Gods & Thieves ✔

25. Charming and Innocent

༄༄༄

My mentor is acting strange tonight, I think, making my way to the fountain. Or am I paranoid? I've been quiet and docile these last two weeks, sure, but previously, Loretto has never let me chase my ideas and risk getting into trouble. Maybe now fae believes I can act sensibly? Because I can.

And why is Loretto suddenly interested in the rumors about the First Blood? Is she really in town? Is fae afraid of her then or seeking her audience? But if she taught both Maricela and Loretto, who's she gonna help now?

Lost in worries, I realize I've reachedthe fountain in the dark only when it's literally a step away from my very nose. I didn't know there was a fourth aura fountain in Tik'al, but I guess it's because this one is old, small, and broken. Just one split stone arch, like a door, with aura, blacker than the night, coiling around it like inky ribbons.

I look over the square overgrown with grass, surrounded by windowless walls, but there's nobody. I listen.

No one.

"Faris?" I ask quietly, my hands balling into fists. Not a trap, I remind myself. Not a trap. Loretto would never--

"You're alone?" Faris's voice replies from the dark, and before I can say yes, he steps from behind the inky arch. His shoulders are stiff, the corners of his lips downcast, and everything in his posture screams of his nervousness. With Ariane, as I always saw him, he is relaxed and smiling, and now he looks like a little hawk that just dodged a hunter's bullet.

My eyes prowl over Faris again, trying to comprehend this new side of his character and figure what scared him so much, I notice his right hand surreptitiously reaching for the fountain's arch. Aura billows around his fingers, and--his skin doesn't look burned. My jaw drops open. "You're a shaman."

"You're a shaman."

I blink, conflicted, as our voices merge into one. No, I'm-- I'm about to mechanically deny it, but then I realize I'm standing just as close to the fountain. I can feel aura's minty touch on the fingers of my left hand. I gave it away. Loretto was wrong, I'm still a troublemaker. But it doesn't matter if-- "You're a shaman?" I repeat, vexed puzzlement dozing off all my previous thoughts. "But you're dating my sister!"

No, that's impossible. This suddenly seems too complicated. New thoughts begin to spin in my head. Ariane hates shamans, they killed her father; she won't date one. Or...she will? From the year her father died, she's been crazy about learning about magic as much as possible.

At first, everyone believed she, just like Cale and Kofi, wanted revenge and researched her enemy, but when she announced she applied to Tik'al to study alchemy yet refused to help me and my brothers with thealchemical formula of the potion depriving shamans of their power, it became obvious--she had no enemies here. Kofi then called her cuckoo, Cale just stopped talking to her at all for a year, and I...I don't know. I felt betrayed for a while, then kinda accepted. I told myself her hatred simply couldn't stop her curious mind.

Perhaps I got it all wrong, perhaps not every plainblood is as blind as I was, not every plainblood hates every shaman? Even in my family.

Ariane is the only one who I've actually never heard saying that every problem in our family's life is because of shamans. What if she's been suspecting everything Loretto told me about shaman power being no inborn talent all along?

"I thought my shaman nature was obvious to you," Faris says, frowning. "Since you're here. Of course Ariane knows. We don't lie to each other." He pauses. "But what about you? She said you were faking it."