The Girl Who Chose

by Violet Grace

  ‘On the contrary, Your Majesty, this human is very much alive,’ she says. ‘And, inexplicably, he senses our presence.’

  He holds one hand out in front of him, feeling the air slowly like someone finding their way in the dark. He’s reaching for the invisible wall between the realms. He knows we’re here but, unlike Massimo, his sight is trapped within the human realm.

  Jules steps around him, examining him like an alien specimen. But I’m unable to move, crushed by the aching weight of too many emotions. I shudder as his ethereal hand passes through my left shoulder.

  ‘Who is this man, Your Majesty?’

  ‘Samuel Maxwell.’ My voice cracks. ‘My father.’

  Speaking his name unleashes the torrent of tears welling in my eyes. The father I’ve dreamed of all my life is alive. And he’s so close. I want to go to him right now, to transfer directly into Volgaris and wrap my arms around him. I want that feeling again, the one where I’m safe and loved. I want to feel like a daughter.

  Trembling, I begin to carve a portal.

  Jules’s hand clamps down on my shoulder, yanking me back.

  ‘What are you —’

  ‘He’s an agent, Your Majesty,’ Jules says urgently. ‘He’s one of them.’

  I have to grab hold of the door frame to stop myself from crumbling to the ground.

  ‘My father works for the Agency,’ I whisper, a realisation dawning.

  ‘It would be unwise —’

  ‘I know,’ I snap.

  The Agency wanted to produce a fairy with human morality to beat the Fae to finding the key to the Luck of Edenhall. My father must have been sent to Iridesca to create one, the same way Agent Eight was assigned to make a moral fairy with Damius years earlier. But my father succeeded where Agent Eight failed.

  The Agency has been trying to manipulate me for most of my life, but now I see the full extent of the horror. My very existence was an Agency plan.

  I’ve clung to my parents’ love for each other – and their love for me – for as long as I can remember. I was wanted; my parents hadn’t abandoned me. It wasn’t much, but it was something. But it was a lie. Just like with the Chancellor and the Luminaress and the rest of the Order, and Agent Eight, and Larry and Damius: all I am, all I have ever been, is something to use.

  ‘He made me so he could use me,’ I whisper as Samuel Maxwell – Agent Twelve – turns back to his map, evidently giving up on what he can only sense. ‘My mother was just an assignment for him. And I was his lab rat.’

  The ceiling feels too low, the walls oppressive. My mind goes blank, both registering and rejecting what I know to be true.

  I turn. I’m walking, then I’m running.

  I pass my father’s apartment, racing along the dank corridor. I need to get away from this place, these people, everything.

  ‘Your Majesty …’

  Jules’s footsteps pound behind me. I run faster. I don’t look back. I need to get out of here. I need to be alone.

  ‘Chess, stop, wait! Chess …’

  ‘Leave me,’ I gasp as I take the stone steps at blistering speed. Adrenaline floods my body. My heart is still in the room with the maps, broken and bleeding.

  I reach the foyer of the villa and slow a little, weaving through the students, hearing whispers as I pass. I can’t understand a word they’re saying, but I’m certain it’s about me. I need to escape, to hide awhile in some place I’m invisible, beyond the looks and the judgements, somewhere I can breathe.

  Volgaris.

  Mid-stride, and without thinking through the risks or consequences, I utter the transfer spell. Reality blurs, the air ripples and shifts as I hurtle through the veil into Volgaris. And stumble straight into a woman.

  I turn my head to the side, connecting with her shoulder as I fall to the ground, just managing to break my fall with my hands. I forgot about the tourist crowds in Volgaris and didn’t account for all the extra bodies.

  Dust from the transfer wafts around me like a ghostly aura. Hot sun pierces my eyes as I lever myself up off the gravel. I’m about to apologise but the words catch in my throat.

  There’s something unnerving about this woman.

  Her stance. Her outline, set against the blinding flare of the sun.

  My Art flickers to life, an awareness of danger from some primal place inside me. I squint, my eyes trying to adjust to the streaming bright light behind her, making her head look like it’s surrounded by a ring of fire.

  ‘Hello again, Francesca. Good of you to visit.’

  Agent Eight.

  She appears to have fully recovered since the last time we met. You’d never know that she’d been in a coma after half the roof of the V&A fell on her.

  All around us, tourists scurry for cover, some looking terrified, others looking on curiously at the semicircle of agents standing poised, ready, their weapons trained on my heart.

  I have to hand it to her for her optimism. Or her stupidity. The last time I had a standoff with Agent Eight’s goons they ended up with smelted weapons and a trip to the burns unit.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt your people again,’ I say as I brush the grass off my gown. ‘But I will if I have to.’

  Agent Eight sneers and raises her own weapon – an oversized nerf gun with a cone on the front of it. My body tenses briefly, intuiting what’s coming. That cone is a radio dish. Just like the one I saw in the video.

  I hear a click as she presses the trigger, and then everything happens at once. The weapon makes a hum, low at first, but then rising in volume, like it’s powering up before unleashing a blast. I can’t see the radio waves, but I sense the air parting and rippling as they hurtle towards me.

  My heightened Fae senses go into overdrive as my wings stretch to maximum span and await my command. Time slows; my vision broadens and intensifies, magnifying reality into every microscopic detail, from the myrtle pollen wafting in the breeze to the blocked pores on Agent Eight’s nose. I launch upwards, avoiding impact, my iridescent wings displacing the air.

  Agent Eight twists around, aiming upwards, following me. There’s another blast. The agents follow her example, sending a volley of fire towards me in the sky. I effortlessly avoid the second blast and, releasing a bolt of blue from my fingertips, melt the stream of bullets into liquid. Agents duck and yell as the molten alloy plummets down like raindrops.

  Any other day, I’d be tempted to stay and put their little weapons program out of action, but with the fury and hurt in me at the moment, I fear what I will do to them. I just want to get away from this place, from my father.

  I’m about to fly up higher when a blast strikes me from behind. I don’t know how I missed it. Waves of energy seep across my skin. It grows and spreads until fire erupts through my veins, like being stung by a thousand bees from the inside.

  I need to leave – now. Gritting my teeth through the pain, I summon the Art to transfer, but nothing happens. My brain sends the message, but no portal appears, like when your leg falls asleep and won’t do what you want. I look around for Jules, hoping that she’s followed me through the transfer portal. Not seeing her, I try to fly out of range of the weapon. But my wings aren’t responding. The searing pain intensifies, making them heavy and sluggish, and the best I can manage is a controlled land on the grass.

  I try to scramble to my feet to run, but my legs are shaking too much to support me. There’s only one thing left to do. I roll into a ball, waiting for the agony to end.

  The burning pain slowly begins to recede, but my relief is fleeting as the pain is replaced by an aching emptiness. The Art inside me smoulders away to ash.

  My eyes refocus on a pair of black stilettos.

  Agent Eight crouches down next to me, her smile a mean little slit.

  ‘You look like you saw a ghost in there.’

  She knows about my father.

  And she knows that I know.

  She chuckles like it’s a joke – and I’m the punchline.

  ‘Ser
iously, lady, you need to get over me and move on,’ I manage to croak, refusing to give her the satisfaction of seeing the pain from my father laid bare.

  I swallow a scream of agony as she presses the heel of her shoe into the top of my hand. Blood pools around the wound and trickles onto the ground.

  ‘Austerity measures must really be biting,’ I say through clenched teeth, trying to control my breathing. ‘You’re reduced to attacking your victims with stilettos?’

  ‘Keep them coming, I can keep this up all day,’ Agent Eight says, grinding her heel further into my hand. I reel in pain.

  ‘You do your master proud,’ I taunt. ‘How is Damius these days? Has he gotten over the humiliation of me whipping his butt at the V&A?’

  Agent Eight moves her full weight onto the heel and into my hand.

  ‘I’d shut my mouth if I were you,’ she hisses. And then, to the assembled agents, she barks, ‘Give me some space. She’s no threat in this state.’

  ‘Still in the double-agent closet then, are we?’ I look around to see the remaining agents, some nursing minor burns and injuries, keeping the assembled onlookers and tourists at bay. No doubt the whole thing will be explained away as some kind of anti-terrorism exercise. Phones and any other device with compromising footage will be mysteriously wiped or bricked.

  Agent Eight slowly lifts her foot off my hand. I’m not sure how much more I could have endured without sobbing from the agony. I push down on my puncture wound, trying to stem the bleeding. I try to conjure another transfer spell, but there’s a void inside me where the Art would normally stir.

  ‘Do you know why I’m here?’ she says.

  ‘To give me a medal for saving the world from your psycho boyfriend’s army of pycts?’ I say, buying myself some time until the Art rekindles inside me. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’

  ‘I’m going to finish you,’ Agent Eight says, as if it’s her life’s work.

  I look up into her face. It’s twisted with pure, unadulterated loathing. I am so much more to her than just an assignment. I always have been. This is personal and it feels like payback, as if I am singularly responsible for ruining her life.

  ‘Why do you hate me so much?’ I shouldn’t care, but I just have to know.

  She hesitates, and a look flashes across her face that puzzles me. Sorrow? Pain? It’s just a momentary lapse, a fleeting glance where the mask she shows to the world drops away, and then it’s gone. Back to officious hostility.

  ‘Take her,’ she says over her shoulder. ‘And if she shows any more signs of insolence, don’t hesitate to give her a little dose of this.’ She tosses the weapon to one of the agents.

  Two agents grab me under the arms and lift me to my feet. Another one follows, holding the radio wave gun across his body. I try to walk but I’m mostly dragged to the side of the villa. I look around again for Jules as we enter a side door, wondering what’s taking her so long. I really should have kept my promise about not going off without her again.

  They drag me downstairs, my knees scuffing along the stone steps. For a moment I think I’m being taken back to my father’s office, but we seem to be going further down into the building.

  I can feel the Art stirring inside of me, but I can’t reach it. Nothing’s connecting. Aside from my throbbing hand, I’m numb.

  We come to a line of cells with stone walls and a criss-cross of thin wire mesh at the front. Dank linoleum covers the floor, and a labyrinth of pipes is strung from the ceiling.

  I make one last attempt to bring the Art to life, but there’s still nothing there. So I try to escape the old-fashioned way. I swing my legs up and kick the wire, using momentum to push the two agents back. The one on my left goes down in a heap, the other stumbles, but manages to avoid the full impact.

  ‘No you don’t,’ he growls.

  Pain flares in my right arm as he tightens his grip, twisting me around and using his full body weight to shove me into the last cell. I’m sent sprawling towards the back wall, slumping against it and then sliding down the smooth stone to the floor.

  I focus on my breath – in and out, in and out – trying to manage my rising panic from being caged.

  Agent Eight’s heels clack on the hard floor as she approaches my cell.

  ‘Confined spaces suit you, Francesca.’

  ‘My Protectorate will have this place surrounded in a few moments,’ I say. ‘And you’ll have to explain why you broke the Treaty. Again. So I suggest you let me go before things get really unpleasant. For you.’

  She examines me for a moment. ‘My new toy doesn’t just work on you, Francesca. It also suppresses chromium in wands. If any Fae come sniffing around here we’ll neutralise their instruments and then destroy them. And since trespassing on Agency property is a violation of the Treaty, there’s not a thing anyone could do about it.’

  ‘Imprisoning a Fae queen is a violation of the Treaty too,’ I say, gritting my teeth.

  ‘True. But wiser heads than I in Her Majesty’s service have done the risk analysis. They have decided the political fallout from capturing you is preferable to the harm you will cause otherwise.’

  She nods towards the radio wave gun, triumphant. ‘I have orders to ship you back to Agency Headquarters in London. You’re going to wait it out here until we can arrange appropriate transport.’

  I use all my strength to stand up and stagger over to her.

  ‘I will get out of here. And when I do, I’ll brief your superiors on your special friendship with my uncle.’

  She laughs, mouth wide, flashing her smoker’s teeth. ‘Really? And who do you plan to tell?’ she screeches. ‘No one cares what you think. No one cares about you.’ Her face calms, a cruel glint in her eyes. ‘If you had a shred of pride or self-insight, you would have crawled into a hole last spring.’

  And then, examining me more closely, she adds, ‘You really are clueless, aren’t you? You don’t even realise just how much nobody wants you. Even your own people are trying to marry you off to get rid of you. That Chancellor of yours will be sending me flowers and chocolates for ridding him of yet another troublesome queen.’

  Her words sting more than I’d like to admit. I think of the Chancellor and the Luminaress and all the members of the Order who travelled to Serenissima. They didn’t come all this way to honour the Grigio alliance, they came to make sure I didn’t come home. They want my name on the throne, but not one of them actually wants me.

  I stare daggers at this woman who has haunted me since childhood.

  She turns and calls down the corridor. ‘Bring the tripod.’

  A moment later there’s a thud of boots. A thickset man in a black commando uniform appears, carrying a wooden stool with two metal brackets fixed to the seat.

  ‘Set it up there.’ Agent Eight points to a spot in front of the cell, out of my reach. She takes the gun from the guard and slots it into the bracket, clicking a lever to lock it in place.

  I reach down to the Art, but it’s panic that rises in me, not power.

  Agent Eight’s thin lips stretch into a smirk as she pulls the trigger of the radio wave gun and the agony begins afresh.

  I come to in the cell, curled up tight in a throbbing ball of agony and spiralling panic. My wings are wrapped around me like a protective cocoon. A drop of water from the pipes above me plops onto their iridescent film, then rolls off. I wonder how much longer I will be able to withstand this pain.

  I reach for the three words that have saved me in the past, like a buoy that keeps me afloat in a violent ocean. It won’t last.

  It won’t last. Whatever happens, if I live or if I die, it won’t last.

  I wince and peer through my wings to the cell door. There’s nothing to see except the weapon, still doing whatever it does to the chromium in my blood. I search myself inside, reaching down to my wellspring of magic, but it’s inert.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been unconscious. I’m guessing a while because the building is quieter, except for m
uffled speech somewhere out of view. Agency guards, probably.

  I retract my wings a little to hear more, but the blast of pain is immediate. I curl them back around me and the sharp pain reduces to a dull throb. I contract and expand my wings once more, with the same results.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ someone bellows from down the corridor.

  It’s him. My father.

  ‘This is a research facility, not a prison,’ he says, coming into view.

  ‘Sir,’ barks one of the guards. ‘We are under orders to hold the fairy until it can be transported back to HQ.’

  ‘Whose orders?’

  ‘Agent Eight’s, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ he says in a tone that makes me think she outranks him.

  I sit up, my back against the wall and my legs bent in front of me, feeling self-conscious. My father peers at me through the wire. For a moment, I think he’s going to free me. I briefly part my wings and lock eyes with him.

  ‘What do you want?’ I croak.

  He doesn’t reply.

  Closing my wings back around me, I say, louder this time, ‘I can see you there, you know.’

  He looks at me like a scientist examining a perplexing new specimen. It might be because of the artificial light in the corridor, but his face is paler than I remember.

  ‘Your name?’ he says. ‘What is your name?’

  I feel rage simmering inside me. He doesn’t even know who I am. Leaving aside the strangeness that Agent Eight has obviously not briefed her colleagues about my identity, he doesn’t recognise me.

  But why would he? I’m not a daughter to him. I never was.

  Bracing myself for the stabbing pain, I part my wings and peer out through the gap. I hold his gaze, refusing to look away, despite the acute burning sensation from the weapon. I want to know this monster, so I can exact revenge when I get my chance.

  As I look at the father I have loved my whole life, I wonder what he sees. Does he realise I am the daughter he created, only to abandon? Does he ever think of me, of what happened to me? Or was I just part of the job – one project amongst many others?

  ‘I’m not telling you anything,’ I spit. ‘I owe you nothing. But there will come a day, and it will be soon, when I’ll be back for you – all of you.’