He keeps his secrets. Brooding face, unreadable eyes, darkness falling back over the glittering blue. He cuts his gaze to the dust that glitters in the light column.
“Do you know the meaning of the word kinta?” he asks.
Numbly, I shake my head. I lift my hands to my face and wipe away the dampness.
“You are kinta.”
I stare at him, waiting for more, more revelations to churn my stomach and elevate my heart. I wait for him to lift me up then cut me down as he does.
“This is why you need the light.”
A frown pinches my brow. “I’ve never needed it before.”
“You always have.” He still watches the dust glitter, but his eyes are far away. “Your illness is from the darkness. You require the light to live. It is your energy source, your life source. I fed you the white powder, but it is a mere remedy. This,” he adds and gestures around a gloved hand to the light piercing through the Wastelands, “is your true treatment. This will heal you in ways that no powder ever can.”
“And that makes me a human who … needs light?” I think of the boy in the village who is sick like me, too.
“It makes you a kinta.”
My face is blank, still damp from the tears I failed at wiping away. “I don’t get it. I’m lost, Daein.”
“Aren’t you always?” he wonders aloud. He cuts his gaze to me, sharp and alive. “A kinta,” he tells me, “is a restricted one.”
“Restricted,” I echo, unsure.
“Inactive.” He reaches out his hand to dance his gloved fingertips over the edge of the light column. “I suppose you know the meaning of a Changeling?”
I nod, reaching for the blades of grass at the curve of my knee. I don’t pluck the blades—they are too green, too beautiful—so I graze my fingertips over them instead.
“Changelings,” I murmur, “are sick fae children that used to be put in the human world, I think.”
“Essentially,” he tells me. “Only, that tradition did not fall away with the merging of the worlds into one realm.”
Head still bowed, I lift my gaze to him. “What do you mean?”
“Changelings are still swapped in your villages for healthy human new-borns.” He lets his hand fall away from the light and drop to his leather trousers. “They are normally born from litalves and humans. Often, those offspring are expected to become Halflings. On occasion, this does not occur. The fetus encounters … problems.”
In answer, all I give is a crumpled face.
“Kintas are those problems. They are born human, not Halfling. They carry none of the magic of a fae—light or dark—and are poorly from birth. They need constant care and light land sunlight to maintain their health. Even still, their survival is never guaranteed.”
I eye him closely, my heart clenched in my chest. “So what are you saying?”
His smirk is small—dark. “No human can be the evate of a dokkalf prince,” he tells me. “You are kinta, April.”
My face falls as my heart sinks to my watery gut. Now, my fingers clutch onto the blades of grass and rip them right out of the soil.
I loosen a shaky breath, watching him as he considers me from beneath his lashes.
He adds, “You are a failed Halfling planted in a small village. Your parents have lost their true child to the litalves. The family you yearn to return to—the ones who never make you feel as though you belong—are not your blood.”
“So…” I scramble to gather my whirling thoughts. “I’m a broken Halfling?” I blink under his unflinching stare. “And my parents—do they know this?”
“They never do.” His tone is firm like the way he studies me, lacking the compassion I crave from him, the compassion he is incapable of ever giving me beyond trips to the markets and the Wastelands.
Guess that’s my ‘human’ needs.
“You must be of royal lineage,” he tells me, and my gaze snaps up to his. A frown burrows between my brows. “Without royal blood,” he explains, “you would not be dying without the light.”