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When the transformation was complete, it wasn’t Gileon standing before me at all, but a Good Council elite I’d never seen before.
An elite who bent in front of me and hissed out words that sent a cloud of rancid breath straight into my face.
“Do you know how awful it was to take the shape of that goon for so long? To listen to all of you squabbling and scheming and having to play dumb the whole time?” He screwed up his face. “Nuisance. I miss Nuisance. Wahhh.” His nose wrinkled. “The one good thing is that your boyfriend assigned that skulking bitch and me the task of picking out every potential rebel right here at the Esholian Institute. So now I have a list of names to give to the Good Council.”
The horror in my gut twisted and yanked, shredding my insides.
Gileon hadn’t betrayed us after all. A Shape Shifter had been among us this entire time, impersonating him, listening to all of our plans, feeding information back to the Good Council. Waiting and lurking until the right moment to attack.
Rage blackened my vision for a completely different reason, though.
“Where. Is. Gileon?” I whispered. They could beat me and kill me all they wanted, but I could not allow them to hurt somebody else I loved.
The elite’s mouth merely smiled knowingly.
And from the shreds heaped up inside me, a monster burst out.
“WHERE IS HE?”
My Mind Manipulating skewered his brain long enough to make absolutely certain he wasn’t my friend. That he’d truly been an imposter with both Shape Shifting and Wild Whispering magic this whole time, attending classes with us, dining with us, going to the Uninhabitable Zone with us.
The forefront of his mind showed me an imitation of Gileon’s soft, padded walls, but when I kicked it down, it was all bubbling magma and ash beyond. Definitely not a maze that belonged to my gentle, kind-hearted friend.
Another Mind Manipulator must have built a replica of Gileon’s mind around this fraud to disguise him as thoroughly as possible.
My Object Summoning hands did the rest before I could even think about it. Snatched one of my knives, spit it into the air, and sliced.
A thump echoed up and down Bascite Boulevard as Gileon’s impersonator fell to the ground with eyes as blank as the corpses from Wasteon, blood gurgling from the slit I’d just drawn across his throat.
And the world seemed to rupture.
Screams gashed the air. Mrs. Smetlar wailed with a purpling face and finger pointed at my heart. The other elites converged on me, and I had just enough time to take in one last glimpse of all the faces I loved.
Emelle. Lander. Rodhi. Wren. Cilia and Mitzi. Norman and Pierson. Even Quinn and Wilder. All of them wide-eyed. All of them shouting. Reaching for me.
Glancing up at a certain familiar window in the mansion I’d called home for the past three years, I saw Felicity’s face pressed against the pane and shook my head.
No, don’t come out. I forbid it, I commanded both her and Willa.
It was the last bit of magic I used before all the elites sent their powers crashing into me from every direction at once.
And darkness bludgeoned me in the head.
CHAPTER
46
COEN
A blotchy patch of light made me blink from up ahead.
Sunrise.
I’d spent the last several hours vomiting over the edge of the palace balcony. Queen Mydusia had left immediately after voicing her newest command, and now those words were the only thing left in my stomach.
“Kill your little girlfriend, Rayna Drey Reeve,” she’d said triumphantly, and specified after a beat, “the next time you see her.” Then, as if to punch another hole through me, she’d turned back one more time. “Oh, and don’t break up with her just so you can avoid these orders, General. She is your girlfriend. Her name is Rayna Drey Reeve. And she will die the next time you lay eyes on her pretty face.”
I gripped the balcony railing like a lifeline, hating that Mydusia had stitched up every possible loophole. If she’d just said Rayna Drey, the command would have been void. A name was a powerful part of someone’s identity in the faerie world, after all, and Rayna was more than just Fabian’s daughter.
