I woke up to the smell of something deep-fried, and I could detect bright sunlight from beneath my closed eyelids. Someone was talking downstairs—two people—and I was lying on… a bed.

I managed to un-glue my eyelids and sit up, feeling completely disorientated. I was in our bedroom, in the Churnleys’ house, my two friends sprawled out in the beds next to mine, still asleep.

For several long minutes, I couldn’t remember anything. Then, the previous night’s memories suddenly came rushing back.

I hadn’t forgotten. I had not taken the Elysium, as I had feared. It was a coincidence that whatever it was I had drunk, also knocked me out almost instantly—and kept us asleep for… I glanced at the clock. Geez. For twelve hours. Granted, I didn’t know exactly what time the coldbloods had returned us, but it was already 2:30 PM.

I swung my feet off the bed and stood up, before a wave of nausea forced me back down. I wasn’t sure if it was because I had stood up too quickly, or if it had something to do with the after-effect of the coldbloods’ beverage. A salty aftertaste lingered in my mouth, and the thought of it being some type of blood made me want to gag.

I dropped to the floor and crawled to the bathroom, using the sink to prop myself up so I could rinse my mouth out. After a minute, I felt ready to try and stand again, and this time I did so successfully, without all the blood rushing from my head.

I stared at myself in the mirror. My blue eyes were bloodshot, and my brown hair looked like I had been dragged backward through a jungle. My clothes were torn, and my shins and knees were covered with cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

I returned to the bedroom, glancing at the window sill. The coldbloods couldn’t have known that we had been sleeping in the treehouse, and must have slipped us in here through the open window. I was surprised to see each of our flashlights resting atop the sill, along with the black waist bag Lauren had been wearing. It was thoughtful of them to return those, too.

“Hey,” Angie said from behind me, rubbing her eyes and holding her head like she had a hangover.

“Hey,” I replied as I sat back down on the bed and folded my legs beneath me. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve felt better,” she croaked. “But I remember everything. And I don’t feel like I’m dying—yet.”

She leaned over to Lauren’s bed and shook her awake.

“No! Stop! Wha-What are you—” Lauren babbled, as she rose to consciousness. She bolted upright, her dark hair pointing every which way. She stared at us blearily before reaching for her glasses, which had been left on her bedside. Another thoughtful touch, I noted.

“Are you okay? Do you remember?” Angie asked.

Lauren groaned, closing her eyes again. Her brow furrowed, and then she nodded. “Yeah. I remember. And I… I think I feel okay. Just like I could sleep for another six hours.”

“Okay, good,” I said. At least we hadn’t gotten sick from whatever we had drunk—not yet, anyway.

“Girls? Are you awake?” Mrs. Churnley’s voice called from downstairs.

Guilt gripped my chest as I remembered what it had meant to her that we sleep outside in the treehouse—after all the trouble she had gone to show it to us, and Mr. Churnley bringing up special bedding. I felt awful.

I stumbled to the door and opened it, calling down, “Hi, Mrs. Churnley. Yeah, we’re awake. I’m-I’m sorry we—”

“Slept so long?” Mrs. Churnley asked, and I was sure there was a slight note of disappointment in her tone.

“Yeah, we, uh…” I looked back over my shoulder at Angie, struggling to come up with a reason why we had come back indoors.

She came to my rescue. “We got a bit chilly out there in the treehouse, surprisingly, once early morning kicked in. We would love to sleep there again tonight, with some heavier blankets. We didn’t get a great night’s sleep, which is probably why we slept in so late.”

“Ah, I see.” That seemed to placate Mrs. Churnley. “Well, lunch is almost ready.”

“Thank you so much,” I replied. “We’ll be down soon.”

We closed the door and backed into the bedroom, turning to look at Lauren. I stuck a hand in my pocket and pulled out the two silver vials. My friends retrieved theirs, and a long moment of silence passed between us. I was sure we were all realizing the same thing.

Pretending last night hadn’t happened was going to be hard.

* * *

My friends and I were so quiet during lunch it prompted Mrs. Churnley to ask us several times if we were okay. A part of me wished we could tell them the truth, but I felt bad enough about breaking my promise to Navan and not taking the Elysium, and it did seem that he and his companions had Earth’s best interests at heart—given their mostly gentle treatment of us, and the fact that they were keeping Earth a secret from their race. They could’ve been lying about that, I supposed, but they had seemed genuine. Otherwise, why would they have let us go, instead of abducting us back to their homeland for our valuable blood?

I shuddered as I recalled Navan’s description of his homeland; I felt sure he had good reasons for wanting coldbloods to remain a secret from humans. Besides, nobody would believe us anyway. The police would think we had lost our minds, and we didn’t even have the wing anymore for them to analyze. We had never even thought to take a picture of it.

We ate lunch quickly and then set about our chores for the day. We began with the garden, doing some general maintenance, and then swept and mopped around the patio where the dogs spent most of their time.

There wasn’t much we could talk about as we worked, since we were so close to the house. All the windows were open, and the Churnleys could hear us. But when Mrs. Churnley sent us to the overgrown blackberry bushes at the border of their land, near the woods, we eased up a little.

“A part of me still thinks it was a dream,” Angie said, bending down to pluck a cluster of plump blackberries by her knees.

“I’m past that,” I replied, dropping a handful of berries into my plastic bowl.

“Me too,” Lauren said. “It doesn’t feel any less weird though.”

I nodded, sighing. My head was still reeling, and the consequences of last night were beginning to hit me. We would have to spend the rest of our lives with this incident living in our brains. With our minds expanded and blown open, in a way nobody else’s on the planet was. It would almost feel like we were living in a different reality to the rest of Earth’s population, everything seeming suddenly so… terribly mundane.

You should have taken the Elysium, a small, nagging voice whispered in my head. Then you could have simply resumed your life, carefree and normal.

I couldn’t entirely dismiss the voice, because it held a note of truth. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. And yet, even now, in hindsight, I still couldn’t bring myself to regret our decision to throw the vials away. Yes, ignorance could be bliss, but sometimes the truth was simply too illuminating to let go of, in spite of the consequences.

At least I had Angie and Lauren for company. Without them, I probably would have been a lot more worried. Maybe a silver lining existed in all of this—maybe this incident would turn out to be the thing that kept us close in our adult years, even if physical distance tore us apart. That was the only comfort I could cling to as the aftermath of last night overwhelmed my brain.

We let ourselves fall into silence and focused on picking, and the steady, rhythmic activity helped to soothe me. Physical activity almost always did.

As I neared the edge of the bushes, however, I heard a noise coming from the woods. It sounded like voices—male voices.

I placed my bowl on the ground and waved my hands to get Angie and Lauren’s attention. When they looked, I put a finger to my lips and gestured that they follow me. Together we crept to the edge of the bush and peered around it as much as we dared.

It was hard to find them amongst all the trees, but my eyes finally settled on two tall, dark, winged figures, standing on a thick branch, about seven feet off the ground. I couldn’t make out their faces, because their backs were to us, but as I listened more closely, I realized it was Jethro and Ianthan. They had come some way from their enclosure, as the beginning of their fence was at least a ten-minute walk from here… well, probably only a few seconds of flying at their speed. But I wondered what they were doing out here, away from their plot of land.

If we weren’t in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn’t have been able to hear them from this distance, but the almost deafeningly quiet atmosphere worked to my advantage. I could just decipher their words, and from the tone of their voices, it sounded like they were having an argument.

“—didn’t think it through,” Ianthan said.

“You had plenty of time to think this through!” Jethro retorted.

“You pressured me, Father. And things seemed different when we were back home, with distance between the plan and its actual execution. I’m telling you now, I don’t…I can’t go through with this. Navan is my best friend! I’d rather face the consequences than betray him.”

“Fool boy! Navan will get caught sooner or later for deceiving Queen Gianne, regardless of our actions. You really think he can keep up this charade forever? Besides, we don’t even have to blow the whistle on him. All we need to do is follow the blood sample back to Queen Brisha—if all goes to plan, we won’t need to see the face of Queen Gianne ever again. Queen Brisha will grant us immunity from her sister’s wrath and—”

“Wha—What do you mean follow the blood sample?”

“I extracted a blood sample from one of the girls last night—hardly difficult to do while I was flying her back to their house—and sent off the sample in a pod, early this morning before Navan woke up. It’s on its way to Vysanthe now, waiting for us to follow in the ship—”

“What? That wasn’t part of the plan!”

“No, it wasn’t. But neither was those girls barging into the house. It was the perfect opportunity to get a sample on its way discreetly.”

“But—”

“Look, Ianthan. I’m sick of arguing with you. Vysanthe will discover humans at some point, whether we’re involved or not—it’s only a matter of time before they figure out how to build a ship like Navan’s. We might as well derive some benefit from Earth’s discovery. Think of your future, of your wife and children… Which side would you prefer to be on, when it all goes down? Brisha’s or Gianne’s? If you possess half a brain you’ll answer Brisha, because she will become Empress. She will be the first to bring war to Gianne’s gate, and she will be the one to unite Vysanthe. You will thank me for getting us on Brisha’s side when that happens, mark my words.”

My heart was in my throat.

Betray Navan?

Two Queens?

A blood sample taken from one of us, on its way to Vysanthe?!

Nausea rippled through me, and I looked in alarm at my two friends. All of us began frantically checking our bodies for any signs of pricked skin. I checked my arms, legs, stomach, but found nothing, then asked Angie to check the parts I couldn’t see without a mirror, while I did the same for her.

“Your neck!” she suddenly gasped, running a finger along the skin near the base of my throat, just above my collarbone. “You see that, Lauren,” she said, pulling Lauren closer to me. “Two tiny pricks—they look so small they could be mosquito bites. I guess they must be from his fangs.”

My stomach plummeted, and I suddenly felt imaginary pinpricks all over. That guy… he had bitten me while I’d been asleep. I felt utterly violated. But that was the least of my worries.

“He took my blood and—” I stopped abruptly as their conversation resumed.

“Navan and Bashrik leave in less than an hour for town, to procure more basic provisions for Ronad after his transformation,” Jethro said. “We have to leave with the ship then. It’ll be painless, I promise. Ronad still can’t walk. You won’t even have to look any of the brothers in the eye.”

There was another pause in which every part of me prayed that Ianthan would resume his moral ground and refuse to be swayed by his father’s words.

But instead he replied, in a low, resigned voice, “All right. Let’s get this over with.”

How can you say that?! I screamed at him in my mind. You said Navan is your best friend!

The two coldbloods shifted on the branch, spreading their wings to take flight. We scrambled backward to conceal ourselves behind the bush. We froze, listening to the sound of their rustling wings transporting them back to their base.

And then we stared at each other, wide-eyed and panicked.