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“Anger?” Moira asks, giving no sign of perturbance. “Is that your response, Quinn?”
Power fills my guts. It crackles through my body, across my skin. It feels like pop rocks under my skin. I grit my teeth, narrow my eyes, and take a step towards her. The kids that were playing stop, turning towards us. They are the only thing that stops me from doing something more.
“I’m done,” I growl. “No more lies. No more half-truths. No more unanswered questions.”
“Quite a list.” She smiles, darting her eyes up and down as she judges me. “Tell me, Quinn, what is stopping you? Why don’t you jump the hoops and return in time? Make the decision they all want you to make and save magic. Be the big hero.”
“Because I don’t know enough.”
She nods sagely, undisturbed by my anger or the power crackling over my skin. I know, with an undeniable certainty, that I could destroy her. That if I let this building power rush out in a torrent, I’d blast her into atoms. I can’t imagine she doesn’t know it too, but she gives no signs of caring in the slightest.
“No, you don’t. It’s the same dilemma, over and over.”
She saunters closer, swaying her hips, and pursing her full lips. I’ve never been interested in girls, but she exudes confidence in a way I only dream of achieving and I can’t deny that it is sexy as hell. She reaches for my face, and when her fingers touch my cheek it’s an electric jolt that drives straight into my core. Not magical, per se, purely a physical connection. I jerk away, taking a step back. I’m breathing faster for more reasons than anger.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Care about you? Because I do. Or tell you the truth? Because I will. Unlike the rest of them, I think you need to know.”
“Know what?”
“What your choice will mean. It’s not so simple, you see. It’s not black and white. Choose this or choose that. You’re not naïve and life isn’t so simple. We’ve been here before, Quinn, you and I. That’s what they all mean. There’s a turning point in every age. And every time there is you and there is Dugald, and Duncan, and of course, there’s me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t or won’t? Are you sure you’re not rejecting a truth because it seems too fantastical?”
Doubts fill my thoughts, leaving me trembling. I shake my head. I want to reject the idea out of hand, but it’s taken root in my thoughts and is springing forth tender shoots.
“I… I don’t know.”
She grimaces. “And none of us have helped. I’m sorry about that. I am, but whatever you decide, it’s not an end. It’s a turning. A change, you see. It will come about again, eventually.”
“You’re saying time is circular?”
“No, no,” she says. “Nae so simple. It’s not quite linear either. The old adage of those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it comes to mind but it’s not quite it either, now is it? Magic comes in surges, like the tides. It rolls in and it rolls out and every so often, as the ages pass, there’s a turning.
At the turning there’s a choice to be made. A choice that will decide the fate of the world going forward. Until the next turning anyway. Nothing is truly permanent and a lot of things, a lot of us, we continue.”
I’m going to be sick. Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this? I push down the bile rising in my throat. Something in her words isn’t right, doesn’t ring true. I don’t know which ones though, because it feels like a partial truth.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” She tsks. “I told you I won’t lie to you.”
“There’s something you’re not saying.”
“But that’s not a lie, is it?”
“Same as,” I argue.
“Ah,” she smiles, “well I guess that’s my nature after all.”
“Of course it is; you’re a trickster.”
“All Fae are tricksters. It’s what we are and how we do it that matters.”
“You want the darkness.”
