Michelle and Jenna had become kind of... close? Over the course of tutoring? Jenna was so bizarrely nonjudgmental. Michelle didn't trust it at first, but she was starting to put out tendrils into the rumor mill now, and while things she had told Jenna openly popped up sometimes, there kept not being any rumors about things Michelle had asked Jenna to keep private. Even when Michelle followed Mr. Morley's advice and gave Jenna something fake and spicy that was easy to disprove.
Michelle admitted it to Jenna afterward, which led to their first argument. Well, not really an argument so much as Jenna being hurt and upset while Michelle apologized a lot and promised not to do it again. (Jenna wasn't promising anything in return, so it wasn't magically binding, but Michelle would stick to it, darnit.) What calmed Jenna down, bizarrely, was being told about the lying lessons. Because, of course, she wanted to know all about everything ever.
God, she was so cute.
Eventually, Michelle found herself talking to Jenna about all kinds of things. From stuff people had made fun of Michelle for to things she'd never told anyone. Especially because she knew Jenna would just listen and ask questions and not spread rumors or tell Michelle she was childish and creepy or... or all the crap other people did.
They gushed over cartoons together and who their characters would be if they were secret superheroines.
Michelle admitted her family was in the mob--that half the school was, and had been keeping it secret--and Jenna wanted to know all about it.
And Michelle admitted how much it creeped her out that arranged marriages were such a big thing for wizards, especially because she wasn't sure she wanted to have sex, like, ever? Much less with some guy she was only being married off to because of magical bloodlines and family alliances. Which somehow ended up with Jenna not only wholeheartedly agreeing--"I mean, I guess sex sounds okay, the thought of it doesn't freak me out as much as it does you, but also I don't think I really care if I just don't?"--but also with them laptop-to-laptop looking up stuff about in-vitro and surrogacy. Just because then there was something to put it in black and white that maybe they didn't ever have to have sex because of bloodline bullshit. Finding this stuff out was a relief, for all Michelle wasn't even sure if she wanted kids one day. (Jenna said she did, she thought kids were super interesting, and she'd love to bring them up and teach them all about everything.)
Being around Jenna was honestly one of the most comforting things in the world. And Jenna would tell Michelle sometimes that Jenna really liked being around Michelle, too. "You don't get mad at me about asking questions, and you look stuff up with me, and also you're really cool?" And Michelle actually believed her, because that was just how Jenna was.
But, lately, Jenna had finally succumbed to that same plague a bunch of the other students had and developed a crush on a teacher. Not Mr. Morley, at least. No, Jenna's crush was on Dr. Morley, the Potions teacher. Which was the first time Michelle had ever gotten confirmation that, um. That she and Jenna had liking girls in common.
But Dr. Morley was...
Honestly, Dr. Morley was kind of an asshole.
Michelle could sort of get why Jenna would like Dr. Morley. The prof knew a ton of things, had the students do experiments to develop new magic, gave them ridiculously dense textbooks. All stuff straight up Jenna's alley.
But, at the same time, it did make things awkward. Especially when Jenna started parroting some of Dr. Morley's opinions in their tutoring sessions with Mr. Morley. Sometimes Mr. Morley go for questions and logic, sometimes just deflection, and he always seemed patient about it, but it put Michelle on edge. Mr. Morley and Dr. Morley were playing a deadly game against each other, and it would be safer if Jenna stayed way the hell out of it.
"I envy you, do you know that?" Mickey told Thairn, one stolen evening.
"Why?"
"You're so free! You don't have some family to impress and take over, you can choose whoever you want to be and change it, you can have endless love stories without having to be arranged to some suitable bloodline..."
"None of that is true."
"None of it?"
"Absolutely none of it."
"You've disappointed me. Come, now, you were my one true hope for the world."
"I've been a pretty little trinket in my family's display case since the moment I was born. I get to be only that trinket back home and only whatever the mission calls for here abroad. And I have been promised to an arranged marriage since I was fourteen."
"How long have you been not-fourteen?"
"Decades. We're long-lived, so, we're allowed to take our time."
"At least you've got that. All the time in the world. Wizards live a little longer than normal humans, but... not nearly so long as the fae. I can't believe I have less than a century left to plan my gravestone. It's a tragedy. Though I will say, I've got a secret plan to get myself turned into a vampire. Mostly for the hot vampire sex."
"Not worried about being a, ah, 'monster'?"
"Ha. If I don't already qualify, with all the blood on my hands, then that word doesn't mean anything."
"Sensible." If only Don had been so sensible. "Maybe we can get to know each other again, after you've out-unlived everyone else."
"That would be nice," Mickey said. "We could drop all this mortal enemies nonsense and pick new lives for ourselves."
"What would you do? With your new life?"
"I'd run a cabal of wizards."
"You're already working on that."
"Not this cabal. It would be a nice one, with fluffy puppies."
"I don't even believe you."
"No, it would be great. I'd run a real magical school that had nothing to do with building influence. I'd wear a frilly apron, and we'd have all the money and power we needed just from running the school and fighting evil and trading a little. We wouldn't run addictive drugs or destroy my friends' lives or have to murder everyone who looks shifty." He laid back, contemplated that castle in the sky. "I would be so bored. It would be wonderful."
She ruffled his hair, or started to, but it made her think of Illa, so she stopped.
"What's yours?" Mickey asked. "Your ideal life?"
She thought about her years with Don, her months with Illa, and every tragedy in between. "It would be one of my love stories," she said. "But it would have a happy ending, where nobody dies, and nobody has to leave." Maybe she would get that love story. Maybe everything would work out with Illa, and she could get a happy ending. This certainly wasn't going to, not this little fling with Mickey Morley. Not with his Capones to her Montagues. Too bad, that. She liked him.
"You'd have to set up a mansion-cottage," he said, "for all your lovers."
"Oh, yes," she said, captivated by the strange-yet-wondrous image. "We'd get together around the breakfast table, and Il--" No. She shouldn't say his name.
"Hm?"
Covered for it. "We'd bake muffins."
"We'd have to have mansion-cottages for all the lovers' lovers, of course."
"Of course. There'd be an infinity of lovers' houses. We'd make a whole town out of it."
"You build your town, I'll build my fluffy puppy cabal, and I'll set up a satellite school in the middle so I can come visit."
"Oh, no. You've got to build your academy right in the town. I insist. I'll pardon you for bringing in non-lovers. It'll be fine."
"If you insist, I certainly can't turn you down." He gave a happy sigh. "I think I could love you."
"This war between our houses would never allow that."
"Entirely forbidden. Which of us is Romeo, do you think, and which of us is Juliet?"
"I could be either," Thairn answered.
"So could I," Mickey said. "I think we'll just have to pick by who has the better friends."
"Really?"
"I could flounce around on stage in tights or in a dress. Either is fine." A slight tension to his voice as he said that.
"I'm surprised you don't do that already," Thairn said.
"That would be far too fae. A proper son of the Morleys can't be anything like you gender-shifty bastards."
"That doesn't sound very wizardly at all."
"I know! Wizards should be able to be anything they want, or else, what's the point?"
"Well, you can be anything you like here."
An expression, then, that read so strange on Mickey's usually-jovial face. "Can I really?"
"I'll make it a law of lovers-town."
Mickey giggled, a bright, free sound. One Thairn hadn't heard before, for all he had a ready laugh. It was a good sound.
"I'm tempted to trust you," Mickey said. His voice thick with some intense emotion. "In ways I don't trust anyone."
"I certainly wouldn't say 'no' to that."
"You wouldn't, would you." He rolled onto his side to look at her, his eyes tracing over her wings, her body. The body that, as promised, was how she would like to be seen tonight. "Could I ask you to actually keep a secret? I know that all the rest, you report to your superiors."
"It depends." An unfortunate, honest answer.
"It won't make very good blackmail," he insisted. "Not in comparison to what you already know. I've left no proof. It would be easy for me to deny."
"I'll do what I can," Thairn said. "But I can't guarantee it. You know what I am."
A touch of sadness to Mickey's expression. "It means nothing to the succession. Nothing to our little conspiracy. It's personal. And I've--" cracks in his voice, his façade entirely absent, "I've never been able to tell anyone. But, I--I think--I think it's something that you would understand better than anyone."
"If it is solely personal," she said, for all she knew she shouldn't. "Then I will keep it." Not bound in magic bargain, but. The best she could do. She really would keep it, if it turned out she could.
"Kind fae." He brushed her hair from her face, thumb stroking her cheekbone. Closed his eyes and breathed past the deep strain of a secret bound so tightly its chains had never broken. "I'm... like you. In ways people say just the fae are."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, instead of..." He looked lost for words. But he found them anyway, stubborn. "I'm 'supposed' to be a man. And, maybe that's true sometimes. But most of the time, that's not what's in me. And. I think I would be a woman sometimes if I could, but not always. I'd want to change. I do change, in my head. It would feel wrong if I didn't. I don't know what I am, but, you've said something a lot like that before. And that's. That's why I. Why you might understand."
"I didn't know humans felt like that, too." Because she did. Perhaps less chaotically, but, staying in one assigned gender for too long--the way Illa did--had never felt comfortable for her. She'd warned Don, even, that one day he would be embracing a man instead of a woman. He'd accepted it, but never lived to see that shift.
"I don't know if any other humans do," Mickey said. "It's too 'fae', so I can't exactly ask."
"There are intersex humans." One of the students was, and had come to Alanna terrified they might actually be a changeling faerie, despite being entirely human. Alanna had arranged for the student to talk to Tricia, whose own birth traits had somehow managed to come up in their seed discussions. "I don't see how anything that naturally occurs in humans could be too fae."
"You are, I'm afraid, far more logical than anyone in this family."
"More fools they."
"Anyway, I'm not intersex, not that I know of. This gender stuff is all kept locked inside my head, nothing physical that I can see. Sometimes I'd rather have visible physical traits, but, I'm not even sure what that looks like for me. And it wouldn't stay the same."
"Glamours, perhaps," Thairn said, for all she knew that he had no access to such instruments.
"Ha. Yours has tempted me, once or twice."
"Has it really?"
He covered his face with his palm. Shivered, and didn't answer.
She pulled his hand gently free. Exposed his expression. Whether his face held fear or longing, Thairn didn't know. But she kissed his knuckles, tenderly.
"You can be anything you like here."
Greg came in a few times a day. Never spoke to Illa. Expression varying--some days troubled, some days controlled, some days distant. Always brought a bucket for Illa to use. Checked and changed bandages. Rubbed a wet towel over Illa to keep him clean. Took off the gag long enough for Illa to eat and drink, but put it back on if Illa tried to speak. By this point, every removal of the gag shred Illa's skin. It almost hurt more to lose the tension than it hurt to have it, so long had he been gagged. His jaw clicked when he moved it.
Illa lost count of the days again. Fewer beatings, more times when Gabriel just came into the cage room to sit and watch Illa, as if he were trying to make something click in his head. The pain of the gag meant Illa had less inclination now for cocky, Rhett-style smirks. The change seemed to soothe Gabriel. Maybe if Illa looked humbled, Gabriel would let him out.
It was cold. Illa had been cold for days. His healed arm ached with it. It felt wrong, still. What had Percy done to it? The chill and the pain were growing of late, up towards his shoulder, down towards his elbow.
Illa leaned just delicately enough against the iron bars that only the shirt and brass collar touched them. Not his neck, not his head. Thairn was still protecting him. He had to hold onto hope--that Thairn would be there at the end, to erase all of these scars. All of this. It was a pleasant thought to hold onto.
He wished he could keep better track of the days. Had he missed his check-in at the doctor's office yet? His backup check-ins from Greta? How long until someone noticed he was missing?
His head was clearer today than usual, at least. Enough to think. To start putting together some of the pieces.
Gabriel hated the fae and the Morleys with a special kind of rage. Something that spoke of personal grudges. What personal grudge had seemed easy to answer for the Morleys, given Malachi's harassment of the Wingless. But, was that really it?
Perhaps the grudge was, all along, solely against the fae. If Gabriel had believed until now that Magdalena was still the changeling who had infiltrated--
Wait. That didn't add up. How would Gabriel know there'd been someone on the inside without knowing they'd been caught and killed? Unless there was someone else, someone Illa didn't know about? But the higher-ups would have told Illa and Thairn, surely. And Greta would have spotted them.
Greta. Who had some kind of oath she couldn't talk about. One that meant she couldn't so much as answer what her role was in the Holloway-Morleys, nor what she saw for them. Greta, who could see through every glamour Thairn and Rain had shown her. Who insisted that her grand-nephew becoming Magdalena's heir would endanger him to such a degree that Greta was willing to make a bargain with Thairn to prevent it.
Was Greta fae? No, that didn't add up. Gabriel clearly had a specific person he'd pegged as the insider. If it were Greta, her whole arrangement with Eric would never have happened. She would be in a cage same as Illa.
Was Mickey fae, and Greta afraid that heirship would expose him? No, that didn't match Thairn's mission reports.
All you've told me is you don't know shit.
What did Gabriel know, then? What had Illa seen, what could he infer?
Gabriel spoke Fan. But, fae couldn't be turned into zombies. So, the man wasn't fae. An escaped servant, perhaps? Signs pointed that way: his anger towards the fae, his distaste for being called Master--reminds him of bad times, Greg had said--his insistence on referring to Rhett as a service sub rather than a slave or servant. He'd even threatened Illa right after watching Illa fold laundry--was Illa's way of folding particular to Faerieland?
Faerie had no necromancers. They couldn't have raised Gabriel as a zombie, and they probably wouldn't have kidnapped him as one, either. So, this servitude must have occurred before Gabriel had died. And he'd died young--for all he carried himself like a full-grown, intimidating adult, his body itself looked almost like a teenager's. Illa had assumed that that was because he was trans, but--
Wait.
Servant. Young. Fluent, without a trace of an accent. Implying he'd lived in Faerie from a very early age. The human side of a changeling swap?
And his faerie counterpart, undoubtedly assigned a female identity.
You've had someone on the inside for decades.
How did they die? As if Gabriel already knew the answer.
Steel pin through the heart. Illa had helped Gabriel dress often enough to see the scar on his chest. Had not thought asking was worth the ire of breaking social taboos--Bev had warned him early on that around here, you didn't ask about scars, and you didn't ask how someone had died.
The Morleys sent us a photo. But no body. They'd never sent a body.
Gabriel's laugh. Bitter. Knowing.
All you've told me is you don't know shit.
Gabriel had been swapped for Magdalena. And when he'd come to take back his place, she'd killed him. Disguised his body as fae, enough to hold up to a photograph. And convinced everyone--the Morleys and the faeries both--that the faerie counterpart was the one who had died, and the human counterpart was the one who had lived.
Magdalena wasn't seeking an heir. She was seeking a new face.
The creature that had pretended to be Rhett Shriver wouldn't break. Other fae had, in the past. Gabriel had, under similar treatment, until he'd put himself back together again. But this... thing. It had finally lost its smile, but it hadn't broken. Gabriel was tempted to do other things to break it. But he had two limits: nothing that would damage it permanently, and nothing the faeries hadn't done to Gabriel.
Surely it would break if he punctured its chest with a steel pin, but he couldn't bring a faerie back from the dead. He'd tried, in the past. Maybe they just didn't have souls.
Besides, he was half in furious mourning for the loss of one of his favorite service subs to never having existed at all. He still saw so much of Rhett in this creature. Even with those heartbreaking, cocky smiles gone now. Killing it would be finishing the death of Rhett. Weak as it was to hesitate, Gabriel couldn't stomach going through with it.
Gabriel dropped the creature out of its cage one night and didn't take it back to the dungeon. Took it out to the bar, instead, past his guards and over to one of the back tables. If it tried anything, the guards would be there as backup.
Gabriel looked the creature straight in the eye and said, "If you sing a damn note, you won't have a throat anymore."
It leaned its head against the wall, watching him. Its eyes half-lidded, either infuriatingly relaxed or finally exhausted. It nodded.
Gabriel ripped off the gag, skin coming away with it. The fabric was a stinking mess. He should replace it, so this thing didn't catch an infection.
It didn't speak. Just watched him. Shivering, he noticed. Good.
"You enslave people?" Gabriel asked. He knew the answer even before it came. They all did.
"Is that what this is about?"
"Answer."
"My family has one." It closed its eyes, gave a sigh. "They don't do this to her."
"Because they've bread-and-milked her?" Given her faerie food and cast magic to control her. Gabriel's magic had let him resist it, when the enslavers had tried.
"No. That's not common anymore, unless someone has a history--"
"You don't even care."
"I do."
"Would you care if they did this to her?"
"I would."
"If some other family did? Because they do."
"I can't fix home, Gabriel. Why do you think I'm here, instead?"
Gabriel stood, paced around. The creature's eyes lit, spotting a potential avenue of escape. But there was no chance of that. Gabriel would catch it easy, and, if he didn't, his guards would. It must have come to the same conclusion, because it just relaxed further against the back of its chair, let those eyelids lower. A thin sliver of red watching Gabriel still.
I can't fix home.
I can't, can I?
How badly had Gabriel tried? He'd gone back to the Morleys once to fight for his rightful place. Gotten killed for it. But he was better now, more powerful now, and the monster that had stolen his face had no idea.
The Morleys were starting a school, Greta had told Eric. Soon, they'd be all the more powerful, with trained allies to add to their numbers. Was Gabriel going to leave his home that way, unfixable, under the changeling's thumb forever?
He'd assumed Rhett was the changeling's ally. But it wasn't, was it? The faeries didn't even know a faerie was running the Morleys. They weren't in control, and they weren't here to help it.
It was time Gabriel took what was his.
"I'm going to make you a deal, enslaver," Gabriel said.
That red glimmer tracked Gabriel as he paced. "What do you propose?"
"You help me go after the Morleys, and I tell you what I know about them."
"And free me."
Gabriel knocked him out of the chair. Rhett came up on his knees. Expression steady. Pain concealed.
"Tough bastard, aren't you?" Gabriel asked. "I haven't even heard you scream. The other faeries did."
"I screamed for the doctor, if that's any reassurance."
"Good. Hope it means I don't have to break it again."
"It's not like you really had to."
"Thought I'd break you."
"The arm still hurts, you know."
Gabriel frowned. "I'll tell Percy."
"You surprise me."
"I don't do anything you monsters don't. You monsters use healers, so I do. Fair's fair. 'Course, I could kill you, you monsters did that. That's fair."
"How did you die?"
"Poisoned. Never woke up. Percy found a steel pin stabbed straight through my heart, so maybe that's what struck the killing blow. Always wondered why they buried paper wings with me. Thought it might be some faerie funeral rite."
"It isn't, no." Rhett's eyes met Gabriel's. Glittering. "But they were in the photograph."
"You've figured out who I am, then."
"Magdalena Morley."
"The name I was born with, yes. And, if my family had gotten to know me, they'd have learned I was Gabriel instead, in time. But they never got to know me. You fae took that from me."
Rhett bent his head. And didn't respond.
"I'm going to take back what's mine," Gabriel said. "My place. My identity. My family."
"I'll help," Rhett said. "I'll even help you get rid of the changeling who replaced you. They're dead to us, anyway. Just tell me all you know about the Morleys, and let me go at the end. Alive."
"We have a deal."
Illa wasn't taken back to the tenement--they didn't trust him that far--but there was a shower and a bunk room in the club basement. An actual bed, and no iron in sight other than the usual fixtures. Trusted, for now, on the strength of the bargain he'd made to help.
He slept, first. Set a couple of towels atop the bed and pillow so he wouldn't dirty the sheets with blood and grime. Got himself onto the towels and passed out cold the second he was horizontal. Woke groggy, with no idea what time or what day it was--hell, he didn't even know what time or day it had been when he'd gone to sleep. His throat parched, the sores around his mouth scabbed and stiff. His arm cold.
He walked into the bathroom and only realized once he turned the light on that this was his first time he'd been in front of a mirror since laundry day.
The person in the mirror was him. Haggard, colored with bruises and crusted with blood, but recognizable. Eyes the right color. Wings visible if he flared them. Chest free of tape. Genitals the right configuration.
Did Gabriel ever get to feel this sense of relief, he wondered? Rhett knew, by now, which things bothered Sir and which things didn't. He--
He put the thought away. He would think about Gabriel when he had to think about Gabriel, but not here and now. Here and now was privacy and recovery.
Illa took the collar off, gingerly. Washed it in water that swiftly turned a reddish brown. Cleaning it, over and over, until it finally had something like its old polish. Until it looked right again.
He showered. The water ran polluted, blood and brown and something black. He scrubbed himself until his skin felt raw. It didn't involve washing a body that felt wrong, though. At least there was that.
It was only after he left the shower, as clean as he could get, that he finally let his gaze settle on the image of his arm in the mirror.
A third of his upper arm looked like one giant bruise. Yellow and green at the edge, turning to blue and purple in the spot where the bone had snapped. In that spot, there was something black just beneath the skin, as dark as tar. Some of the skin was raised, like he suddenly had varicose veins in places where he shouldn't. He reached to push one of the bumps down on horrified impulse and it... squirmed away.
He grabbed hold of the collar on the counter just to fight the urge to--he wasn't sure what. Scratch the skin off his arm? Dry heave? Scream?
All the things Gabriel had done to try and break Illa, and this had come from Gabriel trying to help.
Illa put the collar on. Tried to remember Thairn putting it on him. It took multiple attempts, but finally the faint echo of the memory stuck, and Illa could picture it again, feel it again. Thairn's. He could get through all of this if he was Thairn's. And Thairn would fix this in the end.
If she could.
Some untimed swath of sleep later--under the covers, now that Illa was clean--he got up, stretched, dressed. Ignoring how his body felt, for now. Just relieved at how he filled out his clothes. At how the long sleeve of his dress shirt covered the sight of his arm, dampened the urge to gouge the bumps out of his skin.
He knocked on his own door. The knob turned.
"Greg," Illa said.
Greg's gaze scanned over him, catching on details. "You look better. Little bit, anyway."
"Thanks."
"You put anything in the food, all those times you cooked for us?"
Illa shook his head. "Never."
"Good." Greg nodded, almost to himself, and then, "What the hell, Rhett?"
There wasn't a good way to answer that. There really wasn't. "I don't know what you want me to tell you."
"Was any of it real?"
As real as lies you lived. As real as pain and service and drowning in who you weren't-but-were.
"Some of it," Illa said. "Not all of it." And, because part of Rhett was still running his brain, "I'm not actually a brat."
Greg made as if to punch him in the arm, the kind of exchange they'd have had before, but, stopped himself. "The hell you aren't."
Rhett's insouciant grin wanted to escape, and Illa let it.
"Were you going to capture us?" Greg asked. "Take us to Faerie?"
"No." That had, fortunately, never been Illa's job. Not in the sense Greg meant, anyway, to seed changelings and grab servants. "Just here to get information."
Greg swallowed down his next question. Looked down the hall--to where Gabriel was, maybe? And, hurried. "I'm sorry. What you did was fucked-up, we don't need anybody spying on us, but Sir... torture's not right. We know that. He knows that. He doesn't do that, not to..."
"Not to humans?" Illa guessed.
"I was gonna say 'people', but. You're a person, aren't you?"
Illa nodded. Eyes tracing Greg's face, body language. Looking for what came next.
"I can't do much. I didn't do enough, but I tried to make it easier on you, without letting you hurt us." The towel baths. The food. The bucket.
"Thank you." Did I ever even do anything, to make it easier on humans back home? Illa put that thought away to the back of his mind. Not to be ignored, necessarily, but to simmer. For later. When all of this was done, and he had room to think.
Greg didn't accept the gratitude, just shook his head. "Look, maybe this is stupid to you, but, it's important to a lot of humans I know, and it's something I can maybe ask to change, now that you're sort of on our side."
"Okay?"
"Gabriel's been calling you 'it'. Is that something you want to be called?"
"No."
"So, what? I guess 'they', is that polite for faeries?"
"That one's alright, yes. I'm used to 'he', at least in English, but either is fine."
"Thought you all didn't have genders."
Illa shrugged. "I've been in Human a long time."
"Alright. I'll tell Sir. I think it's something he can respect. The faeries would... but you never called him wrong, anyway."
A distinction there, between Gabriel's tormentors and Illa. Illa could guess. There were gendered pronouns in Fan, but they referred to non-fae sexes. Which meant, in practice, animals and humans. Was that acceptable, because humans tended to be dyadic, or was that depersonalizing? Either way, Gabriel wouldn't have favored any equivalent to "she".
"Thanks," was all Illa said out loud in response. And now, to the reason he'd knocked on the door. "Could I get something to eat? After that, I'll be ready to see Gabriel about our plan."
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