The Terrible Gift (Empath Found Book 1)

by Colette Rhodes

  Bryn’s anger was still bubbling through my veins. “You were in a closed room? No open windows or doors?”

  “Right. That was his intention.”

  “Then air magic, I assume. Only strong fae can manipulate an element to that degree and only one specialty element. Mine is fire, for example.”

  Bryn looked around, checking we were alone, before moving his hand, palm up, between us on the bench. Tiny, bright orange flames flickered to life from his fingertips. I watched in amazement as the fire licked his fingers but didn’t seem to hurt him. It was mesmerizing.

  “Not all fae can do that?”

  “Not anymore. All fae have an affinity with the four main elements — earth, water, fire, and air. We can all manipulate an element in front of us. For example, I can manipulate small amounts of water already in front of me, but I can’t conjure water into existence the way I can with fire. If you were in a closed room without wind to pull from, it would appear that you conjured that air. That would certainly be enough to catch Gwyneira’s attention, especially from Albion. Magic died out in this realm centuries ago. ”

  Bryn’s annoyance died down significantly when he was explaining things and his excitement rose. I wondered if he was a bit of a nerd like me? Learning gave me the kind of happy buzz that only orgasms could beat.

  “And what about the other thing I can do? You said you have tracking magic and that lady has guardian magic, so maybe mine is unique to me.”

  His eyebrows pulled together, and I felt his doubt like a curdling in my gut, as well as his curiosity tingling behind my ears.

  “Only fae blessed by the gods are gifted magic beyond their elemental abilities. What is it you think you can do?” he asked condescendingly. Behind the pretty face, this guy really was such an asshole. I made sure to look him in the eye so he could see the honesty in my expression.

  “Right now, you are feeling doubtful that I have other magic, angry — which you’ve been feeling since the minute we met and a mixture of lust and resentment.” I chickened out of eye contact on the last bit. He blinked at me slowly, and I felt his doubt morphing into an icky sort of discomfort.

  “You can feel emotions? Anyone’s emotions?”

  “Since I was a kid. I’ve always been able to do it.”

  “Anything else? Can you influence people to your will?” His panic shooting through me like sharp splints.

  “No! I would never do that. Is that a thing? I don’t even like being near people. Too many emotions give me migraines.” Oh god, that was the last thing I needed. I hated feeling other people’s emotions. I definitely didn’t want to influence them.

  “What am I?”

  “Trouble,” he muttered. “And incredibly rare. Extinct, in fact. There are plenty of fae who would love to get their hands on someone who can scout emotions, and most of them don’t have honorable intentions. Come on, scout, we need to go to Gwyneira before you attract the wrong kind of attention from Avalon.”

  ◆◆◆

  I walked to the tube station with Bryn trailing a few steps behind me. I hadn’t agreed to go back with him to his magical fairy realm, I wasn't quite that impulsive, but I hadn’t entirely dismissed him as crazy yet either. In the meantime, I felt more comfortable continuing this conversation in the privacy of the room I rented in a boarding house. Theoretically, bringing a strange boy I just met home was a bad idea, but I felt a strange, overwhelming urge to trust Bryn. I knew somehow he would never hurt me, not physically anyway. I also felt incredibly turned on, but it probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up.

  “How do you live in Albion? The pollution here is suffocating, you probably can’t even feel your magic,” Bryn muttered.

  “What do you mean by Albion? Great Britain? The world? It’s an ancient name we use for Great Britain,” I replied, ignoring his snide commentary.

  “Firstly, ‘they’ not ‘we’. You are fae, not human. All of the human realm is called Albion. The original portal was at Stonehenge. The giants who occupied the area at the time called it Albion and the name stuck.”

  I blinked. “Giants? At Stonehenge?”

  “Obviously. They built it,” Bryn scoffed.

  “There aren’t any giants in Britain. Or on Earth. I think we’d notice.”

  “They’d notice. The humans. You are fae. And of course there aren’t any giants here now. Albion is solely inhabited by humans now. The few giants that were left moved to Avalon to recover their numbers and live peacefully.”

  Holy crap. Giants?

  “Next you’ll tell me dragons are real,” I joked and Bryn looked at me like I was the stupidest person he’d ever met.

  After that, we fell into silence throughout the tube journey and the short walk to my place, which I was thankful for. I needed a minute to think about what I was going to do. I sort of felt now the genie was out of the bottle, I couldn’t get it back in. My magic trick — literal magic, apparently — to protect myself from Kayden had already brought attention to myself. What if someone else from this magical place had noticed it too?

  I could feel that Bryn was being sincere when he warned me that there were people with less-than-honorable intentions who would be interested in my abilities. Maybe going with him to meet this Gwyneira wouldn’t be the worst idea. Maybe I could just go and talk to her? There was little I hated more than feeling uninformed. Knowledge is power, after all.

  I let us into my small room in Mrs. Davey’s boarding house. There were three other residents, all upstairs. My room was on the ground floor, next to the front door. It had a big window facing the street and a smaller window on the side of the house. The room was sparsely furnished with a sink, mini-fridge, kettle, a twin bed, and a dresser to store my clothes. All of which had seen better days. I didn’t have a great job, and London is hella expensive. Still, I’d happily take this tiny little place than some of the fancier foster homes I’d been placed in over the years.

  “This is where you live?”

  “Ah, he speaks,” I muttered, “yes, this is where I live. It’s a boarding house, Mrs. Davey is the landlady. She’s upstairs.”

  He frowned at that. “Are you close to her? She may alert the human authorities when you leave.”

  “First of all — ‘if,’ not ‘when.’ I haven’t agreed to anything. No, she and I aren’t particularly close. I’m sure if I left her a note and some money for rent, she’d be okay with never seeing me again.” The words came out unwittingly and the rational part of my brain wondered why I was giving him so much information.

  “Seems as though you’ve really endeared yourself to humans during your time here, scout,” he sniggered. I wanted to slap him and then pin him against the wall. My hormones were really clashing with my better judgment right now.

  “First of all, foster care has a way of making people wary,” I snapped. “Second of all, my name is-,” I was interrupted by a loud banging on the front door that made me jump. Bryn narrowed his eyes at me.

  “Expecting company, scout?”

  “Ffion Smith? Police, open up. We received a complaint from Mr. Kayden Lowell about an assault that took place last night. We need to talk to you.”

  My face blanched. Was this seriously happening? The dude had locked me in a room to rape me, and he’d reported me for assault? That piece of shit.

  Bryn rolled his eyes impatiently. He was taking this development oddly well.

  “Look, I don’t really have any vested interest in convincing you to come to the Academy. The dean sent me here to get you so here I am,” he grumbled irritably, and I wondered if the insane connection I felt to him was completely one-sided.

  “You’re really selling it,” I deadpanned, glancing nervously at the front window. The knocking on the front door grew louder and waves of the policemen’s impatience lapped at my skin.

  “Miss Smith? Open up, please. We’d just like to talk to you.” Lie.

  Bryn’s annoyance felt like an uncomfortable chafing sensation my arms and
I couldn’t help but glare at him. It’s not like I wanted to be in this situation.

  “Your job is awful, and you live in a tiny, damp room, spending your days avoiding people, so you don’t get headaches. At the Academy, you’ll have comfortable accommodations, receive a stipend while you study, and learn more about your abilities,” Bryn listed, rolling his eyes like I was the one being difficult.

  That did sound like a vast improvement over my current setup…

  “Miss Smith! Open the door, please. We will come back with a warrant if you don’t cooperate,” one of the policemen sniped through the front door. My heart was doing double time. I wouldn’t be able to lie to them if I did talk to them. I’d spend the rest of my life in a straightjacket if I told the cops I blasted Kayden away with magic.

  “Plus, I doubt you’ll be able to avoid those migraines in prison,” Bryn added smugly. “Grab your things, we’re leaving out the window. Unless you want to hang around with the humans and see how this plays out?”

  Bryn may be an insufferable asshole, but he made some excellent points. Open the door and chance it with the cops or sneak out the window with a sexy fairy? Fuck it, I could lie low for a while and come back when Kayden inevitably got himself arrested for doing something shady. It didn’t seem worth taking the risk with the authorities. Why was I fighting for the right to stay in a tiny room and work the graveyard shift as a cleaner anyway?

  I took a deep breath. Time to take a chance with a fae. Maybe I’d figure out how to make that air magic happen on demand and never be vulnerable again.

  Fi

  I left Mrs. Davey enough money to cover the next month’s rent and a note simply saying sorry — not a lie — and quickly shoved my meager belongings into a backpack. Bryn had tried to convince me to leave them most of my things behind since apparently, synthetic materials would quickly deteriorate in Avalon. Still, I had worked hard for the few things I owned, I felt more comfortable having it with me.

  His comment made me pay closer attention to his clothes, though. I’d initially assumed he was some kind of trendy London hipster, but maybe his clothes were standard fae apparel? His pants were dark navy but a sort of linen fabric and loose, stopping just above his ankles. It looked like he had a white tunic type shirt underneath and a thick grey woolen jumper over it, the tails of the shirt hanging below the jumper. On his feet were soft leather boots that looked straight out of the Middle Ages, lacing up over his ankles and underneath the bottom of his trousers.

  We quietly slipped out the side window and used the bins to boost ourselves over the fence. I’d never been more grateful to live on the ground floor. We moved through the quiet backstreets of the suburban South London neighborhood where I lived in silence. Between what Bryn had told me, the physical response I was having to his presence, and the powerful way his emotions were affecting me, I didn’t trust myself to speak yet. I was finding it difficult to separate my feelings from his, it was messing with my head.

  After walking for 15 minutes or so, Bryn flagged a cab and directed the driver to take us to the southernmost limits of the city.

  It was already a grey day, and the sun had barely risen when we pulled up outside an ominous-looking pile of ruins.

  “You sure this is where you want to be dropped, mate?” the driver called to Bryn. “It’s an old cement quarry, hasn’t been used since the Victorians were about.”

  Bryn’s irritation chafed at my skin again, but I was getting used to it. Irritated seemed to be his permanent state of being. Before he could snap at the poor driver, I assured him this was where we wanted to get out as Bryn paid him. Luckily he had some money on hand. I’d cleared out myself out with that rent money for Mrs. Davey.

  “Come on then.”

  Bryn ducked under a ‘No Entry’ sign and started picking his way across the broken cement flooring and around rusted bits of machinery.

  “It is an abandoned quarry, but it has also been glamoured to repel curious humans. It’s a good site for a portal, close enough to be convenient to London but out of the way of passersby.”

  Shocked that he was even bothering to explain this to me, I kept my mouth shut so I didn’t jinx it. I was also focused on not getting tetanus from all the old bits of rusted metal sticking out in every direction.

  We climbed a few stairs, then Bryn stopped at a ledge in front of a large vat. It looked out of place amongst the ruins, too shiny and new to belong here. The vat was filled with what could have been water, but it had a strange silver sheen to it that definitely didn’t look of this world.

  “Welcome to the portal. You need to be carrying a token on you to pass through it so the Assembly can monitor who enters and exits. It also stops humans from accidentally getting into Avalon.”

  Bryn looked at me, his suspicion felt like a layer of tar coating my insides. “Your glamour will disappear when you pass through the portal. As will mine.”

  “My what?”

  “Your glamour,” he repeated slowly like I had a hearing problem. I rolled my eyes, such a pompous ass. “The enchantment that is making you look like a human.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I have one of those. This is just what I look like,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly. This is the same face I’ve had my whole life, surely I’d know if it had been changed.

  I eyed the shimmering vat suspiciously. “I’m not jumping in that if it’s a one-way trip. I want your word that I will be able to return here if I want to.”

  I had a funny feeling that if Bryn gave his word, he would honor it. I’d always felt a weird sense of levity when I had given my word; maybe it was a fae thing?

  I felt the striking sensation of Bryn’s sincerity again when he reached out to shake my hand. “You have my word. You can return to Albion if you wish. The Academy has no interest in imprisoning you.”

  He handed me two silver coins that had a small circular hole in the middle and tiny engravings around the edges. “One will disintegrate in transit, but the other is for you to keep so you can come back to Albion if you wish to, as agreed.”

  “See you on the other side.” And with that, he jumped.

  Of course he just freaking left me here. I stood on the edge of the vat for a few seconds, deliberating what to do. The vibe I’d gotten from Bryn before he jumped hadn’t been malicious, it was challenging. He was daring me to do this on my own.

  Was I really going to rise to his baiting?

  Probably.

  Yes, definitely.

  I lowered myself slowly into the vat and it came alive once I was submerged, gently coaxing me through a swirling mass of silver mist. It felt like icy water against my skin but my clothes didn’t feel wet, and I seemed to be breathing just fine. Weird.

  After what felt like a few seconds, I broke the surface of a pond filled with the same silvery substance as the vat had been. I shot Bryn a quick glare as I pulled myself up next to him on the bank. Thanks for waiting for me, asshole.

  I would know we weren’t in the human world anymore without even opening my eyes. The air here was so different, so clean and full of… something. Magic? It was something intangible, but I felt it deep in my bones, right down to my soul. There was an intoxicating rush in my veins, like a welcome home from the realm.

  The portal was much nicer on the fae side thank the human side — no tetanus-y old concrete mixers or broken glass in sight. It was housed in a meadow that shimmered in brilliant shades of orange and gold. The meadow was full of the most spectacular flowers I had ever seen, far more vibrant than any I’d ever seen in London. They almost...glittered? It was fascinating. I hadn’t spent much time in the country, but libraries had always been a safe place for me, and I had never seen foliage like this in books.

  Bryn stood and I went to follow, stumbling slightly when my limbs failed to cooperate with me. My long limbs, I thought, staring down at my body with a frown.

  “You’re taller,” Bryn said gruffly, staring intently at my significantly longer legs.

 
; My skirt had been a couple of inches above the knee when we’d left London but now it was practically a belt. I pulled off my parka which had become uncomfortably tight under my arms and found that my hoodie was basically a crop top, a generous strip of stomach on display. Holy hell, how tall was I? My breathing quickened as I looked at my long limbs in a panic. I’d somehow grown half a foot in the past three minutes, I needed a moment to freak out about this.

  Bryn cleared his throat uncomfortably as his lust shot through the roof. Not helping. I felt every flash of his desire as an aching pulse between my thighs and a heaviness in my breasts. If this was going to be a regular thing here, I’d be taking cold showers every 10 minutes.

  “You’re about average height for a female fae. That was quite the glamour you had on you,” Bryn reassured me while managing to sound snide at the same time, it was quite a talent. His suspicion laced through my system like tar and I grit my teeth to stop myself from snapping at him. At least until after his tour guide duties were over and I had some semblance of where the hell I was.

  “What else looks different?” I asked politely, examining my arms and legs and ignoring Bryn’s suspicion. He reached forward and tugged a long lock of curly hair toward my face.

  “Your hair is lighter. It has gold tones. Same as your eyes.” I tilted my face up to him, “they’re amber, with gold flecks. And your features are sharper.” I felt my face warm a little at how close he was standing, staring at me intensely. Bryn may be a total dickhead, but he was fine as hell and my hormones were doing a happy dance at his close proximity.

  Bryn pushed my mass of curls back to one side and ran his finger lightly over the shell of my ear. I immediately shuddered and bit back a moan, while Bryn dropped his hand like he’d been burned. What the hell was that? My ears had never felt that sensitive before. This was not helping with my hormones.