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“My magic.” Another nod, but this time he gestured to himself.
“And yours?” Again, a nod. “Because your kind can heal faster. Your kind.” The phrase stuck to my tongue like glue as I tried to work my way around it, tried to make the confusing shards of glass stick together.
A Catalyst who is not a Catalyst. A mother and son who are trapped by a Queen. One with her tongue cut out, the other not allowed to speak.
“Adain, your mother, is she the reason you cannot leave?” I had a feeling she was the ‘she’ he wrote about in his primer.
There was a pause as he shifted, a soft click of yes whispering from behind the shroud, the sound almost like a sob.
“Will Mother hurt her if you leave with me?” A nod. “If you step out of line?” Another nod, that same soft sob coming again.
I grabbed his hand without thinking, my fingers tight around his as I lifted our hands, wishing I could touch his face, that I could press my hand against his cheek. Against the scars.
I froze, fingers fluttering against the air as all those pieces of glass clicked together. He stiffened, knowing what I was about to say.
“Your kind.” I repeated the word, that lead weight against my chest coming back as those scars that wound from his ears to his neck made sense. “You’re Fae.”
The vile word was a heavy thud against my chest as I watched him. It was only he and I in the carriage, the rest of the world sucked away as his head bobbed.
‘Yes.’
He was Fae.
I should have been scared. I should have been terrified. I had been told all my life how wicked and vile the Fae were, how much they had taken from our people, how they had stolen our magic. We had hunted them, killed them, a Goddess at our side as we exterminated the wicked monsters in the divine black war. But the Boy was not a monster. The boy had never been a monster. He hadn’t hurt me, he had protected me, trained me. He had always been there.
“You’re Fae.” The word didn’t burn as much to say that time. “But you aren’t a monster.”
He shook his head without hesitation that time, the hood shifting and again I could have sworn I saw him, saw his neck, saw those scars that dragged down the edges of his ear.
My body gave a lurch from throat to knees.
“Those scars. Your ears…” He shifted and scooted back, but I stared at him, my face heating. “Did my mother do that?”
Again, a nod, slow and steady as each bob dropped another rock into my gut.
Batian’s mention of Fae blood on the ledge. The hair that they used with the accolades. I had been told they were extinct, killed off in the Black Wars. It was another lie.
Here he was, and he wasn’t the only one.
“Are you…” I hesitated, not sure how to phrase this. “You said you don’t serve her. Are you trapped?” As trapped as I was. He placed one hand over a wrist and then the other, repeating the motions as my eyes widened.
Not trapped.
“Prisoners.” I nearly choked on the word and he nodded. I couldn’t breathe past the knot in my throat, past that heat that was becoming violent. He was only a child when he was brought to me. He was just a boy.
“Is that why you don’t talk to me?” I whispered, his hands reaching to grasp mine as he nodded, his fingers right against my own. The pressure of his touch, his longing, he was almost more than words. I didn’t even need to see him nod.
I knew. It wasn’t some old law. It wasn’t to keep me safe. We were both trapped, prisoners of a Queen with a heart as cold as the ice she wielded. She put us together, not for my protection, but to keep an eye on us. To lock us both away.
“Why would my mother have two Fae prisoners?” Why would she do anything she did? Why would she keep my father’s Catalyst from him and lock him in his rooms? Why would she lock me away because my Catalyst was dead even if she herself did not have one? Why would she tell me I would die without a Catalyst when hers was a ploy. She had always been wicked to me, but her nasty words and snarling expressions were nothing compared to this, to hurting and imprisoning a child.
“Has she done worse than this?” There wasn’t any hesitation before he nodded his head. “You can’t tell me what?” A shake and a click of ‘no’.
So many pieces had snapped together, but there were so many more, so many other questions that I couldn’t get answered with a nod of the head.
The Boy sat still, the inkiness of him swallowed into the shadows of the coach as the last of the sunlight left. We sat there with our hands entwined, staring at each other as the sounds of tents being erected and the aroma of food being cooked whispered through the camp.
“We need to escape,” I whispered, my voice low as I leaned in, his hands tensing against my own. “We can’t stay here with her.”
