Page 55 of Hidden Kingdoms

A way to understand it, to understand me.

Kaius thought I was Fae because I could wield magik, but so could Nanna Alba. And so could Briar. Sure, I hadn’t seen them use the amount of power I had in that room with the prince, but if that made me Fae, then it made them one, too?

Did they know? Is that why I grew up immersed in a world of magik and folklore?

To keep the Fae away, Nanna Alba said when she burnt sticks of myrrh.

Was that more than superstition? My mind tripped over itself as it whirled from memory to memory.

The wards we had all studiously erected, the talismans she made constantly, there had been times I’d laughed them off and she had begged me to take it home. I reached for the familiar comfort of the pendant that was no longer around my neck, and I dropped my hand with a sigh.

I desperately needed to organise the information blazing through my mind, needed to find a way to make it make sense. Wrenching open the drawers in front of me, I was certain I'd seen a stub of pencil in one of them. I found the first empty and slammed it shut. A few black buttons rattled in the second as I shoved it back. The third drawer revealed the small, thin pencil rolling around inside, and I laughed in victory. It was blunt, but I could work with that. I needed paper.

I chewed my lip for a moment, eyeing the old books stacked under the TV and considering if I was really going to write all over one.

Fuck it, I’m doing it.

Right now, it was my only option and picking out the most boring looking one—Stein’s Introduction to Fungi—I sat on the bed to flick through the book before realising there were few blank pages.

Without hesitation, I put pencil to paper, scribbling down everything I could remember in every available space, underlining the things I needed to find out more of in a hurried disjointed scrawl that I doubted even I would be able to decipher.

The pencil soon became unusable, and knowing I wasn’t going to find a sharpener hidden in here, I turned to the mostly blunt knife that came with dinner, because who would give aprisoner a pointy object? But it was enough to sharpen make it useable again.

When I had written down all I knew about this place, I moved onto Nanna and the things she had told me as I was growing up. The things she had done.

Flipping to the back of the book, past numerous depictions of mushrooms, I hesitantly wrote about the nightmares that plagued me—nothing in detail, just the basic points. Next, I added themomentswith the forest and overhearing the conversation between Bastian and Marcellus, explaining them the best I could.

I would find the answers, I was sure of it.

23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ELODIE

The air was snatched from my lungs as panic clawed its way up my throat in its attempt to suffocate me.

Why couldn’t I have dreams about rainbows and fluffy bunnies?

There was no way to swallow past the dread, and turning in a slow circle, I took in the trees that ringed the clearing.

Everything was the same—same tall wildflowers. Same jumble of trees.

The small pool, shaded by the large willow, unchanged.

The soft breeze blew the scent of the flowers around me as the drone of the bees collecting their pollen dipped in and out of earshot.

It’s just a dream, Elodie, It’s not real.

All I need to do if it all goes to shit is wake up.

I sucked down a breath, I could control this. It was all in my head after all. Each beat of my heart was a race to the next, despite my heroic attempts at deep breathing.

Forcing myself to count to ten, I waited for the spark that would set it all ablaze. I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, waiting and waiting. Knowing what was about to happen and not having a single way to stop it.

Other than waking up.

Desperate to feel the comforting hum of energy flow through me, I pulled at my magik, but there was nothing there. I was empty, the more I tried, the harder it became, and I knew I stood no chance once that fire started.

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