Mamá spat into the flames and my eyes darted to the path as a pitchy scream sounded beyond the blazing fire that blocked us from view. Alejandro grabbed Mamá’s arm and the two of them ran, tearing past me and nearly knocking me over as they made their escape before they were spotted.
I stood in shock, trying to gather my wits as more and more students poured out of The Orb and I circled around to join them, hugging the shadows so I wouldn’t be seen.
My mouth was too dry and the scent of death hung everywhere as I pushed into the crowd and melded with the panicked students.
“Move aside!” Professor Orion’s voice carried above them and he came barrelling through the crowd with Darcy and Tory on his heels. Darcy’s hair had been sheared off and Tory’s eyes were alight with some horror, making my gut tighten. What had happened to them?
“Who is it?” a boy muttered beyond me.
“Do you think it was a Nymph?” another girl whispered and panic rose in me like an oncoming storm.
I had to throw them off, I had to make them think it was something else.
“What the hell is that?” Darcy whispered in fear as she squinted at the raging flames.
“I’ve only ever seen Dragon Fire burn like that,” I said loud enough for my voice to carry, latching onto what Astrum had told the twins and casting shade on Darius in the hopes that no suspicion would fall on me or my kind. Because I knew a terrible fate awaited me if I gave my family away, and maybe my uncle was right. Maybe I was a coward.
I could feel Diego’s panic wrapping around me from that night and I didn’t know what to think as I was cast forward into the future. I started to see moments blurring together, Diego letting the Nymphs onto campus the day they’d attacked at the Pitball pitch, him tossing the vile of knotroot out the window into the bushes at the base of Aer Tower to hide it from the FIB raids, his anger as Orion had broken the box gifted to him by his grandmother, his embarrassment as Orion had exposed his secret crush on Sofia to the agents around him. I saw the night he let his uncle onto campus and I fought with him in the astronomy tower, but I also saw Diego willing me to kill the man who’d tormented him, praying I was strong enough to destroy him.
And then I was thrown into another memory of Alejandro choking him in the woods at the edge of campus, his vision going dark as his uncle demanded he work harder to deliver me and my sister to him. I could feel Diego’s fear tearing up the inside of me and his absolute longing to shed himself of his family, his Nymph form, and be Fae like his friends, like us. The people he was truly starting to love and care for in ways that he had never felt for anyone.
Then I was in Diego’s room, watching as he pulled his hat off, leaving it on the desk as he tugged down his sleeves to cover bruises his uncle had left on him, and the next minute I was in the woods with him, his hand taking hold of mine as he we headed to the Fairy Fair together. Without his hat, the shadows slithered deeper beneath his flesh and the Shadow Princess purred evil commands in his ear. He found it easier to be colder, to draw me in and try to get closer to me as his uncle had asked. It was why he’d kissed me, why he’d tried to flirt with me, but all the while he’d been hurting over Sofia dating Tyler, knowing she would never choose him instead. And he believed in his soul it was because he wasn’t Fae.
The shadows had burrowed deep within him during the Fairy Fair and he’d almost lost his mind to them, the Shadow Princess calling to his soul and filling him with rage against Fae kind. It was the reason he’d snapped at me, called me a whore. He’d let his mind sink so deep into the shadows that it had nearly consumed him whole. And the moment he pulled it back on later that night, I felt his remorse, his pain. And I felt the beating he’d taken from Alejandro for failing him once more too.
I suddenly crashed into another memory on the night of The Reckoning, looking up at the stars through Diego’s eyes with terror making his bones quake.
A glimmering number three hung above my head, a mark of how poorly I’d done so far, but now The Reckoning would be the final deciding factor and I was certain I was about to be either sent home for good or exposed by the stars for what I was.
I glanced over at the Vegas, guilt eating me up over how I’d behaved at the Fairy Fair, sure I’d ruined our friendship, though I didn’t know why I even cared. I’d tried to hurt them last night, tried to do what Alejandro had demanded of me and bring them to him at last. But even while embracing the shadows, I’d failed. And now I felt the weight of what I was becoming like my heart was turning black within my chest. I was growing sick of this game and I was so tired of being a traitor to the girls I’d come to really care about. But what kind of friend was I? They’d hate me if they knew the truth. And now it had all come to nothing, because I couldn’t lie to the stars. They’d see me for what I was – if they’d even bother to judge me at all.