Where did you go? (Infatuated fae #3)

15. Caly

15

CALY

S creaming would do nothing, I continued to tell myself.

A thousand times, I had stepped out of the fairy ring and back into it, and nothing had happened.

Calypso! Are you all right? Answer me, for fuck’s sake!

The bond.

Mendax! The feeling of a thousand urgent, grasping hands surged from his end of the bond.

Are you hurt? It doesn’t feel like it. You are in the human realm, aren’t you? Are you safe? Aurelius and I can’t get through the portal. We are in Seelie. We landed in a portal by a field of savage mini unicorns. One is attacking Aurelius right now. I like them a lot.

I sat down on the forest floor before I could fall. Being all alone, back in the human realm, felt like I had lost an appendage. It felt completely different to me after having spent so much time in the other realms.

What do I do? I pleaded through the bond. Of all the things I’d been through, the lies and secrets I had been required to keep, I couldn’t remember ever feeling as alone as I did in this moment while sitting alone on the ground of the human forest.

Once, a long time ago, when my family had been taken from me, I had wholeheartedly believed that I would never feel that kind of pain again, but in this moment, the same horrible feelings arose from within me.

What if I never got back into the faerie realms? What if I never saw Eli or Mendax again?

“No! No,” I wailed. “You can’t do this to me! You bastard!” I lay on my stomach and pressed the tops of my thighs and arms into the ground as hard as I could, willing the ground to absorb my flesh. Roots and dried leaves pressed into my skin, and my fingertips dug into the cool, damp dirt. I pushed my face into the earth with so much pressure, I saw sparkles behind my eyelids. But tears managed to get through, turning the crumbly soil into a muddy paint that stuck to my skin.

Mendax! Please, how do I get to you? Please!

I lay in the dirt sobbing for what felt like hours as I waited for an answer that never came.

Why would my father do this? It didn’t make any sense. If he had wanted to be rid of me, he could have killed me quite easily, as powerful as he seemed. So he didn’t want me dead, but…but he didn’t want me in Moirai either. Hadn’t he summoned me though?

On behalf of the Fates , I believe was how he had signed the first letter. Was it possible that he hadn’t sent it? Was that why he had tried to steal—or rather break—the second scroll at Lake Sheridon? That letter had been from the Fates directly.

Was it possible that my father was doing all this because he didn’t want to see me? Did he somehow know I was going to kill him? His track record with my sister and mother left nothing to be confused about. He only cared about himself.

I rolled over and sat up, feeling every minuscule bone and muscle in my body strain with the effort. I suspected that Eli and Mendax were unable to send any powers through the bond and tie to me, which was why I suddenly felt so terrible and weak. A part of me was glad they couldn’t send me any powers. I was already enough of a burden on them both. I had never asked either one of them to bond or tie to me, but they had chosen me not knowing what a lie they had braided themselves into at the time.

Sitting here upset about the situation was doing me no good. Perhaps I could find another portal. I glanced around the wooded area. It was spring here, and though it paled in comparison to any of the fae forests, it was still a beautiful patch of woods. Fiddlehead ferns covered nearly half of the forest, and what wasn’t covered by ferns or moss was decorated in beautiful yellow daffodils. A few common trilliums, with their three-petaled white blossoms, were scattered about, adding a bit of beauty to the deciduous forest floor. My eye caught on a small clump of particularly white trillium blossoms adjacent to a decent-sized ash tree.

I stepped out of the ring of mushrooms and took a few steps closer to the flowers. Were they…smiling at me? I knelt in front of the flowers, inspecting every corner of their petals, but had to sadly dismiss the little flowers as being ordinary. I looked over the bright daffodils next to the trilliums just in case, but like their neighbors, nothing was abnormal in their appearance.

I returned to my feet and began to turn away when the trillium blossom I had just been inspecting sneezed.

“Bless you—aaagghhh!” I jumped back, startled.

The little white flower giggled and tucked the two triangular petals on each side up against its little yellow…face? It opened its petal arms and slowly removed something from the little slit where its smile was. The trillium cupped the object in its petal and leaned toward me, bending its green stem as far as it could in my direction.

It was handing me something.

A common trillium flower, in what I thought was the human realm, was handing me a trinket. I snorted, unable to fight the absurdity before me. Had I hit my head?

I missed science. I missed how everything was reliable and measurable. I had gotten good at predicting and manipulating, though I had yet to discover gifting, sneezing flowers, so maybe I wasn’t as good at predicting as I had thought.

My first thought was that it was somehow Adrianna’s doing, that she was giving me some kind of token of hope or something that would get me back in the right direction so that I could still be with her.

“For me?” I stupidly asked the flower.

Of fucking course it was for me. Who else was out here? I rolled my eyes.

Even the flower giggled a little but courteously nodded its little flower body. Carefully, I reached out and picked up the small tan object it held out to me with my thumb and forefinger.

“Do you know how I can get back through the portal?” I asked hopefully.

The flower shook its head and shrugged its little petals.

“Thank you,” I responded as I inspected the gift.

It was a tiny cream-colored scroll about an inch in size. I looked back down to the flower and thought about asking more questions, but it hadn’t seemed to know much, and I felt silly talking to the flower as it was. It had laughed at me twice already.

As dexterously as was in my capabilities, I flattened out the tiny scroll, nearly throwing it to the ground in frustration when I saw the teeny-tiny cursive font scribbled on it.

“How the fuck am I supposed to read this?” I angrily shouted into the air. My eyes strained until all the words just blurred together. It took every ounce of strength I had left not to crinkle up the little note and give up. I couldn’t though. What if this told me how to get back to Mendax and Eli? “Come on, Caly,” I grumbled at myself, trying to think of how I could form a makeshift magnifying glass. If I recalled correctly, there was a small stream in the park a few miles over, but I would need a glass jar for the water, and I had no?—

Glass!

I pulled the leather strap over my head and started to dig through my pouch, squealing excitedly when my fingers found the broken pieces of the glass scroll from the lake. It wasn’t human glass, as it moved and bent obscurely, but being that it was crystal clear, there was a good chance it would still work.

I pulled the piece of scroll out and began to bend and cup the center of the small shard. It wasn’t perfect, but I just needed to make a somewhat convex lens that was thicker in the middle. I bent the edges carefully so it curved out at the middle as best as it could. A convex shape would bend the light rays so they could converge together.

Water—I needed water.

Too impatient to try and find a stream or puddle, I pulled up my outer shirt and grabbed ahold of my still very wet undershirt. Nearly tripping over myself in my rush, I hurried to set the tiny scroll on the ground and then placed the bent piece of glass overtop. With both hands, I wrung my undershirt until my hands were red and raw. I untwisted the white cotton and glared at the small bit of water I had managed to get into the glass. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

I looked down at the small scroll, and a sigh shook loose from my tight chest.

Calypso Petranova,

You have been returned to the place where you showed the most long-term happiness, Willow Springs, Michigan, in the human realm. Stay, and Cliff, Cecelia, and the rest of your small-town friends will welcome you with open arms, believing only that you were visiting relatives for a short week after your stay in the hospital.

Your tie to Prince Aurelius of the Seelie realm and your bond to Prince Mendax of the Unseelie realm will be severed under the stipulation that you never see them or any fae ever again. Both princes will be removed from the previously stated bond/tie with no penalty of death to either party.

Should you take the second option and enter the faerie ring that lays before you, it will take you to the Seelie realm with Mendax and Eli, where you will be met with a final letter containing the location of Moirai. The aforementioned bond and tie will remain in place, and the trial against you will commence, resulting in the death of one member of the arrangement.

All decisions/rulings shall remain in effect regardless of the life status of any related persons or relatives.

The Fates

I fell to the forest floor. Only when my chest squeezed painfully did I realize I was hyperventilating. I crawled until I could press my forehead onto the rough bark of the closest tree within reach. This decision would be easier if this was not an ordinary, boring human-realm tree but instead a knot that would kill me.

Eventually, my breathing slowed as it turned into ragged, coughing sobs. What was I going to do? If I stayed in the human realm, my problems with Eli and Mendax were solved—at least in the fact that neither of them would die because of me. Theoretically, I had been ready to take my own life after I killed my father, so I wouldn’t have been able to spend more time with either of them. That was of course assuming everything went as planned. But that also meant that my father would still go on living his life without ever having to answer for what he had done to his own wife and child.

What was I going to do here? Settle down with a local and work at the parks forever?

For once in my life, everything could be…normal. I could get a job doing something with biology. I could live my life for me for the first time.

I was struck with a pleasant feeling of warmth in my gut at the completely mundane thought. How could that even sound nice to me after everything I’d done in the other realms? I’d spent my entire life working tirelessly to get to Seelie and destroy the Seelie queen before I went on to finish with my father, after which I would finally get to rest with my Adrianna, full of peace. I couldn’t give up on things now…

Could I?

Eli had been joking when he’d dubbed me a Seelie royal. Even though fae laws were unusually true to phrase, what if it didn’t hold true, and I didn’t go to the Elysian Fields with Adrianna after I died? What if I went to hell with the rest of the mortals like me? Would I even be capable of killing my father? After seeing Mendax’s reaction to my father and knowing what the Smoke Slayer was capable of, I was starting to doubt I’d even be able to kill him, and then what?

On top of all of it, I couldn’t begin to imagine a world without Mendax in it. After everything we had been through recently, I hadn’t given much thought to having a life without him somehow. It seemed like, even in death, we would find each other.

But not if I was in hell and he was in Tartarus.

Everything inside me, all the little voices of my subconscious, screamed at me to stay in the human realm, to let things go once and for all with my father and to be so filled with gratitude that both Mendax and Eli lived that I never even bothered to look back.

And perhaps that was what I would have chosen had I been a good, levelheaded person. But I was neither of those things. Not really.

I wanted retribution more than I wanted any kind of happiness for myself.

Especially after this.

My father couldn’t stand the sight of me. He hadn’t even met me, yet he was trying to sabotage us getting to Moirai just so he didn’t have to look at me and be reminded of what he’d done and who he’d left behind.

I couldn’t fucking wait to hurt him. I wanted to hurt him in ways I’d never hurt anyone. I wanted him to feel every little drop of pain that Adrianna and I had to.

An obscure thought suddenly occurred to me: maybe he had been right in choosing not to give me the Artemi powers. If I felt this destructive and ready to inflict pain as a human, I could scarcely imagine what it would have been like with the power of an Artemi.

I snorted to myself as tears fell down my cheeks. At some point, they had turned from tears of heartbreak to tears of fury. This realization hit me like a sack of bricks—that fucker had been right. He was right. Had he chosen to give me his powers, I would have massacred this entire realm right now. I wouldn’t have hidden behind a veil. I would have waged a war on every single person who threatened me or my people. Everyone would have felt my wrath.

I sat back down, feeling weak again. Somehow this simple realization changed everything. My father had been right. Adrianna was and had always been the best one to take his powers. He…he had made the right choice.

After that, my choice was simple.

I read over the tiny scroll one last time before tucking it into my bag and stepping just outside the mushroom ring.

Feelings of guilt weighed me down for a moment before I pushed them aside. Sure, I could just stay here, and Eli, Mendax, and I would all remain alive. That in and of itself should have been enough for me to stay, but it wasn’t.

Now more than ever, I needed answers. It was foolish to entertain thoughts that I would ever be capable of living a normal life in the human realm and be happy. I didn’t even fully understand what happy was. That was not why I was in this world. I was here to avenge my family, and at this point, I didn’t know what to think. I had so many questions running rampant in my head and only one person alive who could answer them.

He still deserved to die for what he did. Had he stayed and not left us, Mom and Adrianna would still be alive and with me. Had he stayed with us, maybe things wouldn’t have been so hard for Adrianna when she got her powers. None of us knew how to help her but him, and he left us.

No, I would never be able to live a pretend life when all this took up my thoughts. I also desperately needed to say goodbye to Eli and Mendax before I left this life and went to rest with Adrianna once and for all.

I filled my lungs with air and stepped into the ring of destroying angel mushrooms.