House of Ash and Shadow (Gilded City, #1)

by Leia Stone

“You said I couldn’t control how people treated me, but I could control my reaction to their mistreatment. That it would define who I was.”

“Well, the moral of the story is to be kind to others but defend yourself if you must.”

“You can’t be serious. We are banished. The price of unlawfully breaking into The Gilded City as a magicless is death.” Tears filled my eyes, blurring my vision, and then spilled over onto my cheeks. “If he dies, I’ll be dead inside anyway, so they might as well kill me,” I told her. “Now please move.”

“Come back with me tomorrow and see Headmaster Clarke at The Academy.” My head reeled back in shock. “Why the Nightling would I do that?” He looked me up and down again, slowly, and my stomach warmed. “Because you have more magic than anyone I’ve ever met. I can smell it on you, like a sharp, aged whiskey. You belong here.”

Ariyon looked at me with compassion. “His soul has already been marked for death. I’ll have to fight the Grim to get him back.”

His eyes fluttered closed, and he swallowed hard. “A lot of magic. So much magic I can taste it at the back of my throat.” When his eyes opened and he looked at me, I was shocked to see the steel-grey iris practically glowing. “More magic than my aunt.” I frowned. “Is your aunt powerful?” He nodded. “Very.”

I looked over at my dad, who shrugged. “Who knew the little, cursed girl in the basket was a powerful fae.” He chuckled.

“You will take this child from me only in death, do you understand me, pretty boy? She is Isarian and will not be leaving with you,” she snarled.

One second, I was staring at the cold-hearted man with his outstretched hand on my throat, and the next, Hipsie’s meat cleaver came down and cut his arm right off.

“Marissa hated people because they only ever disappointed her. She felt like a mistake and said so many times,” Clarke said. “Her mind was dark from a young age. I hear differently about Fallon. The people of her village gathered around her and fought your guards to keep her there. They loved her. She’s been loved, which is something Marissa didn’t have.”

My father took a deep breath and exhaled. “The night you came to Isa, I planned to take my own life.” I gasped in shock. My father? That was… I couldn’t believe it. “I just couldn’t handle one more night alone, with no one to talk to. One more holiday without someone to celebrate with. The loneliness was soul crushing.”

“Listen, I don’t know what you heard about me, but I grew up in Isariah believing that I had zero magic my entire life. I was adopted by my father as an infant, never had a mother. I would appreciate going forward if you and I could be friends. If I ever do anything to disappoint you, or hurt you, then you don’t have to be my friend anymore, but I’d sure like to be given the chance. It doesn’t seem fair I’d be judged for a family lineage I know nothing about.” Her questioning face turned into a bright smile. “Fair enough, Fallon. Friends.” She held out her hand and I sighed in relief.

“I’m an Illuminator. My magic is healing in nature, which I infuse into tinctures. But also, I can see someone’s truest self. I see them in colors. When they lie, I can tell. When they are hurt, I can tell. When they have ill intent or seek to harm, I see it all,” she said. The hairs on my arms stood up as she pointed to the tinctures around us. “It makes for an incredible ability to give the person the right remedy they need.” Then she looked at me. “It also helps me know who I can trust.”

When I pulled the door open, it revealed Eden, and she was carrying a large brown box. An older woman with bright red, curly hair stood beside her. It had to be her mother. She carried a steaming hot savory pie of some sort, if my nostrils smelled true. “Wasn’t sure if you had a chance to get clothes or food yet?” Eden asked. I shook my head, overcome with gratitude. “Well, here. We look about the same size.” Eden held out the box and I took it from her, unable to find my voice. “And I made a meat and potato pie.” The woman held it out, and my father swooped in and took it from her, their fingers grazing lightly.

“The House of War and Bone was for all warrior fae. They grouped together and learned to fight and protect those, great and small, for the bet-ter-ment of all fae.” I struggled with the long word and flushed with embarrassment. Master Clarke was patient and said nothing. “The House of Light and Ether was for all healing fae. They worked tirelessly to help those in need of medical restoration and coexisted nicely with the warrior fae, working together to make a har-mon-ious society,” I finished. Master Clarke nodded. “Last house,” he said and tapped the page. I swallowed hard, a sudden sense of impending doom falling over me. “But a third type of fae was discovered. Fae with magic so dark and powerful they made up an entirely new house. The House of Ash and Shadow. Their magic was destructive in nature, causing death, disease, war, and madness—” I stopped reading, my heart hammering against my chest, its erratic rhythm pounding in my ears and drowning out all other sound. I was suddenly overcome with terror that I might be reading about myself. “Go on, Fallon, you must know,” he pressed. I took in a cleansing breath and continued. “Madness and horror. Their magic did not seem to come from the Light, but elsewhere.” I gasped at the insinuation and looked up at Master Clarke in anger. The Light was the creator of all good things. Everything decent and worthy came from the Light and then everything good returned back to it. To say that anything was not of the Light was…just me...

I flipped back to the page I’d been reading. “The magic that the members of the House of Ash and Shadow carried infected everything they touched. The plants started to die, the people near them began to go mad, and the fae themselves started to have evil appetites. Appetites for…blood.” A tendril of fear gripped my heart so tightly then, I nearly lost my breath. I slammed the book shut and looked at Master Clarke with wide eyes. “No.” The only fae that I knew of who had an appetite for blood were…Nightlings.

“If I cannot teach you how to control your power, it will control you, and you will not just become a Nightling. As a Bane, you will be their queen,” Master Clarke declared.

Fallon Bane Fae Class: Warrior Year: One Advisor: Master Clarke 1st Period: Pyrotechnics I Mrs. Bardot 2nd Period: Telekinesis I Mr. Whitlock 3rd Period: Weapons I Mr. Supra Lunch 4th Period: Fae History I Mrs. Hilton 5th Period: Private Elective with Master Clarke 6th Period: Group Elective with Master Knight

“Don’t tell me Ariyon is a prince.” She winced. “He is. Nephew of Queen Solana. She had no children, so he’s next in line to the throne. Five minutes older than Ayden, his sweeter, more sensible half.” Holy Fae! I rode on a horse with the prince of The Gilded City? The prince of The Gilded City saved my father’s life?

“Ariyon is the healer. Ayden is the warrior. Yet their personalities seem opposite to their powers,” she mused.

Eden looked sad at that but continued. “So, it’s kind of tragic, but Ariyon is a Maven Healer, which is a very rare type of healer. When he heals someone, he takes their injury into his body, and it takes days or years off of his life. Maven Healers don’t usually live past thirty. Very sad.”

I knew in that moment that no matter what Ariyon did to me, no matter how cruel my four years here were with him at The Academy, I would never be able to hate a single hair on his head. I owed him everything.

‘Yanric Spade, Bane family familiar. At your service,’ he said, but his beak never moved. My heart thumped so wildly, I was sure the entire table could hear it. I gave a nervous peal of laughter and looked around at everyone else. They were all staring at me, wide-eyed. Suspicious. Even Eden. “Go on! Go away.” I reached out and shoved the bird with the back of my gloved hand, pretending I hadn’t just heard him speak! He flew backward a few inches and then hopped closer to me. ‘Fallon Bane, I live and breathe to serve you. I will never leave you,’ he declared and then lifted off the table and flew at me, perching on my shoulder.

“Fair enough. Marissa Bane murdered Ariyon’s and my parents,” he said matter-of-factly and it felt like the floor fell out beneath me.

Ayden squinted at Yanric. “As an heir to the House of Ash and Shadow, you have a familiar. A familiar is only something that your house has. They are dark creatures that can turn to shadow and carry powerful magic. And they are tied to their chosen heir for life.”

‘I will do no such thing. I am an extension of you and I’ve been searching for you for seventeen years. I will only leave you in death,’ Yanric pledged.

“Can you heal it? My curse?” Ariyon met my gaze with compassion. “I can take the pain, not the curse. The curse is who you are, you were born of it, like skin and blood, it’s…a part of you.”

“Miss Bane, if that bird flies in here, I will roast him for dinner. Your familiar is not welcome in my class,” she growled and a stone sank in my gut. I could only nod, praying Yanric didn’t do anything stupid. ‘Roast me!’ He laughed maniacally in my head. ‘I’ll rip her soul from her body and feed it to the grim!’

Rumor had it that the Nightlings were undead. Fae, once human in nature, who had crossed over to the Realm of Eternity and came back somehow. They fed on blood and became shadow, at one with darkness. They were evil and the highlight of every horror story told to me as a child. I wasn’t even sure how to kill one, or if you could. All I knew was that according to Master Clarke, I was destined to become one. House of Ash and Shadow.

“Fine! Be that way. But know this, Fallon Brookshire. We don’t have a set destiny. We have choices, and you can choose to be different from Marissa Bane. We make our own destiny, dammit!” She rapped on the door a final time and then I heard her footsteps retreat.

‘Let’s get one thing clear. I am loyal to you and you alone, Fallon Bane. If you need my help, I offer it without question. If your heart breaks, my heart breaks too. If someone seeks to harm you, I will harm them no matter who they are or what title they carry. And if you go insane with darkness and become a Nightling, then I too go with you.’

She looked supremely flustered at that. “Well, what do you want, Fallon?!” she huffed. I met her gaze, unable to stop my tongue from baring my deepest truth. “To be loved. To be kissed by a boy. To be normal. To go to the school dance with my hair down, in a short dress, with no gloves, and dance all night without fear of being touched and caused pain.”

I peered at him. “How long did my mother last before she…went dark?” He blew air through his lips, seemingly rolling that question over in his mind for a long time. Something flashed across his face that I couldn’t quite read—regret? “If I’m being honest, she was dark from the day I met her at age sixteen.” I gasped in shock, and he frowned. “Marissa Bane grew up on the West Side with an adoptive family. Her birth parents were”—he cleared his throat—“murdered by the current Gilded City King at the time.”

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “At age sixteen, Marissa got angry when her adoptive parents wouldn’t let her stay out late and she started a fire with her mind, burned the house down, killing them both.” My face went slack. “Surely…that was an accident.” He swallowed hard. “She then became a ward of the crown, put under my parents’ care, and when I questioned her about it, she had absolutely no remorse. Said she was better off alone.”

“So, what happened?” I wanted to know everything about her now. I needed to know what went wrong so that I could avoid it. He looked suddenly stricken, the blood washing from his face. “She fell in love.” That got me sitting upright. “With who?” “We don’t know. Only that when she fell pregnant with you at age nineteen, she was the happiest I had ever seen her. This woman normally never smiled, she never cared about anyone but herself and her familiar. She ate lunch alone; she was cruel to people and animals. I’m sorry, Fallon, but she was horrible at times. She was mad at the world and blamed The Gilded City for all of her problems.” I swallowed a sob and realized in that moment I had never for one second thought about who my birth father was. I had my dad, so I didn’t care, but in this moment, I realized that if I was conceived, it meant my mother had to have lain with someone. “Well?” I pressed him. He couldn’t leave the story there. “She never made it through her full fourth year here. By second semester she was six months pregnant with you…whoever had made her feel so alive, so loved, broke up with her. She burned down most of the school in a rage, it’s why the bricks are black. She killed one hundred and seventeen students with that fire. Nearly half the school. Including Master Knight’s family. Solana was there, and that’s when she cursed the Queen with a lifetime of barrenness.”

He nodded. “And their mother, the queen. Then Solana, King Madden’s sister, broke into the room and killed Marissa but not before your birth mother threw a final curse for our entire generation. If any of us are to kill you, the next heir to the Gilded City throne will fall dead themselves.” Ariyon.

“Fallon, you are not Marissa. You smile, you care, you’re protective of those you love. You love! You have friends. I see more light in your eyes than I see in my own when I look in the mirror. I will not give up on you,” he told me fiercely and a lump formed in my throat. I’d judged Master Clarke all wrong that first day. His harsh words in that jail cell were because he cared so deeply about the outcome of my life. Because he’d failed my mother and now, he wanted to do right by me. “Thank you,” I managed. “We’ll just take it one day at a time, okay?” He offered me a forced smile. I nodded. “Okay.”

Clarke seemed to pick up on my mood and gave me a weak smile. “We can’t help what we are born into, Fallon. Only the choices we make each day.”

“Are you okay?” he breathed, his wild gaze running over me as if looking for injuries.

“Look, Fallon, I said some mean stuff last night⁠—” “It’s fine,” I grumbled. He reached out and grasped both of my shoulders lightly, forcing me to look up at him. “It’s not fine. I hate myself for what I said to you last night. I’m an ass and it wasn’t okay.” The brick wall I built last night on the walk home began to crumble in that moment. Just a little. “You are an ass but everything you said was true. Getting close to me would be dangerous and you all should stay away from me.” I turned my face so that he couldn’t see the tears build in my eyes. A strangled whimper came from him, and it shocked me to hear. “Fallon, no. My parents’ death has…affected me more than it did Ayden. And then Marissa showed up last night after I thought she was gone, and you were easy to blame. But that isn’t right, and…I’m sorry.”

Ayden had sent me a hug through the one person he knew could touch me, and I wasn’t sure if I was falling for him or his twin brother who held me in that moment. It was the most thoughtful gift I’d ever received. Ariyon seemed to know that this was a big deal for me because he held on, even as my silent tears ran down my cheeks and onto his bicep. Even as my breath shuddered against him. Even as the final bell rang. He just held me and, in that moment, it almost made up for a lifetime of not being able to be hugged.

Stepping up next to me and placing his hand on the door handle, Ariyon leaned into my ear, pressing his lips against them. “If I could take the curse from you, I would, Fallon,” he whispered, sending chills down my neck as he opened the door and left me in the storage closet, alone with my feelings.

Avis then reached out and grasped Solana’s hand lightly, which made the queen bristle. “But Fallon is nothing like that. She has one of the brightest lights inside of her that I’ve ever seen. It’s like…she’s incapable of hatred. I don’t see her going fully dark. Ever.”

Ariyon sighed. “You don’t understand, Fallon, when someone is in pain, I can feel it.” He moved closer to me and made a fist, pounding it on his chest. “When my aunt grasped your arm, I felt your agony and I wanted to kill her in that moment,” he snarled. I gasped and he leaned even closer. “And when you said that all you wanted was to be normal, to be loved, to be kissed… I felt that too, in my heart, like an invitation.”

Ariyon grabbed a thin paintbrush and dipped it in white paint. Walking over, he crossed out five tallies. “How many days or weeks I have eaten up with healing. It’s an estimate, of course. Curing the drunkenness was probably five days.” My face fell when I realized that he was counting his own life span. Pain clawed at my heart at the mere thought of what he’d given up for others. For my father. For me. “You shouldn’t…count them like this. Or look at them so…openly. It’s depressing.” I blinked and a single tear rolled down my cheek. “Why not? I’m not afraid of death. The moment my Maven healing magic presented itself at age five, I knew what I was signed up for.”

Something to last forever. Now it made sense. Roses in a painting would never die.

Ariyon stiffened against me, dipping his head to look down at me, which brought our lips dangerously close. “You think I don’t want you?” There was pain in his eyes, and I was starting to feel the pull of sleep yanking me under. “I’m destined for darkness. No one should want me,” I mumbled against his chest, my head lolling downward. “Hey!” he said loudly, and my eyelids snapped open as I jerked my chin to look up at him. He was angry as he gazed down at me. “You’re too desirable, Fallon. It scares me.” My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest but also my chest felt numb, so all I could do was swallow hard. “And what if I go dark?” I whimpered. His face sobered. “Then I will jump into the shadows and pull you back to the Light.”

Both Madden boys were going to break my heart and I knew it; all I could do was brace for impact and enjoy the days I had.

“I’m saying that from the moment I met you I’ve felt some spark of myself come alive that I long thought was dead. I’m saying that I can’t get the way you smell out of my head, and I dream about tasting you. I’m saying, Fallon Brookshire, that I don’t care who your mother is, I just want to be the person that makes you happy. It’s always been you.”

Ariyon stared at me, mouth open, as he grasped at the axe embedded in his chest. Right where his heart was. The sound of Ayden’s wail when he caught his brother on the way to the floor would haunt my dreams forever. That was a death blow, there was no healing an axe embedded up to the hilt in the heart.