The Voice in my Head
I wasn’t sure what concoction I’d just helped the banshee create, but Nella and I had come out of the task nearly unscathed.
In fact, my lightning wounds were uninfected and reduced to only a dull ache while Nella’s punctured hand was nearly good as new.
The knife slice across my palm was gone completely—this must have been the banshee or its blade’s magic.
I guessed that elixir must be something really special for that terrifying being to actually be somewhat kind to us. After nearly killing us both, of course.
I filled Nella in on the banshee’s answers as we found our way to a path. The same roller coaster of emotions crossed her face as I’d felt—shock at my mother being in Dolvenar, disappointment…followed by hope…at the potentially non-permanent loss of half my sight.
The trees were thinning around us, so it seemed like we were on the right path toward an exit out of this massive forest. The realization that we hadn’t slept or eaten in over a day now set exhaustion and gnawing hunger coursing through my body and stomach.
I’d at least passed out for a few hours on the water bank. Nella had to feel far worse.
But still, we kept walking through the dark.
“What happened to you after the banshee slapped you with the smoke from the cauldron?” she asked, eyeing me. “You fell into this, like, trance and, well, you screamed a lot. And then there was a knife, and it all happened so fast. Then you woke up and started sobbing.”
My heart sank. If I had been screaming during that awful experience, I was sure they were sounds of despair. I had screamed that I wanted to die…
I wished she hadn’t heard that.
“I was trapped in a dark place, and I was forced to watch my greatest fears come alive,” I said with a shudder.
“What were they?” Nella asked with wide eyes.
I told her about the smoke figures and the sex scene, albeit an abridged and nondetailed version, and about my mother not wanting me, which stung to say out loud.
My feelings about my mother were more conflicted than ever.
If the rebellion was real and she’d left me to join it, then maybe there was some hope that she’d left for a good reason.
And if that were the case, and she was in Dolvenar, maybe she was working against the king right under his nose.
These were a lot of “maybes”, but I’d never know unless we found her.
So I’d made my mind up about our destination. It had to be Dolvenar.
The mortal purge had already happened in Fellendral, and the fae and royals there were urging other continents to do the same.
It made me sick to think about it, but if my mother had left me to join those allegedly rebelling against our king and the mortal purge of our continent, then she had to be good.
I couldn’t believe that a woman with strong morals like that would have no love for her only child.
I had to hold on to hope. But I knew hope could be a dangerous thing.
I snapped out of my thoughts, and Nella listened with rapt attention as I finished telling her about Cassius embracing Fadric like a son, but words failed me when I thought of her lifeless body.
I couldn’t tell her I’d watched her die at our father’s and sister’s hands, and how badly it had broken me in those moments I believed it to be real.
“I always thought Fadric was slimy,” she said with a shrug.
I snorted. “No, you didn’t. You loved him. You thought he was perfect.”
Her smile turned to laughter, and I found myself laughing with her. Full belly laughing. We both stopped, doubled over, holding our stomachs, trying to contain ourselves. My heart felt lighter than it had since we made our escape from Aemilia and Briarstead.
“You’re a liar, but I love you,” I said as I nudged her shoulder with mine.
“Don’t worry about me, Naci. We’ve gotten this far together, and we’ll protect each other. I’ll always have your back.”
“I know, little lamb, but protecting you is my job.”
Before she could respond, a bird flew overhead, swooping low and slowing to keep pace with us.
Moonlight reflected off its feathers as I watched it bob up and down and weave side to side.
It was a crow, I assumed the same one that had helped us with the banshee’s task.
My chest once again heated inexplicably. Right over my heart.
“I’ve been watching you.”
I halted and looked around frantically for the source of the voice.
“Naci? What is it?”
“You didn’t hear that? Someone said they’d been watching us.” I pulled her closer to me as I continued to search but found no one around. I looked back up and saw the crow circling low above us.
“Naci, I didn’t hear anything…”
“Well, of course she didn’t. I wasn’t talking to her.” The voice was drenched in sarcasm, and while it seemed eerie to hear a voice that wasn’t mine echo through my mind, it didn’t instill fear in me. It sounded almost familiar, I thought.
“Well, that is what they call us. Familiars.”
“Are…is that you talking to me…in my head?” I said to the crow. “Can you hear my thoughts?” I thought the last part, without speaking aloud.
I cocked my head, studying the circling crow as it mirrored the same movement with its head. It had to be true. How, I wasn’t sure, but I knew this bird was talking to me. And for some reason, it didn’t seem strange, though it should have.
“Caught on faster than most,” it replied, almost playfully. “Then again, there is something odd about you.”
“Did you say…Familiars?” I asked.
Nella looked back and forth between the bird and me. She still didn’t seem to hear anyone but me. Maybe the bird was right. Perhaps I was odd.
“Excuse me, ‘the bird’ is a crow. And its name is Noxie. Me. I’m Noxie. The name just came to me when I saw you. After you got hit by lightning.”
“Wait, you’ve been following us that long?”
“Naci…?” Nella asked, as if concerned for my sanity. She probably was.
“This bird, Noxie, has been following us since we escaped Aemilia.”
“And it told you that?” she asked, her words laced with skepticism.
“I don’t appreciate the tone you used with my name. I’m quite fond of it actually. You know, you’re not making a great first impression, Ignacia.”
“Ugh, that’s not my name. It’s just Naci. And yes, Nella, he told me that, said he is a Familiar. By the way, what does that mean? You are a he, right?” I asked the last part in my head again. It came as naturally as breathing. I didn’t even have to try to communicate this way with him. Odd indeed.
“Yes, Ignacia, a he. Some of my kind are born with a nagging ability to commune with a single fae and form a bond. If we choose the bond, our fates and magic intertwine. It’s become more and more rare these days.”
“I’ve only ever heard Familiars referenced in storybooks. I didn’t think they were real. And you’ve got the wrong girl anyway. I’m not fae. I don’t have any magic.”
“He thinks you’re fae? Naci, I think we should keep moving and get somewhere you can lie down. You’re not making any sense.”
“Ha! Ha ha ha, she thinks you’re nuts!”
“I think you’re nuts, thinking I’m your bonded fae or whatever.”
Nella and I started walking once more. She wrapped her arm around mine, like she meant to help carry me out of the woods.
“I would take offense to that,” the crow continued, “but it is strange indeed. Mortal humans can’t bond without magic. I’ll admit I was confused the first time I shared your mind and heard your mortal heart beating. Something about your heart is…different.”
“What’s my heart got to do with anything?”
Noxie sighed, exasperated, before he said, “Mortals…you know nothing. I can actually feel the emptiness in your brain.”
I shot him a dirty look that earned a side-eye from Nella. “I’m beginning to hope Nella is right, and that, after I lie down, you will have been just my imagination.”
“The heart is where magic lives,” he continued, as if I had said nothing.
“Without magic, the heart beats faster. So fast, trying to fit an entire lifetime of beats into the brief span of a mortal life. Without it, a heart cannot be free to find the bonds it’s destined for, to reach for the hearts that share its same magic.
The magic is what makes a fae, giving them a near-immortal lifespan’s worth of heartbeats.
It gives them bonds, mates, and magical abilities.
And you, Ignacia, have none. No magic whatsoever. ”
My anger flared out of nowhere, and I decided I didn’t want to talk to this bird in my head anymore. “Then why are you still following me?”
Nella eyed the bird still circling us. Instead of answering me, he skimmed the top of my head with his wing as he crowed and flew off ahead.
“There is something weird about that bird,” Nella said, glancing at me.
“Agreed. Let’s stop for the night,” I said, changing the subject. “I know you must be as starving as I am. But we need at least a few hours of sleep, then we can try and find some food when it’s light out.”
She agreed, so we left the path and walked twenty paces or so before we found a massive tree. I sat down, leaning against its trunk and Nella sprawled out beside me. She put her head in my lap and was asleep within minutes. My mind lingered on the strange bond with Noxie for a bit longer.
I was mortal. Cassius was, and my mother had been too, as far as I knew.
And even if she had been fae, I had no magic, so I wasn’t even half-fae.
If she had been fae, then I was just like Nella.
She was mortal even though she’d had a fae mother.
It was luck of the draw whether a mortal and fae couple produced mortal or half-fae children.
And if I were half-fae like Aemilia, from what we’d been taught in school, fae magic emerged much younger than my current age.
It would have happened by now if I had magic.
Yet I could talk to a bird, and according to him that should only be possible if I had magic in my heart. My heart, that was racing over all the unknowns.
I could also understand the banshee…