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W e managed to get to another quadrant before we pitched the tent and slept for the night. My familiar stole food again and the only reason I felt safe sleeping was that Liam’s bears agreed to stay outside our tent because they didn’t like what was outside.

I’d been peacefully sleeping and then I heard a yelp and someone was jostling me. When I rolled over, Lucian was crouched in the corner with red eyes and his fangs bared. Liam was looming over me with his arms crossed. Khalid looked like he was staying out of whatever was happening.

“Stop kicking me in the kidneys!” Lucian hissed.

“Stop snuggling Sage without asking. If she’s not awake to say yes, then it’s no.”

What? I didn’t realize Lucian had done that, but I had slept really well considering everything that was going on. I didn’t even feel all that creeped out that he’d done it again when he wasn’t in a trance.

“I don’t snuggle with anyone. I just don’t. I wouldn’t even cuddle someone if they asked me to. I wouldn’t snuggle Sage without her consent.”

I didn’t know how I felt about that. He looked upset at the idea.

“You did,” Khalid said. “I saw it, too. At some point last night, you got out of your sleeping bag and got next to Sage. When Liam and I woke up, you were spooning her.”

“No, that’s impossible. I don’t do that.”

He might as well have slapped me. Lucian was prickly, and I thought most of the time, he wasn’t trying to be insulting unless he was talking to Liam. He was being insulting now. It was pissing me off because I was the one who should have been upset right now, but Lucian was acting like it was the worst thing that ever happened to him.

And now he was the one who looked like he’d been slapped when he saw how I was looking at him.

“You don’t get it. It’s not you. It’s everyone. When people touch me, it feels like bugs are crawling all over me. I don’t even let my parents hug me because I don’t like it.”

Oh, Lucian. I knew he was lonely just in the brief time I’d known him. He was brilliant and he couldn’t exactly find other smart people to talk to because of his title. I didn’t know he didn’t let anyone touch him, either. No one really touched me, either, growing up. My parents didn’t do that, and they didn’t allow other people to do it.

Liam kicked him in the kidneys again, but he decided to be helpful this time instead of poking him.

“Listen, we’re on a team because we’re supposed to be, but I think you and Sage are exempt from your whole ‘touch aversion’ thing, so if she doesn’t ask you to stop, I won’t kick you in the kidneys if I catch you spooning her again.”

“No one is exempt. I can’t…I don’t even let my mother touch me.”

“It’s okay if you want to touch me,” I said.

Because it was. Lucian sleepwalking to snuggle me didn’t creep me out. It was almost sweet. It seemed to make him very uncomfortable, and I was trying not to let that hurt my feelings. Liam and Khalid could see that, too, so they weren’t pressing.

“I smell food,” Khalid said.

“If your familiar lifted a full Irish, I’m going to woo them,” Liam moaned.

But it wasn’t an animal waiting with food. It was Saffron with a bag and breakfast sandwiches.

“Sorry, when I realized you felt Fae and you said you had diabetes, I felt the need to take care of you. I’m studying to be a healer. The rations will feed you, but these are mostly ingredients our ancestors took from Fairy and they will nourish you.”

“Yeah, well, we had a hangry vampire who couldn’t figure out what he wanted to eat, and he ate all of ours in his sleep,” Liam said, glaring at Lucian.

“Um, no offense, but the reason fairies are wary around vampires were that Vlad’s favorite was fairy blood, and he didn’t care if we didn’t want to give it. There are a lot of underground cults that worship Vlad and think vampires should aspire to live how he did. They are going to come crawling out their basements now that he’s been reincarnated. No one knows what the reincarnations are going to be like, so we could end up with a violent shit that wants to drain fairies again.”

“Lovely,” Lucian muttered. “I have no desire to bite you and even if I did, I wouldn’t unless I had your permission. And violence solves nothing. I could ruin anyone’s life much better with a Wi-Fi connection than with my fists. If weird vampire cults start crawling out of the woodworks trying to make me their leader, I’ll take them down.”

“Tell me about Fairy,” I said.

Saffron just shrugged.

“Fairy is gone. It’s been gone for a while and what happened to it depends on who is telling the story. All anyone really knows is that something went down, and the choice was either leave or die. Our ancestors brought seedlings and animals to this realm and settled here. We’ve been here for a long time.”

“Am I going to get pointed ears like yours?”

“Probably not. Fairy was just as big as this realm and I’m not the only type of fairy. Some of us have pointed ears, some have wings, others can pass for humans, and the rest can’t. There are multiple races of fairy and none of us are related, but we are all kin and we can sense that.”

“Can you sense what kind of fairy I am?”

“No, because you aren’t just a fairy. After we migrated here, we ended up with several gods in various pantheons. Some were fae, and some weren’t. You’re one of those gods. You’re fairy, but more.”

“What kind of fairy are you?” Liam asked.

“I’m Seelie and so was my entire group. You’ll meet other fae out here and just to dispel some rumors, the Unseelie aren’t evil. Seelie are one court and our magic is tied to the sun. The Unseelie magic is tied to the moon. Humans just decided we are at constant war and the Seelie are good fairies and the Unseelie are wicked fairies. None of that is true.”

“Fairy deals?” Liam demanded.

“We do make them, but not how you think. We were strangers in this realm. Some of us are tied to nature, but some of us have household magic. We tried to get jobs and help out and people took advantage of us. Our deals are fair. We get something and you get something. And I swear to the goddess if you say something about babies, I’m going to hit you in the face.”

“Can you hit him, anyway? He has it coming,” Lucian said.

“My nana used to terrify me with stories of the fair folk, but maybe she was just trying to get me to behave.”

“Oh, and the castle is taken care of by fair folk. Brownies to be exact. They are paid a living wage and have a place to live, but they also become malevolent, little shits if they don’t feel appreciated. So, don’t leave your dorm room a pigsty because they are going to pick it up, and leave them a bowl of cream or a piece of cake with honey before you go to bed. They won’t just refuse to do anything for you if you take advantage of them. They will become a menace until they feel like you’ve kissed their ass enough.”

“Noted.”

“I can’t do these trials for you, but I am able to help. The Unseelie took this quadrant. The Seelie helped the witches with the traps on the crystals on the quadrant you were just in. There’s at least one magic user in each quadrant. Some have several. Someone out here is giving off seriously bad vibes, but it’s not constant, so we can’t pinpoint who it is. I think everyone would be willing to help you with everything but the magical traps because you have to earn it, but we also know what we’re feeling might be why there are so many reincarnations on your side of the school.”

“There’s a girl out here that doesn’t give off anything. You can’t smell her and if you have any magical senses, they don’t register with her. Someone beat the shit out of her, but she seems harmless. Could that be what you’re feeling?” Khalid asked.

“Okay, first things first. No one out here is harmless. Just because you’re bigger than someone doesn’t mean you’re going to win that fight. Some of us don’t end fights with our fists. We can do it with magic from across the room. A few Seelie on my team might engage because they like brawling. The arrows were mostly to scare you. If we really wanted to hurt you, we would have used magic. I’m not even training to be a guard. I’m going to college to be a healer, but I could hurt all of you before you took your next breath. So, trust me. No one with magic is harmless.”

I think we all needed to hear that, but I also knew there was no way Lola did that to herself. And none of us had moved past harmless yet except Lucian since we hadn’t got much in the way of magic yet. Liam and I didn’t even know who we were in our first lives.

Lola might be uber powerful once she figured out who she was and was fully trained, but right now, she was tiny. If any of her magic had shown up, it would have saved her. I got what Saffron was trying to say, but at this moment, a lot of us were harmless.

“You should get going now that you’ve eaten. A lot of magical creatures can travel by portal and gods are one of them. You’ll either have to figure that out or do it the hard way and walk. And remember, everything you’ve heard about Unseelie are a lie if you meet them, so don’t hurt them. There’s nothing evil about the moon.”

“I have loads of questions because my nana told me a lot of stories,” Liam said.

So did I. This was an entire culture I might be a part of that I wanted to know everything about. Their food was amazing, but I also wanted to hear all the different theories about what happened to Fairy. How could an entire realm be gone? Had anyone gone back to check? Maybe it was still there. I had questions.

But Saffron was right. I wouldn’t learn any of it unless I completed the trials and unless any of us figured out portalling, we were going to be doing a lot of walking.