Someone had to.
And the next person who reminded me not to eat food from the realm was getting stabbed in the throat. I was tempted to eat a leaf off a tree just for fun, bonus points if it killed me.
Also, whoever had written the last bullet point deserved to be institutionalized.
Who the fuck would voluntarily eat the eggs of a parasitic monster with pincers?
Controversial take—that person deserved to be infected.
“Write what I’m about to say down.” Dick pointed to the pens attached to our binders.
I unclicked the pen and doodled a dying stick figure shooting a rifle at another dying stick figure.
Art imitated life.
Dick frowned. “This information is crucial.”
Apparently, he was incapable of getting to the freaking point.
Sadie snored softly.
Dick’s posture was rigid as he said, “You’re probably wondering why we’ve had so many meetings.”
“No one cares!” I shouted and made an obscene hand gesture…in my head.
“Your role”—Dick’s ruddy complexion flushed as he glared at each of us—“is more important than you know.”
No one blinked.
Where Lothaire would yell and smack a baton, Dick spoke with zero inflection, which was somehow ten times more terrifying.
There was a strange intensity around the High Court leader that no one, not even the kings, dared to challenge. With his wings retracted, I’d never have guessed that Dick was an angel. He didn’t have the poise and aura of arrogance they all seemed to possess.
He looked too ordinary.
Although…I’d never thought I was an angel, and now I was one that couldn’t fly.
Current life plan: throw myself off a cliff as soon as possible.
If I flew, I flew.
If I didn’t—slay (in the slaughter sense).
Dick lowered his head and said, “What I’m about to say will change everything you thought you knew about this war.”
I have syphilis.
I barely stopped myself from laughing aloud at my joke.
As far as I was concerned, he didn’t deserve anyone’s respect.
First, he was a man.
Second, he’d taken me from the fae realm as a child and beaten Sadie into her powers as he masqueraded as a beta shifter. He’d stood beside me in a gladiator arena when I’d consumed my mother’s beating heart. He’d spread angel wings wide in the beast realm and represented the gods in the Legionnaire Games.
Dick was always there when our lives hit rock bottom.
His nostrils flared as he enunciated each syllable. “The reason we’ve been lecturing you continuously—”
He paused.
I drew another dead stick figure on my palm.
“—the Official Peace Accords, otherwise known as the OPA, doesn’t just ban the involvement of gods in war as you’ve been told.”
Déjà vu skittered down my scarred spine.
A lifetime ago, I’d learned about the OPA in the fae palace, but the memory was sand, and it dripped through my fingers.
Dick’s eyes flashed. “The OPA also bans the involvement of the High Court in any battles or strategy.”
I drew another dead figure.
So we were alone? Nice.
Dick inhaled deeply. “The OPA also bans the realms within the High Court from establishing an independent militia of greater than one hundred soldiers.”
The room was dead silent.
There would be no sprawling army fighting against the ungodly, just one hundred people versus a planet of parasitic monsters.
We were doomed.
Dick seemed to grow taller as he said, “The OPA were enacted as an ignorant reaction to the last major war.” He flung his arms wide, and the movement was startlingly violent compared to his usual stillness. “Just because there were some—unexpected casualties in the previous war led by the High Court, everyone panicked. Cowards.”
What?
I couldn’t breathe.
One. Hundred.
I honored those who’d panicked in the past by panicking in the present.
Dick’s face flushed and twisted with disgust as he continued, “The High Court needed a scapegoat in the last war, so they blamed the god who saved them and the soldiers who died for them. They enacted the OPA as a cowardly way to restore faith in governance and absolve themselves of guilt in future wars. The High Court and gods bound themselves with enchantments that cannot be broken.”
Only one hundred soldiers, repeated in my head.
“Now the time has come for that future war, and you must pay the consequences of past failures.” He didn’t sound apologetic. “We kept this from you, so you would focus on our lessons and not panic about the task ahead.”
What a great plan—save the upsetting information for three seconds before a war starts.
Why was he looking at me?
Why was he pointing at me?
Click. I stabbed the pen into my hand and made a hole in the forehead of the stick figure.
He said, “We have given you every tool we can to help you, but victory is up to you—study everything you’ve learned over the next week and prepare to adapt.” He nodded. “The angel scouting party is identifying the location of the first settlement. When it is time for battle, you will be notified—good luck.”
He stalked out of the room, and the cloaked man followed.
The door slammed shut behind them.
Fugue was too mild a word to describe what came next.
Paranoia devoured me.
John threw his arm around my shoulder, and Sadie sleepily leaned against my side as we left the strategy room. The kings followed behind me like unwanted shadows or looming specters of death.
Physically, I went with the group to the cafeteria, but mentally, I disappeared.
I’d learned about the peace accords before, and it was imperative that I remembered. So I threw myself into the dark recesses of memory.
I dove into my mind.
We left the cafeteria.
Time warped.
I blinked.
I sat on the floor of our tiny new shower, arms wrapped around my legs as the frigid water kept me focused on my task.
Someone banged on the bathroom door and told me to hurry up.
I didn’t respond.
On the outside, icy drops pelted skin.
Inside my mind’s eye, I reconstructed the fae library stacks spine by spine, and I rebuilt the towering mental shelves I’d once lived within.
It was painstaking work.
The first lesson a fae tutor had ever taught me was how to create a memory palace. Knowledge was useless if it had nowhere to go.
Step one: meditate.
As a child, I’d spent days, months, and years mentally building a library that mirrored the one on the top floor of the palace.
Step two: memorize.
Every day, my tutors would ask me about the contents of random pages in books I’d read. If I couldn’t remember, I’d read the book again and mentally reshelve it.
The one time I still couldn’t remember, my tutor had hit me. Hard.
I hadn’t cowered like a princess was supposed to; instead, I’d hit him back harder.
He’d beaten me bloody and dragged me to Mother, who’d gladly lit me on fire for hours.
I’d never forgotten a book since.