Page 2 of Curse the Fae

Just one more hug. Just one more touch.

Please, please, please!

My prayers echo through the welkin, with no one there to catch them. Desperate, I scan the knots of ash trees for a pair of spruce green eyes or a cloud of white hair, but my sisters are nowhere in sight. Juniper and Lark have vanished into other parts of this terrible place, having passed through my hands like water—brief and preciously irretrievable.

One false step, one accidental trespass into this dark realm, has marked our fates. These monsters have separated us. The ruler of the mountain has claimed Lark, the ruler of the woodland has stolen Juniper, and soon I’ll be…

I close my eyes, my wet lashes shuttering.

We belong tothemnow.

I belong tohim.

I still taste the panicked slipperiness of my words, the salt of my cries just before they were taken from me:I don’t understand. We did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong!

But I do understand, and I have done something wrong. I’ve done something so very wrong, and it’s not what my sisters think, and that’s why I’m here. Yes, my sisters and I had trespassed into Faerie—forbidden territory to humans. It had been an accident, and now we’re paying the price, but it’s not the whole story. It’s not the real reason he’s punishing me.

My eyelids flap open. Tears are nothing to be ashamed of. Some might call it a weakness, but I think it’s a sign of bravery. It takes courage to weep publicly, to expose oneself like an open wound, raw and overflowing. I’m not ashamed of crying. I’m strong enough to feel hurt, and I’m courageous enough to feel scared. It reminds me I’m human and alive.

And while I may cry, I won’t yield.

“Curse you,” I say, in case he hears me.

Ash trees cluster the forest. The boughs shiver, their leaves whispering secrets in the breeze.

Ahead, a spring cleaves across the ground, the water churning like liquid glass. Glowing lanterns flank the eddies, flames licking the air from inside the vessels, their light pulsating through the darkness and stroking the water. Flat rocks tread down the spring’s center, marking a path along the serpentine current, which gushes into a tunnel.

Rather than wipe them away, I let the tears dry on their own. I imagine saltwater cutting across my cheeks like old ravines, the grief trailing down my face. Since it’s the last emotion I had felt after saying goodbye to my sisters, I’m not about to erase them like some castaway emotion, unexpected and useless.

I’m not Juniper, who’s as unyielding as an oak tree. Nor am I Lark, who can smirk or flirt away her demons.

Aside from our father, I’m the only one whom my sisters have ever shed tears in front of.

Who will take care of them now? Who will soothe their wounds? Who will be their haven?

I clutch the gold chain draped across my throat and dangling down my back, the waterdrop pendant resting against my spine. Visions of Juniper and Lark swim through my head. I keep those memories tucked like pearls in the clamshell of my heart.

Within the tunnel, the spring broadens and slides down a precipice. I’ve received no instructions about where to go from here, but I suppose this is my trajectory. I step one wobbly foot in front of me—just as something slithers through the grass from behind. I pause to register the sound of a figure disturbing the shrubbery, pushing through the underbrush, and prowling in my wake.

My pulse races, pounding like a gong in my temples. I grip the expandable spear buckled at my hip. My thumb pops open the closure that secures the weapon in place. I whirl, jerk the spear’s handle to elongate its length, spin the weapon, and impale the ground between me and—nothing.

There’s nothing there. I blink at the setting, which is ripe with midnight colors and dense vegetation. Had the noise been real or glamoured?

Hyperawareness bristles the hair along my arms. No, it wasn’t glamour. Something is here, and it’s close.

A predator? A monster?

One ofthem?

I walk backward for several paces, then pivot on my booted heel and flee toward the tunnel. The flat rocks protruding from the spring are stepping-stones. With the spear armed in my hands, I pad from one rock to the next while yards of shell-white cotton cascade and swish around my limbs, my dress loose and flowing. It’s a free-floating garment, if one ignores the billowing sleeves that cuff at the wrists like manacles.

A pair of interlocking serpents is carved above the tunnel’s entryway. Below that, tendrils of fog rise from the deluge. I hover at the landing and peer over the side where the current tumbles into a steaming void.

My intakes become shallow. They pump from my lungs and into the mouth of the abyss, the noise magnifying until it clashes it with the torrent.

The pack hanging over my shoulder grows weighty, reminding me of the two leaflets festering inside. My sisters and I had each received the same sets of missives. One had been an order to come here, the other a cruel welcome message upon arriving at The Triad. The inked writing had seeped into my blood, chilling it like a poison.

For your trespass, be our sacrifice—to surrender, to serve, and to satisfy. Under the vicious stars, three sisters must play three games.

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