Chapter 11 Heidi
HEIDI
My stomach drops to my feet.
Now I really can't breathe.
The fae woman turns back to me. She sounds professional enough for the camera, but the hostility splashing off of her and onto me makes me shrink in on myself.
"Miss Murley, many reports are now identifying you as the estranged daughter of the late war criminals Corbin and Daphne Frost. Is it true that you sought safety with them during the Upheaval, but you were turned away?"
She shoves the microphone in my face.
My parents' names ring in my ears. My mouth goes dry as my world starts to spin.
This can't happen. I can't do this. I can't think up a lie or a defense as these strangers' emotions coalesce like bile in my stomach, filling me with their hate and anger and insult.
Run.
"Elise, get away from them," Athanis urges.
"Miss Murley?" she repeats insistently, brushing hair out of her face when the cold breeze picks up.
Get away. Leave. Run. Let me run.
I can't afford to freeze up right now.
"Excuse me," I choke out, trying to move past her as my phone starts ringing again.
My heart leaps into my throat when someone else grips my arm through my jacket, subtly holding me in place. This person has pointed ears, too, and their anger burns through my sleeve until I'm sweating and shaking. The reporter is still here with that blinking camera.
More people have stopped on the street nearby, watching and listening as their emotions swirl around me. A crowd is forming, and people are honking angrily on the road beside us, near the busy intersection where drivers have slowed to look.
Curiosity. Concern. Anger. Distrust. Confusion. Accusation.
"Miss Murley, other reports have surfaced indicating that you have been allegedly involved in an illegal excavation into the Nether to unearth precious fae relics," Kaitlyn Parks declares.
"It's not illegal," I interject without thinking, hugging myself tightly to try to keep everyone's feelings from piercing my skin so roughly.
"So it's true that you're guiding the excavations into the fae's homeland?" she demands. "Is it also true that due to your attempts to steal fae relics, several fae excavators lost their lives yesterday?”
"N—no, that's not—"
Oh, gods.
This is Chancellor Marwood's doing, thanks to everything Brahm told him.
I'm about to puke all over the mic as I try again to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. Eavesdroppers are starting to grumble nearby, and some people are pulling out their phones to film it themselves. More horns are honking, and the camera is way too fucking close.
Let us go, my animal whimpers.
When more people start joining this little crowd and their emotions join the sludge of feelings slipping down my throat, I try again to get away. The grip tightens on my arm. I rip it away and end up accidentally yanking my elbow right into the face of the fae man previously holding my arm.
"Ow!" he shouts.
People gasp. The camera zooms dramatically in on the man's nose as it starts trickling blood.
"Sorry," I wheeze through the pressure building in my chest, pushing through the crowd.
I just want to get into my therapist's building, find a corner in her office, and die in it.
I've tried so hard to start over. To be human. I've built a life in a small town and gone where the Frosts and everyone obsessed with them couldn't reach me. I became Elise instead of Heidi.
But now, my real identity is out of the bag. Chancellor Marwood must have hired someone to dig up my past, and with my parents no longer pulling strings to keep my existence a secret from the world, his guy did quick work.
Even the Upheaval didn't feel as world-ending as this.
I stumble when the reporter catches up to me, the cameraman getting in my face again. I'm not surprised that I didn't make it far from them, with all these strangers' feelings choking my airways and slowing me down.
I don't realize Athanis is still hovering beside me until he scowls at the journalists, swearing in ancient fae at them.
"Miss Murley, what do you have to say in defense of your actions?” she presses. “What would you say to the families of the fae who lost their lives at the excavation yesterday, if they were standing in front of you right now? Would you apologize?”
Tears blur my vision, but I shake my head hard. "You don't understand, I didn’t try to—”
“Now that the Entity is no longer holding the Nether captive, don’t you think that we fae have a right to our homeland? Or do you think that pillaging that realm is admissible?”
For the love of the gods, I don't think anything.
I know absolutely nothing about legacy politics. It's not my business. I just wanted to uncover those poor sleepers buried under the citadel.
Now, I just want to run.
"Please leave me alone," I rasp, lifting a hand to block my face from the camera's view.
Someone else in the crowd bumps into me, making me stumble off the sidewalk. Intrigue, anger, and disagreement swirl around me, creating dark spots that freckle my vision.
Athanis curses at them again. "Get back! Away with you all!"
The cameraman isn't backing off as the reporter continues pelting me with questions. People and all their crippling feelings are thronging this sidewalk, the honking is just getting worse, and now my inner animal is frantic.
Run, she begs, tearing at my insides.
I flinch when one of my ribs snaps out of place—the start of a shift. She's so terrified that she's making the choice for me.
I'm about to shift.
"Miss Murley," Kaitlyn begins again, reaching toward me even as her hostility scores its way over my throat. “People died thanks to your actions. Can you give us a statement about—"
I can't let her touch me. She'll feel everything I'm feeling.
Run! my animal screams as emotions make my head swim and the world sway. Run now!
I do.
As my shift begins, I bolt away from the fae woman and the cameraman and the people and their feelings—
Right in time for the front of a bus to slam into me.
Bang.
Everything goes white as my ears pop. The world inverts, turning over itself, flipping and spinning until I slam into the ground. My head cracks against the cold asphalt before its roughness strips at my skin as I roll to a halt.
Brakes screech all around. Adrenaline sears through my system as screams echo from nearby, lancing my sensitive eardrums. I realize hot blood is dripping freely from my nose, pooling with the rest of the blood leaking from somewhere. My head, maybe?
"Move! Out of the way!" a stranger's voice shouts.
"Oh my gods!"
"Elise!" Athanis's voice calls from what seems like hundreds of miles away.
"What just happened?" someone else gasps, shocked.
Blood seeps out of my left hip and leg, which look all jumbled and wrong when I crane my neck up. My left arm looks wrong, too, but that probably has something to do with the bone protruding out of my shoulder.
One tough thing about being a shifter is that adrenaline and shock don't usually dull pain for more than a second or two, since the healing jumpstarts things so quickly. Even though my healing is a bit slower than most in the House of Shifting, since I’m a prey shifter, I still get that fun little half-second delay.
My brain registers the pain throughout my body all at once, letting me know that something is majorly wrong with my insides, too.
My damaged head slumps back to the asphalt as my vision spins. For a moment, all I can feel is my broken body and hot blood and warm tears and the little world I built for myself being flipped upside down.
Everything hurts, inside and out.
I finally try to breathe and end up hacking, but I can feel my hip starting to mend itself. Something inside me cracks again, attempting to get back in its proper spot. Furious tingling courses over my spine and in my head, where my body seems to decide the most work needs to be done first.
Ow. Ow. Ow.
Can I just black out and stop feeling all of this already? I'm pretty sure I have a nasty concussion on top of all this other fun, so where's that little benefit?
I really wish Jessica was here right now. If she were, she would remind me that if I don't heal quickly enough and the blood loss gets me, at least we can check out the dating pool in the Beyond together.
Maybe a new start in the Beyond wouldn't be so bad. It could be peaceful. Maybe I could finally get a new boyfriend there.
At least it would keep me from having to face the end of the human life I've worked so hard for.
"Miss? Miss, can you hear me?" a woman is asking.
It feels like I've been lying in agony for forever, but I'm pretty sure it's been only a handful of seconds since that bus hit me. Or rather, since I hit the front of that bus.
"She's alive," Athanis tries to tell the woman who probably can't see him. "Her spirit has not yet joined the plane in which I walk. Elise, give this kind woman a sign you're still alive."
I feel someone prodding gently at a tender spot on my head.
OUCH. Please stop that.
Hurts, my inner animal weeps, in just as much pain as I am. She’s no longer trying to shift.
"I'm Mia Lanshire. I'm a paramedic. Someone's called an ambulance already, so—oh my gods, your head is healing.
Are you a shifter? That's good, we can—hey, you!
" she shouts suddenly, leaning away from me.
"What the fuck's wrong with you? Turn off that camera!
Yeah, that's what I thought! Okay, miss, you need to… "
It sounds like she's being slowly submerged underwater. Athanis is saying something, but I can't understand him. Either he's speaking ancient fae again, or I'm finally blacking out.