Page 108 of Faerie Hunted

“You’ve never heard about the Abyss before in school?” It was less a question than a statement when Livvy finally spoke again.

“Not before today.” But it felt important. “What aren’t you telling me?”

I felt her secrets like a change in the wind, a drop in temperature—something real and tangible.

Laina blew out a breath, her lips rounded and her hands trembling. They both looked…upset. Which only made me dig my heels in further. If the topic was off the table of discussion, then most likely I needed to know about it.

These kinds of secrets made for worse problems down the road. I’d seen it before.

My stomach curdled and I clenched down on my back molars in preparation to be a brat and demand they answer me. Luckily, Livvy spoke first.

“The Abyss,” she began with clinical detachment, “is a place where magical things—or people—are sent when they are not wanted inanyrealm. It’s like a hiding place. A terrible in-between. It belongs to nothing and no one.”

“It’s an empty corner of the universe to send awful things you want no one to ever find again,” Laina filled in. “Which makes it a very dangerous place.”

“Any realm? Like the mortal world and Faerie?” I asked.

Livvy marched ahead without looking at me. The blood on her arm had dried and plastered her shirt to her skin. She picked at it and said, “There are more worlds than you think, Tavi. The Abyss is one of those, only we can access it from here.”

“No. We do not go to the Abyss,” Laina warned.

A chill curdled my gut.

“We have no choice,” Livvy tossed back angrily.

The mothers faced off against one another and the rest of us slowed our steps, unconsciously putting distance between us.

“If there were any other way, don’t you think I’d take it?” Livvy’s hands balled into fists at her sides and she drew in a sharp breath, her nostrils flaring. We need the spell.”

An unspoken conversation passed between them and I had no clue who won, but they started to walk again.

“I don’t understand. If the journals you want are so important, then we have to retrieve them. How would we even get there?” I asked.”

“I know the way,” Onyx said softly.

“Wait, what?” Shock rippled through me.

I stopped dead in my tracks and reached for him, forcing him to stop beside me. His eyes were inscrutable and the dark circles beneath them were brought to stark contrast against the paleness of his skin and white hair.

He met my gaze, held it.

I wasn’t the only one surprised though. The others had all stopped as well despite our need for haste.

“You never said anything.” And there were plenty of opportunities for him to do so.

“Why would you want to know?” Onyx swallowed, his throat visibly working. “It was a time of my life I wanted to forget and it wasn’t relevant to our training. There was no reason for you to ask and none for me to bring it up.”

I felt like this was the kind of thing thatshouldhave come up before. If there was really a place in the universe where people, things, were banished into obscurity, then shouldn't it have been mentioned? Especially if Onyx?—

“You actually went there?” I clarified.

He grasped for my hand and our fingers brushed, both of us clammy and trembling. The contact steadied us both. “I was banished there by my father. Okay? As a teenager. I was one of those forgotten people. The one nobody wanted. He decided if I wasn’t willing to play his games, then I was better off there. Worse than dead, Tavi.”

Tears pricked my eyes. All that pain and suffering, all those years in his past where he’d had to survive his father rather than live the life he might have if he’d been born to any other family…

One day, I didn’t know when or where or how it would happen, but Kendrick would die. For what he’d done to his son. For what he’d done to any innocent he’d terrorized. I was going to kill Kendrick Grimaldi with my bare hands. I made the silent vow to anyone who might hear me, including Faerie herself–if the goddess existed.

“It was how I managed to get out of his clutches and into Faerie,” Onyx finished. “I found my way through the Abyss and out the other side. It wasn’t an easy path.”

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