Seven Black Diamonds (Seven Black Diamonds #1)(36)

“Hard to say. Maybe he kills photographers.” Lily met her eyes, testing her reaction.

Alkamy smiled and then without missing a beat said, “Messy.”

Lily nodded. Then she met Alkamy’s gaze head-on and said, “I don’t use. No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Nothing.”

“Not a problem.” Alkamy flashed her an odd look, but she didn’t come right out and ask if Lily was fae-blood. She was more subtle than Creed and Zephyr. All she did was hint: “So no chemicals. Are you a nature girl then?”

“Eh. I like being outside.” Lily shrugged.

Abernathy Commandment #6: Never confess your vulnerabilities if you can avoid it.

“Finish hanging your stuff, and I’ll show you the grounds. St. Columba’s bites sometimes, but the gardens are excellent.” Alkamy hopped to her feet. “Oh, and since you’re ‘Just Lily,’ you should call me ‘Kamy.’”

Lily only wanted her solitude. “That’s not . . . I’ve already . . .” She looked at her new suitemate, who was watching her and grinning. There was no graceful way to refuse Alkamy. Maybe her confrontational suitemate could be a potential friend . . . or at least an ally of sorts. Unlike Creed and Zephyr, Alkamy, at least, seemed to be offering friendship without strings.





sixteen


ZEPHYR

The moon was still in the sky when Zephyr slipped out of his suite. It was not yet morning, although his suitemate was only recently asleep. Creed had crept into their suite somewhere around midnight after another excursion to the garden. In a few days, his moonbathing and sunbathing would restore him to health, and as long as he abstained from the bad habits he seemed to cherish on holidays, he’d be as strong as ever.

It was one thing to occasionally behave like humans to avoid accusations of fae-blood, but Creed took it too far. He cycled between self-destruction and purification repeatedly throughout the year. Something in his life drove him toward self-destruction over and over. The whole group saw it, but so far, no one had gotten anywhere when they’d asked him about it. He’d been worse the past few months than ever before. If they were the sort of friends who talked, Zephyr would try harder to find out what had set Creed into such a spin, but Creed was as likely to throw a punch as to walk away.

So far, Zephyr had been able to let them do as they wanted. That was all about to change. Now that Lilywhite was with them, they’d start receiving regular orders from the queen. Whatever the queen demanded, they’d do. That was why he needed to get his team in order. They would obey, or they would be “retired.”

But he was too far ahead of himself. First, he had to report to the Queen of Blood and Rage. There was a protocol that he’d been drilled on repeatedly. His handler, Clara, stressed the points at which he was required to visit the Hidden Lands. Lilywhite’s arrival was uppermost on that list.

Silently, Zephyr walked up to the back wall of the West Tower. The old buildings that made up St. Columba’s all retained a fairy-tale quality. The entire campus had once been a monastery, but time and traditions had changed and so the monastery was turned into a school for the wealthy.

From residents who took vows of poverty to those who lived lives of indulgence, the change was almost too great to ponder. Zephyr sometimes thought he would have preferred the former. He’d miss the comfort of money, but he wouldn’t miss the attention it drew. There was a feeling of history, energy perhaps, that lingered from the long-gone monks, as if they’d left behind some sense of purpose that filled those who lived here then and now. He needed that—or maybe it just felt that way to Zephyr. Like the monks, he had a purpose; he never needed to guess about what he was meant to do. The queen would tell him, and he would serve her wishes. He’d been born to do this. Literally.

He stroked a hand over the leaves that crept and twined together across the dimly lit wall. Most students had no idea that the thick vines covered a section of stone that accessed a network of tunnels. Unless one could ask the vines to part, there was no way to tell the passage existed and still keep it secret—since a human hacking through the growth would’ve been detected.

Zephyr willed the plants to separate for him, thanking them for their kindness and asking if they would hide his exit. With a welcome rustle the plants divided, exposing the hidden door to the mouth of the main passageway. Zephyr pushed the stone that would expose the latch, lifted it, and shoved.

The door scraped open and Zephyr quickly stepped into a dark tunnel.

The air smelled of dampness and age, and he wondered—not for the first time—what the monks had feared. Escape tunnels weren’t built by those without enemies. A fleeting thought of Lilywhite made him wonder if her homes had such hidden exits as well. When he’d first discovered his heritage, he wondered if that was why his parents had exit tunnels, but then Clara told him that he was a changeling and that his parents had no idea that he was fae. They, like the parents of all of the Sleepers, assumed that some latent fae DNA had surfaced in them. They protected him all the same.

After Zephyr pulled the door to the passages shut behind him, he flicked on the small light he carried in his pocket and followed one of the twisting routes to the other end. The tunnel curved and eventually this path came to narrow spiraling steps that descended two stories and dead-ended.

He’d figured out how to open it years ago, and he no longer had to look to find the stone that hid the giant key. He pried the stone out, retrieved the key, and opened the door. There were other passages. The one he typically followed led to the grounds outside campus. Tonight, however, although he was leaving campus, he was doing so via a route that was inaccessible to all but those who had the fae permission to enter the Hidden Lands—and the knowledge of tunnels at the very edge of the grounds of the campus, past the hedge maze, where only the Sleepers ever ventured.