AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Faeries had ruined my life. Faeries thought they could dictate whatever happened to me. Faeries had destroyed everything human about me, tried to kill me, made me responsible for Thaya’s death, and now this stranger wanted to take me to his home to be some faerie queen. To force me to sit on his throne and be his bride. Hell no.
“Mina,” I said, and she stepped forward, getting between me and Dagda. Rage sparked in his eyes at the sight of her.
“Stand down, knight,” he growled.
Mina said something, but the voices in my head crescendoed, drowning out her response. I was slipping, slipping. A shout from the guard brought my head around. My gaze was growing fuzzy. No, that wasn’t it. Smoke was everywhere. Dagda’s molten faerie guardian had set the whole front yard ablaze.
The guards continued yelling. I no longer saw them. The last thing I heard was Dagda’s words.
“Forgive me. There is no other choice.”
Something shattered at my feet. A putrid stench surrounded me, making me gag. Death filled my nostrils, and the world faded to nothing.
I ran through a midnight forest. Branches clawed at my black sweatshirt like fingers, trying to keep me from my destination, but I had to get there, had to stop what was to come.
Seeing the future sometimes was a curse.
Tonight, Thaya was destined to die in my place. I needed to find her, to warn her.
Please don’t let me be too late.
Roots jutted up in my path, causing me to stumble. I caught myself on quivering legs.
In our minds, we all hoped to be that person. The person who sacrificed everything for others. But most of us sat by and did nothing, hid and allowed people to suffer, while we pretended we were powerless, and somehow still called ourselves good. I had to admit—it wasn’t some sense of altruism that prompted me to brave the dangers of the forest.
It was guilt, plain and simple.
The trees thinned, and a small clearing came into view. Mossy boulders stacked on top of each other sat in the middle of the open space. Two girls lingered next to the stone—Mina, my faerie knight, and another girl. Thaya. She wore an emerald necklace around her neck that allowed her to take on my appearance. She looked like my exact twin, with long blond hair and a matching black sweatshirt.
A sob bubbled up. She was alive. Thank god.
A dark creature suddenly loomed behind Thaya. A beast rising out of the shadows—a unicorn with a double pointed horn as black as the night and eyes that glowed a dull, sickly yellow.
A faerie guardian.
My throat closed off, choking any words.
I was too late.
Awful expectancy pulled at my stomach as the dark unicorn lunged, its horn striking Thaya through the back. The terrible, wet sound of flesh tearing jolted through me as it ripped through her chest and out her front. The creature lifted Thaya, impaled on its crimson covered horn, off her feet. Large drops of hot blood slid from its tip into the grass.
Thaya stared into the night sky—her mouth open in surprise, her glassy eyes filled with agony as the life in them faded.
I woke sobbing Thaya’s name. It was a dream of the battle with the Fomori three years ago. The night that I had allowed Thaya to die instead of me. It was one of many nightmares that often haunted me since that traumatic evening.
Long grass stuck to my face and whispered against my feet. A strange taste lingered in the back of my throat. Something sweet and undeniable. Overwhelming all my senses at once. It reverberated through me.
The trees loomed in the thick night, standing ancient and wise. The life inside them pricked my veins. I no longer shivered, a comfortable warmth settling around me. The entire world had come alive.
I sat up. And gasped at the figures looming nearby. Dagda shoved a long, thin, golden rod with a blue stone at its tip into a burlap sack. I recognized it immediately. My scepter, the one thing needed to open the portal between the human realm and the Otherworld.
A horrible sinking dropped my heart to my gut.
Dagda lingered next to a non-human creature. Onyx scales served as skin and goat-like horns protruded from his forehead. A large robe made with a thick lion's mane covered his shoulders and he tugged it close as he observed the closing of a hole swirling in the stone next to him through reptilian eyes.
I knew him. I’d met him once three years ago when I’d asked him to hold onto something precious for me.
He was the Chimera, keeper of the portal to the Otherworld.
