Harvest: Faction 1: (The Isa Fae Collection)

by Conner Kressley

  I might die here tonight, but it wasn’t going to be without a fight. So I tried to slow my rapid heart and racing mind.

  Calming down, I took a couple of even breaths before I began to wonder why this creature was just staring at me instead of attacking. A million reasons flitted through my head, but none made sense.

  Words came from the thing, though they were like rumbles of thunder.

  “Don’t make me,” the creature said in an almost solemn tone. Well, as solemn as rolling thunder could be.

  “Make you do what?” I asked, finally able to speak. If I could speak, it might mean I was able to move. And if I could move, maybe I’d be able to muster enough of this shared energy to cast a spell and knock this creature back long enough to get Arbor and me out of here. First, though, I needed to buy some time to cast. “What do you think I’m making you do? You just busted in here!”

  “I have to,” the voice said, the tone of thunder and deepness dropping off a bit as it spoke. “Do you think I want to do this, Lara? If I had a choice… if I could control it…”

  The voice, obviously male, stopped short, as though he were overcome with emotion. As if I gave a crap. I was halfway through a casting that would send him flying through the roof. Just another minute, and it would be finished.

  “Of course,” I said, wondering how it knew my name and deciding it was a better use of my time to placate this creature man. Hopefully, I could lull him into a false sense of security. Perhaps then I could put an end to him.

  Wouldn’t that be something—an orphan who the entire faction had brushed aside as useless and nothing being the person to take out one of the most obvious horrors to ever break through our walls?

  “I want to help you,” I lied, putting finishing touches on an energy wave that was undoubtedly going to blaze through the rest of the magic I had at my disposal. This was a one-shot deal. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t have any way to defend myself. “You just have to let me.”

  “I want to,” the voice, even clearer now, said.

  Something tugged at the back of my mind. I knew this voice. It was as close to me as my own. Still, a shroud of something kept me from identifying it. No matter. This thing was trying to kill me. Worse than that, it was trying to kill Arbor.

  “Too bad,” I muttered through clenched teeth as I finished the spell. “Because I don’t.”

  The energy crackled at my hands, and I pushed my fingertips forward. As the energy shot from my palms, the cloud covering the monster dissipated… and I saw him for who he really was.

  First, his legs, then his chest. Finally, the energy cleared from his face, and I saw with a start that I did, in fact, know him. No—knowing him was an understatement. I was intimately familiar with this man. I knew him as well as I knew myself, and I loved him a whole lot more.

  “Karr,” I muttered, instinctively turning my hands upward. The brunt of the blast missed him, knocking a hole through the roof of our room and exposing us to the nighttime sun. Light poured through, enough to illuminate the bit of energy that hadn’t missed as it sliced into Karr and knocked him against the wall.

  “Oh no,” I muttered, struggling to stand.

  He was bleeding profusely. His eyes still shone with energy I didn’t recognize, and his hands were shaking as though he was trying to hold something inside.

  “Don’t,” he said, nodding his head and motioning for me to stay back.

  I didn’t listen.

  “Don’t come near me,” he repeated. “It’s not safe.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, settling in front of him. Something in the back of my mind told me it was a bad idea. He had just tried to kill me. He had actually killed a guard. Perhaps being this close to him wasn’t safe, as he’d said, especially now that I didn’t have enough magic left in my band to sustain a protection spell and my life at the same time.

  Too many witches had died making that choice. In Isa Fae, a girl needed to know when to fight and when to run. And this was definitely the time to run.

  Yet, my body wouldn’t move away from him. After all, this was Karr. One of my best friends. The person I cared for most in this world. The love I thought I had lost forever. Now, against all odds and conventional wisdom, he was here again.

  “How are you back?” I asked, swallowing hard. “How is it even possible?”

  “They were wrong,” he said breathlessly. “They were wrong about everything, Lara. Nothing is as it seems.” He looked at me. “How long has it been? How long have I been gone?”

  “A few weeks,” I answered hesitantly. Time must have been different in the Box if he had to ask that.

  “A few weeks,” he scoffed. “It’s been so much longer for me.” His body shook, and I wanted nothing more than to hold him, but the pained and remorseful look on his face stayed my hand. “Go,” Karr said, the shaking growing in intensity. “Go now! And take—”

  A blast of energy shot through the room, knocking me backward. It blinded me, and when it subsided, Karr was the thing again.

  He moved past me in a rush, his rumbling black energy as loud as ever. His hands reached out to the closet. With a twist of his hand, he opened it, shattering the spell I’d placed on it earlier.

  “No!” I shouted, watching with horror as Arbor floated out, obviously under his control. Her eyes were wide and terrified as they met mine.

  “It’s okay,” I said, unsure about how I was going to back that up. “Just let her—”

  But another flick of Karr’s wrist proved me wrong. Karr sent Arbor flying through the window of our room and out into the midnight air. Absolutely nothing was okay after that.

  My body reacted quickly as I stood and rushed to the shattered window casing. I had hoped against hope for some sort of miracle, but, looking down, I saw it was not to be. Arbor lay motionless on the ground beneath the nighttime sun. Having fallen three stories, her body was broken, her eyes were open, and her life was gone.

  Chapter 8

  I heard the guards finally rushing into the room. When I turned to meet them with tears in my eyes, I found Karr on his knees with his hands above his head.

  I stood there, my body numb and my mind racing as security apprehended our assailant. Our assailant. The idea seemed so strange, so out of place, when assigned to Karr. But that was where we were. The whole of me shook as I stared at him, his bright eyes glistening in the night sun as the guards pulled him to his feet.

  The scar across Karr’s face—a mark he hadn’t had the last time I’d seen him—stole too much of my attention as he repeated the words ‘I’m sorry’ over and over again. Maybe it was because the physical change in the man I thought I loved and would never see again was the only thing that distinguished him from the person I’d known. The man I’d known couldn’t kill Arbor, not ever. The fact that he had… it was too much for me to take in.

  I couldn’t speak as they pulled him toward the door. He kept apologizing, pleading for me to understand. How could I, though?

  I had only loved two people in my whole life. Now, I’d lost both in the worst ways imaginable.

  Finally, Karr fell silent as the guards pulled him through the doorway. He had given up on apologizing. He must have, because judging from the display of power I’d just seen, he could have taken those guards out without so much as tensing a muscle. He didn’t, though. He just stared at me with those bright eyes, eyes I had lost myself in before, as he was pulled from my sight.

  It took a while for the world to stop spinning, for me to remember there even was a place away from this room. Karr had been gone for a while before I could move.

  By the time feeling came back to my legs, enough for me to move toward the window, tears had begun to flow freely down my cheeks. My stomach churned, and my heart sped to unnatural limits as I glared down from my broken window again.

  They were already there, surrounding her. People looked at Arbor’s body as she lay broken and still on the ground below. A sickening thought pu
shed its way into my mind. All our lives, we had wanted to be something. Arbor, chief among us, had wanted to make a name for herself, to be remembered as something other than an orphan.

  In one moment, she had achieved and forfeited her dream. She would always be remembered now as a tale of tragedy. Arbor would be a tale told at dinner parties while people sipped drinks and dined on finger foods. She would be a moment of silence, an uneasy beat in their conversations.

  But they would never really know her. They would never know anything beyond this horrible end.

  Somehow, that thought was the saddest one of all.

  “You have to be kidding me,” the short man said, staring at me with disapprovingly beady eyes. He had been here for nearly half a turn, haggling over the cost of an enchantment to make hair grow on his shiny, bald head.

  I sighed heavily, looking him square in those eyes and repeating what I had already told him six times. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t set the prices. If you’d like to speak to someone about a discount, then you’ll have to wait until Mr. Snidestorm comes back tomorrow. Otherwise, I’m afraid it’ll cost you two bars of atern.”

  He huffed at me, crossing his arms over his puffed-out chest and starting back for another round of negotiation. “If I had the time to wait, do you really think I’d be talking to you?”

  “I really couldn’t say what you would or would not do, sir,” I answered, letting my attitude get the better of me.

  That had been my problem recently. In the two weeks since Arbor had been killed, I had descended into a funk. My disposition had been bad enough that I couldn’t regain employment at the somewhat-acceptable job I’d had before. Instead, I’d been demoted through official channels until I came to rest here—at a secondhand spell shop on the outskirts of town.

  It wasn’t my fault. Or, at least, that was what I liked to think. I needed time to process things. My life was supposed to look a certain way. I wasn’t supposed to be alone. I was supposed to have Karr, and I was supposed to have Arbor. But since I didn’t, maybe I was having more trouble adjusting than I should.

  There was no time for adaptation for orphans, though. The faction already looked at me as a burden—one with a bad attitude who got no assistance. One more slip up, and I would likely be out of this job. There would be nowhere to go from here.

  I just couldn’t help myself. Arbor’s death had lit a fire under me. I was dissatisfied, unhappy with not only my place in the world, but also the entire universe itself.

  And I just couldn’t stay quiet about it anymore.

  The short man huffed, still glowering at me. “I have a blind date tonight, and I want to look my best!”

  “Really?” I muttered. “Poor girl.”

  “That is it,” he shouted. “I will not take this sort of abuse! I am a paying customer. What’s more, I’m a friend of Mr. Snidestorm. Don’t think I’m not going to tell him about your horrible demeanor as soon as he returns.” The short man scurried toward the door, turning to me with fire in his eyes as he twisted the handle. “I’ll just wear a hat!”

  As he slammed the door behind him, I sighed, partly in relief that it was time to close shop. The other piece knew what trouble this confrontation would bring.

  While it was true the guy probably wasn’t a friend of Mr. Snidestorm, he’d very likely be back tomorrow to spin his tale of woe. He’d likely get a free charm or two for his troubles, and I’d be shown the door.

  I wasn’t a good enough worker to be kept on in the face of customer complaints. Still, something about the idea of it being over, of this being the last straw in the entire bundle, made me feel better. I couldn’t fall any further than I already had. After this, I wouldn’t be dependent on this horrible system for anything.

  I was about to flip over the open sign to closed when the door opened again.

  A tall man strode in. He wore the sort of large-brimmed hat I could only imagine the shorter man would now be wearing on his blind date tonight.

  “I’m sorry. We’re closed,” I said, not bothering to plaster on the customary fake smile. “But we open first thing in the morning.”

  “I’m not here for spells,” the man said, tipping his hat up enough for me to see his face.

  He was gaunt, with hollow cheeks and shadows under his eyes. Instantly, I thought he was a spell junkie, but he was dressed too well for that. And besides, he’d already said he wasn’t after magic.

  “I think you might be in the wrong place, then,” I said, checking my band and seeing it was depressingly low. Suddenly, I regretted my earlier decision. Without this job, I would run out of magic completely. And then I’d be dead.

  “I’m here for you,” the man announced.

  My heart sped as I pulled open the register where the day’s stack of bartered atern was kept. This guy was about to come at me. If he did that, I was going to need magical assistance. Mr. Snidestorm would understand me taking just enough to defend myself, wouldn’t he? And if not, what did it matter? This was probably my last day, anyway.

  “I’m here to give you a message,” the man said. “A message that cost the sender a lot. So you’d better listen up.”

  “You have the wrong person,” I said, letting energy fill up my band and my body. “I don’t know anyone. There’s no one who would want to tell me anything.”

  “There’s at least one person,” he responded. “And it’s time sensitive. Karr is—”

  “Don’t say that name,” I said, my body tensing. “Don’t you dare say that name to me.”

  Karr was awaiting trial for what he had done, for the life he had taken. But I liked to imagine the man had never existed at all. I couldn’t bear remembering that one of the people I loved had killed the only other person I had.

  “Fine,” the man answered. “I won’t. You’ve already heard it anyway. He wants to see you. If you’ll just talk to him, he says he can explain everything.”

  Then the man turned tail and left, leaving me speechless with a half-full band of atern I’d just stolen and no excuses to offer for it. Somehow, after the man’s message, that seemed the least of my concerns.

  Chapter 9

  That night was a hard one. I tossed and turned. Knowing Karr wanted to see me brushed the scab off the still all-too-fresh wound his actions had inflicted on me. What was he thinking? Did he really believe I was so naïve, such a gullible and stupid little girl, that I would just coming running after what he’d done?

  Angrier than I had perhaps ever been, I gave up on sleep a full few hours before I was scheduled to go in for work.

  Dressing quickly, I decided to do something I had never had the chance to back in House One—take a long walk to clear my head. As an orphan, I was a ward of the faction. Because of that, my actions and whereabouts were sometimes subject to either approval or rejection from the people who’d raised me. Things like walks or clearing my head were always deemed unnecessary and a waste of time and energy.

  Now, though, I was leader of my own life, and while it turned out that was a much lonelier prospect than I’d ever imagined, it also had its perks. I could walk around the faction at my leisure. Could watch people as they milled about, getting ready to start their day. And, if I was lucky, I might also manage to tear my thoughts away from the impossible request Karr had made of me.

  That relief didn’t come immediately. As I made my second lap around Elder’s Lake, I found myself going over our last night together before the Harvest.

  Karr had snuck into our room, a breach of protocol, but a common enough occurrence to not warrant much concern. He’d brought me an extra piece of cake from the cafeteria because he knew I loved it and because he had spent that night cleaning up dishes as part of his chore list.

  We almost never got sweets in House One. So, on the rare instances they served them to us, I always got excited. Still, it wasn’t the cake I remembered thrilling me that night. Sure, it was good—sweet and fluffy and exactly what I’d wanted. The thing that really mattered, thoug
h… what had left me floating on air… was the fact he had brought it to me.

  “That must mean something,” I’d said to Arbor after he’d left. “It has to.”

  Blinking, I found myself standing still, looking out at the lake with tears in my eyes. That girl—the one who so wanted to be loved and to love in return—seemed a million turns away. The idea that it was only weeks ago made me sad and afraid. If life could change so much in such a brief period—if it could change me this much—then what would the long sprawl of years do to transform me?

  Who would I be when all of it was over?

  I looked down at my band. If I didn’t head to work soon, I wouldn’t make it. Sure, this was likely my last day. I could probably not show up at all and get the same results. But if I did that, I would be left to my own devices… left with these thoughts. And I would much rather deal with Mr. Snidestorm, regardless of how angry he might be.

  Pushing through the door of Mr. Snidestorm’s Magical Pawn, I found that my boss was indeed angry—but not at the person I thought he would be.

  The short man from yesterday stood across from Mr. Snidestorm, who himself was no giant in the making. They were screaming at each other, energy crackling off each of them respectively.

  While neither of these two were the sort of powerhouse that would traditionally frighten me, anyone over a certain age had been exposed to enough magic to be a threat. I couldn’t have them destroying this place with me inside it, regardless what their argument was about.

  “I told you to leave, Harvill,” Mr. Snidestorm said, pointing toward the door, and as such, inadvertently at me.

  Harvill looked over, his bald head still glistening and his eyes going wide as he took me in.

  “There she is! There’s the girl who was so rude to me! You’ve got to fire her, Redmon,” he said, using Mr. Snidestorm’s given name. “You have to fire her right now, or I swear I’ll—”