Page 17 of Escape from the Green

You could claim to have done a spell in one of the Dark camps for a few years, the unyielding hard work and long days causing your body to bend into a new shape.

It was a passable excuse.

They'd believe me.

Or, well, I'd kill them for their silence.

Maybe that was harsh, but so had been my life.

I would do anything to prevent myself from living that way again.

If the price of my freedom was bloodstained hands, so be it.

That may have sounded cruel, heartless.

But the Green was not a place for softness, for sweetness, for goodness.

Which was why Amethyst needed to get out as quickly as possible.

It would eat her alive.

Possibly even literally.

You never really knew.

I had been out of the world for so long. It was hard to tell who the players even were anymore, which fae had risen in power, which had fallen.

I wasn't even entirely sure which Court was holding more power.

They were supposed to be equal, of course, but only fools believed that. Power always tilted ever so slightly in one direction more than the other. For generations, it was Light, back when the lineage was secure, the powers unparalleled.

But then rumors swelled about the Princess taking ill.

And just like that, everything tilted Dark.

It was why the forests were so unsafe, even in the Light.

But new rumors were surfacing.

I'd heard the guards talking about it in whispers for ages, knowing Opal would flay them if she overheard.

The Princess had made a full recovery.

And the Light was guarding Cece. Celestine. The daughter of both Courts - something never before heard of in all of our history. A fae bound to be more powerful than any before her.

If she chose the Light Court instead of the Dark, who knew what was to become of them.

But those were problems for those whose lives were bound to be affected by those decisions.

Amethyst was going to be out of reach in the human realm.

And me, well, I was going to see what - if anything - was left of my tribe.

It had been so long.

I wasn't even entirely sure I could find my way back. But I would die trying. Die in my efforts to regain what was ripped from me so long ago.

We live on the fringes. Lived. Maybe I was getting my hopes up too much by thinking in the present tense. But we had survived on the fringes for generations behind our own veil created by a grateful mage so long before that no one even remembered the details, they had been long lost in the haze of endless seasons.