Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
“Yes,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe I was getting this offer. I couldn’t believe I’d have any sort of status in a fairy court.
In a fucking fairy court!
I’d dreamt of this. This was one of my wildest fantasies, and it had the potential to actually come true.
Was I dreaming? I had to be dreaming.
I didn’t remember leaving. I didn’t even remember the walk from her room back to mine to deposit the folder. The guards could’ve been gone and Granny herself could be following me and I wouldn’t have noticed. I did remember taking the knife out of the box. I still held it as I walked out to the work shed, everything around me floating with a strange sort of surreal quality.
“Welcome back, Captive Lady.” Vemar was working on making more of the sleeping product. Finley had yet to try it or approve of it, but it seemed Vemar was so sure it would pass that he was going ahead with it.
“You’re late this morning,” Delaney said, glancing over at me. She did a double take. I had no idea what sort of expression was on my face, but it was enough to make her study me for a moment. She then looked at Arleth, who had stopped to study me as well. They shared a look, and it was clear they knew what had happened. They’d known an offer like this was going to come, one with all sorts of perks attached, with promises of training and tutors and the sort of fairytale life that was not meant for people like me.
I started laughing as I got to work. A quarter of me was fairy.
I was a full quarter fairy, with fairy blood and fairy magic. Someone was playing a joke on me.
My day felt slow, but it was over in a blink. My mind just kept replaying the things Calia had said. Freedom to go where I chose. Room for Weston and a family. A promise of friendship.
I’d have a fairy bestie.
I laughed again as I was leaving the work shed, intending to head to my room and finish the last journal. I had all my notes, I had all my ideas, and now I just needed to put it on a map to see if it yielded any results. I didn’t know much of the world, not even my home kingdom. I had names, a few repeated over and over throughout the years, but no real idea what those names meant.
Instead of heading that way, though, I found myself sitting on a bench, looking out at the wood.
Vemar sat down next to me. He crossed an ankle over a knee and laid his arm across the back of the bench, content with silence. The guy could really read a room.
“She said she’d take care of my Granny problem,” I told him, assuming he knew the situation. He hadn’t seemed overly surprised about seeing Calia earlier. “She said that if I agreed to her offer, she’d send guards to hunt Granny.”
“I recall that we tried that, too. We found you instead.”
“No, you guys found her—you just weren’t quick enough to grab her. You were plenty quick to grab me.”
“Ah. Well then, maybe they are quicker.”
I shook my head, looking away. “They aren’t. I know that they aren’t. Weston and the dragons are having a hard time with her. I’ve spotted two of her people following me, but who knows how many of them I haven’t.”
“This is true, but Weston is on the case.”
“I know. I trust him. He’s the best, isn’t he? Everyone seems to think he is.”
“I don’t know, but he is definitely one of them.”
I nodded slowly, tears in my eyes. “I don’t want Granny killed. I don’t want her hurt. I know I should for what she’s done to me, but tearing down her livelihood feels like enough. My act of war is enough. I don’t want more.”
“I don’t know that you’ll have that choice.”
“I know,” I said softly.
I closed my eyes as the breeze slid across my face. We fell into silence for a while as the afternoon waned. Butterflies fluttered across the greens, and I wondered if I could somehow gather them like I seemed to do with the emberflies.
“I’m an Emoter,” I told him. “I’m a powerful Emoter. That’s the mind-fucking. I don’t know when I’m doing it. She said she’d train me. Well, someone would train me, I guess.”
“An Emoter, huh? That’s pretty cool. You get to be two things. I’m just a dragon. Of course, being a dragon is a privilege, so I would say I come out on top.”
I chuckled even as I rolled my eyes. “If you were Hadriel I’d say, ‘No, you’re two things as well. You’re also an asshole.’”
He laughed. “Good one. How does it feel to know you have powerful, in-demand fairy magic?”