“So this comes next,” Kallie whispered. “Then your tunnel of light, then the phoenix, then the school’s on fire. What happens after that?”
“It just gets more complicated,” I said, flipping through the pages. “There’s a drawing of another ship, like the ones Charlie and I found on the shores of Kinpago— and a page of actual blood.”
“Really?” Kallie grabbed the journal from me and scanned the journal. On the pages were blood droplets streaked across the page, like someone had purposefully bled upon it.
“Yep. Gross, right?” I asked. “Then there’s this twisted drawing of a face, one that’s half-man, half-woman, and some sort of crystal cave, and— get this— the Institute symbol on the last page.”
I turned to the final page, where there was a depiction of the Institute logo— a twisted flying snake with wings, wrapped around a key. That symbol was everywhere, carved into stone pillars all around the Institute, and on our uniforms. I saw it every day. “The rest of the journal is just filled with things like Elven symbols. It’s not helpful.”
“So we have to be in the right place to find keys,” Kallie said. “Though it’s all really vague. Are yousureyour aunt knew what she was doing?”
“Most of this handwriting isn’t hers,” I said. “There are at least two other versions of script in this journal.”
“Which means someone must’ve worked on it with her,” Kallie said. “Maybe they wrote stuff down when she was having visions.”
“Possibly, but who was helping her?” Who would my aunt have trusted with this kind of information? The mysterious handwriting in the journal wasn’t the scrawling of anyone I knew, that was for sure. I knew my Uncle Drew’s handwriting, and this wasn’t it. My aunt hadn’t asked her husband to help with this.
“None of this makes any sense. It’s just a scramble of clues,” Kallie said.
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “That’s why it’s so hard to make out. I’ve tried and tried, and I’m getting nowhere. That’s why I stopped reading it.”
A rattling sound came from my desk. Oberi cocked his head, and his ears perked up. I opened the desk drawer and found the blue egg I’d stolen from Contraband inside. My eyes widened. I’d taken that egg almost a year ago, and it’d never moved. I thought it was some sort of jewel, or a fossil, but as the egg shook back and forth, I realized there was a creature inside.
“Holy ancestors,” I breathed. I grabbed the egg and set it on the bed. It was warm to the touch, and there was a thin crack in the blue lining of the shell. “It’s hatching.”
“Let me hold it,” Kallie said. She reached out to grab the egg. Once she sat it in her lap, the egg burst open. From within the egg emerged a fuzzy blue and white creature. It looked like a moth, with a long, thin body, six legs and fuzzy feelers. It had the biggest, most brilliant sapphire eyes and a little mouth that held teeth. The creature could fit in Kallie’s hand. She reached out her fingers, and the moth waddled into Kallie’s open palm, snuggling her thumb and beating her majestic wings. It was undeniably cute.
“Oh my gosh! It’s amalyludwy— a type of faekin!” Kallie gushed. “They’re little creatures that are related to my kind. They’re rare to find outside of Malovia. Sometimes, they bond with faeries who they’re destined to protect.”
“Looks like that one bonded with you,” I marveled. The faekin waspurring, making loving sounds as it danced on Kallie’s hand.
“You think so?” Kallie’s eyes grew alight with wonder as the fuzzy moth took to the air. “They like to rearrange furniture and play pranks on their caretakers. If a fae bonds with one, the faekin will defend them with their life. They can be really powerful.”
“Well, she needs a name,” I said. “What are you going to call her?”
“I think I like the name Alette,” Kallie said. “It’s very faerie-like.”
“Alette it is.” I cleaned up the remnants of the shell. “You’re going to have to hide her. If the guards see you with her, she’ll get taken away.”
Other races at the prison weren’t allowed to have animals like Elementai and witches were, and Alette was just too cool to give up.
Alette fluttered around the room and landed on Oberi’s nose. She beat her wings once or twice, giving Oberi a mask with her wings. Oberi sneezed, and Alette took to the air again, fluttering this way and that.
“Faekin are good at hiding. She’ll remain concealed,” Kallie said.
As if to prove it, Alette fluttered toward Kallie and landed on her shoulder. She crawled behind her neck, hiding behind Kallie’s curtain of blonde hair. Her little feelers poked out, and I giggled.
“I knew stealing that egg was a good thing. Now you have a pet,” I said brightly.
“Yeah, and I think her hatching gave me an idea…” Kallie mused. “You just had a gut feeling when you took Alette’s egg from Contraband, right?”
“Yeah. I felt like we were just meant to have it,” I said.
“That’s intuition. We’ve been talking about it in Hemlock’s class. Do you know how to use it?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t really pay attention,” I confessed. Hemlock had been lecturing on intuition last semester, but since I’d been going through a major bipolar episode at the time, I hadn’t been able to concentrate on what she said.
“Intuition helps a supernatural on their life path, connecting us to our true purpose,” Kallie said. “Intuition can be harnessed to help us discover which path to take or where to go next. Why don’t we use intuition to figure out what we should do next with your prophecy?”
