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“And then back to us?”
“Tomorrow night.”
That was plenty of time before Samhain. He rubbed his jaw, thinking about it. Even if the Six failed in convincing Maebh, hopefully, they would still be able to return, knowing whether Aleksandra was alive and their location. Leaf could portal there and take the battle to them. No one would expect it with the taint running rampant.
“Go,” he said. “If I don’t see you by midnight tomorrow, I’ll know something is wrong. We will move on to Plan B.”
“One more thing,” Legion said, his unnerving eyes locking on Leaf. “About your mate.”
He tensed. “What?”
“You must keep her in the shadows if she’s to remain alive.”
“What does that mean?” His eye twitched.
“The Well doesn’t bless Nero. He ages like any human. He steals mana and violates it to his will,” Legion returned.
It was hard for Leaf to keep his patience right now. “We know this already. It’s why he’s mad—he ingests the memories of the creatures he steals from.”
“Nero believes stealing the mana from his daughter staves off madness. But that supply is almost dried up.”
Dread sank in Leaf’s stomach as he recalled something Nova had told him. When her twin gloated about winning a race she knew nothing about, he said he overestimated her usefulness to him. That was the same day Nova had seen his daughter in the car outside her home. It solidified their theory that Rory was the same girl, and Nero had somehow manipulated their way into being frozen and then thawed in this era. He’d sired her to act as a personal mana supply for when his dwindled. And if both of them were out, discovering Nova existed would put her at risk.
“Clarke witnessed Nero drink stolen mana,” Leaf said. “He’s already mad. How can he believe that ingesting his daughter’s will keep him sane?”
“What is more dangerous than a madman?” Fox asked, a twinkle in his eyes.
“Enlighten me.”
“One who believes he is not.”
ChapterThirty-Five
Nova stepped out of the sixth elemental pool in the Order temple and onto a towel. Clarke spoke with two other fae introduced as Preceptress Dawn and Preceptress Colt. Both were intimidating, and Nova preferred to sit back and let them hash out the details of her elemental affinity results.
A rise in hushed conversation turned Nova’s head to them as they discussed whether her results would be trusted because of the taint or if, on the flip side, her results were the only correct readings since the taint began. None of it made sense to Nova. But she was determined to wrap her head around it. She figured the more she learned, the more she could do to help, despite what hermensomate said.
It had been two days since her failed attempt at a dinner party. Two days since she’d given these people an ounce of hope with her mystery gift. But this was the first time anyone had a moment spare to test and train her. She had done her best to be useful while the Order panicked about the impending battle. But there wasn’t much she could do, and the house brownies had seen her attempts to take over cooking as an invasion of their territory. She’d been chased out with a broom earlier this morning.
Everyone ran on fumes and stress. Tempers flared more often than not. If it wasn’t angry fights, it was the nihilistic and promiscuous behavior amongst the Mages and Guardians living on campus. Last night, Nova heard Leaf’s unmistakable bellow at someone he’d caught “wasting time worrying about his cock when he should be worrying about his head.”
She looked past the open temple columns to the sprawling campus far below and listened to water dripping from eaves and rain chains. Tiny culverts of flowing water surrounded the terrace. Behind them, on the opposite side of the main campus, steps led down to a private courtyard.
The sun left an idyllic golden haze on every object as it drifted across the sky. The air smelled fresh and sweet, and the temperature was warm enough that she didn’t need a coat. Glass tiles glimmered on the academy’s dome rooftops in the distance. Despite her brother’s destruction, this world had still found a second chance at flourishing. And here at the Order of the Well, the world had found its champions. Jace—Leaf—had been its first.
This was the perfect place for Nova to be. This community was everything she’d ever dreamed of back in her time. She shouldn’t be impatient while trying to fit in.
But she felt untethered again, floating in a sea of doubt and inadequacy. Leaf had been brutally honest about her being a liability. He was right. Did she have a right to be upset over it? So much was happening. He was busy trying to wrangle an enormous organization falling apart without a leader. He’d barely slept each night because every waking hour was spent preparing for a battle.
“Right,” Clarke said, coming over. “We think we have a handle on your elemental split. It matches our theory about you being an amplifier. You have zero chaos affinity. This could be why you somehow led me to a single pure drop of mana amongst the taint and then magnified it. The Six also didn’t want to use you. They’re almost entirely chaos and draw from the inky side.”
“That’s good, right?” Nova bit her lip and glanced at Colt, who was rubbing her hand over Dawn’s back as though consoling her.
Clarke squeezed Nova’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about them. That has nothing to do with you, so don’t take it on your shoulders. Come on, I’ll walk you to the academy, and Violet will give you a rundown of the theory behind your gift. Colt would do it, but Dawn isn’t in a good place without the Prime. They were close.”
“I didn’t realize the Prime was respected around here. From what Leaf said, she’d hurt many people.”
“She did,” Clarke answered truthfully with a sigh. “But she’s been alive longer than any of us. She’s loved and lost. And lost. And lost. Then she put all her effort into the Order. Maybe if she kept her heart alive somehow, whether with Maebh or someone else, she’d have someone to ground her. Rush is the first person to tell me if I go off the rails. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten through the past ten years away from our daughter without his level head to steer me in the right direction.”
