AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do I have a choice?”
“You always have a choice,” she says cheerily. “Especially you.”
A smart remark dies on my tongue before I say it. Exhaustion and despair rear their ugly heads. I shrug and make a dismissive hand wave.
“Do whatever you want. I’m sure you will anyway.”
She sits next to me, close. The bench is big enough for three or four people but she sits right up on me so close our thighs are touching. I look askance and she offers the coffee. I take it more out of habit then because I want to. A lifetime of social manners telling me to accept something when it is offered.
Moira sits silently and sips her coffee, for all the world as if this is the most natural thing for the two of us to be doing. Two friends hanging out in a park, watching kids play, the sun set, and without a worry in the world. Which is so not us. She’s a Fae. An Unseelie to boot. Which, while I know what that means, at the same time I don’t.
The Seelie are portrayed in stories as the not-so-bad Fae and the Unseelie are the ones that will snatch your baby or trap your soul. Except I’ve met Seelie Fae and they’re every bit as bad as the Unseelie in the stories. I can’t imagine that the Unseelie are worse, except Moira was supposed to be my friend. Mynormalfriend who was interested in magic, sure, but not a Fae. That betrayal is what hurts and makes me not trust her.
“You can drink it,” she says, not looking over. “It’s not poisoned, I promise.”
I look down at the coffee in my hand and smack my lips. I hadn’t even considered that she might poison me. Lovely, now there’s a thought I won’t be able to shake easily.
“What do you want, Moira?”
I don’t look at her, focusing instead on the kids playing and the sunlight breaking through the flowers and limbs of the tree. I don’t want to see her. She betrayed me and it hurts.
“Me? Nothing, really. I’m happy. I truly am. I like this world. Don’t you?”
“What does that even mean?”
I raise the cup to my lips, then stop myself before I sip. Frowning, I lift the lid and smell the contents, but it smells like it should. Would I know it if it didn’t? Aren’t there poisons that are odorless. Moira chuckles; at my actions or my words, I don’t know.
“I suppose it means anything you want it to.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” I open my mouth, but nothing comes. I was snapping off comments out of anger but not thinking them through. “See? At best it would have pushed you away. That’s the last thing I want. I don’t want to push you away. I like you, Quinn.”
“Great, just what I don’t need.”
“Isn’t it? You don’t need a friend?”
“Not one who lies to me.”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“You didn’t tell me you were Fae.”
“You never asked.”
I roll my eyes and scoff but she’s right. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to. I wanted that one single person who I could share with and thought I’d found a friend.
“It wasn’t a glamour?”
“No.” She shakes her head and her soft curls bounce. “Would it be better if it was?”
I sigh. “Probably not.”
The children continue to play, and as I watch sometimes they’re kids, sometimes they’re Fae. Sometimes their play is magical, glimmering with hints of power, but then I blink and the world is normal. It flits back and forth until I’m not sure which is real.
