Chapter 1
Iam considered a curse upon Estrella. As the barmaid so kindly reminds me. Her fist tangling in my hair, ripping at my scalp as she plucks my unwelcome body from the shadows beneath the table.
Bitch.
I had been quietly minding my own business, scrounging for crumbs. Broken, forgotten bits, just like me. But if she wants to make a scene, I’ll indulge her.
A feral growl escapes my mouth as I feast on the pain needling my skull, mincing deeper as I thrash like an animal swallowed alive.
I buck wildly, gouging my claws up into her skin where she twists my hair tighter.
My roar falters into a whimper, a searing kick to my ribs smoldering my flames, her only pause as she rakes me along the ale-sodden floor.
“Sneak into my bar again, and I’ll have my husband whip you like the dog you are,” the barmaid threatens.
Her dark hair curling like snakes around her bosom as she tosses me into the darkness.
I contemplate biting into her plump, overfed hand, wishing it could fill my empty belly.
As though I truly am one of the animals I prefer over the wretched citizens of this town.
She turns, slamming the door, while muttering something under her breath about how she’s certain my curseborne presence will spoil all their ale.
I crumble to the frozen ground, alone once more.
My dark brows pinch above gold-flecked cheeks twisted into a sneer.
My loathing spearing into the gold woven through my skin.
Mocking me as it glitters through peeking holes of my tattered clothing.
The gleaming bands lining my body are easy to hide, but the tiny golden squares on my face, just below my lower lashes, are ever-present.
Aligning perfectly with my obsidian irises, shimmering like midnight pools eddying with gilded waves.
I’ve never minded my black and aurelian eyes.
They serve as a warning of the darkness lurking beneath.
The unimaginative residents here believe my gold brands me as a jinx, misfortune unfurling in my wake like a malignant mist of chaos. I wish they were right. Instead, my bad luck clings to me like a jealous lover, unwilling to share her affection.
The villagers need someone to blame for their miserable existence, and unfortunately for me, I’m the fucking one. I stand out. I’m different, painting me an easy scapegoat for town woes. It’s clear to everyone I don’t belong here—even me.
Yet here I am, trapped with these wretched fuckers. In a crater carved from the earth by a falling star’s last breath. An ancient prison, pinned in by the unforgiving peaks of Eldoria.
Estrella. What a pretty name for a shitty fucking place.
I scrape the ground, gathering the remnants of my mettle, snapping each vertebra upright as I bolt into familiar shadows. Yet my darkening thoughts dig in, dragging me back to the first memories I possess.
I was three years old when the town elders found me and plopped me on the stoop of a wooden shack, a typical abode for this abysmal village.
Yet there was something particularly haunting about the way the weathered timber wailed in the wind.
A warning of what lurked inside: a morbid fate gleaned to swiftly sever my curseborne existence.
My innocent tears were greeted by a string of curses lashed into me from my venomous foster parents. I’ll never forget the way his soulless eyes scraped over my flesh with disdain.
“Fucking curseborne! Don’t you fucking look at me with those demon eyes,” he seethed as he dragged me to a dark corner. His words festered in my young, squishy heart. Spreading like rot.
In that somber crook he left me in, the twisting shadows welcomed me with open arms, curling around me as though I was theirs to hold. They taught me how to become as cold as the darkness that cloaked me, heart barely beating, lungs breathless. Hidden. Out of sight, out of mind.
Now, I use them to travel unseen, threading in and out of shadows cast by rickety buildings and windswept merchant stands. I scavenge what I can to survive, piecing together scraps. Just like I piece together my soul after my foster father’s done with me.
I am a fucking mosaic mess of sharp edges.
A feral Faeling with nothing to lose, not even my dignity, clinging to the foolish notion that one day, I’ll escape this icy cage.
My only escape, my only reprieve, is the uncorrupt patches of Mysticwoods nestled around our town: my sacred refuge. The creatures who inhabit the magical forest are the only kindness I’ve ever known. Perhaps that’s why I’ve grown to act more like a beast than a Fae child.
I needle through the shadows, making my way to the violet sanctuary of the Mysticwoods.
I often spend my nights among their twisted limbs, sleeping below a forever lavender and indigo orchid canopy.
Despite the beautiful view, the bitter frost slices through me, carving me out hollow, too numb to feel the echoes of his torture on my skin.
The icy cold is my kindred.
Locking my heart away in her glacial palace, ensuring my foster father can never fully break me. Oh, but how he endeavors, ripping me to ribbons like a monster spawned from the corrupted Blackwood. He has cultivated an endless abyss of darkness within me, twisting me in unnatural ways.
I often wonder how my golden markings still gleam, when he has stolen all my fucking light. Leaving me with nothing but feral rage. Layers and layers of rage. Bristling on my skin like invisible dragon scales.
If only they were real. This thought curls the shadows of the snowy street around me, tightly, as if to shield me.
Their darkness suits me. Their darkness becomes me.
I now know, the elders left me to those monsters in the hopes their demons would consume me. And oh, how they did. Just not in the way those old fuckers hoped.
A wicked smile kicks up on my lip. It's been five years since that day. Five years of stumbling to grasp my Shadowblending ability, befriending the darkness they sought to ruin me with.
The shadows are now my home. My solace. My only embrace.
A pit groans in my stomach, gnawing hunger reminding me of my failed attempt to scavenge dinner.
I curse my iridescent white hair for giving me away to the barmaid.
My Shadowblending has improved over the last five years, but I let my overzealous hunger get the best of me, moving when I should have been still.
Food is a scarcity, a luxury, and one of the most pressing problems of being a feral Faeling in the unforgiving ice tundra of the Highlands.
In the warmer months, I can at least forage the Mysticwoods for gorgon nuts, atria berries, crunch plumes…
Emberhell, right now I’d even settle for the mind-bending neon green mushrooms I ate once that made the world fold in on itself.
My exasperated sigh blooms a cloud of white plumes into the frigid air. Tonight, I’m shit out of luck. It’s the dead of winter, and I minced my only chance at a bite to eat. I tuck my tail like a feral pup, shame and exhaustion hanging heavy on my face as I retreat into the beckoning shadows.
I’m almost at the edge of town when something snags my eye. My stomach churns, leering at a waste bin tipping in the whipping wind. My sickening reality gutting me while hunger whittles my bones.
My eyes widen on a moldy loaf of bread beside the bin, glowing in the light of the blacksmith’s forge. Thank the fucking Celestials. My stomach badgers me forward, growling like a wolf, drool pooling in my mouth despite the green and grey fungus desiccating my find.
Hunger devours my typically calculated stealth.
I lurch forward, snatching my lucky break.
The fuzzy, rotten loaf is almost to my mouth when a large shadow swells before me.
My gaze rolls up to the giant, towering grizzly bear figure, looming menacingly above me.
I topple backwards, trembling, the feral need for food overtaken by self-preservation.
Frantically, I claw for the embrace of darkness to hide me once more.
What the actual fuck is a bear doing in the middle of town?
Instead of a roar punching through my eardrums, a male voice rumbles—gravelly, but warm, like it's been slicked in summer honey.
“Come, sit here by the furnace, little one.” Cascading moonbeams spill over him, revealing his almost seven-foot-tall frame.
No wonder I mistook him for a bear. His voice tumbles from the depths of a dark beard.
The comforting tone scrapes along my icy skin, his kind words more menacing than a hand raised to strike me.
“I have an extra bowl of stew to share. By the looks of you…” He pauses, stepping further into the light, his warm honey eyes sweeping over my emaciated form. “You’ll need the extra meat on those bones to survive this winter.”
There’s a gentleness laced between each of his words, but habit curls my lip into a snarl—a conditioned response to being noticed at all.
I’ve grown quite attached to my well-made mask, one fitting of the feral dog the town folk see me as.
A carefully crafted facade, tucking the real me away in the shadows, deep within my layered darkness.
Guarding what little I have left from this cruel world.
My mind’s a muddled mess trying to unravel his kind words.
Why is this male willing to offer me help?
I’ve survived this long without so much as even a smile tossed my way.
My scrutinizing gaze reluctantly narrows on him, studying his upturned mouth, the subtle wrinkles extending to his eyes.
I have a knack for reading others, sometimes even feeling intense emotions bleed through me, as if they are my own.
Perhaps because I’m so hollow, locking up my own feelings deep within the darkness, out of sight, out of mind.
Their absence leaving space for others’ to seep in.