Page 61 of Reap the Night
The lights flicker again.
We’ll have to get someone in to check the fuse box soon.
Chapter 22
MERRY
His eyes are hazel with flecks of gold, and his aroma is wildberries and sunshine. I jot it down. I don’t want to forget anything. But even as I neatly print the information in my journal, there’s a part of me that trembles with foreboding because it will happen.
It always happens.
The reset.
I can feel it at the back of my mind. An itch, a niggle. A memory attempting to surface, and as soon as it’s close to breaking, then I’ll forget all of this.
Reading it won’t be the same. It won’tfeelthe same.
WillIbe the same?
It’s been weeks, and I’ve grown, but all that growth will be wiped out.
The pen feels suddenly too weighty.
I can’t go on like this much longer.
I need help, and maybe Crush can give that to me. Find a pureblood fae who can help heal me. I’ve got to hope that I can be whole again. I so desperately want it, and especially now that I’ve been accepted into the fae world.
What will Mother and Father think when I tell them about Midsommer Nights and Crush? Even as I think it, I know I’ll never tell them…well maybe notneverbut not now. Not for a while. They did their best to raise me, to make me feel normal, helping me find information about fae—books and stories and anything they could get their hands on. At the time I thought it was enough, but I know now that I was lying to myself.
The other night at Midsommer…what I felt in the company of Crush and his ogre blood friends…that was real. That was true, and I desperately want to feel it again.
I tuck my journal into my desk drawer and stretch. It’s late, and I should sleep, but the moon calls to me, and so like most nights, I pull open the drapes and stand in front of the window to bathe in its rays.
The grounds are silver and gray, the sky clear and pinpricked with starlight, and the moon hangs heavy in the bosom of night, gleaming beautifully rotund…well, almost. A cloud passes over it, obscuring its beauty, and movement below catches my eye.
A shadow darts across the grounds.
There’s someone on our grounds, veering toward the mansion.
What the?—
I turn and run for the door, sprinting down the passage.“There’s someone on the grounds! Padma! Edwin!”
I get to the top of the stairs and jolt when I see them run into the entranceway.
“What is it?” Edwin asks.
“There’s a man outside. I saw him run around the back of the house.”
Edwin makes a beeline for the front door, and Padma and I rush toward the back.
The intruder won’t get away.
We almost collide with Haiden coming the other way with a tea tray. He lets out a yelp and flattens himself to the wall as we rush past.
We shoot into the kitchen and out of the back door into the garden.
A shadow moves at the side of the chapel. “Hey!”
