Page 162 of Under the Iron Sky

Aeris ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. “But what about those who get trapped above? If this is true, how could no one else have discovered it? The humans catch our soldiers all the time. How has there never been an accident where they’ve been caught above without their helmets and not died?”

“Because they never get hostages.” Emelda looked at Soraya. “Isn’t that right? You said that whenever you do catch one of our kind, they always die within a few hours because of what you thought were kill switches built into their helmets?”

Aeris’s head snapped toward Soraya. “What the hell is a kill switch?”

He didn’t know. Soraya had thought this might be too good to be true, but the more she was learning, the harder it was to ignore the possibility that Malakai and Emelda were telling the truth.

Soraya met Emelda’s eyes again. “You weren’t drunk while you were healing me, were you?” she asked, feeling more than a little foolish.

Emelda’s lips pressed into a tight line. She shook her head.

Sighing, Soraya turned back to Aeris. Yes, she’d really fucking underestimated this fairy. “Every hostage we’ve ever taken has always died while they were being transported to the nearest base. It’s always quiet; we often don’t even realize until we arrive and notice the smell and by then it’s too late. When we take the helmets off, there’s nothing left, like someone has …”

“Go on,” Malakai prompted when she trailed off.

Soraya took a breath. “Like someone took hold of their head and squeezed.” Just like Ramapheal could do. Just like she’d seen him do to one of those fairies in this very room before he’d killed Ikarus’s mother.

“We think he’s using the checkpoints,” Emelda explained. “Taking note of who goes in and out each time, and if any soldier doesn’t return from a mission within a few hours—”

Malakai made a squishing motion with his hand.

Aeris shook his head, clearly not convinced. “But how could he do that from a distance? Surely his magic cannot stretch so far as to end people hundreds of miles away.”

Emelda sank onto the chair Malakai had been bound to, twirling the fabric of her skirts. “We haven’t figured out that part yet.”

Aeris pulled his hood up and began pacing the room. Emelda tried twice to catch his eye but he seemed to be purposefully avoiding her gaze. “I don’t understand. That seems like a lot of effort to go to for something so trivial. Why is he so desperate for us not to know the air isn’t poisonous?”

Malakai answered, “He needs us trapped down here so we keep inhaling the vapor, because that’s how we get our magic.”

Aeris skidded to a stop. “That’s not possible.”

Emelda looked up at him with a pleading expression, seemingly relieved that she could finally draw his attention. “I know it sounds crazy, but please listen, it makes sense when you break it down. We’re all born down here so we’ve been inhaling the vapor since birth, but the chances of babies accidentally using magic is ridiculously low—but not toddlers. How many children have you seen lose control of their magic during a tantrum?”

When Aeris didn’t reply, Emelda went on. “That’s why he insists on completing the Rebirth ritual so young, not because he’s sparing us from remembering it, but because he can’t risk us getting old enough to use our magic accidentally and unveiling the lie. He wants us to be loyal to him, to be grateful for the ‘gifts’ he’s given us so we serve him.”

“Then there’s the executions,” Malakai continued. “He always does them in public and encourages people to bring their children—planting the fear of what will happen to us if we do take our helmets off from an early age and then waters it. Shoving it in front of our faces again and again until why would we question it? Why would we even risk going up there without a helmet when we’ve all seen what happens? I mean, come on, how many people have you seen take a sword to their own chest or throat when their helmets have been cracked mid-battle because that’s a quicker, less painful death than what’s about to happen to them? He’s been brainwashing us all into believing that we’re dead without him—that we need him to escape this place. To trap us down here so we keep inhaling this stuff and keep our magic, keep the lie going.”

The shadows around Aeris’s feet crackled. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Emelda reached for him, flinching when he backed away a step. “After what happened to Varena, we didn’t want to drag the two of you into it until we had all the information. She only knew the air wasn’t poisonous—but she wasn’t sure why Ramapheal had lied about it. We created Ma’varea to avenge her, and for the last two years that was all we were doing. We didn’t realize the vapor gave us magic until Soraya.”

Soraya’s spine straightened at this. “Me?”

Malakai nodded faintly. “We figured something was special about you when Ikarus couldn’t get into your mind. Then he showed me and Aeris your memory at the checkpoint, the one where you killed for the first time, and it clicked into place. That Dar’rak punctured your leg when he was climbing on top of you, and by the time the memory had finished you’d healed.”

Soraya blinked at him. All these years, she’d thought she’d imagined that pain. “I healed myself?”

Malakai let out a whistle. “Sure did. You’d only inhaled a tiny amount of vapor, so it’s astounding that your magic manifested like that—we think you might be a little more susceptible to it than most people, given that your gifts presented that early. If the cut had been any bigger, it probably wouldn’t have sealed. But you’d done that way before Ramapheal linked you to Ikarus, so that speech about you ‘channeling’ his magic because of your blood connection is bullshit.”

Soraya pressed a hand to her throat. “That’s why I could keep Ikarus out of my memories right from the start, because I’d already inhaled the vapor in the throne room.” A good amount of it too, given how much she’d been panting. Nausea roiled in her stomach as she remembered those first panicked breaths in this strange world. The cold, burning sting in her nostrils, the spread of it down her throat and into her lungs, like choking down water pulled straight from an icy lake. The same cold as Ikarus’s magic. Of all magic.

“But wouldn’t Ramapheal know this, though?” Soraya asked. “Why would he keep me down here if he knew inhaling the vapor would give me magic?”

Malakai shrugged. “Because he deemed the reward worth the risk? He’s very strict about making sure any human hostages are kept in the palace, are monitored constantly, and disposed of within a few days—which me and Mel now think is to make sure they don’t get the chance to present any gifts. We also think that’s why he made a big show in front of everyone about connecting you two through blood—he was setting the pieces of the lie up, ready for when your magic came through.”

Soraya undid her mission jacket, the leather and heavy armored plates suddenly feeling too tight. “Is that why he’s so powerful then? Because he has been breathing the vapor in for so long?”

He’d had magic before he came to Aleena—the only creature in existence at the time too. Who knew how long he’d been breathing this stuff in.