Page 64 of Faerie Fate
Why did I need to know about potions for luck or increased strength when I should have been learning about potions to hide me from my enemies?
I recognized some of the ingredients hovering above us, the lemonberry and wild rosemary. The night milkbalm. All those things Livvy and I gathered fresh when we attempted to do the spell. Poppy must have really studied the journal.
“Well?” She cleared her throat. “Are you going to do your part in this or not?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I hadn’t meant to sound so snarky. Nerves, I told myself. Nerves gave us all a different, harsher voice.
We glared at each other. Finally, Poppy settled across from me and with a thought, she cast the magic, the lines of the circle glowing.
“This will keep us grounded and safe while we work,” she explained. “You ready?”
“Don’t we have to?—”
“What? Go through the motions? The mumbo jumbo preparations? Amateurs do those things.”
With a scoff, she reached out for my hands and began without a countdown. My chest clenched, heart going athousand miles an hour. The silence was an awful din throbbing through me, pulsating my eardrums and settling in my bones.
Livvy once said the ingredients would ensure the potency of the spell, but it hadn’t worked. The spell hadn’t done anything except erase the wild excitement in her eyes when everything failed.
I wasn’t ready then. I still wasn’t ready, not at all, but I’d backed myself into a corner where choice didn’t exist.
Whatever destiny Faerie had for me, I was about to find out, and there was no going back.
Poppy’s power rushed out of her and slammed into me, stealing the air from my lungs and taking me along for a terrible ride.
The magic she would unlock might be mine, but right now there was only her. Only Poppy and the way she stiffened, her spine straight as the room darkened around us, plunged into an unnatural night until even the flames underneath the cauldron glowed ebony. The stench of burning herbs stung the inside of my nostrils.
I heard the words written in the journal inside my head. Poppy had no need to speak them out loud. The ancient language echoed in the sharp corners of my brain, an unnatural breeze tickling the curly soft hair at my temples. The foreign words of the spell lifted the hair on the back of my arms yet again.
Poppy’s eyes went pure white. Electricity zapped through me and I yelped, pulling back my hands, but her hold was unbreakable. Rather than finishing with the words, they began again, a ghoulish repeat.
Darkness built in the room and pressed in on me. Stealing my vision away and turning everything to the same nightmarish black.
Already, this was different. Deeper than I’d imagined. Rather than unlocking the hidden doors, it felt like pieces were stolen from the exact places where I needed them most. I tried again to tug my hands away from Poppy’s but she held firm.
The circle kept us muffled. The grunts I managed reverberated back to me, heard as if through a veil of cotton.
Help me.
Even if I’d gotten the plea out, even if I’d manage to scream it at the top of my lungs, no one would hear me.
Poppy’s fingers were like iron, crushing and grinding my bones to dust. In the middle of the darkness, growing closer with every heartbeat, there were only those terrible white eyes.
The only thing I saw. The only spot of brightness left in this world. Wind whipped my hair into a halo above my head.
This was a mistake. I never should have gone along with it. Never should have believed Livvy and her insistence that I needed the witch powers in my genetics unlocked. I gave one last tug to free myself from Poppy before the floor suddenly opened up underneath me.
I was falling, tumbling through the darkness, but not backward. Falling forward—into Poppy’s eyes and dissolving into those white pools.
My physical body filled with a sickening heat before that soon detached as well. I dropped into the abyss that quickly shifted to a blinding white as I fell inside the witch’s eyes.
I landed with anoomphin a chair at a table. The wooden legs rocked underneath me. Jolted and shaking, it felt like I’d left my form behind even though I saw myself as solidly as anything else.
The walls of the room were water, moving up toward the roofline. Great turquoise droplets moved together and disappeared into the ceiling overhead. I glanced around, taking in the space no larger than a typical bedroom.
A few inches of water trickled across the floor, with the level growing quickly. When I first landed, it was at my ankles. Now it was creeping up toward my shins.
Poppy landed across from me and grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself, her hair disheveled and her eyes looking just as confused as I felt.
