reached the traffic light, I pressed my palm against the green bulb. The stamp on my wrist—a rosette—flared, and then my body was sucked through and spit back into Neverra.
2
The Political Match
I emerged from the dark, gelatinous tunnel into the Gorge of Portals located in the heart of Neverra, between the forest of calimbors, trees so thick and tall their crowns seemed to kiss the purple sky, and the Pink Sea that resembled a plum-tinted mirror at night and glistened rose-gold in the light of day.
When red hair began rising from the slender disk under my boots, I dove off and bobbed in the air, waiting for Remo to tell me where the meeting was taking place. Was my father in the calimbor that housed the Duciba, or in the hovering palace he’d built over the Pink Sea from volitor fronds and stone quarried from the Five, the gray cliffs that cinched the Valley of Hunters?
After the Caligo Dias—the Day of Mist—Negongwa’s tribe had finally been invited to settle in Neverra. The Hunters, along with their bodiless Unseelie brethren (most of them had claimed human forms since, but the older ones had chosen to remain specters, unwilling to constrain their spirits to flightless, aging bodies), had chosen to live in the valley.
Giya and her twin brother Sook lived there with their parents, in a palatial stone wigwam. I stayed over whenever I could, not so much because I didn’t like my cottage on the sea, but because my cousins were my best friends.
My only friends.
Remo hopped off the portal, his lucionaga uniform, a black bodysuit made from a coated, laser-proof weave, contorting around his solid frame.
“Where is my father?”
“In the Duciba.” Remo’s tone was as frigid as his expression.
As the three lucionaga popped out of the portal in their golden firefly forms, I flew toward the base of the great tree that had once lodged Neenee Lily’s favorite candy shop. Iba had requisitioned the first five floors of the calimbor after the Woods’ palace had slipped off the mist and shattered into large chunks of pink quartz and clumps of moss-flecked stone.
The remnants of my grandfather Linus’s legacy had been transplanted to the middle of the forest of calimbors and had become a playground for young fae. As a child, I’d spent afternoons hopping from one eroded chunk of quartz to the next with Giya and Sook. We’d pretended prickly mikos and poisonous capras slithered in the mossy space between.
Before the Year of Flight, the year Seelies learned to harness their fire, our game had been particularly fun because I could still fall. Unfortunately, my Year of Flight had come early. Right after I’d turned four, I’d slipped but failed to tumble, levitating instead. My cousins had gaped, then told me I wasn’t allowed to play with them anymore. That night, Nima and Iba called the family together and sat us all down. Our four parents reminded us that we all had different powers, but that deep down, we were all the same—all of us faeries.
Even though Giya and Sook apologized, their ostracism intensified when my parents threw a huge banquet to celebrate my achievement. Iba was particularly proud, because most Seelies learned to fly in their fifth year and had to be taught. I’d picked it up without anyone’s help an entire year early.
It took my cousins several days to come to me and admit they’d been jealous and missed me in the playground. They’d hurt me, but I’d forgiven them because I wasn’t the type to hold grudges. Except toward the Farrows. I held a massive grudge against that family for sullying Nima’s name with their false accusations.
After I landed on the mossy ground, I pushed my curtain of black hair behind my ears and glanced over my shoulder. Sure enough, the recipient of my grudge landed beside me. “Are you going to stalk me the entire way?”
Mouth as tight as his shoulders, he gestured toward the dark entrance at the base of the calimbor. “My orders were to deliver you to your father.”
“I’m not a package.”
His golden eyes narrowed. I tried to remember what color they’d been before he was made a lucionaga but couldn’t. Oh no, wait. Poison green. That was how I’d described them to Giya the afternoon we’d watched Remo and his friends play Floatball, the Seelie version of basketball—the nets were crafted from hovering volitor fronds, but the ball was human-made, and when it fell, it fell fast. The players spent more time