Page 1 of Realm of Wind and Vines
CHAPTER ONE
Winds tug at my hair, making it flutter behind me. The air tastes of salt and seaweed and freedom. Sunlight glitters like jewels in the endless water before me. I stare at it. The sea. It’s breathtaking.
I have never seen the sea before. I didn’t realize that it would be this massive. It’s just water, spreading out completely uninterrupted. As far as the eye can see. An entire world of possibilities could be waiting there just on the other side of the horizon. The thought of it makes my heart flutter. When this is all over, I want to see it all. I want to see every inch of this world that I have been denied all my life while I was trapped in the Seelie Court.
My gaze flits to the west. Somewhere out there is the Western Isles. Draven’s home. A mass of islands where the rest of the Black Dragon Clan are currently hiding. I wonder what it looks like.
A knife is pressed against my back.
I go still.
Even through my black fighting leathers, I can feel the tip of the blade firmly against my back, right by my left kidney.
“One small push is all it would take,” a dark voice says from behind me.
My heart squeezes tight at the sound of Draven’s voice. His dark and commanding voice that always makes my spine tingle. But now, ever since I forced a wildfire of hatred into his chest two weeks ago, every word he speaks to me is always laced with threats.
The overwhelming heartbreak inside me threatens to rise up again. A massive black wave, pressing in on me from all sides, suffocating me. But I know that if I let it crash over me, I am going to drown in it and never recover. So instead, I feed the rage and hatred burning in my own chest. It helps me block out the agonizing pain inside me and turns my heart into cold black ice.
“One small push,” Draven repeats as he flexes his hand on the knife against my back, making it push a little harder against my fighting leathers. “And then this blade would puncture your kidney and you would fall over the edge of this cliff to drown in the sea below.”
I resist the urge to look down at the sheer drop right before me. My toes are right at the edge of the cliff, and waves crash against the stones far below. Instead, I turn my head and meet Draven’s gaze over my shoulder with a look full of challenge.
“If you really wanted me dead, you would’ve killed me already,” I declare. “But you haven’t. Because deep down, you know that you don’t actually hate me.”
Anger flits across his face, and he clenches his jaw. “Again with your desperate theories.”
“It’s not a theory. It’s the truth. You love me. In order to save your life, I made you hate me by forcing a wildfire of hatred into your chest.”
“No,” he grinds out between gritted teeth.
We’ve had versions of this exact conversation several times in the past two weeks. I have tried to explain to him what really happened. I’ve tried to remind him of everything we have saidand done for each other before this. I’ve tried to convince him with logic and truth. But every time, that unnatural flame of hatred that still burns fiercely in his chest finds excuses and explanations to justify itself. To condemn or even outright rewrite his past emotions to fit this newfound hatred.
“No,” Draven repeats, more forcefully this time. The knife pushes harder against my back. “I hate you because I finally realized what you really are.”
“And what’s that?”
“Someone who ruins everything around you.”
The words are a precision strike right through my heart. It’s so violent that I almost gasp.
My mother’s words echo through my mind.You ruined us. You ruined everything.
They’re followed by the words of that Unseelie fae from the White Faction when she attacked me in that forest.You ruined him! You ruined everything!
Pain crackles through my chest like a vicious lightning bolt. I try to swallow it down, but I can’t breathe. That oppressive wave of dark despair and crippling guilt inside me lurches in from all sides, wrapping around my chest like strangling vines. I try to draw in a breath, but no air makes it past my throat.
Panicked, I sweep my gaze over the area around us.
A short distance away, down on the sand beneath the cliffs, an old human man is fishing. Summoning my magic, I create a warm sparkling yellow flame of joy and shove it into his chest.
Pleasure floods my body.
Closing my eyes briefly, I inhale it like I’m starving. It’s like floating on a perfect cloud. Like a warm sparkling hug. Like the perfect embrace telling me that everything will be okay. Every time I create emotions from nothing, I’m rewarded by this euphoric sensation. It’s incredibly addictive, but it also helps smother the pain that flared up inside me, so I bask in thatpleasure for another second before releasing my grip on my magic.
The connection to the old fisherman is broken, so the pleasure is gone, but I know that the unnatural flame of joy still remains inside him. Just like the hatred remains inside Draven.
Draven glances towards the fisherman, who has started to whistle now, but since Draven is standing behind me, he couldn’t see that my eyes were glowing and therefore doesn’t know what I just did. After presumably checking to make sure that the human isn’t watching us, he focuses his attention back on me again.
