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For a moment, fear roots me to my bedroom floor. I haven’t had time to mourn the loss of my future properly. Haven’t had time to mentally prepare.
I’m not ready.
The tattoo on my arm begins to burn, and I drag my gaze to the window. The moon is halfway over the rise.
I need to go, but I’m frozen with fear.
Nerves in a jumble, I collapse to my knees and drag a shoebox out from beneath my bed. My small ruby necklace sits on the top. The silver charm is shaped like a wolf’s head holding a pea-sized ruby inside its fangs.
The details are painstakingly etched to perfection, right down to the gleam of the beast’s large nose and his thick, shaggy fur. There’s no denying this was made by the best silversmiths in Everwilde.
The second the cold pendant slips over my head and rests against my breastbone, I breathe a sigh of relief. Before taking a few choice items off Cal’s hands earlier, I’d removed my pendant—just in case.
But I never feel right without it. It holds the memory of my parents, and is the only thing connecting me to them besides their picture.
That’s harder to find. It sits at the very bottom, beneath my adoption paperwork.
I rub a thumb over the faces in the photo; a man dressed smartly in a brown corduroy jacket next to a Christmas tree, his arm around a pretty woman with dark hair pulled into a bun and an easy smile. Their happy eyes fill me with courage.
“I can’t leave you guys,” I say to my parents.
With the photo stored safely in my jean pocket, and the pendant around my neck, a hidden well of strength bubbles to the surface. My boots clop softly over the wood floor as I tiptoe to my open window, carefully push the screen out, and duck through.
Chatty Cat tries to follow, but I shake my head. “Stay. Watch over Jane and the others.”
As if he understands, Chatty Cat jumps down to the floor and sits on his haunches, watching me with those too-bright lime-green eyes.
From the roof to the ground is a ten-foot drop. I manage to lower myself and then jump, landing hard on the scratchy rose bushes near the front porch.
An army of stars march across the indigo sky. I make sure to leave no tracks as I slip across the prairie toward the Shimmer. When I’m close enough to see the spot from yesterday where I entered, a distant voice calls my name.
Jane. Somehow she suspected. But she’s too late.
“See you in four years,” I promise, ignoring the throb of my heart.
Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I pass into Everwilde.
8
The first thing I notice when I cross the Shimmer to Everwilde is that I didn’t dress warmly enough. At all. Somehow it’s even colder than before. A blizzard rages. The icy breeze piercing my flimsy clothes and taking up permanent residence in my bones. retirement, a shadow can ask any favor of their Fae; many go on to be incredibly powerful influencers on the other side.
Just for kicks, I click on the link over the word darkling and am rewarded by a terrifying photo. All-black eyes stare wildly at me above bared incisors. Once human ears rise sharply into points.
The darkling in the photo, taken God knows where, still wears her human clothes: an orange-and-blue flannel and ripped jeans.
Bad fashion sense aside, the wild, hungry look in the darkling’s twisted expression scares me more than the way her back has hunched and her bones have malformed so that she runs on all fours. The way her body has grown larger even as her muscles and flesh have withered.
I skim the words below. Infested with the residual dark magic that seeps daily into the tainted borderland, this used to be a happy, seventeen-year-old girl named Samantha Stevens.
More pictures of turned darklings fill the page, and I quickly close the tab.
The Wiki for the Fae themselves is much more thorough, with everything from their appearance (super good looking,) lifespan (immortal, duh,) and weaknesses (iron, ash, rowan berries, salt,) to conspiracies on why they came.
Annoyed at the lack of any real information, I push my laptop away. I need to focus on my letters, anyway.
I feel especially guilty for not telling Aunt Zinnia. Ever since she rescued me from a human trafficking ring in Dallas, she’s been nothing but amazing. Treating me like the daughter she lost.
When the Fae arrived and took over the west, the Shimmer was erected almost immediately.
