"They don't always have wings," Aspen assured me. "They're magical wings. They also live on magic, so they feed on it directly instead of indirectly."
"And are always male," Keir went on. "You know how sirens lured sailors into the seas with their songs?"
"Uh-huh..." Because we'd discussed that last semester in literature. Evidently, they were a real thing - and also wildlings.
"Well," Keir said, "jevadu are the male version."
"Less seduction," Torian clarified, "and more fear."
"I think they're seductive," Wilder joked.
I was looking back and forth between the group. There was something not being said which made me think I was being picked on by my friends, fae-style.
"What am I missing?" I demanded.
"They're a myth," Keir told me. "Besides, an entire race of nothing but men? Like that would work."
"Hey," Aspen countered, "m-preg is a whole thing, you know. Oh wait, you don't read those books!"
"Not fucking funny," Hawke told her.
"Oh no," Torian countered. "This is fucking hysterical. Now,whyam I a jevadu?"
Wilder leaned back, a grin taking over his face. "Well, you remember Nevaeh?"
My eyes jumped over to the jester's table, where she'd sat last semester. She wasn't there. "What happened to her?"
"He stripped her power," Aspen explained.
"I know," I countered. "Fucking bitch. She should've been expelled for trying to attack Torian."
"She was actually aiming for Hawke," he clarified.
Keir ignored that, and pointed the other way. "She's with Poppy Hawthorne now."
Following his finger, I saw Nevaeh with the girl who'd helped me out a few times last semester. The same one who'd picked up my pen when Harper had slammed into me. The girl who'd asked Torian to not be so loud while she was studying. The girl I kept bumping into over and over, and now she finally had a name: Poppy.
Wait. "Hawthorne?" I asked, finally putting all the names together with faces. "Like the bitch teacher from New Year's Eve?"
"That's her mom," Keir admitted. "But Poppy's cool. She's like three-quarters fae, pretty quiet, and mostly keeps to herself. She's also taking care of Nevaeh, because without magic, that girl has been getting a lot of shit."
"Most of it from the jesters," Hawke said. "They turned on her so fucking fast."
"Keep calling her a Winter bitch," Wilder added.
"Because Torian beat her?" I asked.
"No," Torian said. "I stripped her magic. She has none, Rain. In the peak of her season, I drained her dry, and now she gets to live with the repercussions of coming at me."
"Us," Aspen corrected. "And that includes all of the court." She lifted a brow at her brother pointedly. "Doesn't it, Tor?"
"Evidently, it does," he agreed.
"So, are you this jevadu thing?" I asked.
Torian's head snapped over to me, but his response was not at all what I expected. His mouth hung open for a second, then he clamped it closed only for a laugh to sputter out and keep on growing.
"You..." He could barely get a word out around his laughter. "I'm..." And that was it. The guy was done.
