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“Well, as a faerie with opposable thumbs, I’m sure it’s much easier to read through that book I gave you.” I watched his expression from my peripheral. “You know, the one with the map.”
As I expected, Jagaros reacted with a stiffening of his spine, a slight tightening of his grip on the railing. Another secret, one he probably wouldn’t tell me about.
He surprised me by giving a short, “There is someone I must find after this.” He swept a hand toward the skyline, where Dyonisia’s antipower glimmered far out at sea. “If the dome falls and the island is freed… then I will begin my search.”
His jaw was set in a clench of unmistakable anger. Maybe whoever he had to find had wronged him and he was seeking revenge? I didn’t dare use my Mind Manipulating to pry into his private thoughts he wasn’t ready to share.
Instead, I allowed myself to take him in, his outline as he surveyed what was once his empire. Golden light from the sinking sun reflected off the jewels and shells of his crown.
If—when, I corrected myself—Jagaros took his throne back, he would be leaving the island to look for this mysterious person. Some might think that made him a bad king, but my throat swelled with gratitude at the realization that he could have left the island already. He could have taken the form of a bird and flown straight through the dome until he landed on another continent and resumed a faerie form.
Yet he’d stayed, imprisoning himself here as surely as his people. And he would stay until he was sure we were safe.
Maybe, one day, he’d even come back.
Kanuk cleared his throat beside me, nudging me. “Speaking of falling domes… how is your vitlah’s plan going? Sorry, I don’t know the word for whatever Coen Steeler is to you. And he only comes here to update us every two weeks.”
A blush burned into my face. I cleared my own throat, trying to swallow the heat.
“Phase one is complete.” Emelle and Lander had successfully planted relics of the Uninhabitable Zone all over the island, getting the villagers to wonder, to whisper, to wish. “Phase two is underway.” According to Coen, Dazmine and Terrin had completed their mission in Gildenleaf and Yellowseek, although I didn’t have any details about their work yet. “And phase three…”
My gaze caught on the sinking sun again. A sickening pit dropped in my stomach as I thought about what Coen was about to do with Sasha and Sylvie’s help.
They were planning to begin at sunset.
Beside me, Jagaros’s canines ground against his lower teeth. I knew he wanted to help Coen, wanted to be there right now just as much as I did. But it was more risky for my face to be seen in a village when I should be at the Esholian Institute right now, and as for Jagaros himself?
I made an oath a long time ago that I would not interfere in the Good Council’s projects, he’d told me last year. After training with him every weekend, I’d siphoned enough information out of him to understand it a little more.
He could not kill a Good Council elite just as surely as Coen had to kill an elite every day. The oath tattooed around his neck wouldn’t allow it.
For better or for worse, Coen had to do this without us.
“Phase three,” I finally told Kanuk, “should be starting now.”
CHAPTER
36
COEN
The village of Gildenleaf wallowed in golden light.
With the sea to our backs and the gentle roll of fog-laced jungle in the distance, it might have been a beautiful sight if it weren’t for all the stains of a past attack from Dyonisia’s monsters: boarded-up windows, whole chunks of buildings missing like empty eye sockets, rubble in the streets.
And despite it all, a row of elites stationed alongside the main cobblestone path that cut through the town.
I’d never seen so many at once before. Growing up in Hallow’s Perch, there had always been a few who patrolled the village, but never several dozen lined up outside shops and houses, stopping every surviving villager who passed.
“You there! Wait a moment!”
The nearest elite’s voice reached Sasha, Sylvie, and me from where we crouched in a grove of trumpet trees on the edge of the village, masks plastered to our faces and weapons in our grip. He hadn’t spotted us, though.
As we watched, he yanked on a villager’s arm and sent wind whistling around her, tugging her pockets inside out so forcefully that all her belongings fell onto the cobblestone. She nearly fell, too, stumbling forward.
My knuckles ached to smash right into the elite’s face.
Coins. They were looking for the coins Emelle and Lander had planted. Last week, when Terrin had sent a smoke signal into the sky, I’d located him and Dazmine and received an update on the status of the villages: the Good Council was hunting anyone in possession of relics from the Uninhabitable Zone and publicly whipping or “exiling” anyone who mentioned Jagaros’s name. Or the faeries of old. Or the fact that Dyonisia may have conquered the island rather than discovered it already vacant.
