The Awakening Series: Volumes 1 - 3

by Dean Murray

  Jace stopped pacing and dropped down onto a log next to the fire. "Yeah, except there's never been any record of something like that happening. It's always one Awakened who creates a given fairy. If multiple people expend a ton of power at the same time, then you just get multiple fairies."

  "So it's never happened before—that doesn't mean that it's impossible though, right?"

  Bethany shook her head at me. "No, he's right. When we first start out, we can only feed off of magic powered by one specific emotion. Everyone's emotions are subtly different—not by much, but just enough that we can't feed on them until we've had a chance to grow. That's why I'm still this size despite having followed that dolt around for eighteen years. He's burned a ton of memories up, but nothing that I could use."

  I looked back over at Jace. "She says you're right, that they can't feed off of anyone other than their creator until they've had a chance to mature."

  "Right, all of which indicates that you created her just days, or even hours before you died."

  "Okay, so we just have a ton of questions that we don't even begin to have answers for. What's up with this Seelie thing she keeps talking about?"

  "The fairies are divided roughly into two groups, the Seelie and the Unseelie courts. Fairies who are born from a massive expenditure of memories being consumed under a positive emotion, all go to the Seelie Court. Fairies who are created by a negative emotion, all eventually end up as part of the Unseelie Court."

  The nervousness inside of me amped up to eleven. "What about fairies who are born under the auspices of neutral emotions? What do they go on to become?"

  Jace seemed to understand what I was getting at. My old self had been big on anger, which felt awfully dark to me. If Bethany had been born while I'd been using anger to help power my effects did that mean she was going to be Unseelie? I didn't even know what it meant for a fairy to be Seelie or Unseelie, but something was telling me that I didn't want to be around one that belonged to the Unseelie court.

  "There isn't a third court, so the fairies created under a neutral emotion end up joining either the Seelie or Unseelie courts depending on their temperaments."

  "And the Unseelie court is…"

  "It's not very pleasant, Selene. Unseelie fairies take what they want and don't worry about what they have to do or who they have to hurt to get it. They don't have much if any moral code other than just greed and a lust for power."

  "What about the Seelie fairies?"

  Bethany jumped to her feet and then took flight, twirling around in the air. "We are kind, honorable and loyal. The perfect companions and the staunchest of allies."

  "Never mind, Jace. Bethany just filled me in. The Seelie fairies are all sunshine, roses and wet puppy kisses."

  Jace cleared his throat. "Actually they are most of those things, but they are still occasionally pranksters, and they aren't usually very big on the concept of mercy—justice seems to wield a big trump card where they are concerned."

  "He's right to be nervous. He deserves a severe punishment for ignoring me for so long."

  "Chill out, Bethany, seriously, he couldn't see or hear you. It wasn't like he wanted to ignore you, he didn't have a choice."

  "Fine, just remember that I don't entirely approve of your choice in boyfriends."

  I sighed. The last thing I'd been looking for was a self-righteous Jiminy Cricket to ride around on my shoulder and tell me everything she thought I was doing wrong.

  "So how do we figure out whether Bethany is actually Seelie or Unseelie?"

  She landed back on my knee and stomped her foot again. It was an impressive display of frustration—I didn't have the heart to tell her that I couldn't even feel her foot through my jeans.

  "I told you already, I'm Seelie!"

  "No offense, Bethany, but isn't that exactly what you'd tell me if you were Unseelie?"

  "Hmm. I guess you have a point. What does your dull, self-righteous boyfriend think?"

  Jace waited until I looked away from Bethany before responding. "If you come across a fairy in the wild, so to speak, one who is big enough and old enough to absorb memories from anyone, then there isn't any good way to know for sure whether they are Seelie or Unseelie."

  "So you just have to treat them like normal people and hope that if you give them your trust they aren't going to screw you over?"

  "Yeah, but with the added complication that it is always possible they've screwed you over in the past and you just don't remember any of it."

  "Wow, that's lovely. I'm beginning to understand why you and Kat are such big fans of journaling."

  "Yeah, it comes in handy. You'll also get pretty good at sketching things out. Just because a fairy tells you their name, doesn't mean they are telling the truth."

  Jace looked off into the distance for a second before continuing. "There are some fairies who are generally known to be part of either the Seelie or Unseelie courts. The Lady of the Lake, for example, is generally considered to be the leader of the Seelie court, and Fenrir is as dark an Unseelie fairy as has ever existed."

  I'd only thought that my head was starting to hurt before. The Lady of the Lake was from the story of King Arthur—she'd been the one to give him Excalibur—but I was having a hard time remembering who Fenrir was. The best I could come up with was that he'd been some kind of giant wolf from Norse mythology who was fated to help destroy a bunch of important gods in the final battle when the world ended or something.

  I was kind of proud that I'd remember that much, but mostly I was just still struggling with the idea that so many figures from mythology weren't just based on real people, they were actually still alive and running around.

  One thing for sure, it was becoming very apparent to me that fairies weren't all bite-sized Tinker Bell clones. They might all start out that way, but the ones that had been around for thousands of years sounded like they could be as big as an SUV.

  "But nobody really knows, right? I mean the Lady of the Lake may have been super awesome for the last two hundred years, but if she's actually Unseelie, then she could just be playing a really long game waiting for the perfect chance to screw over everyone who's ever trusted her. Gah! This all sucks beyond belief."

  Jace was obviously trying not to laugh at me, but the corners of his lips turned up in just the slightest of smiles.

  "It's not quite as bad as that. Firstly, the fairies aren't like us; they don't lose their memories over time, and they don't age physically. That means that the Seelie court is quick to kick out anyone who turns out to be Unseelie, and they are happy to make sure any Awakened who asks knows which fairies can or can't be trusted."

  "So they can still screw you over, but they'll only get to do it once."

  "Yeah, and it means that even any Unseelie fairies masquerading as Seelie fairies are still going to tell you the truth about who is officially part of the court. Since they are only going to get one chance to betray their supposed friends, they aren't going to blow their cover over something small."

  I frowned at him. He was right, and that was better than worrying about an endless cycle of betrayals, but it still wasn't reassuring. Frankly I was thinking that I'd just be better off telling Bethany to hit the road—she wasn't worth the risk that she was lying about being Seelie.

  "What's the other thing you mentioned?"

  "Well, if a fairy grows in response to effects that are being powered by positive emotions, then the creator at least knows that they are Seelie fairies."

  "All of which doesn't do us any good since I created Bethany governed by a fit of rage."

  "No, you didn't."

  I looked back at Bethany. "Beg your pardon?"

  "You weren't using anger as your driving emotion when you created me. You were using a sense of happiness."

  A chill worked its way up my spine. Kat had been so convinced that my default emotion had been anger, just like hers had been for so many decades. Had I started to change right before I'd died? It didn't make sense
, but it had happened to Kat and it strained belief to think that I'd ended up picking my current default emotion simply by chance.

  Jace was off of his stump and at my side a second later. "What's wrong, Selene?"

  "Bethany just told me that she was created by a positive emotion. All I can assume is that I must have started changing my default emotion at some point before the end."

  Jace looked like he'd been hit between the eyes with a hammer. "No, that never would have happened, Selene. I mean it happens, but only to Awakened who have undergone something traumatic, something life-changing. You weren't in that kind of place; you were at the top of your game.

  "There is another explanation though. Sometimes one of us can be overcome with another emotion that is actually stronger than our default feeling. It usually only happens under unique, trying circumstances, but when it does, it's usually so strong that the only limit on the effects that can be worked while in its grip is the amount of memories the Awakened in question has available to them. It's the stuff of legend."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean things like continents shifting, new volcanoes suddenly appearing out of nowhere, or tidal waves that are more than fifteen hundred feet tall. We Awakened worry a lot about how fast we are consuming our memories, but the truth is that in most confrontations it isn't the person with the most memories who wins, it's the person who can immerse themselves in the strongest emotion while still being able to function. Most of us would have to fight all-out for hours in order to burn up even just a few decades' worth of memories. That's the kind of thing that is required to birth a new fairy."

  "So you're saying that I didn't die with most of my memories untapped, I burned up most of them the night before and created Bethany while working on something. But none of us have any idea what that something might have been?"

  "No, one of us has to have an idea what you were working on that night. Ask Bethany what you were doing."

  I cocked my head at her. She gave me a lazy shrug. "Yes?"

  "You heard Jace, we'd like to know what it was I was working on when you were created. You know, right?"

  "Yes, but I'm not going to tell you."

  "Hello, I'm your creator, don't you owe me some kind of debt of gratitude?"

  "Yes, I owe my creator an immense debt. My creator sacrificed more than I can imagine to bring me into existence—and unlike a lot of her kind, she did it with the intent of giving me life—but you aren't her."

  "What do you mean I'm not her? I've just spent two days with Jace and Kat telling me that I am her."

  "No, you look like her, you act like her, you even think like her, but you aren't her. Usually that is enough, but not this time, not when my real creator asked me to keep it a secret for her."

  "She says that she's not going to tell us. She says that the old me asked her to keep it a secret and she cares more about the old me than she does about the new me. Is there anything we can do to make her tell me? Can't I just refuse to feed her if she's not going to be any help?"

  Jace shook his head. "No, you're eventually going to start working effects, and when that happens she'll naturally feed off of the excess energies that are released. The only way to stop it would be to kill her, and neither of us wants to do that."

  Bethany gave me a knowing look that tapped into the anger that I'd spent so long nursing. It was nearly enough for me to tell Jace that he was wrong, but I knew I'd just be making a hollow threat. I wasn't a killer—didn't want to be a killer, when you really got down to it.

  "Fine, I guess she can keep her secret. I wish I knew what it was that I was working on though. If I had access to that kind of power, shouldn't I have just blasted my way out of the trap we were in? I mean, even if it had cost me most of my memories, wouldn't that have still been a better way to go than getting myself killed a few hours later?"

  "I don't know, Selene. You weren't the kind of person to make many mistakes. If you decided to burn through decades of memories the night before a big battle then there was a very good reason. I just don't have the foggiest idea why you would have done it."

  Chapter 22

  The rest of the night was basically a bust. Kat came out a few minutes later and we filled her in with regards to Bethany and the fact that I had apparently been working something very expensive and powerful while she'd been asleep that last night before I'd died. I'd been holding out hope that Kat would be able to explain everything, that the new information from Bethany would snap into place with what she already knew and she would be able to solve our mystery.

  Unfortunately, she seemed to be just as stumped as we were. We kicked around one hypothesis after another, but I didn't know enough about the world of the Awakened to even guess and the other two started repeating themselves after the first fifteen minutes.

  After an hour Jace finally stopped us and said it was time for us to get back to training. Kat begged off, saying that she needed to get some sleep, which meant that it was just the two of us.

  Saying that I was nervous would have been a severe understatement. We weren't alone, not with Bethany hovering just a few feet away from me, but after Jace's first few attempts at getting me to tap into my ability didn't work, she started to pay a lot more attention to her wings than to what we were doing.

  I'd been afraid that things would be awkward between us, but I couldn't decide whether I was afraid Jace would try to kiss me again or if I was more worried that he wouldn't. It had all of the classic ingredients for me getting lost inside of my own head, but Jace somehow just short-circuited all of that.

  He was all business during our training session, but he wasn't cold or standoffish. He was warm and funny and perfect. Honestly it was still blowing my mind that Jace had been married to me of all people. Not only that, he'd been married to a version of me that hadn't looked drastically different than I did now. I'd seen her—I mean my—old clothes and we were the same size.

  I knew I didn't have all of the knowledge and confidence of the old me, but it wasn't like guys noticed confidence and smarts right off the bat. Jace had said that he fell in love with me from the moment he saw me. That seemed to indicate that I still had a chance with him, that he liked the outside package and all I needed to do was make sure that I spruced up the inside package to the point where I could keep him interested.

  Of course, being able to use my ability for something worthwhile was a key component to that. We tried for three more hours to get me to the point where I could create my first effect, but in the end we didn't get anywhere.

  Jace didn't seem impatient or disappointed, which was nice. He acted like we had all of the time in the world, but I knew that wasn't the case. Kat wouldn't be so worried if the threat of another pantheon finding us wasn't very real.

  By the end of the third hour even my Awakened constitution was starting to fail me. I was yawning every thirty seconds, and getting worse by the minute. After my tenth yawn, Jace chuckled and pointed at the RV.

  "Go get some sleep. We'll have tons of time tomorrow to work on this stuff."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because it's obvious that Ari loves going fast almost as much as Kat does. I suspect that's the one thing that is guaranteed to pull her away from my side."

  "I guess that's true. I can see the two of them spending a lot of time on the lake tomorrow."

  "Like I said, plenty of time. Go ahead and go to sleep."

  "What about you?"

  It could have been viewed as some kind of invitation. In fact, I was pretty sure a lot of guys would have tried to turn it into the two of us spending the night together, but Jace just gave me another easy, slow smile.

  "I set up a tent thirty yards that way. That's actually where I was when Bethany was dive-bombing you."

  "Okay, I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning, Jace."

  He looked like he was debating what to say next and then suddenly he was there in front of me. He took me in his arms and gave me a single, long kiss t
hat made tingles shoot out to my extremities.

  My defenses, the walls that I'd tried to put up after finding out that we'd been married, crumbled instantly. If he'd wanted to he probably could have had his way with me right there next to the RV. I wanted him to kiss my neck like he'd done the last time, wanted him to make my head spin and my body melt away, but he didn't do any of that.

  When he pulled back a minute later his grin was faintly apologetic. "I told myself that I wasn't going to do that again, not so soon, not after nearly losing control the first time, but you were just so beautiful standing there in the moonlight that I couldn't stop myself. Good night, Selene. Sleep well."

  **

  I woke up feeling refreshed despite not having gotten much sleep, which was a good thing because Kat and Ari were even more hyped up than I'd expected them to be. Ari came out in a red bikini and jumped up and down on the pull-out bed until Kat and I finally threw our pillows at her.

  Jace knocked on our door a few minutes later, which sent me scurrying for the shower. He'd probably seen me with bedhead at some point in the past, but I wasn't going to put that image back in his mind if I could prevent it.

  I got ready in record time. The shopping spree hadn't included any makeup, but that probably was for the best since we were going to be on the water. I pulled on the blue tankini, slid on a pair of cute black board shorts, and then pulled my hair back into a simple ponytail.

  Just before I was going to leave, Bethany popped through the door. "Jace has breakfast ready, and he's looking back in this direction five times a minute. If your goal was to make him antsy I think you've succeeded."

  "Hey, Bethany. How did you go through the door like that without opening it?"

  "It's a fairy thing. It's going to go away once you start working effects and I'm no longer invisible, but I figure as long as I've still got it I should enjoy it."