Fae (6 page)

I swallowed it all down.
The emotions, the fear. I pushed Malik's voice away with every bit
of strength I had. "It's nothing," I said. I had to think quick. I
had to lie. "I was just scared because..." I shook my head. "It's
nothing."

"It's not nothing." His
eyes narrowed. "You were scared like this earlier. Why?"

"Earlier?" I prayed he'd
just let it go. He noticed--and remembered--more than I'd
thought.

"Yes, earlier." Suspicion
grew in his voice. He knew I was hiding something. I was such a bad
liar.

I dropped my head and
whispered, "It's the Fae'ri. It just hits me sometimes." As I said
the lie it all started becoming true and fear spiked inside me
again. I shivered and wrapped my arms around my waist to hold it
in. "It's been so long since El has said anything. That
anyone
has said
anything. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do
anymore."

Or who I was. My
similarities to the Fae'ri disturbed me more than I wanted to
admit. Even now my rage at everything threatened to take control. A
constant pressure I shoved down, forcefully, like a rip or tear,
but an ache swelled up and tears took its place. Not tears of
sorrow or of frustration, but of anger that refused to be
controlled. Of rage that needed to express itself somehow, some
way.

He pulled me into his arms
and ran his fingertips along my back. I leaned in and tried to let
his comfort soak through me. "I don't know either, Ella. But there
is something that we
do
know. You
are
the Destructor. And I'm here helping
you."

My hand went up to grasp
the locket that I always wore around my neck now. I still didn't
remember finding it, but Cailen said I had. On the day I was taken.
And according to some prophecy, the only person who
could
find it was the
Destructor.

I really wished I
remembered everything.

Just then I had this
overwhelming need to tell Cailen all I knew. I'd been keeping
secrets since the moment I reached civilization outside of
Sho'ful
. I needed to own
what I
did
know.
I needed it to be mine. But I also needed to share it, make it more
real. Maybe Cailen would understand.

Maybe.

With my gaze resting
squarely on the locket in my hand, I took a deep breath and made
the plunge. "I haven't been totally honest with you."

"I know." I heard the
smile in his voice and looked up, a little more than
surprised.

"You know?"

"Of course. Ella, you're a
horrible liar."

I hit him on the shoulder
and playfully shoved him out of the way so I could sit on his bed.
Before passing him, my hand grazed one of his wings and the
electricity spiked so much my knees shook and sweat broke out on
the back of my neck. I fell more than sat on the mattress. Ignoring
the heat of embarrassment crawling in my veins--and failing because
we both knew he could feel how humiliated I was--I leaned against
his headboard and said, "I'm not that bad."

He chuckled and pulled up
the chair to sit across from me. His wings slid back into their
home beneath his skin. The room lost its lovely blue and green hue.
"Yeah. You are."

"Well, anyway..." I pulled
at my hair and played with the ends, looking at anything but his
eager face. "...this is kind of a big deal. For me."

"I'm sorry. I'm just
surprised. I've been waiting weeks for you to open up to me, to
trust me."

"I know."

"Why the
change?"

I swallowed. "I don't
know, really. I guess I needed to be able to trust my own feelings
first." I looked up. “Besides," I laughed, "you shared your cool
invisibility trick with me."

He laughed and
nodded.

"So." I took a deep breath
and paused. I didn't really know where to begin.

He raised an eyebrow,
waiting.

I decided I just needed to
do it. "I didn't forget you on
Sho'ful.
"

He leaned back in his
chair looking almost like he'd been slapped. "What?"

I wiped my sweaty palms
against the silky folds of my dress--which didn't help much--and
tried to breathe away the prickle growing in my throat.
"I...uh...well, I forgot most of it, but I remembered this one day.
We were rolling in the grass, you looked down at me and whispered
my name."

His face morphed from
slapped to stunned, and finally amused. He leaned forward and
rested his elbows on his knees. I tried to stay focused and not
notice the way his shoulders curved toward me, the way the mounds
on his back looked so soft, so ready to be touched.

"Huh," he said. "That's
nice to know."

"That's all you have to
say?"

"I've been convinced these
past few weeks that I've pined for you for ten years, fighting,
sweating, and breathing your existence while you'd forgotten
everything about me." His gaze darkened. "Honestly, I felt like
crap, so yeah it's nice to know.

Something dark and
sinister started chuckling inside my mind before I had a chance to
process what he'd just admitted.
"Oh, how
sweet. We're all just this big, happy family."

Go away!
I imagined screaming at Malik, tearing him to
pieces by the sheer power of my voice alone. Sweat blossomed on my
temple and my fists clenched at my sides.

"And I hear a voice in my
head," I blurted out through gritted teeth before I could stop
myself.

Chapter Five

Movement

"You what?"

I covered my face with my
hands. Horror washed through me. I wanted to be anywhere but
there.

"Ella. What did you say?"
His words came out forced, punctuated. This was leader Cailen; the
one who was used to being answered. Except I didn't have to answer
him. He couldn't order me around.

"I didn’t say
anything."

"Lies, lies. Always
telling lies."

Shut up, Malik.

His voice and presence
seeped away, his fading chuckles echoing around my
skull.

I heard Cailen stand up
and push his chair across the floor to the other side of the room.
He came and pried my hands from my face and gently pulled me to my
feet. "We need to see Ranen," he said.

"What? Why?"

Cailen stood at the
doorway, his hand hovering just above the blue lit screen, waiting
for me. "Because apparently we're not done with this."

"Done with
what?"

"The prophecy." He winced
like it hurt him just to say it, but he soon recovered and held his
hand out to me. I climbed off the bed and took it.

"How do you
know?"

His voice dropped.
"Because after you were taken and I had your locket, I knew I had
to know more about the prophecy of the Destructor. There were many
different versions, but more than one said, 'The voice from the
broken abyss will carve the path.'"

I repeated the words under
my breath. Very little of it made any sense at all. "Broken abyss?
Carve the path? What does that even mean?"

"I don't know," he said.
"But if you're hearing a voice, that means we need to talk to
Ranen."

I let him lead me out of
his room and through the maze of The Block. Wherever we walked, the
walls throbbed with whispers and dark glances. Unfortunately, we'd
left just at the beginning of a shift change. But since no one was
heading in the direction of the Royal Wing except us, we found
ourselves in empty corridors once we passed the dining facility and
gaming rooms.

Unlike the section that
housed the door to the outside, I'd been in this part of The Block
before. I'd come a few times to talk to Ranen, but he never wanted
to see me. I'd heard some whispers that no one came in or out of
the Royal Wing anymore. No one except the Emperor's First Servant,
whoever he was.

As we neared the Royal
Wing, sensors buzzed by our heads and scanned us. The silver walls
blazed red. A warning. Anyone else would have taken the hint that
they'd gone in the wrong direction and turned around. Both Cailen
and I pushed ahead.

Just as we rounded the
last corner and the red-plumed Ladeshian guards standing sentinel
before the sealed door came into sight I remembered the message on
my wall.

Duha'i ni. Orsilani.
Ba.

And right then I knew it
was Ladeshian. It had to be. It wasn't coded at all. And I
remembered the few times I'd heard Ranen speak his native language.
I'd always gotten the sense he'd preferred it. Like the time we
walked into his house and he'd hidden in the shadows, spitting
those Ladeshian words at us.

Now more than ever, we
needed to talk to Ranen. I wouldn't let the guards turn me away
this time.

They were ready for us,
though. The flaming red walls pulsed in warning not only to us, but
to the guards as well. They had their staffs up--I had a feeling
the long, metal rods did more than make the soldiers look
pretty--and pointed at our hearts long before we stopped several
feet away.

"You don't have clearance
here," the one on the right said. His voice was smooth and
perfectly calm and I knew at no point did they think we stood a
chance of getting past them. The behavior seemed odd to me,
actually. They'd never pointed their weapons at me the dozen times
I'd come. Something had changed.

"We're here to see Ranen,"
I replied.

I caught the gaze of the
soldier on the left. His mouth quirked.

"You don't have
clearance," the other one repeated.

"We're his friends,"
Cailen said in a light, seemingly disinterested tone. Only I could
feel the energy coming off him. "He will want to see
us."

"If he wanted to see you,
he would have given you clearance."

Energy prickled off
Cailen's skin. Irritation spiked, quickly replaced with calm. "If
we cannot go in, could you please tell him we are here so that he
can come out?"

The one who had spoken
paused, seeming to think about it. "No," he finally
said.

Wind blew around me and
tickled at the guards' plumed helmets. The red feathers danced.
Both guards visibly tensed, their mouths pulling down and their
fingers clenching around the staffs.

"Turn around and leave,"
the guard on the right said. With that one command, both guards
stretched to their full height and stepped forward, both staffs
still trained on our hearts. The message was clear: we weren't
getting through.

Annoyance prickled from
Cailen to me, and with a growl that came from deep within his
throat, he said, "You know who we are. You know what we can do."
And then he turned on his heels and left.

I stayed a moment longer,
staring at the guards as they stared back, and I brushed my hand
through my hair. Heat flared in their eyes. I wouldn't be able to
get past without a fight and I wasn't ready to do that. Not
now.

Not yet.

Part II

Manoo rejoiced for new
plans and old plans alike. Something was going on behind the locked
doors of the Ladeshian compound. He felt the sinister stirrings of
deceit like vibrations against his spirit and decided then to
inspect it later that evening.

But for his old plan, he
rejoiced all the more for he had just succeeded in doing something
he'd been trying to do since invading Ella's mind.

He'd made her move her
hand through her hair.

Chapter One

Sprite

Bright red letters smeared
across my bedroom door like a disease.

Die

Sprite

Die

Cailen had gone to see if
anything had been written on his door, but I knew the truth even
before he came back and shook his head. This had been an attack
on
me.

I flipped over the door's
datapad to use the touch screen. The walls were changeable with
hundreds of different decor options available. But when I hit the
erase button to get my door back to its stark silver hue, I got an
error message. Whoever had done this--and I had an inkling it was
either the boy who'd called me a sprite earlier or one of his
lackeys--had put a lock on my door. I no longer had access to
anything but basic functions like opening and closing
it.

"You can stay in my room
with me," Cailen said with a hint of amusement hidden under the
cold dread I felt coming off him.

But anger ripped through
me at the suggestion. I would not be scared away by a silly little
boy. I kicked my door and clawed at the words, but they were
digital and would not come off.

Thankfully, Cailen didn't
say another word as I pounded on the screen and the wall, willing
it through the sheer force of my rage to do what I
wanted.