Page 12 of A Dance With Fire
She set the mirror aside and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll stand, thanks.”
Shula sighed and resisted the urge to rub her temples. She had to remind herself that she was the liar here, the Fae. Fanny had every right in the world to be wary of her because she’d lied.
“I don’t know where to start.” Or if she even wanted to, but she had no other choice. Fanny could go to the soldiers. As much as Shula wanted to keep this a secret, she couldn’t. Not anymore. And she’d be lying if she said a deeper part of her didn’t want Fanny’s acceptance. But she was terrified of what the truth might bring.
“The beginning. Now. I’m losing patience, Fae.”
A bitter laugh rumbled from Shula’s throat and when she met Fanny’s eyes, her own narrowed into thin slits. “That fucking word.” She shook her head. “You say it with so much venom. And that is precisely why I could tell you nothing.” Some of her Fae cadence had slipped between her words. They had a lilt to their speech that was refined, something she’d hid for so long. A little part of her Papa that she kept hidden within herself. All it had taken was for someone else to know the truth for her roots to slip between the cracks of her walls.
“Can you blame me? I don’t even know what the truth is anymore! Are we even really friends or did you use your magic on me to trick me? To trick everyone?”
“I don’t use glamor. I haven’t used magic in years.”
Her eyebrows rose in a condescending way. As if to ask what Shula called bursting into flames, then?
“Except for today. I don’t know what that was or what happened. But I swear to you, I left the Fae life behind.”I don’t even want to be Fae.Those words went unsaid. Even thinking them felt like a betrayal, so she didn’t. “I left that life behind ten years ago.” The moment her parents were taken from her. The moment the old woman’s blood coated her dirty legs and hem.
One look at Fanny’s unconvinced expression, and Shula knew she was going to have to bare her heart, her soul. She would be forced to give up every secret she could, tear herself apart in a way that terrified her.
With a shaking hand, she shoved away the errant waves of hair that obstructed her view of Fanny. “What do you want to know?” Her voice was a broken, fearful sound.
“Everything.”
And with a heavy breath shaking through her smoke-filled lungs, she began to speak.
5
Mana
Soul raw and aching more than her back, Shula slumped against the pillows. While her body looked relaxed, she was anything but. She was filled with fear as she waited for Fanny’s reaction.
She had kept quiet for the most part, letting Shula speak her story. Shula hadn’t held anything back. She gave every bit of herself, stuttering through the story of her life. She’d separated herself from it as best as she could, telling it like she was a mere spectator in her own life, if only so she wouldn’t break down crying like she truly wanted to with every painful word that wrenched from her throat.
Her life had been one tragedy after another, and the only happiness she could find had been at Piriguini’s Circus. And now even that was on shaking ground, threatening to crumble and destroy.
Shula stared at Fanny, taking in a deep breath. Fanny just stared right back. Her expression had softened every time the story progressed, but she was still hard lines and slashing glares.
It made Shula lose hope.
Just as she started to say goodbye to her life, for there was no possible way she was making it through the day alive, Fanny slowly took a seat across from her.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Shula made a choked noise. “How could I? You’re looking at me like I’ve changed right before your eyes. Like I am some type of monster.”
“You’re Fae.”
As if that said everything, explained everything.
“I am still Shula Azzarh. I am still your Shules, your friend. That friendship? It was never a lie. I still care about you. I still love you, even if fire flows through my veins. Even if I have magic, I am still me. I still like dessert before dinner, I still am a talented dancer. We still laughed together, and those jokes weren’t a lie. The only thing different is that now you know that we are different. Yet we are the same. Friends. At least, I pray that we still are.”
It took a long moment before Fanny answered. “You don’t like what you are, do you?”
Shula didn’t want to say the words, but she forced them out anyway. Her cheeks heated with shame, and she could taste it like a visceral venom coated along her tongue. “If I could change what I am, I would.”
Those words would seem rudimentary to a human, but they were a perilous betrayal to Shula’s parents and to everything she’d ever known. But they were enough for Fanny.
Smiling, Fanny reached across the space that separated them and gripped Shula’s hands in her own. “Then that is all that matters.”
