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He looked up and pursed his lips in mock thought, clearly pleased with his high position. “Or something.”

My eyes widened and darted to something at his other side, and when he instinctively looked in that direction, I stuck my leg out, bringing him crashing to the floor.

He recovered quickly but the damage to his ego had been done, his cheeks burning red as a few guards stifled laughs. “Dammit, Marlowe,” he whispered. “It’s hard enough getting these fae to respect you when you’re a quarter their age…”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “Maybe you should look where you’re going, then. Or maybe if you wanted to look cool in front of your friends, you shouldn’t have dragged me here. Because I’m going to make it my personal mission to embarrass and undermine you whenever I can.”

He led me down a set of stairs and laughed, wrapping his arm my neck and bringing my head into his chest to give me a noogie. “Ah, I missed you.”

I almost smiled, and then the context of our reunion came crashing right back into me.

I hated this so much. Ezra had always been my best friend, but this situation, what he had done to me—it was beyond fucked up. And yet he could make it so easy to fall back into our twin sibling rhythm. The teasing, the joking, the pranks.

I couldn’t let him lull me into complacency, keep me off guard. It would be difficult, but if I didn’t constantly maintain an active resistance, I might fall right into his trap.

The training gym was on the first floor at the back of the castle, and was mostly empty aside from a few overachievers, still going at it and looking like they were about to collapse from fatigue.

They had to be the same sort of fae like the king. They were all tall and lean, with well-defined muscles and not a strand of body hair. Their skin tones ranged from human to otherworldly, and with their pointed ears and elongated canines, they appeared even more feralthan shifters did in their human forms.

Ezra huffed his annoyance at their presence. “After dinner they’re supposed to rest,” he explained before telling the stragglers to leave.

They stopped immediately, passing by us and breathing in just a little too deeply when they got close. Ezra watched them carefully, and once the room was empty, he brought me to the center of one of the rings.

I rubbed my toe in the dirt, kicking up a little cloud. “Last time I was in one of these it didn’t end so well.”

Ezra snorted. “I disagree. Last time you were in one of these, you showed me you were ready to cross the veil.”

“Exactly,” I sighed bitterly, stretching my arms behind my back. “Alright, teach me what I need to know so I can kill you all and go home.”

He approached me and adjusted my stance, knocking my feet apart and pushing my shoulders back. “Your posture sucks, but fine. Let’s first think about shifting. How do you call forth your wolf?”

My poor wolf, I hadn’t let her out in a long time. It would have been too dangerous in San Francisco or Chicago, and then as soon as I’d returned to Maiingan Hollow, everything had gone to shit. I wondered if, when this training was over, Ezra would let me release her for a bit.

I closed my eyes and touched base with her. She was anxious since our pack was far away. “I imagine a large, fenced-in pasture where she lives. And when it’s time for her to come out, I simply open the gate and let her through.”

“Good,” Ezra replied. “You can learn to use your Aetherium in a similar manner.”

“Aetherium?”

“The magic, it’s a substance in every living thing in Vespera. You need to have a certain amount in your body before you can do things like shift or shoot icicles.”

“Oh right,” I replied. “Archer found that, he called it Luminis.”

Ezra cocked an eyebrow. “Luminis? Huh, I think I like that name better than Aetherium. Well, in any case, all fae have it in their systems, some more than others, and how we’re able to channel and wield it depends on our genetics and fae type.”

“Starborne and Verdanshade?” I asked.

My brother grinned. “Well, it looks like the omegas taught yousomething. But do you know what makes us so special?”

“Besides the stupid prophecy?” I asked, crossing my arms.

Ezra produced a small, glowing orb of light in the palm of his hand, and began rolling it back and forth over his skin, up his arms and across his shoulders. “Verdanshade magic is physical—they can manipulate the world around them. Their bodies, drawing a rock from the ground or water from a river, connecting to animals… anything that already has substance and is close by. Starborne magic is more abstract. They can summon elements from nowhere, wield light and shadows, induce pain or euphoria, influence minds to do their bidding…”

The ball of light in his hands separated into two figures, male and female. “We’re special because we’re both.”

My breath caught in my chest as I watched the little people made of light demonstrate their abilities—fighting, shifting, wielding…

“What do you mean? How can we be both?” I asked quietly.