AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Minasatonthetattered brown carpet of her room, staring at the cell phone in her hands, her thumbs twitching over the screen, messaging someone. The room was small and sparsely decorated. She hadn’t bothered to put on makeup today, and she wore a plain t-shirt, probably acquired from some local discount store along with worn jeans. The bottom half of her griffin faerie guardian tattoo peeked out from the shirt sleeve on her left arm. I had the same image etched into the skin on my right bicep, a reminder of the link between us—a queen and her knight.
She brushed back her chin length hair and glanced up, examining me with light brown eyes. Despite Mina’s lack of fashion sense, there was always something about faeries that made them a degree hotter than the average human. Like it would be a crime against the universe if a faerie ever turned out to be ugly.
She looked annoyed that I’d interrupted her from whatever she was doing, and I started to rethink my plan of telling Mina about my vision in the bathroom. How relevant was it really? I wasn’t in the Otherworld, and if I had anything to say about it, I’d never go there. So, future solved. That vision wasn’t coming true.
Mina raised her eyebrows in expectation. “Have the whispers returned?”
I shook my head. But speaking of whispers... “You heard from Illya?”
She frowned. “He hasn’t contacted me.”
Illya was our mentor—a very, very old, quirky, and blind mentor—who lived in the Otherworld. Mina used a magical glass ball to communicate with him. When the whispers started, we’d told Illya what was happening. He’d appeared sufficiently disturbed and said he needed to go check on what the whispers might mean.
We hadn’t heard from him since.
Mina still watched me. “Was there something you needed?”
“Just wondering if you’d received any news from him.” I gave her a fake smile.
Her eyes narrowed, too observant for her own good. “You’re not hiding anything, are you?”
“Why would you think that?” I crossed my arms in front of me.
That only turned her expression sour. “You remember what happened last time you hid information I needed to know?”
I balled my hands into fists. “I’ll never forget.”
Three years ago, right after I had discovered I was a faerie, we’d all been swept into a battle against the Fomori, a secret organization of faeries committed to the destruction of the Otherworld and my death. They’d almost killed me. Thaya, another faerie soldier sworn to protect me, had died in my place.
Of course, none of that might have happened if I hadn’t hidden my visions of the future from Mina. I didn’t want to do that again, but how would she react if she found outImight cause the Otherworld’s ruin? She already thought so little of me. Maybe she wasn’t the best person to talk to about this.
“What do I need to do to convince you I’ve changed?” I asked.
She waived a dismissive hand. “Is that important? I’m here protecting you, doing my duty, and you get to live your life however you choose.”
I took an enraged step toward her. “That’s not true.” She wasn’t the one who constantly feared for her own life. She wasn’t the one who’d been hunted and nearly killed.
Like always, she didn’t back down. “Was this why you came in here? To start a fight?”
Oh, she was in a mood. I straightened my shoulders, saying the thing that would get under her skin the most. “I’m telling you that Mark is coming over again tomorrow, so don’t bother us.”
She shook her head, disgust creeping into her expression. “Mark is a player.”
I knew that. “You may be my protector, but you don’t have the right to judge who I’m with.”
Her eyes softened. “Chels…”
“What?”
She glanced away. “Nothing.”
But I wouldn’t let her act all high and mighty without saying it out loud. “Just say it.”
She took a slow breath. “You may need to remember that you are not just some normal human having a fling. You’re the faerie queen. And I’ll remind you that there is a faerie king who—”
“Stop,” I snarled. “I’d rather have sex with Mark a thousand times beforeeverconsidering the faerie king.”
“You two are bonded, Chels. You have been for millennia.”
