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Chapter Sixteen

RAIN

O ddly, when I left my new first period class, I felt completely exhausted. Ms. Rhodes had made me try so many different ways to summon this Wild magic of mine, but I hadn't had much luck. Losing it - rather embarrassingly - was the only consistent method I had right now.

Thankfully, pushing it showed some possibility.

Well, if a tendril of darkness counted as a possibility.

But it was better than the nothing I got with everything else.

Ms. Rhodes thought my problem was I didn't know how to feel the magic yet, so I needed to spend my time trying to identify a hum, or vibration, or fullness in my body which hadn't been there before.

But second period was math. Aspen was in there, and she checked to make sure my new class had been ok. I told her it was fine, because it kinda had been. Not good. Not bad. Learning magic was cool in a way, and hard in all the others.

After that came History. Wilder and Hawke were in that class, and Ms. Rhodes taught it as well.

Both guys offered me warm smiles - which was a new thing - but nothing else.

Yet by the time I reached Biology, my eyes were getting heavy.

Torian moved his stuff, making it clear I should sit beside him, then told me to put my head down.

I may have napped through most of the class, but the teacher didn't bother me. No one did! And when the bell rang, Torian walked me to the cafeteria, going so far as to follow me through the line. When he started requesting fruits and flowers for my meal, I was ready to snap his head off, though.

"It's for the magic," he quickly assured me. "I'm not sure if it helps with yours, but it won't hurt, and you look drained."

"Oh."

I should probably apologize, but ever since my shadow had thrown him, Torian and I had been a little weird.

He was still nice, but much more distant.

In truth, I kinda missed his arrogant little comments, so I was pretty sure I'd fucked up.

At the same time, he had too, so I didn't really want to be the one to break first.

We made it to our table right as the entire court burst out laughing. I glanced behind me, wondering what I'd done that was so funny, but Aspen waved me down.

"Not you," she insisted. "Just rumors going around today."

"Ok?" I sat down beside her.

Torian claimed the chair on her other side. But when Aspen opened her mouth to explain what she meant, Wilder shoved to his feet, waving towards the drink area. "Keir! Over here!"

"Yep!" Keir called back.

Torian groaned. "So he's sitting with us?"

"He is pure fae," Aspen countered. "Besides, he's Rain's, and she needs her own person."

"She has you!" Torian huffed.

Right as I said, "I have you as my person!"

Which made Hawke snort, nearly choking on the flower he was eating. "Did not expect that to be what the pair of you agree on."

I groaned, but Keir's arrival kept the group from picking on me. Even better, Keir asked the one thing that could make the court forget about everything else.

"How bad was your first magic lesson?"

"She slept through Biology," Torian replied before I could.

Aspen quickly bent to dig in her bag. "Here!" she said, thrusting a pair of Pixie Styx at me.

"Ok?" I looked around the table, aware everyone else here was a pure fae. "What's with the sugar?"

"Jack!" my bird said, as if that was some kind of answer.

"What he means," Hawke explained, "is that the greatest source of magic on Earth is sugar. Sunlight works, so do other things, but it all basically adds up to be sugar. "

"But my magic isn't like yours," I countered.

"I bet it will work," Torian assured me. "Call it a hunch."

"Which," Aspen said, "brings me back to the new rumors. Torian, did you know you're a jevadu?"

"A what?" I asked.

Keir let out a heavy sigh. "Supposedly, jevadu are a wildling that looks almost like us," he explained. "I've been told they're like a magical vampire with wings."

"Vampires don't have wings..." Yep, I was trying hard to imagine this thing.

"They don't always have wings," Aspen assured me. "They're magical wings. They also live on magic, so they feed on it directly instead of indirectly."

"And are always male," Keir went on. "You know how sirens lured sailors into the seas with their songs?"

"Uh-huh..." Because we'd discussed that last semester in literature. Evidently, they were a real thing - and also wildlings.

"Well," Keir said, "jevadu are the male version."

"Less seduction," Torian clarified, "and more fear."

"I think they're seductive," Wilder joked.

I was looking back and forth between the group. There was something not being said which made me think I was being picked on by my friends, fae-style.

"What am I missing?" I demanded.

"They're a myth," Keir told me. "Besides, an entire race of nothing but men? Like that would work."

"Hey," Aspen countered, "m-preg is a whole thing, you know. Oh wait, you don't read those books!"

"Not fucking funny," Hawke told her.

"Oh no," Torian countered. "This is fucking hysterical. Now, why am I a jevadu?"

Wilder leaned back, a grin taking over his face. "Well, you remember Nevaeh?"

My eyes jumped over to the jester's table, where she'd sat last semester. She wasn't there. "What happened to her?"

"He stripped her power," Aspen explained.

"I know," I countered. "Fucking bitch. She should've been expelled for trying to attack Torian."

"She was actually aiming for Hawke," he clarified .

Keir ignored that, and pointed the other way. "She's with Poppy Hawthorne now."

Following his finger, I saw Nevaeh with the girl who'd helped me out a few times last semester.

The same one who'd picked up my pen when Harper had slammed into me.

The girl who'd asked Torian to not be so loud while she was studying.

The girl I kept bumping into over and over, and now she finally had a name: Poppy.

Wait. "Hawthorne?" I asked, finally putting all the names together with faces. "Like the bitch teacher from New Year's Eve?"

"That's her mom," Keir admitted. "But Poppy's cool. She's like three-quarters fae, pretty quiet, and mostly keeps to herself. She's also taking care of Nevaeh, because without magic, that girl has been getting a lot of shit."

"Most of it from the jesters," Hawke said. "They turned on her so fucking fast."

"Keep calling her a Winter bitch," Wilder added.

"Because Torian beat her?" I asked.

"No," Torian said. "I stripped her magic. She has none, Rain. In the peak of her season, I drained her dry, and now she gets to live with the repercussions of coming at me."

"Us," Aspen corrected. "And that includes all of the court." She lifted a brow at her brother pointedly. "Doesn't it, Tor?"

"Evidently, it does," he agreed.

"So, are you this jevadu thing?" I asked.

Torian's head snapped over to me, but his response was not at all what I expected. His mouth hung open for a second, then he clamped it closed only for a laugh to sputter out and keep on growing.

"You..." He could barely get a word out around his laughter. "I'm..." And that was it. The guy was done.

But it wasn't just him! Aspen was giggling. Wilder had a fist pressed to his lips, and Hawke was tittering a few octaves too high. Thankfully, Keir was looking between them, proving I wasn't the only one who missed the joke.

"What?" I begged. "Guys, I don't know this stuff!"

"Jevadu are wildlings," Keir said. "They're not sidhe."

"So he's not a she?" I asked, wondering what the hell they were on about. "Kinda can see that."

"No!" Aspen wailed, tears starting to leak from her eyes. "Sidhe. The fae who are Winter or Summer. Wildlings are the third court!"

"Oh, that sidhe." I groaned in embarrassment. "They sound the same! "

Aspen waved at her own face like she was trying to get some air. "Oh. Oh, that's too good."

"I'm still lost," I said, yet I was still smiling because seeing this group laugh this hard? What the hell?

Keir leaned in. "Rain, the sidhe are one type of magic. Seasonal. We can use both seasons of magic. Well, as a whole people we can. Most of us only use one, but the point is it's the same magic, just different seasons. Wildlings use your magic, which is the anti-magic to ours."

"Why no one's spells work on you," Hawke clarified.

"Oh." Yep, I was starting to figure it out. "So why are jevadu funny? Is there something wrong with Wild magic?" I was feeling a little targeted here.

"Because they don't understand jevadu!" Torian sputtered, still laughing and barely managing to control it. "Oh! Oh, that's..." Another little laugh broke out, but he was slowly regaining his composure. "Wow."

And I was still lost. "I completely missed that joke," I admitted.

"Rain," Aspen said, making me look over at her. "It's more a case of the faelings trying to act like they know what they're talking about when they clearly don't."

"Yeah, I missed it too," Keir admitted. "Jevadu are fucking terrifying. They're like the boogeyman of fae stories. The ones who walk among us, can suck out our magic - which is our life force - and walk away without being spotted."

"And they're people," Aspen insisted. "They're also real, have children with fae women, and the girls are fae, but the boys are jevadu."

I paused, looking between Torian and Aspen. "Oh. But Wild magic isn't evil."

"No, it's not," Hawke assured me. "It's just Wild."

On my shoulder, Jack was twisting his head. "Court!" he finally said.

"Yes," Torian replied, "you're part of the court too, Jack. And you're a wildling. See? We don't discriminate here."

But Jack looked over at Torian, then twisted his head first one way, then another. "Court?"

"This court," Torian said, "has Summer, Winter, Wild, and mixtures."

"Fuck monarchies," Keir muttered.

"Wait, why?" Torian asked.

Keir gestured at the entire table. "Because this is better." Then he tipped his head back towards the jesters' table. "Just look at them. It's all about Summer this and Summer that and how horrible the snow is, how long it's going to last, and how Aspen and Wilder are evil or some shit."

"What about jevadu?" Wilder asked. "Would you feel the same way if I was one?"

"But you're not," Keir countered.

Wilder simply smiled. "Are you sure?"

Maybe Keir was sure of it, but now I was starting to wonder.

My eyes shifted between Aspen and Torian, rethinking all I knew about them, then over to Hawke and Wilder.

None of them had been scared of my shadow magic.

Not a single one had pulled away after I'd become the Morrigan.

Or showed myself to be, or found out, or whatever the fuck had happened on the Solstice.

They also accepted Jack as royalty, and even called him "Highness" as if that was a real title. Never mind how their magic was just as weird as mine, but in their own way. Hawke's was without color. Aspen and Wilder used white. Keir used rainbow-colored, and even Torian used both.

Wait.

"How are jevadu born again?" I asked.

Torian's smile grew, and it was sly. "The father is a jevadu. The mother is a sidhe. The child's type is determined by gender."

"And do these jevadu raise the kids?"

"Nope," Wilder said. "The mother does."

"So they're fae enough to fit in with other fae?"

"All of us are fae," Hawke huffed. "Even Jack. The difference is the magic. Sidhe or wildling. Sidhe call theirs one way. Wildlings call it another. They neutralize each other."

"Oh," I breathed, looking over at Torian as subtly as I could. "Tor, are jevadu evil?"

"They can be terrifying. That is not the same as evil," he assured me.

Which was when I remembered something my dad had told me. Fae weren't good or evil; they were simply fae. He always made it sound as if that was its own thing. As if being fae was more of a cultural confusion than a morality issue.

"Ok," I decided, nodding my head with my internal decision. "Because fae are pretty fucking scary sometimes, so I figure a jevadu can't be any worse."

"They can," Keir assured me. "Rain, jevadu are fae monsters. Things from nightmares."

"So are Morrigans, it sounds like," I countered .

He opened his mouth, but paused. "Yeah, I guess you could say that too," he admitted after a long pause.

"But, um..." I looked over at Torian. "Is Nevaeh going to be ok? I mean, if she's Winter, and people hate Winter, and she can't defend herself... Did you screw her over?"

"I did," Torian admitted. "I also feel no guilt because she wanted to kill us, and no one comes at my court."

Slowly I nodded, his answer all the confirmation I needed. "Ok," I breathed. "Then jevadu are assholes, but I'm a bitch, so team jevadu, right?"

Hawke had his glass to his lips and nearly choked. "What?" he asked.

"I'm cool with jevadu," I explained. "Because I'm down with the Wild magic, and Jack, and fuck racism, even the fae kind."

His autumn eyes found mine, and then he smiled. "Yeah. Fuck racism."

"Fuck racism!" Aspen declared, raising her voice to do it.

Torian just leaned back, but the smile on his lips this time looked real. It looked almost warm. Most of all, it looked relieved.