I glance over at him, my body sluggish and slow, as if time itself is stretching it. He looks older than in my other dreams of him.
‘What is this place?’
‘Power. Loss. The beginning of everything.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I say slowly.
'Do you know who I am?' he asks, looking at me, his eyes boring into mine.
'Only from my dreams,' I say, but my voice is warped. It doesn’t sound like my own.
He looks pensive, glancing over his shoulder at the path I came down.
‘Let’s see, then.’
With those cryptic words, he turns and begins to walk away from the lake, but every step he takes somehow moves him much farther away from me than it should, and I have to runfull-pelt up the path to catch him. He turns a corner, and I find a Ring. Large and imposing. Gray and stark like the rest, but its stones are polished to a brilliant sheen.
It’s open into the Breach.
I follow where he must have gone, into the dark corridors of the ether, and I see him.
He doesn’t look the same. He’s smaller. Tired. Older. Gaunt and pale.
'What happened to you?' I ask.
He puts his hand on my shoulder and opens his mouth, but all I hear are the screams.
I wake suddenly in my bed.
Alone.
I turn onto my back, breathing hard.
Since the night I spent with Morgan, I've been sleeping in this room by myself again. He hasn’t asked me to join him upstairs, and I'm not sure how to ask him without feeling as if I'm begging. I almost wish for one of those attacks to come upon me, so that I have an excuse.
I try very hard not to let his rejection bother me, but it does. He speaks to me, he’s pleasant, and he ensures I eat heartily. Why will he not fuck me? Did he not enjoy it?
As I stare up at the ceiling, unsettled and troubled, I recall with a sinking feeling that today is the day the training with Voss will begin, and my spirits plummet even lower.
I hate that I don’t really know what to expect. The others have only given me a general idea. I don’t think they know either. None of them grew up with the other fae, so perhaps they aren’t privy to how the Under-born spies are trained.
They have been speaking about it when they're together, I think. Jak and Morgan are even including Locke in their talks. And I know they’ve been conferring about me, because when I come into the room, they immediately quiet. I can only guesswhat their discussions are regarding when my back is turned, and I don’t like it.
How many of my hours will this training take up? Will I still have time to help Jak at the apothecary? I hope so. Everything's been going so well. I've been learning the names of the herbs already and people in Halsford are beginning to ask for me. When they see me in the street, some of them greet me as if I’m one of the village. It isn’t as bad here as I first feared it might be. I’m starting to feel more settled.
I only hope after all this, that I’m allowed to stay.
I get up and dress, deciding to put on the clothes that I wore when I was in Merediea and pretending to be a Fae. I assume the training will be physical, so a gown will just be cumbersome and impractical.
I look under the bed to make sure the vials of healing potion that I brought from the healer's rooms yesterday are undisturbed. Considering what happened the last time I was alone with Voss, I'm not taking any chances this time.
A part of me wonders if I should just tell the others what happened. I don’t know why I don’t. A lack of trust perhaps, and fear, I suppose, stays my tongue. Things have been different between us over the past days, it’s true, but what if they don't believe me? Worse, what if they do and they decide to confront Voss directly?
I remember what Calder said in the Hall about them not belonging here. Their positions in Halsford, though not as precarious as mine, are still shaky. I would hate for them to be cast out because of me…especially as I can handle it myself. I rarely even had a healing potion the first years of my life anyway, and I definitely had none during my time in the pits. I can endure whatever this training entails. There’s no other option.
I comb my hair and try to plait it out of my way myself, growling in annoyance when I can't get it as tight as Morgan canwhen he does it for me, so I go into the living area and find him making a hearty breakfast.
I give him a small smile, my heart increasingly softening towards him. He enjoys taking care of me, and I like it. I can admit that at least.
