Page 67 of Faerie Fate
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she pulled free and took the last bit of my warmth with her before she stumbled over the line and broke the circle. The salt smudged under the rapid sweep of her foot.
Poppy snapped her fingers and the flames brightened further, dancing like sunlight beneath the bottom of her cauldron. The herbs still suspended in midair now plummeted down around us like dead birds shot from the sky.
I felt the same.
“What about unlocking my powers?”
The spell couldn’t have failed twice. Could it? I swallowed over bile.
Poppy ignored my questions. She walked to a cabinet on unsteady legs and drew out a couple of white towels, then sloshed back to me and tossed one my way. Only then did I realize the entire floor of the spell room had flooded.
I jolted back off the edge of the cushion.
She watched me, silently, keeping her secrets. We both understood it as we moved together, drawing off our wet shoes and clothes.
I shivered as I scrubbed the towel through my hair.
Poppy stood with her back toward me and I latched my arms around myself, wearing only my bra and underwear. My eyes widened when she tossed something at me and I moved automatically to catch it.
“A loaner.” Her voice sounded as unsteady as her legs. “Keep it as long as you need.”
I slid my hand down the front of the dress, brushing out wrinkles in the autumn-colored fabric. The buttons were oak brown, with gold thread stitching them to rich ochre fabric. The dress smelled like her, the scent of her embedded in the stitching when I drew it over my head. It wasn’t enough to get me warm. I’d probably never be warm again.
My manners were slow to come and when they finally knocked me upside the head, I grimaced. “Thank you. For the dress.”
Poppy harrumphed something like an acceptance but the muffled sound made it impossible to distinguish.
I wrapped my hair in the towel, watching her totter as she moved to the fire beneath the cauldron and began tossing in the useless herbs. A new belch of smoke erupted every time the bundles disappeared.
“Prophecies aren’t passive,” Poppy suddenly blurted out. I jolted at the sound of her voice. “Not like most people assume. Mine never have been, anyway. My prophecies are magical. I travel through time, through space, and it can be a harrowing experience if you’re not expecting it.” She swiped her hand through her hair. “They’re dangerous, too. It’s the price I have to pay for the information I receive from the universe.”
I shifted my weight, feeling uncomfortable and almost indecent for spying on Poppy’s prophecy. I’d witnessed firsthand something I had no business seeing.
“Okay,” I said slowly, scrubbing at my temple. “Okay…so what was that one trying to tell you? It was just some awful weather, right? Faerie is going to get some storms?”
That had to be the answer.
“Although cyclones and mudslides and floods aren’t natural in Faerie,” I added.
My skin prickled. It might have been a figment of my imagination, or a consequence of the stubborn headache I’d yet to lose, but I swore I heard a voice in my head. It had no words, none I understood anyway, but it warned me tobe wary.
The faintest trace of ash crept into the air.
Stormshadn’tbeen normal before I got to Faerie, anyway. Then the land fought back because it knew, or at least I thought it knew, that I didn’t belong. Goddess, was Kendrick somehowgoing to force his way back here and cause all those horrible things to happen?
My bones went brittle and the rest of me was too hot until I wanted to peel off the borrowed dress and shred it.
Poppy waited until I calmed down and met her gaze. “Think about it, Tavi. Use your head. We were attempting to unlock your powers when we were thrust into the vision. All those things you saw?” She waited a beat and then scowled when I stayed silent. “It’s what will happen in your time if we succeed.”
I stared at her, through her, not understanding. “How did you get that from what you saw?” I asked weakly. “Those kinds of things can’t be linked to me and my?—”
“It’s a kind of knowing,” she interrupted. “I see the vision and I witness it with all my senses. I am physically in the reality that comes to pass when the prophecy is given, and my mind knows the rest.”
She was asking me to trust her, to understand her and take what she said as gospel, and I revolted. Every part of me fought against what she claimed.
Poppy held my gaze in a challenge, the obvious victor without having to touch me. She made sure there was enough space so if I wanted to reach out, she’d be a breath away.
Was it intentional?
