I might as well have been walking through a swarm of Bari’s beetles when I walked to South’s barn room. I was abuzz with anger for the pain that had been dealt to my Entente that I never even imagined. Bari’s face, Amantha’s body . . . all those years apart . . . and for what? Human greed? Human whim? And beneath all my emotions and all my questions I could still hear the whisper of wishes.
I paused outside South’s loft and tried to calm myself before knocking on the door and slipping inside.
“You’re up?” I said when I saw him. He was standing at the window, staring out.
“I felt like you needed me.”
“You heard what Bari told me,” I assessed.
He nodded.
My heart ached suddenly. South was worried about me when he was the one who just found out about his past.
“You shouldn’t be worried about comforting me, South. What Galatea said last night . . . your father . . . your power . . . the Fates keeping you from knowing who you really were.”
It all seemed so big, so overwhelming, the enormity of all those revelations and the enormity of all the Presents crushing in on him at once. But maybe Galatea was right—maybe South was finding his balance. His peace.
“It’s better to know than not to know. All that time I thought I wasn’t special . . . and all that time you thought your magic was gone . . .” His voice was light, but his lids were heavy with thought.
“And it turns out we were both wrong . . . Your magic is back.” South was reading me again.
“It turns out you are very, very special,” I said with a smile.
He smiled back.
“And I am only half as special as I thought I was,” I quipped, but there was more bitterness there than I had intended for him to see.
“That’s not true,” he said protectively.
“It’s not the same as before. My power is limited. And passive.”
“Passive?”
“I can’t make magic for myself. I can only do it for others.”
As I spoke, I got more flashes of wishes. It was as if the radius of my power was expanding by the minute. I could hear them, but I was careful not to grant any of them.
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I’m going crazy trying to figure it out. But what matters is that you look rested. At peace. I’m glad.”
“It’s funny. This place must look so peaceful to you, but it’s a roaring cacophony to me,” he said.
“Actually, it’s not quiet at all. I can hear things too—not like you—but I hear things—wishes—all the same,” I said finally. It felt good to tell the one person who would actually understand.
“What do you mean?” he said, looking at me sharply.
“Cinderella wishes that the Entente never came here. The pig farmer wishes he could take a nap . . . There is a couple down the way who are so in love, they wish that they’d die on the very same day . . . It’s so romantic . . . and terrifying. Not the couple . . . but having it back . . . but not all the way back . . . It’s been so long and now I’ve lived more of my life without magic than with it. Other Entente are missing so much more. I should be grateful,” I said, thinking about Amantha.
“You should be what you are . . . ,” South said, clearly holding back.
What he didn’t say was that he knew how I felt right now: Scared I wouldn’t get my gift all the way back. Scared I couldn’t handle the gift I had. I appreciated that he didn’t say the quiet part out loud.
“There’s no such thing as half magic, Farrow. There’s what you do with it. We will figure it out together.”
I nodded, wanting to believe him.
“Can you do me a favor?” I asked, inspiration hitting me. I had only thought of myself when my gift returned.
“Anything,” he said.
“Can you wish us someplace?” I asked.
He was smiling at me, happy that I had gotten my magic back if only in part.
“Where?”
“The Reverie.”
“That’s a terrible idea. It’s too dangerous.”
“I just need a few minutes. Please, South.”
He looked at me a long beat, and I knew that I had him.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. I wish Farrow wouldn’t be so impulsive, he thought.
Take us to where it all began,
Where South got his wings and he held my hand.
“I wish I were back in the Reverie with Farrow,” he said out loud.
The air picked up in the room with such a force that we were thrown together. South took my hand, and a few seconds later we were standing on the grass.
“What are we doing here, Farrow?” South asked, blinking hard at me.
I could tell that he was trying to use his gift on me, to read my Present, but it wasn’t working.
“I want to undo what I did to you all those years ago if you’ll let me.”
Surprise filled his face.
“My wings . . .”
“I know you have your own magic now. But I would be honored if you would let me fix what I did then. It is my greatest regret.”
“You still don’t understand . . . I want to keep them.”
“Why?”
“After everything that happened, after I thought that the Entente were dead, I didn’t want the wings gone anymore. I didn’t think of them as scars. They were part of me. They were proof that the Entente were real. That I was one of them. All these years I wasn’t hating them; I loved them. I was waiting for the day when they would heal. When I could do this.”
He unbuttoned his shirt. As it dropped to the ground and the sunlight hit his shoulders and chest, I was aware more than ever how much time had passed since we were children. South’s shoulders were broad. The musculature of his chest had developed from his years in the army. His body was a thing of beauty.
It was strange seeing him that way. Half dressed. And all grown up. I felt my heart quicken. I reminded myself that this was still South—the kid who once annoyed me more than anyone under the sun. And now he was one of the most beautiful things under it to me. Maybe he’d always been. But I had been too young and misguided to see.
His wings unfurled, the span creating a shadow over us. He flapped them, creating a draft. Once. Twice. And then he began to lift off the ground. His wings continued to flap as he hovered in the air in front of me.
South rose a few more inches off the ground. He was flying.
I smiled up at him, feeling a little lighter myself.
When he touched down, his wings folded back behind him and he took a step toward me.
Before I could react, he reached for me. He ran his fingers through my hair, his hand cupping my face.
“South, you aren’t supposed to touch me,” I said in a whisper.
“I don’t care . . . I forgive you, Farrow. You have to forgive yourself.”
I blinked up at him.
And South leaned in. I closed my eyes, anticipating his lips meeting mine.
“Farrow,” he said urgently.
“Yes, South,” I said.
“Farrow, we have to go.”
I opened my eyes, trying to shake off the fluster of emotion.
“They’re coming. I can feel them.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Magrit’s men.”
There was the sound of boots against the ground on the path where the Veil used to be.
“Wish us back to the manor,” I demanded.
“I have a better idea.”
He put his arms around me, and his wings began to flap. This time we lifted off the ground. I looked down as the earth receded.
“South, this is a terrible idea. The Presents . . .”
“It’s better up here,” he exclaimed.
And in fact, he looked more serene than I had seen him since we’d reunited.
We were like that for a while—him flying over the dark forest with me in his arms. The sensation was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I could count on one hand the times I could remember being held in my life. And I had never been held by South. And I had never been held while flying through the air. Being up there in his arms felt at once unnatural and at the same time like this was exactly where I was supposed to be.
“We should keep going,” I urged when he slowed down, making us hover in midair over the Dark Wood.
“Look, the guard is miles behind us. They can’t catch us.”
He was right. I followed his sight line. We couldn’t even see them in the woods below. And if we could, they would be tiny specks.
“Look,” he said again. “It’s all different up here.”
The Queendom was beautiful. I took in the forest . . . the edge of the Reverie . . . even the Queen’s Black Glass palace . . . and the Gray mansion ahead of us. Everything looked miniature and more perfect from this vantage point.
He didn’t have to say it. I felt it too. For a moment we were free. Free of our fears. Free of our sisters. Free of our vengeance.
“I could stay up here forever. Maybe I will,” he said.
“South,” I warned lightly.
He sighed, and I could see the weight of the Presents return to his visage as we got closer to the ground. He landed near the manor and finally released me.
I stepped away from him.
“You were right. It was too much of a risk to go back there,” I said, a little out of breath.
“I think it was worth it.” He didn’t break eye contact for a long moment as if he wanted me to be sure. To know that he meant I was worth the risk.
“I want to show you something,” he said, leading me inside the barn.
“Okay,” I said, following him inside. There was a drawing on the wall. It was a golden palace. “What is this?” I asked.
“The Rookery.”
I shook my head. He wasn’t following Iolanta’s orders. He was still letting Presents in.
“I couldn’t help it. I saw something. Or rather, someone. Lots of someones . . .”
“South, what are you talking about?”
Was this like the animals he was talking to in the barn?
“I’ve been sifting through everything, and I think that Iolanta is right. There’s magic at the edge of the Thirteenth Queendom.”
“Magic?”
As I said the word, I realized where he was heading.
“Different from ours, and some of it is in me . . . Iolanta said my father is a Rook. Galatea, too. If we go, maybe we can find them. Maybe they can help us.”
I had been wrong about South’s demeanor. I had mistaken his plotting for peace. He wasn’t accepting what the Entente had hidden from him; he was preparing to hunt down his other family himself.
“Can we trust them? When we were small, the sisters said they were tricksters. And Galatea also implied at dinner that the Rooks deal in chaos.”
“Galatea has said a lot of things we now know aren’t true. We have to try.”
“The Rookery is Queendoms away, and for all we know they’ve already been wiped out by Magrit. And who’s to say they aren’t just as full of conflict as the Entente are? Just because the Rooks have magic, doesn’t make them good. And even if they are good, it might not make them want to help us.”
“You’re right: we don’t know anything about them. But I know what I feel, and there isn’t a Present I can reach with my mind that says they want to hurt us. I’d travel to the edge of the Queendoms for you in a heartbeat, Farrow,” he said.
His cheeks went red a second after he’d said it. He busied himself with taking his wand out of his pocket.
I could see in South’s face how much he believed in the Rooks. But he had also just lost a part of himself in Iolanta and wanted desperately to find himself in the Rookery.
“Iolanta agrees with me.”
“Iolanta?” I said, concern rising.
“It’s in her book.” He went to his nightstand and pulled out a book that Galatea had given him. He flipped through pages of spells. There was a drawing that matched the one he’d made on the wall.
“I want to go there,” he said.
“Of course you do, South. After the Burning I had the same instinct . . . I wanted to go there myself. And that was before we knew that you were part of them. But we can’t . . . not now.”
South looked uncertain for a beat. He wanted this. Not just to save us but to fill the hole that Iolanta’s death and the knowledge that she was his mother had opened in him. I hated quelling that need. But I had to make him see that he had to wait.
“South, I know it’s not fair to ask you to wait . . . and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think that the Entente weren’t on the precipice of danger . . . I don’t know what they are planning, but I can feel it, South.”
South put his chin up, taking in what I said.
“I understand . . . I can feel it too.
“But . . . after Magrit is dead, I want to meet them.” The air began to flicker around him.
“Then I want to meet them with you,” I vowed.
“You would do that?” he dared to ask.
“Wherever you need to go, I’ll go with you.” I squeezed his hand in answer and he smiled at me.