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She walked off, whistling a tune. She meant well, that much I knew. She probably thought her little history lesson would make me feel better or hopeful or more empowered. Something.
Instead, it made me feel worse.
Great.
Not only was I a disappointment to myself, but I was a blot on the entire family ancestry.
Just fucking perfect.
Chapter Fifteen
You come from a long line of fairy warriors.
Maeve’s words had stayed with me through a few tough days of classes where I struggled to keep up with my classmates who seemed to have no trouble with what the instructors asked of them. Memorization was second nature to them, whereas even with Bain’s help, I failed more often than I succeeded.
And unless I was greatly mistaken, I was called on more often than anyone else in any of my classes. And I did my best, but my best wasn’t good enough. For me. My instructors were encouraging, and, when I forgot what I needed to recite in the first sentence or the tenth or the fiftieth, they never chastised me, just told me to keep trying. My classmates, however, were less kind, and their snickers haunted my dreams.
Finally, although my time was better spent with the endless memorizing, I decided to find out about this line of fairy warriors I came from. It fit in with my wondering about what family I might have on the other side of the veil. Was my grandma over there wondering why she’d never seen my face? Did she know we weren’t allowed to cross?
Possibly there were no relatives over there, but since I’d learned that I wasn’t just some sort of generic American but a fairy, I hungered to know what that meant. To me. I’d seen enough variety in the types of fae in class and out to know it meant something different to each. My research so far had shown me the hundreds or more kinds of fairies known to the writers, and I had to be a kind, right? A brownie or wood nymph? A dragon fae? Was my family connected to one of the courts? Every culture on Earth, so far as I could tell, had fairy legends, but they still didn’t think we were real?
Until I learned I was a fairy, I hadn’t thoughtwewere real. So I probably shouldn’t judge others, but I did. Since fairies had gone from “them” to “us.” I’d run across some family trees in the library, so as soon as I found an opportunity to slip away, I headed for that bastion of history where I hoped Ciara would be able to help me find information.
She wasn’t at her desk when I arrived, so I started my search on my own, recalling that I’d located the family lines in way back in the stacks when I’d been killing time one afternoon. And sure enough, there they were, row upon row of leather-bound books with family names in elaborate scrollwork on the spines. It occurred to me that perhaps every student in the school might be able to learn all about their ancestors here. That was if they hadn’t memorized them already back to the time when Noah was interviewing animal couples for the voyage. And knowing my classmates—and the instructors—it seemed likely they had.
The books weren’t in alphabetical order, and there were a lot of them, but I didn’t mind. Since they were all right here on the shelves, I could come back another time or many times and read up on my friends’ families, but for now I needed to find mine. I climbed the ladder that hung from the top of each row, pulling myself along and searching for the file marked with my family name. Windsor. But it wasn’t there. I climbed up and down, checked again and then a third time. I pulled Alara’s family file and opened it. It showed her parents and grandparents and so on. Then I grabbed another classmate’s and another…as far as I could tell, they were all here. All but mine.
“What are you looking for?” Ciara stood at the base of the ladder, looking up. “Can I help you?”
“I can’t find my family information. Maeve said I come from warriors, and I wanted to see who they were, but…”
“But it’s not there.”
I came slowly down the ladder. “And you know that why?”
Ciara gave me a serious look. “Because I’m the librarian and know everything that’s in this space.” She moved toward her desk. “Everything.”
“Okay.” I followed her. “Am I the only student whose family isn’t there?”
“No. Can you hand me that book?” She waved at a thick volume someone had left behind on a table. “Sometimes students can be so thoughtless.”
“Here.” I picked it up and passed it over. “I suppose, but on our original topic, can you tell me why my book isn’t here? Is it because my parents turned their back on their lineage?” That made so much sense. “It wasn’t”—I dropped my voice low even though nobody else was near— “burned or something?”
She blinked at me. “Who would do such a thing? Of course not.” Scanning the spine of the misplaced book, she muttered under her breath and carried it to a shelf where she replaced it. “That’s better. Now I can breathe easy.”
“Ciara?” I waited until I had her attention. “Then where is it?”
“Oh, in Titania’s office.” She spun in a circle and then was off to organize some magazines scattered on a desk. “But she’s not going to show it to you.”
What? Why?
Chapter Sixteen
“This guy has taken a serious page out of the eighties movie playbook. I mean seriously, he’s too many things.”
Alara was perched on the ledge of the window. The last time I looked at her, she had her eyes closed and was repeating the same verses over and over again. There was a poem, some fairy history, wrapped up in a verse like a song that she couldn’t quite get the hang of. She had to say the entire thing in front of the class and was looking forward to it like people looked forward to a hangnail.
“What?” I asked, half-ass paying attention to her. I tried to tune her out for the most part since her fairy verses being chanted out loud were disrupting my own studying.
