assaulted me. The desire to pluck them off and toss them back at him was strong, but I tamed the urge.
Patience wasn’t one of my virtues, but I couldn’t afford to ruin my gajoï, so patient I would become. I simply hoped it wouldn’t take Iba too long to uncover what had become of his bastard brother.
8
The Leaf Portal
When digestives and dessert were served, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
“Did you eat Glade kelp again? That stuff gives me the runs every time,” Sook said between mouthfuls of coconut pudding and spice cake.
Giya elbowed him, but I grinned. “You know me and my love for kelp.” I hated the stuff with a passion. It was slimy and bland, and according to Aylen, prodigious for weight loss. “I’ll be right back.”
Several sets of eyes tracked my progress around the table, but it was Nima’s I felt most intensely.
Please don’t follow me. Please don’t follow me.
When she pressed away from the table, I beelined toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Has Neenee Cass commed you yet?”
Nima frowned.
“Didn’t she have a date with that old actor who won an Oscar?”
“Old?” Iba pinched my waist. “He’s younger than yours truly.”
“Ancient, then,” I shot back.
He pinched me again, and I giggled. He smiled, and it shooed away some of the worry lines around his mouth and eyes.
I squeezed Nima’s shoulder. “Why don’t you comm her up? I’m dying to know how it went.”
She regarded me with that deep, dark stare of hers. The same she’d used on me when I was younger and she was trying to decipher if I’d had a good day in school. More often than not, my days weren’t good. Especially after Remo warned the Seelie students that a drop of my blood could turn them into a pile of ashes. Giya, ever the righteous fae, had tried to dismantle the rumor. When that hadn’t worked, she’d told Nima, who’d come to school with my father to demonstrate that Remo’s claim was false. An assembly had been called in the calimbor’s gymnasium. Surrounded by the entire student body, my parents had cut their hands and pressed them together. Although it had veined Iba’s arm a little gray, the Unseelie magic in Nima’s blood had eventually receded and his skin had turned nice and golden again.
I crouched and whispered, “I promise I’m okay. Just period cramps.”
“Do you need some medicine? I must have some in here.” She swiped through her Infinity.
“Nima.”
She kept swiping. Had she uploaded an entire pharmacy into her band? Probably. Even though she’d never become a human doctor, she had become a skilled fae healer.
The words: 20 mg of Drosaniol, appeared on my Infinity.
“Take it. It’ll help.”
A long press on the medication’s name released it straight into my bloodstream. “I feel better already.”
No medication worked that fast, so of course my comment made Nima tilt her head to the side. “You’ll tell me the truth later, right?”
A faerie lie detector, that’s what my mother was. “Right.” I kissed her cheek, then returned to the dim space beneath the pavilion—again, guard-free.
I considered dusting my face to hide my identity, but what if I brought out Karsyn’s wita instead of my own and asphyxiated myself with it? That wasn’t possible, was it? If I stayed low to the ground, no wandering fae or lucionaga would notice a figure cloaked in black snaking through the tall stalks of adamans. I’d be like a spy from one of the human movies my cousins and I had watched at the cineplex Iba had created sometime after his coronation. Apparently, no human pastimes had been allowed under my grandfather because they’d been deemed propaganda.
I unhooked the heavy earrings, beamed them back to my bedroom using my Infinity, then threaded myself through the slats and rocketed, belly to the ground, around the slender stalks, the jagged purple petals tinkling overhead.
Guards hovered high above the field, but most were conversing or scanning the humid air instead of looking downward. A hiss had my breath catching. I lurched backward and swore as a mikos darted its ridiculously long forked tongue in my direction.
If I hadn’t been on a covert mission, I would’ve roasted the snake with my fire, but flames would attract attention. So I changed course and flew more carefully around the stalks, on the lookout for other reptiles. Neverrian snakes weren’t venomous, but diles were, and they loved nothing more than thick vegetation.
Thankfully, I encountered neither. Still, my heart pounded, and