Page 110 of By the Orchid and the Owl
To what end?I whispered back to Garvis, knowing that Coen was listening in.At what point do you say enough is enough and fight back?
What do you think all those ships are doing out there?Garvis answered gently.The Good Council likes to claim they’re pirates because piracy sounds scary, but they’re just Sorronian fleets waiting for a chink in the armor to attack and take back what’s theirs. What’s ours.
I blinked.
Fell a step backward.
Willa squeaked and scuttled up my leg.
Take back…? What do you mean?
He means… Coen rose to his feet, brushing off the mud clinging to his pants.That bascite is the natural metal found in faerie blood. Unlike humans, we don’t have to consume metals to help us breathe and grow and live. The oldest legends say that while the God of the Cosmos made humans out of dust, He madeusout of loam, already rich in minerals and metals. Many of those metals, like iron, help air travel through our blood, but bascite is what carries themagicthrough our veins. Like a conductor.
Willa sniffled near my ear, but that was the only sound that permeated the night.
Dyonisia Reeve,Coen continued, stepping slowly toward me, took an abundance of faerie blood and found a way to plant its bascite within the layers of human skin.His eyes never strayed from my face as those words clashed into mind.She stole faerie power and has been giving bits of it to humans for centuries, tinkering with the weakest ones and experimenting on the strongest ones. To try to create her own race of beings.
“The bascite she gives us doesn’t come from the mountaintop?” I murmured, touching the ridges of my brand. “It’s… shestoleit from beyond the dome?”
Garvis, this time, nodded slowly.And the pirates aren’t some random seamen waiting to pounce on unwanted offerings each year. They’re faeries trying to reclaim what was taken from them so long ago. The magic in their blood.
But…I tilted my head as Willa nestled into my neck.But they’refaeries. Don’t they have enough power to take down the dome with the snap of a finger?
Even as I said it, though, I suspected I knew the answer. However she’d done it, Dyonisia had stolen so much power from the faeries that they’d become weak without it. Why else would they be desperate to take back the metal that had once surged in their veins?
I wiggled my toes, as if to shake free the blood pooling there.
It made sense now, what my raw power was. Bascite. It came from bascite, just like my Wild Whispering magic did. But it was natural rather than given, born with me rather than stamped onto me. And it was too undeveloped to take its own form as of yet.
But the Wild Whispering one… it was a stolen form of magic from some other, older faerie who… who wanted it back.
“Oh, God.”
I suddenly wanted to rip it out of me, this ability to communicate with plants and animals—even if I’d miss talking to Willa and Jagaros without it. It didn’t belong in my veins, beneath my skin, coursing around and between my bones. I ran a thumb across my brand again, feeling the crests and dips of the scarred skin.
“How long?” I whispered as Coen crept closer, softly nudging Garvis aside and angling his face to meet mine. “How long until our own powers develop?”
So that I can use mine to murder Dyonisia Reeve.
But Coen shook his head, his frown mere inches above mine now.
They won’t, Rayna. As long as we’re taking those pills, our powers should stay stagnant. A faerie reaching full maturity is quite the spectacle, so we can’t let ourselves do so while we’re in this dome.
I dropped my thumb from my brand. Dread swamped me.
If I let my power mature, Dyonisia would stifle it long before it would reach its full strength. But if Ididn’tlet my power mature, if I just kept on taking these pills and smothering it like water on a flame, I’d never be strong enough to defeat her.
Which meant I was trapped here as surely as a cockroach in a jar.
CHAPTER
41
“No more secrets,” I told Coen.
We were back in the gemstone-riddled cave, letting the roar of the waterfall drown out every other sound of dawn.
Garvis had left for bed with a muttered goodnight and a concerned pinch of his brows, and I’d walked Willa back to the house to ensure none of the owls got to her. ButIwasn’t about to go to sleep until I had all the answers.
