The Last Guardian of Everness (War of the Dreaming 1) by John C. Wright

Dylan; Dylan would recognize it for what it was, and this would ensure success for the cause to which Azrael had devoted himself. With my help, Dylan would see to it that those unjustly prisoned would be free, and those who must return to earth would do so. Those were his exact words.”
    Wendy, listening to the story with great interest, rattled her bedsheets in a gesture of impatience, saying, “But why did you trust him? I thought the selkie were your enemies! Bad guys!”
    “That’s true. But one thing was that, after all, one of the three storm- princes works for us, so why not a selkie?”
    “Was that your idea?”
    “Well, actually he said that to me. Azrael.”
    “I would have asked him a lot more questions about who this Dylan was. I would have asked him who betrayed Vindyamar (I love that name!) Well? Didn’t you ask anything about any of this?”
    “Well, I tried to ask, but the moment he handed me the glowing marble, he kind of fell over and collapsed against the bottom of the cage. Also, he had said the dawn was going to come, so I should go immediately. I had to jump.”
    “Off the end of the world?”
    “Off the end of the world.”
    “And—?” prompted Wendy.
    “And what?” asked Galen, blinking.
    “And why didn’t you tell him no?”
    “Well, I didn’t, I mean—I needed to prove myself. And he was unconscious.”
    “Jumping off worlds cannot be good for your health. No wonder you’re a ghost!”
    “It wasn’t like that!”
    Wendy raised one eyebrow with an intensely skeptical look. (She had practiced this look in front of a mirror after she had seen Vivian Leigh in
Gone With the Wind
look that way at a Union soldier just before shooting him. It was one of her favorite expressions.) “Well, I guess you’re pretty young and trusting. Oh! Don’t get that look on your face; you’d think you’d swallowed a frog!”
    “I haven’t swallowed a frog—I mean, I don’t look like that. . .” Galen’s face was burning red. He was noticing how pretty Wendy looked in the moonlight, and it pained him to think she was older than he was, particularly since she acted so much his junior.
    “You look just like that!” said Wendy firmly, giving herself a little nod of agreement with herself.
    “Like what?”
    “Guilty conscience. Why was this guy in the cage to begin with? Because he was trustworthy or because—wait for it—he was not trustworthy?”
    “I mean, he told me he knew how to make it so I’d survive the fall! And, well, he is the Founder of my Order, the first ancestor of my house, and—”
    “And if he told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that, too? Oh, wait,” she said primly, “you don’t exactly need to answer that one, do you?”
    “The Black Ships float! The selkie know the secret.”
    “Really?” Wendy now perked up. “I knew how to fly once. I wish I could remember. What’s the secret?”
    “If you drench your craft in the blood and sweetbreads of thirteen slain fairy-girls, killed by one stroke of a silver knife, you can . . .”
    “Yuck. Gross.”
    “I mean, it is a spell.”
    “Gross. Yuck.”
    “The Founder
is
a magician, you know!”
    “And his first magic trick is, he makes you lose track of whether something is wholesome or unwholesome, right?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Magic! It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye, my Mum says. You start thinking the strangest things are perfectly normal, and you wonder why everyone is staring at you. Like watching too many murders on TV: and you start thinking murder is normal. My daddy kills murderers. Did your magician ask you to murder a fairy?”
    The young man gave a start of surprise. “The Red Knight attacked me first! Um, I mean, no. I didn’t kill any, um, fairies.”
    “Good for you!”
    “Didn’t need to. Azrael already gotten a bottle of blood and brain fluid from the . . .”
    “Please. I cannot tell you how much I do not want to hear the end of that