The world around me went utterly quiet, as if it had stopped to behold the surge of power that sprung free from my bones, my being, with a blast that drove me to my knees.
I barely noticed the cracks where it ripped straight through my skin — and for one, majestic moment I bathed in the raw and glorious light that filled me up and made me whole.
I reached out to the dark, vicious lifesource, which had stumbled backwards in astonishment.
The corners of my mouth curled into an unnatural smile at the tangible notion of its fear. I wanted it to hurt. It wasn't about killing or be killed anymore; the primal part of me that had taken control wanted to feel it suffer for coming after me.
My hands merely moved into fists and the creature — the fae who lived off of something else's power as I could sense now — evaporated into a wisp of smoke.
Then the world continued, and I suddenly felt off—balance, moving at a different rate and only aware of the splintered wood pressing into my skinned knees, as black ichor started dripping from my hands. I collapsed face first on the groaning wood.
I lay there with the sound of my hammering heart, but there were voices screaming, the scraping of wood on wood and the tinkling of broken glass in a tumult that had erupted all around me. I had no strength left to lift my head and see. Against my trying to to fight it, a heavy, compelling darkness felled me before anything else had a chance to.
* * *
Bleak strokes of sunlight peaked through carefully drawn curtains.
I sat on a bed, blinking against the sudden light of a lamp, feeling as if I'd just woken from a deep sleep and was still not entirely awake.
My mother sat cross—legged on the other end of the bed, restlessly flipping through the pages of a musty—smelling book, wearing a pair of glasses she kept shoving back up the bridge of her petite nose.
‘Mom?’ I was surprised by how small and delicate my voice sounded, though the sight of those haunting, blue eyes made me forget what I was going to ask her in the first place. I just stared at her, a woman I hadn't seen in so long it made my heart ache. I'm dreaming, I thought, I must be.
‘You're not trying to turn me into a toad again, are you?’
I never noticed how young she'd been. Of course I'd only ever seen her through the eyes of a child. The woman in front of me, however, barely could've been a day older than twenty—five.
‘I would never,’ I responded, much to my own surprise, startling into laughter when I felt closer to crying. Maybe I had died and this was where I'd wound up; in the scraps of my own memories. At least, I thought I remembered some of this. I felt odd, like the bedroom was rocking, placed on an unquiet sea.
‘I'm not sure if you actually could, but I don't really want to find out,’ she continued, smiling as if I hadn't spoken at all, closing the book in her lap with a soft sigh. I gave it a better look now: the leather casing was worn with time, faded lettering suggesting another language than the one I'd been taught. It held an other—worldliness to it that didn't seem to fit in the mundane looking bedroom.
‘Reyrey?’
Nobody has called me that in over a decade, I shivered, my eyes snapping up to her frowning face.
My mother moved closer, stuck out a hand, and pushed back a strand of my hair. I nearly bit through the tip of my tongue in order to remain exactly where I was, afraid that even the slightest flex of a muscle would make her disappear.
I sat up straighter and noticed then that I was wearing a pair of bloody leggings. The knees were ragged, revealing cuts on both legs, as they soaked scarlet blood into the flower—themed sheets. Being part fae, I had been trained to react to wounds the way humans naturally would. I dismissed the sight of them when I refocused on my mother.
‘Please don't go.’ It was such a sullen thing to say. She was long gone and I, I was pleading a ghost to stay.
‘We've got to teach you how to take care of yourself, don't we?’
I wanted to grab her hands, but she was already at the door when I looked up, seeming a lot smaller and paler, turning the glasses in her hands.
‘There's nowhere safe for you, not as long as I'm here.’ She pointed down, and I looked.
Black coated my fingers. It curled like veins up to my wrists and lower arms, as if my skin had been sewn together with ink, scorched by flames of glistening tar. I was horrified and, strangely, intrigued.
‘Wake up, Tiffany, please wake up.’
It wasn't my mom's voice coming out of her mouth. I blinked and the room of a childhood home I couldn't recall started to slip back into the fathomless darkness. It tried to pull me under too, stringing an anchor of comfort and warmth around my limbs, sweet as the touch of a mother's hand had been.
My human heart might have gotten lost in the void — had it not been laced with faerieblood.
* * *
It was like hitting the surface after being underwater for too long.
Air rushed back into my lungs as if it were my first breath. My head pounded so loud I thought it would split open from the pressure. I couldn't even place the flaming, constant pain that gnarled at me further down, licking at my hands as if they were on fire.
Maybe it had been nothing more than a fever dream. My traitorous lungs, however, struggled for oxygen. I didn't want to be in the darkness, I had not lived nineteen years in constant fear to be discarded like this, so I swore to any God that would listen that I'd make it right — even if it came from a liar's heart, my word would still bind me. It's the only thing I never gave. I must've been really desperate for air.
‘Tiff? Tiff, it's okay. You're going to be okay. They say you're going to be just fine. Just breathe.’
It was Beck, the same voice that had broken through the void before, now comforting me with soothing noises as her gentle fingers squeezed around one of my throbbing hands. I tried to focus on the feeling of her touch, holding onto it like a lifeline, as her words turned into echos, drifting into open sea.
Breathe
Breathe
Breathe
I can do that.
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