by Olivia Hart
I started to yell as what was happening started to click into place. Some crazed, knife-wielding, bad guy was abducting me and running through a magical cave after I’d teleported through a mirror into a crackhouse. As soon as any sound left my lips, Tinkerbell slapped my ass hard enough that the sound carried through the caves, echoing over and over again. “Shut up or you’re going to get us both killed,” he whispered.
Then, the copy of us that had been running next to us somehow flowed into the rock. Sebastian kept running, and I looked down, realizing that mist had surrounded his boots, becoming almost solid. His footfalls should have made noise, but they didn’t. Somehow, that mist was keeping his footsteps completely silent.
Once more, he created a copy of us and began to run his hands along the wall. The entire time, he continued to sprint, and I thought of how much I’d run in my life. How could he possibly still be sprinting while carrying me? I would have been dead a mile back if I’d tried to do this.
My awe went away pretty quickly as the minutes passed. I wanted to scream, but I knew that he’d just hit me again, and maybe he was right. Maybe that other guy with freaking bloody knives was the actual bad guy.
The longer that he carried me, the more the questions that had no answers plagued me. Where were we going? Where were we? How’d we get here? How did I walk through a magic mirror? Who was chasing me? And, more than anything, who the fuck was Sebastian?
The copy slid into the wall just as the last one had. Sebastian still ran. The tunnel was eerily silent as we moved. No footsteps. No panting. No dripping water. No noise.
He put his hand against the tunnel wall again as he ran, letting his fingers trail against the strange gray rock. We ran into a fork in the tunnel, and he stopped.
Then I heard a sound. The first one since we’d gotten to the tunnels. Footfalls. Far away, but definitely there. Did the mist not cover the other man in black?
Another copy of us formed from the mist, and it began running just as we had. The copy of Sebastian began to run his fingers against the stone, and then he stopped, sliding into the stone, becoming a shadow as he did.
I could feel Sebastian’s heart pounding, but his breathing hadn’t changed. I knew instinctively that silence was our best friend in these tunnels because our tail could hear us just as easily as we could hear him. I would trust Sebastian just long enough to take me away from bloody knives guy.
Sebastian turned down the split, making another copy of him as we ran. The copy slid into the stone. We moved just a little further down, and Sebastian made yet another copy, sending it much farther down the tunnel.
I watched it, still amazed at how realistic it was. Fully solid. Identical in every way. It moved just as we had. At one point, a copy had turned around, and I’d seen the copy of Sebastian’s eyes, and that was when I realized the difference. There was no fire in them. None at all.
I smiled to myself when I realized that I could see the difference. It only brought those same questions back to me. Questions that couldn’t be asked here. I would get answers though. And soon.
The homeless woman’s words echoed in my mind. The world is about to become a very strange place for you. She had been more accurate than I could have imagined. How had she known? That was the second time that she’d predicted something no one could have known. A shiver ran through me. What else had she said? I didn’t have long to think on it, though.
A second later, Sebastian touched the wall in front of us, and then we slid through the nothingness.
Chapter 8
Rose
When we left the nothingness, I was immediately confronted with the fact that we still weren’t in Kansas anymore. Not even close. I’d thought the tunnel was weird. I was wrong. This place was even weirder. Like, pinnacle of weirdness.
I glanced up at the night sky and realized that two moons hung in the sky. One white, like moons are supposed to be. The other was purple, not at all like moons are supposed to be.
And the grass was weird. Also pinnacle of weirdness. Unlike normal grass, this was green and purple. The colors swirled in each blade in different amounts. And it didn’t crunch when we walked. It seemed stronger, yet softer as I walked on it with bare feet.
Even the air seemed weird. Little sparkles seem to pop in and out of existence like lightning bugs. Except that when one popped into existence right in front of me, it was nothing but light.
When we’d arrived in this land of the bizarre, I’d had a whole list of questions. Now I had two. Where the fuck were we, and who the fuck was Sebastian. Okay, there were three questions. How do I get home?
A wide field spread out before us. There was a small pond, and beyond that, a forest. It was beautiful. Almost normal. A scene from a storybook if you ignored the purple moon, invisible lightning bugs, and weirdo grass. It even included a beautiful, pure white horse grazing in the middle of it.
With a freaking silver horn sticking out of his head.
“Is that…” I asked, pointing at the horse, “is that a fucking unicorn?” Sebastian set me down and turned around, giving the unicorn a glance.
“Yeah. Never seen a unicorn before?” The tone of his voice told me that he gave absolutely no shits about the unicorn. None. I mean, I guess unicorns were normal for people who lived in purple moon land. Like crickets or something.
“No, Tinkerbell. Not a lot of unicorns in my area. I think they got put on an endangered species list a few years ago.”
He looked at the ground and shook his head, not responding to my sarcasm as he headed towards the pond.
“Hey,” I said, trying to catch up to him, “Sebastian, I’m sorry. I get snippy when I walk through magic mirrors and get carried through weird tunnels by strange men in black cloaks. And, of course, when someone is trying to kill me.”
“I guess those are new things for you,” he said softly. He pulled his hood back over his head as he walked.
“Please stop. Talk to me, please. I don’t know what’s going on.” I reached out and grabbed his arm and was surprised at just how large it was. My hand didn’t even get close to wrapping around it.
Sebastian pulled away immediately, but he did stop. “You’re a fairy like I told you in your dream. We just traveled from the Mortal Realm through a tunnel between the realms called a warren, and now we’re in the Immortal Realm where your kind rule.”
“I was sent to kill you, but I decided not to for reasons of my own. Now, the leader of the Assassin’s Guild is hunting for both of us. The Queen of the Fae wants both of us dead, and I have to get you to a safe place before I can deal with her. Is that enough of an explanation before I get a drink of water?”
I just stared at him, and I guess he took that as a yes because he turned back to the pond. When he started walking, I started following. What else was I supposed to do? I guessed that I was in fairy world with someone who was hired to kill me, or I was a schizophrenic nutjob and this was my life now. The unicorn chomping on purple grass a few hundred yards away seemed almost normal in comparison.
“Why does this Queen lady want to kill me?”
Without turning around, he said, “Because you have bloodlines from both courts. That means that there’s a slight possibility that you could be a rival queen, and there’s no way that she’d let you claim your place in the courts if that were a possibility.”
“Hold on there. Let’s back up a second. You’re telling me that my parents were fairies? How could they be fairies? Fairies have wings, and I distinctly remember them both being wing-free. That’s one of those things even a kid would remember.”
We were nearing the pond, but Sebastian answered anyway. “Almost certainly. There’s an extremely unlikely possibility that both of your parents were half fairies, and you somehow came out as full-blooded, but that’s far less likely than the possibility that you simply didn’t know about your parents’ magic.”
“Full-blooded fairies all have wings. Your parents probably just hid them or gave up their
magic to live a mortal life. It’s not unheard of.”
“Then why don’t I have wings?” I turned to show him my back. “If I’m a fairy, then where are my wings?”
He chuckled. “You’re a fairy, but you have yet to claim your magic. You’ve never been to the Immortal Realm, so you couldn’t have claimed it before.”
He knelt down and put his hand under the placid water, scooping it into his mouth. I sighed and began to pace.
How was I a fairy? Wouldn’t I know? Wouldn’t I be able to do magic or something? Then the night in the alley flashed through my mind. I’d thought it was a miracle, but maybe it was magic. It was when everything had changed.
“How did you find me?” I whispered.
Sebastian took another drink of water before he stood up. “You pulled power from the Immortal Realm. That happens rarely enough that we track it. The Queen’s seers recorded where and when it happened, and they made this.” He reached into a pocket of that cloak, and he pulled out a sheet of weird paper that had been rolled up.
He slowly unrolled it so that I could see what was on it. A painting. Of me. But not me. My face was different, a prettier version of me, full of sharp angles where my eyes didn’t look weird. Kind of like Tinkerbell. It was me, though. No doubt.
I took a deep breath. I had two choices here. I could either curl up into a ball of disbelief, or I could run with it. Even if I was batshit, living in my own fairy dreamworld couldn’t be that bad, could it?
“Alright, Tink, I’m in. What do we do now?” I was out of my element. I had no idea what the rules of this game were or who the players were. All I knew was that I was in a field with a unicorn and some weird, sexy assassin, and I happened to be a fairy. I needed some guidance.
“Like I said, I’m going to get you someplace safe. Then I’m going to find a way to deal with the Queen. Somehow. All while trying not to die or get you killed. Does that sound like a good enough plan to you?”
“Hold on. I just walked through my first magic mirror about an hour ago, and that’s the first unicorn I’ve ever seen, but I’ve heard plans before. That one happens to be terrible. No details. No actual plan.”
“I’m being hunted by a magical assassin and the Queen of fairyland. Somehow, you, the other assassin she hired, is going to save me from both of them. I don’t know, I kind of feel like a plan is slightly necessary.”
“Then make a plan. If that makes you feel better, you can plan for the next few hours since we need to stay here and make sure that we’re not being followed.”
I crossed my arms and realized for the first time that I was still wearing what I’d fallen asleep in, a pair of booty shorts and a tank top. How was I getting chased by an assassin while wearing clothes I wouldn’t be caught dead in public in?
I guess that it didn’t matter. Tinkerbell was wearing a death eater cloak, so I wasn’t sure any of my clothes would have been “appropriate” for fairyland travel. I just wished that I had my running shoes. “What happens if we’re being followed?”
“I’ll kill him. He works alone, so if he’s dead, then we’re mostly safe. I’d rather that it didn’t come to that, though.”
Sebastian lowered his hood and walked over to a tree, and I followed him. He sat down and leaned against the trunk, continuing to look to where we’d come through the… what did he call it? A warren?
I sat down next to him and began to pick at the grass. It really was strange stuff. It didn’t have the same stiffness that human grass had. Instead, it was almost like really thick hair. Full of bounciness, but flat like grass. Weird stuff.
A picture of fairyland being on the top of a guy’s head popped into my mind. I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud at what he’d look like with weird purple and green hair and little bugs fighting wars on the top of his head. And unicorns nibbling his hair.
Strangely enough, it almost sounded like a plausible myth. Wasn’t there a Greek myth about how we all lived on top of a titan’s body or something? Then there was the Iroquois story about how we all lived on the back of a turtle.
“So, we just hang out and wait to see if a murderer stops by?” I asked.
Sebastian nodded and kept watching the spot.
“We could chat,” I suggested. “You could tell me some more about all of this instead of the ‘I’m annoyed’ version.”
He sighed and ignored me.
“Look. I don’t know how long we have to stay together, but we might as well make this as pleasant as possible. I need to know more stuff. And you look like you’re about to pass out. Let’s chat.”
“What do you want to know?” He turned his attention to me, and I felt those eyes on me, but they seemed different. Were they grayer?
“First off, if I’m a fairy, how do I get my wings?”
He pulled his dagger out of his sheath and began to toss it into the air, letting it spin several times before catching it. He didn’t look at it while he did this. His eyes never followed it or left my face. It was disconcerting to say the least.
“You simply have to say, ‘I, Rose, claim my birthright.’ That’s it.”
I raised an eyebrow in question, but instead of saying anything, I shrugged. What’s the worst that could happen?
“Well, here it goes. I, Rose, claim my birthright.” I waited a few seconds. No flash of light or harp played. No ray of light shining on me like a Harry Potter scene.
“That’s it?” I asked. “No fanfare?”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nope. You’ll notice the changes soon enough though.”
“Okay, next question. Where are we going to after you decide the other stabby guy isn’t going to show?”
“The other stabby guy is named Nyx, and he happens to be a decent guy with terrible orders. We’re going to a safehouse of mine. Then we’ll wait out the night there. Tomorrow, we’re going to get you a new scent.”
“My scent is just fine, thank you.” Sebastian shook his head in annoyance.
“Your magical scent, little girl. You have a very distinct magical scent. It comes from the blending of your bloodlines and your uniquely human experiences. Anytime you use magic, you leave your scent behind, and it’s trackable. Kind of like a dog pissing on a tree.”
I blinked at him. “Did you just compare me doing magic to a dog pissing on a tree?”
He shrugged. “It’s a good analogy.”
“Have you ever talked to a woman before?” I asked, shaking my head.
“I’ve done a lot more than talk, Rose. I learned a long time ago that women really don’t care what you say to them as long as you do things that other men can’t. So I stopped caring about their delicate sensibilities.”
“Well Tinkerbell, I’ve got news for you. Most women that I know care about what men say to them.”
He grinned at me. “Like Sasha? She certainly cared about what Tony said, didn’t she?”
“How do you know about Sasha and Tony?” I asked in surprise.
“They were there the night of your twenty-first birthday. I watched all four of you the entire night. Tony is a far bigger ass than me, and he’s not nearly as big in the ways Sasha claims.”
“Well Sasha’s a slut, and he’s rich. That doesn’t count.” Sebastian just stared at me with the edge of his lip curled in a smile.
“What woman isn’t a slut when it comes to the right man with the right looks and the right amount of power?” he asked as he arched his eyebrows while somehow maintaining that infuriatingly sleepy expression.
“Not me. I’m a virgin,” I said, getting fed up with his obviously misogynistic view of women. “I’ve never put up with a man talking to me like that.” I stood up and began walking away from him. He had managed to convince me that being quiet was better than talking to him.
Suddenly, I felt his presence behind me. Somehow, he’d stood up and moved behind me without making a sound. The thought of him running silently through the tunnels of the warren flashed through my mind, but t
hey were overshadowed by a feeling I’d never had before.
It was like my stomach had twisted in knots, and my skin seemed extra sensitive. My breath came out more quickly, and everything felt just a little bit warmer than it had.
I turned around slowly, knowing what I’d see. I was wrong. The man in the black cloak was gone, the cloak in a pile on the ground. Instead, Sebastian stood in a black, armless silk tunic that seemed to meld to his body and a pair of linen pants that tucked into the bottoms of his black boots.
The whole outfit hugged his body in a way that didn’t seem natural. It showed off every muscle in his body, and I knew how he could have run for so long. His body was perfect. Tight, strong. Fiercely male.
Dangerous.
His black hair hung loosely around his neck and shoulders, and he felt so big. I wasn’t short, but he seemed to tower over me. And those lips that were just faintly redder than normal. A vision of those lips on my body in ways I’d never dreamed of flashed through my mind.
All of that was insignificant in comparison to his eyes. Icy pale blue eyes stared down at me as he put his hand to my cheek. They claimed me in their sight, demanding that I accept his touch. A demand I was more than happy to accept. I felt just as helpless as I had when I’d talked to the old woman on the bench, except that the last thing I wanted to do was turn away.
His touch was like lightning. Lightning that ignited my body with a sensation that I could never have explained. Bliss. Excitement. Energy. Need.
Lust.
For the first time in my life, I knew what lust was. He moved his hand down my neck towards my collarbone, and as he made the curve toward my shoulder, I wished that he’d gone lower. His fingers never did anything but graze my skin, turning it red hot and desperate for more.
My breath came out in short, shallow bursts like my body wanted to move as little as possible so that I wouldn’t disturb him, wouldn’t stop him. He craned his head down to my neck, and as his hot breath touched my skin, I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning.
