows. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it how you seem to think I did.”

“Then how, exactly, did you mean it?”

“What I meant, Nia, was, ‘We don’t spend time with rich people.’ You still seem to think I was rich. I never was. Some of the demi-Fey at that château were, but I was a fugitive with no money. I came from Brocéliande to the south of France with nothing, fleeing Auberon. I was literally barefoot when I arrived. And at the château? I was employed there to pick grapes. I wasn’t a guest like you. I worked in the vineyards, and you were a guest. When I said people like us, I meant poor fugitives. And when I said people like them, I meant rich Americans. We were from two different worlds, that’s all. And I’m assuming that you didn’t stick around to hear my reply because I wouldn’t have accepted anyone calling you trash, nor did I believe it.”

I swallow hard. “Oh.” I bite my lip, my cheeks burning. “I’m not rich, either, as it happens. That vacation you interrupted? I saved up for five years. I live in a dingy apartment with my mom. Walter was rich—the man I thought was my dad. But they never married. She used to find rich boyfriends, but the money was never ours. And once she got older, and her looks faded—well, it’s harder to find a rich boyfriend. I work in a bookstore, Raphael. Mom and I eat bargain-brand cereal for dinner most nights.”

“I see.” His pale eyes gleam, and it’s the closest I’ve ever seen him come to showing real emotion. “Perhaps we’ve misjudged one another. And you’re not what I used to think at all. I thought you were…”

“Spoiled.” It comes out a bit sharp. “Is that where the princess thing came from? Pixie princess?”

“I really did say that, didn’t I? I know it’s not the truth now.” A line forms between his eyebrows. “So, when you saw my room, and you said, ‘It’s not the sort of room meant for trash,’ you were referring to yourself? I was sure you were calling me trash.”

My jaw drops at this. “Oh, gods. You thought that I was calling you poor trash?”

A faint smile curls his lips. “Listen, let’s forget all that.” He leans forward. “Can I show you something? It’s my favorite part of Camelot, and hardly anyone else knows about it.”

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