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Nellie studied me through her round glasses, her green eyes analyzing me. “Is everything okay?” she asked. “Is this about the whispers?”
As if having violent attacks that forced me to see the future wasn’t enough, Nellie and I shared a birthday, and ever since we both turned nineteen a couple of days ago, I’d started hearing these whispers that left me with strange urges. Urges to run my fingers over the bark of a tree, to walk barefoot in a stream. Urges of a more sensual nature.
Also urges to hurt others.
The first ones I could deal with, but the last one…
We didn’t know what to make of them. A soft whispering sound brushed past my ear as if in warning. A tremor ran through me.
“No, it’s not the whispers. It’s…” God, how did I explain?
Nellie’s brows pulled together. I wasn’t one to be tight-lipped. “Boys?” she asked.
“No.”
“Is it a faerie thing?”
Without thinking, my lip curled back. An emotion roiled through me. A pure loathing. That species was the bane of my existence, surpassing even the hatred for my own visions. Faeries had destroyed my life. Faeries had tried to kill me multiple times, leaving me with nightmares that had me waking in the middle of the night screaming. For all I knew, some faeries still sought to kill me. Which is why my father employed guards, twenty-four seven, to watch the house and chauffeur me literally everywhere.
Faeries had killed Thaya, the girl who had given her life for mine. The girl who I’d allowed to give her life for mine.
And the thing that I despised most about faeries?
I was one.
Concern lingered in Nellie’s eyes at my hesitance. “You know what? I’ll cancel my date and we can talk.” Her hand dipped into her pocket, and she pulled out her cell phone.
A wave of affection stole through me. Nellie and I had been switched at birth. Or rather, I’d been put in Nellie’s place and been raised by her human parents. Nellie, their actual biological daughter, had grown up in Idaho State’s foster care.
And now everything had changed. I’d learned I was a faerie, Nellie was reunited with her family, and despite the hell I’d made her life when we were younger, somehow Nellie and I were best friends.
There was no way I’d ruin her evening. “No, you go and have fun.”
Her brow scrunched. “Are you sure?”
I gave her a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I can always talk to Mina.” I didn’t mention how much I wanted to avoid saying anything to my other roommate. I stepped out of the bathroom to allow Nellie to enter. “Get in there. You don’t want to be all nasty when your boyfriend arrives.”
She dropped her phone into her pocket, but held up the metal device with the moonstone. “Okay, but you need to try this after my date. It may help protect you, in case someone wants to, you know...”
“Kill me?”
She flinched. “Yeah, something like that.”
Nellie loved anything techy. After finding out about faeries, and realizing it was possible to combine tech with magic, she was always experimenting. She'd tried so many devices on me, I felt like a lab rat.
“We’ll talk when I get back,” Nellie said emphatically before closing the bathroom door behind her.
I sighed and walked down the upstairs hall of our two-story home, headed toward Mina’s room. The paint on the walls needed a good refresher coat. A dim light overhead winked on and off outside her door. I tried not to take that as a bad omen.
Unlike Nellie, who was human, Mina was also a faerie. It wasn’t until she’d barged into my life right around my sixteenth birthday, claiming that she was my faerie knight, sworn to protect me, that I discovered I was faerie. And everything changed.
“Come in.” Mina’s voice came through the door. I shut my eyes and breathed. When I entered, I would no longer be Chelsea Herrington, human college student living with my roommates in a dingy house paid for by my parents. With her, I would always be someone else.
Because I wasn’t just any faerie.
I was Lady Morrigan. Queen of the faeries.
Chapter 2
