I have syphilis.
I barely stopped myself from laughing aloud at my joke.
As far as I was concerned, he didn’t deserve anyone’s respect.
First, he was a man.
Second, he’d taken me from the fae realm as a child and beaten Sadie into her powers as he masqueraded as a beta shifter. He’d stood beside me in a gladiator arena when I’d consumed my mother’s beating heart. He’d spread angel wings wide in the beast realm and represented the gods in the Legionnaire Games.
Dick was always there when our lives hit rock bottom.
His nostrils flared as he enunciated each syllable. “The reason we’ve been lecturing you continuously—”
He paused.
I drew another dead stick figure on my palm.
“—the Official Peace Accords, otherwise known as the OPA, doesn’t just ban the involvement of gods in war as you’ve been told.”
Déjà vu skittered down my scarred spine.
A lifetime ago, I’d learned about the OPA in the fae palace, but the memory was sand, and it dripped through my fingers.
Dick’s eyes flashed. “The OPA also bans the involvement of the High Court in any battles or strategy.”
I drew another dead figure.
So we were alone? Nice.
Dick inhaled deeply. “The OPA also bans the realms within the High Court from establishing an independent militia of greater than one hundred soldiers.”
The room was dead silent.
There would be no sprawling army fighting against the ungodly, just one hundred people versus a planet of parasitic monsters.
We were doomed.
Dick seemed to grow taller as he said, “The OPA were enacted as an ignorant reaction to the last major war.” He flung his arms wide, and the movement was startlingly violent compared to his usual stillness. “Just because there were some—unexpected casualties in the previous war led by the High Court, everyone panicked. Cowards.”
What?
I couldn’t breathe.
One. Hundred.
I honored those who’d panicked in the past by panicking in the present.
Dick’s face flushed and twisted with disgust as he continued, “The High Court needed a scapegoat in the last war, so they blamed the god who saved them and the soldiers who died for them. They enacted the OPA as a cowardly way to restore faith in governance and absolve themselves of guilt in future wars. The High Court and gods bound themselves with enchantments that cannot be broken.”
Only one hundred soldiers, repeated in my head.
“Now the time has come for that future war, and you must pay the consequences of past failures.” He didn’t sound apologetic. “We kept this from you, so you would focus on our lessons and not panic about the task ahead.”
What a great plan—save the upsetting information for three seconds before a war starts.
Why was he looking at me?
Why was he pointing at me?
Click. I stabbed the pen into my hand and made a hole in the forehead of the stick figure.
He said, “We have given you every tool we can to help you, but victory is up to you—study everything you’ve learned over the next week and prepare to adapt.” He nodded. “The angel scouting party is identifying the location of the first settlement. When it is time for battle, you will be notified—good luck.”
He stalked out of the room, and the cloaked man followed.
The door slammed shut behind them.
Fugue was too mild a word to describe what came next.
Paranoia devoured me.
John threw his arm around my shoulder, and Sadie sleepily leaned against my side as we left the strategy room. The kings followed behind me like unwanted shadows or looming specters of death.
Physically, I went with the group to the cafeteria, but mentally, I disappeared.
I’d learned about the peace accords before, and it was imperative that I remembered. So I threw myself into the dark recesses of memory.
I dove into my mind.
We left the cafeteria.
Time warped.
I blinked.
I sat on the floor of our tiny new shower, arms wrapped around my legs as the frigid water kept me focused on my task.
Someone banged on the bathroom door and told me to hurry up.
I didn’t respond.
On the outside, icy drops pelted skin.
Inside my mind’s eye, I reconstructed the fae library stacks spine by spine, and I rebuilt the towering mental shelves I’d once lived within.
It was painstaking work.
The first lesson a fae tutor had ever taught me was how to create a memory palace. Knowledge was useless if it had nowhere to go.
Step one: meditate.