Read Online Rise of the Fey by Alessa Ellefson - Free Book Online Page B

Arthur only to find Keva waiting for me outside the KORT room. She raises her eyebrows questioningly, but I shake my head—the last thing I want to do is talk. Facing both Irene and Arthur has left me drained, both physically and mentally.
    As we climb up the dark staircase, I’ve only got one thought in mind: sleep in a soft, warm bed. But as I make to go up to the last floor, Keva holds me back.
    “This way,” she says. “We’re squires now, so our quarters have shifted.”
    “Right,” I automatically say, shuffling after her down the deserted fourth floor, past empty classrooms, then all the way down to the last room in the dormitory section.
    “I’ll miss having the place to myself,” Keva says, heaving a sigh as I beeline for the unclaimed bed.
    I collapse onto the soft mattress, grab one end of the cover, and wrap myself in it like a giant caterpillar, then let the sounds of Keva puttering about our dorm room lull me to sleep.
    But the moment she turns off the lights, I fling my eyes open in panic at the sudden darkness. I’m halfway out my bed before I remind myself that I’m no longer stuck in the school’s dungeons, that I can now sleep peacefully and know that in a few hours’ time I’ll be waking up with the sun’s rays caressing my face.
    Yet no matter how many times I tell myself that everything’s fine, my heart keeps pounding at a thousand beats per minute, and the same nightmare that have been plaguing me for the last week comes back to assail me: Carman coming to kill me, Dean dying before my eyes, Irene throwing me in jail….
    I toss over onto my other side with a loud sigh.
    “Are you sleeping?” Keva whispers from her bed across the room.
    “Yes,” I reply, slowing my breathing down in a vain attempt to calm myself down.
    “Did you really use EM like they said?” Keva continues, louder.
    “Yes,” I sigh, struggling to get my arms free from my cover.
    “Without using any oghams?” she asks again, sounding more excited. “Other than your own, I mean.”
    I open my eyes again and stare sightlessly at the ceiling, remembering my attempted escape. “I suppose,” I say at last, forced to contemplate what I’ve been avoiding since then, something that I’m forced to admit scares me more than having to face Carman again: That I’m no longer human.
    Yet I can’t really consider myself Fey either. I’m just someone stuck between two worlds, rejected by both except for those few who see a way to use me.
    Like Arthur and his stupid, never-ending war. How does he expect me to join it now, when he knows I’d be going against my own people? Against, perhaps—I swallow with difficulty at the thought—against my very own mother?
    “So what kind of powers do you have then?” Keva asks in the same excited tone she uses when talking about shopping.
    “I don’t know,” I say, “and at this moment I don’t care.”
    “You should, you know,” Keva says. “I heard Kyle say, who heard it from Saba, who heard it from Sophie, who’s Jennifer’s squire as you know, that it proves you’re the one who committed all those black-vein murders.”
    My hand clenches around my pillow in a burst of anger. “I didn’t do it,” I say. “I didn’t even know I could make fire until a few hours ago.”
    “I know,” Keva says, sounding more certain of this fact than I am.
    “You do?” I ask, too shocked to realize I’m still holding my pillow over my head, ready to throw it at her.
    “Yeah,” Keva says. “I mean, your dad was killed the same way, and unless you were some super-evil baby from hell the minute you were born, there’s no way you did it.”
    “Where did you hear about that?” I ask.
    Keva shifts in her bed and I have the distinct impression she just shrugged. “Arthur mentioned it the other day, among other things,” she says.
    “What other things?” I ask, sitting up again.
    “I don’t remember,” Keva says, stifling a yawn. “Why don’t you ask him yourself