Page 32 of Mischief Maker
I take off at a run toward the house, but my feet won’t move. They’re trapped in mid-air, tethered by vines around my ankles.
With a yelp, I fall to the ground.
“Faela!” I shout. “Faela!”
But the house is silent as my mother slowly walks around me, examining me.
“You really love her.” She chuckles, and it’s a menacing sound. “I would never have guessed.”
My Faela. I can’t leave her—at least not without seeing her one more time. Not without telling her where I’ve gone.
“What if I do?” I snap, trying to unwind the vines. But they keep growing, tightening as they crawl up my body, trapping my tail to the ground. “So what if I’ve stayed? I’m immortal! The humans are forgetting us anyway. We don’t serve a purpose!”
Lucia tilts her head thoughtfully. “You’re right. She is likely the last one to ever summon you.” Crouching in front of me, my mother tilts up my chin, and her pale face is decorated with a pitying smile. “You think you should get to stay, do you, even though you’ve broken all the rules? Even though she doesn’t want you anymore?”
I don’t care if she doesn’t want me. I will live in this dark, stinky barn, and work the fields, and milk the cows for as long as I must to earn her love back. The idea of never having my farm girl again blots out all the light in the sky.
“Haven’t I served long enough?” I twist away from her, but the vines are starting to wind around my arms now. “Haven’t I earned the right to stay while the world forgets about me?”
Lucia chuckles. “That’s not how this works, and you know it, Kireth.” She rolls her shoulders, preparing for something, and I know now that I have not swayed her. “Since you are so insistent that you are now without purpose, perhaps it is time for you to join the others in oblivion.”
Panic sweeps through me. “No,” I whisper. “You can’t mean to send me there.”
“I do. That is your punishment for flagrantly abandoning your post and your duties.” She raises her hands up in the air. “A fitting end for such an arrogant, spiteful child as you.”
“You can’t!” I scream as the vines squeeze around me, pulling me into the gaping hole in the ground. “You made me this way!” They cover my face, my throat, but still I cry, “Faela!” one last time.
My shout is swallowed up as the vines finally pull me under.
Chapter Thirteen
Faela
“Faela!”
I wake up with a start at the sound of Kireth’s screams. I drag myself out of bed, the wine pounding in my head, and run to the window. Whatever is happening out there, he’s terrified. Worry creeps into my foggy mind.
Regardless of anything else, if he’s in trouble, I have to help him.
Outside the window stands a great woman, pale and tall, wearing a white gown that reflects the moonlight so brightly she looks like pure silver.
Lucia. The goddess of the earth.
I rush down the stairs and out the front door as fast as my legs will move. Lucia stands in front of the barn, her hands raised to the sky. There is a hole in the ground in front of her, crawling with green vines.
“Kireth?” I call out. He doesn’t answer. That can’t be a good thing. “Where are you?”
“He’s gone,” the goddess says. She turns to me and lowers her arms, a gentle smile on her face that belies something much meaner. “Isn’t that what you wanted, mortal?”
My head swims. Gone? He can’t be gone. I was angry, yes—so angry, and heartbroken, and vengeful—but I didn’t want him to leave.
“He left me?” I stumble forward. “He couldn’t have.”
“It was not by choice,” Lucia says with a feminine giggle. “But he broke his rules, the promise of his existence, to stay with you longer. And so, he has been punished.”
It is a bolt of lightning directly to my heart.
“No. You didn’t.” It can’t be. I turn accusing eyes on her. “Why did you take him?”
