RISING SILVER MIST
OLIVIA WILDENSTEIN
Contents
Disclaimer
Title Page
CHARACTERS
GOTTWA LANGUAGE
FAELI LANGUAGE
I. Earth
Prologue
1. The Niece
2. Long Time
3. The Confession
4. Broken Bonds
5. The Sap
6. The Spirit Plane
7. The Barn
8. The Experiment
9. The Anger
10. The Glass Flower
11. The Knife
12. The Bargain
13. Favors
14. The Broken Ones
15. Faith’s Father
16. The Tabloid
17. New Roommate
18. Changes
19. The Castes
20. Revelations
21. Birthday Party
22. The Connection
23. Sign Language
24. Devil Incarnate
25. Drowning
26. The Swim
27. Revenge
28. The Forest
29. The Proposal
30. The Lie
31. Cages And Doors
32. Locker Number Four
II. Neverra
33. First Sight
34. Purple
35. The First Ceremony
36. The Envoy
37. Air Ships
38. Middle Month
39. The Earrings
40. The Glades
41. Electric
42. The Half-Sister
43. The Punishment
44. The Truth
45. The Proof
46. Wrong Colors
47. Blackmail
48. Not Cinderella
49. The Cage Of Nightmares
50. Loss, Lost
51. Darkness And Light
52. Invisible Ink
53. Love Potion
54. Ace And Me
55. Aftershock
56. The Elder
57. Blue Magic
58. The Trim
60. First Encounter
61. The Night Of Mist
62. Becoming One
63. Arrows And Dust
64. Rage
65. Quiescence
66. The Faceoff
67. The Last Bargain
68. The Impostor
69. A New Order
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Also by OLIVIA WILDENSTEIN
About the Author
Disclaimer
The Gottwas are an invented tribe, loosely inspired by the Ojibwe people. I did not want to cause offense to Native Americans by writing about customs that aren't mine.
To Liana.
A beautiful light that went out too soon.
Book 3 of The Lost Clan series
by
OLIVIA WILDENSTEIN
CHARACTERS
Adette: Taeewa’s mate; the bazash’s daughter
Adison Wood: Ace and Lily’s mother; Linus’s wife
Ace Wood: Linus’s son; Maximus’s grandson
Aylen: Nova’s sister; Cat’s aunt
Astra Sakar: half-fae; owns Astra’s Bakery
Bee: Beatrice; owns Bee’s Place; Blake’s grandmother
Blake: Bee’s grandson; Cat’s friend
Borgo Lief: Ishtu’s lover; Cruz’s “adoptive” father
Cassidy (Cass): Cat’s best friend in Rowan; Etta’s daughter
Catori Price: main character
Chatwa: Iya’s mother; twin sister to Holly’s mother, Ley; hunter
Cruz Vega: fae; faux medical examiner; friends with the Woods family; Lily’s fiancé; Lyoh & Jacobiah’s son
Derek Price: Cat’s father; Nova’s husband
Elika: Negongwa’s mate; Gwenelda’s mother; Kajika’s adoptive mother
Etta: real name is Cometta; part fae; daughter of Astra; sister to Stella
Faith Sakar: Stella’s daughter; bad blood between her and Cat
Gregor: current fae wariff; soulless narcissist
Gwenelda: huntress; first to awaken; absorbed Nova’s soul
Holly: Ley; half-mortal, half-fae; Jacobiah Vega’s half-sister, Cruz’s aunt
Ishtu: Kajika’s mate; looked like Cat
Iya: Chatwa’s daughter; Cat’s great-grandmother
Jacobiah Vega: fae; former wariff; Cruz’s father; killed by Lyoh Vega
Jimmy: Cass’s brother; Etta’s son
Kajika: Ishtu’s ex-husband; Gwenelda’s brother-in-law
Ley: Holly; Chatwa’s “twin sister”; half-fae / half-human
Lily Wood: fae; mute; Ace’s sister; Linus’s daughter; Cruz’s fiancée
Linus Wood: King of the fae
Lyoh Vega: Jacobiah’s wife; Cruz’s mother; killed her husband; killed Ishtu
Maximus Wood: Linus’s father; ruthless, lawless, bloodthirsty leader
Menawa: Gwenelda’s mate; Kajika’s brother
Negongwa: revered leader of Gottwa Indians
Nova Price: Catori’s mother; Derek’s beloved wife
Satyana: Aylen’s daughter; Shiloh’s twin sister
Shiloh: Aylen’s daughter; Cat’s young cousin; Satyana’s twin sister; has the sight
Silas: lucionaga
Stella Sakar: part fae; daughter of Astra; sister to Cometta (Etta)
Taeewa: Gwenelda’s youngest brother; the 13th hunter
Tony: Aylen’s husband
Woni: Iya’s daughter; Nova’s mother; Cat’s grandmother
GOTTWA LANGUAGE
aabiti: mate
abiwoojin: darling
adsookin: legend
baseetogan: fae world; Neverra; Isle of Woods
bazash: half-fae, half-human
bekagwe: wait for me
chatwa: darkness
debwe: truth
gajeekwe: the king’s advisor, like a minister
gatizogin: I’m sorry
Gejaiwe: the Great Spirit
gassen: faerie dust
gingawi: part hunter, part fae
golwinim: Woods’s guards, fireflies
gwe: woman
ishtu: sweetness
kwenim: memory
ley: light
ma kwenim: my memory
maagwe: come with me
maahin: come forth
Makudewa Geezhi: Dark Day
manazi: book
mashka: tough
mawa: mine
meegwe: give me
meekwa: blood
Mishipeshu: water faeries, Daneelies
naagangwe: stop her
nockwad: mist
nilwa: defeater
pahan: faeries
tokwa: favor
FAELI LANGUAGE
adamans: glass flowers as tall as wheat stalks
alinum: rowan wood
astium: portal, door
calidum: lesser fae; bazash
caligo: mist
caligosubi: one who lives below the mist, aka marsh-dweller
caligosupra: one who lives above the mist, aka mist-dweller
calimbor: skytrees
captis: magnetize
clave: portal locksmith
cupola: cage of nightmares
Daneelies: water faeries, Mishipeshu
diles: venomous Neverrian creature, a cross between a frog and a crocodile
draca: first guard; wariff’s protector (dragon-form)
Duobosi: coupling ceremony
enefkum: eunuch
fae: sky-dwellers
Forma: underground-dwellers, bodiless, Unseelies
Fias: child
gajoï: favor
Hareni: grotto
kalini: fire
lucionaga: faerie guards
Lustriums: clusters of stars
mallow: an edible plant, faerie weed; doesn’t affect humans the same way it affects faeries, and hunters are immune
Massin: Your highness
Mea: mine
Mikos: Neverrian snake coated in sharp quills
Milandi: marvelous
Neverra: baseetogan; Isle of Woods
Obso: please
Potas: I can’t
Plantae: plants
Quid est: Who is it?
Runa: Neverrian gondolas carried by faeries
Seelies: light faeries, Fae
Sepula: ceremony of the dead
stam: giant flat shells that bob in the glades
ti ama: I love you
Unseelies: dark faeries, bodiless, Forma
Vade: go
Valo: bye
Ventor: Hunter
Wariff: equal to Gajeekwe
Part I
Earth
Prologue
I traced the braided gold band of my mother’s engagement ring, running my fingertip against the chiseled planes of the inset rubies. Dad had given it to me two weeks before, and I hadn’t taken it off since. Like gleaming pockets, the red stones held memories of my mother. Some days, those memories were painful and I fisted my hands; some days, they were joyful and I eagerly dove inside the red depths.
Tonight’s memory was a joyful one.
“On my eighth birthday, I wanted sugar cookies instead of a cake. While Mom made the dough, I rifled through her box of cookie cutters and picked a ghost. She asked me, why not a flower? I reminded her that my name meant spirit. So ghosts were more accurate than flowers.”
I held my ring up to the faint beam of light spilling from my desk lamp. The rubies winked at me.
“You should’ve seen my mother’s face. She paled and sat me down, then explained that Catori didn’t mean ghost; that it meant a powerful force, a supreme being. Which of course prompted me to say, you named me God?”
Mom had laughed.
She had the most wonderful laughter. It filled all of her, from her eyes to her mouth to her chest. I would’ve given anything to hear that sound again.
The warm fingers combing through my long black locks stilled. “Never has a name suited a person better.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
The hand wrapped around the mass of my hair and tugged gently to pivot my head. “Cat, I may be endowed with an incredible sense of humor, but I do sometimes set it aside. I don’t think your parents could’ve named you better. You’re a force to be reckoned with.” A crooked smile settled over Ace’s lips. “Supremely sexy and powerfully addictive. A goddess in her own right.”
I rolled my eyes. “I bet you can’t say those things with a straight face.”
“Am I not allowed to smile at my gorgeous girlfriend?”
I searched his eyes for humor but became sidetracked by their exquisiteness. There wasn’t much I didn’t like about Ace, but those eyes…those eyes completely undid me. Bluer and more brilliant than the iridescent veins in the opal pendant I abandoned at Holly’s farmhouse the night I learned the hunters had killed her.
“And I can say it with a straight face.” His hand released my hair, traveled down the side of my body, and settled on my hip where his other hand already rested. Applying the gentlest pressure, he pivoted my body to face his. “You are supremely sexy and powerfully addictive, Catori Price.”
A shiver crackled through each one of my nerve endings. Yes, his hands were on me. And yes, the fire running through his veins heated my own blood. But it was more than that with Ace. His very presence turned me into a livewire.
I wasn’t sure how I could ever have been immune to him. I often thought of our first encounter in the county jail, where he’d come to bail out his best friend Cruz Vega. The meeting—the handshake—felt like eons ago.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Laundry,” I deadpanned.
“Really?” His eyes bored into mine. “My declaration made you think of laundry?”
I licked my lips that suddenly felt cracked as though I hadn’t sipped water in days.
He watched my mouth, dark eyebrows slanted over his straight nose. The caged dust that girdled my neck like an inked rendition of barbed wire throbbed underneath my skin.
A second heartbeat.
I touched the pulsating flesh with my fingers. Even though Stella’s confiscated dust was locked underneath my skin, I always worried it would leach into my throat and choke me, like it should’ve done when she’d unleashed it on me back in the hospital.
Ace lowered his face to my neck and kissed his way across my collarbone. When his lips brushed my knuckles, my hand sprang away. “Would you like me to get your mind off your very human tribulations?”
I shivered. Before I could speak, he kissed the thin skin sheltering the dust.
I forgot about Stella then. I forgot about my mother. About the meaning of my name. About the ghost cookies I’d baked. About my father sleeping across the hall from me. I forgot I was part faerie and part hunter, and that dating Ace was not only a terrible idea, but also a dangerous one.
His mouth skimmed my jaw. “Still thinking about laundry?”
“No.” The word leaped out of me—hoarse, loud, rash.
He kissed my mouth, and the heady warmth that had enveloped my skin swathed my veins.
A long moment later, when our lips broke apart, my pulse felt like it had escaped my body and scattered across my bedroom.
“I want you to teach me to resist captis,” I blurted out.
Ace’s hands, which had slipped underneath my gray T-shirt sometime during our make-out session, stilled on the base of my spine. “Why?”
Ever since Mom died, stress limned everything in my life. I was terrified my father would find out that magic existed in our world and be punished for knowing. I feared my best friend Cass would be killed in the crossfire of the hunter/faerie war simmering in our town. I dreaded that Stella would return to Rowan and carve her dust out of my neck. I worried that Gwenelda and Kajika would plow my backyard to awaken the rest of their hunter family—my family. Not that I considered myself a hunter these days.
Neither did I consider myself a faerie for that matter.
I favored another term: human. I’d even gotten the word tattooed over the brand Cruz had seared into my flesh, the one that had morphed into a W for Wood—Ace’s last name—and glowed each time my pulse hastened.
“Why do you want me to teach you to resist captis?”
I traced the faint white lines of the W, then balled my fingers into a slack fist and raised my gaze to Ace’s. “In case a faerie other than yourself decides to use it on me.”
His jaw ticked.
“I want to become stronger, Ace. Help me become stronger. Fighting something I can see is difficult enough. But fighting something invisible feels impossible. And yet I remember you telling me I resisted it a bit back in Detroit. The first time you used it on me. Were you stroking my ego, or did I really manage?”
“You really managed, but I don’t know how you did it. I just felt you blocking me.”
“Use it on me and tell me when you feel resistance, and I’ll figure out what I’m doing.”
His features were all hard lines.
I touched his brow to smooth it. “I’m not trying to resist you.”
With a gravelly sigh, his features loosened. “I hadn’t even considered anyone else using it on you.”
“I wouldn’t want to imagine anyone seducing you either—with or without magic.”
“That wouldn’t happen.”
“And yet, I find myself imagining this more often than I like. Ever since you told me faeries weren’t monogamous—”
“I would never cheat on you, Cat.”
I wanted to believe Ace, but it felt idealistic, romantic of him to s
ay this, and stupid and naïve of me to trust it. We’d been together all of two weeks. What would happen in a couple months when I was no longer new and shiny?
Although the consideration rattled me, I shoved it away. Now wasn’t the time to focus on potential risks. Now was the time to focus on real risks: faerie allure. “Please teach me.”
His chest rose and fell.
“Think of all that time we’ll have to spend practicing.” I smiled to sweeten my demand.
“I don’t like using it on you.”
“Would you rather I ask someone else to teach me?”
His blue eyes ground into my black ones. “Absolutely not.”
“So you’ll do it?”
He loosed a heavy sigh. “Yes, but not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
He kissed my nose, then the corners of my mouth. “You are supremely sexy, powerfully addictive, and incredibly”—he gave me that cocky grin of his—“incredibly stubborn.”
“My father says he pities the man I’ll marry. So consider yourself lucky you’re already engaged.”
His smile vanished. “I hope you don’t believe him.”