- TWELVE
Cece
The nightmares came fast and terrifyingly vivid.
It always started with the cold, the kind of cold that settled into your bones and made them feel weak and arthritic.
Just when I was getting used to the stabbing sensation of frigid stone beneath my bare feet, the sounds would start to carry.
There was hissing, evil hissing, ritualistic chanting that rose and fell in a terrifying chorus.
I was little, just a baby, toddler maybe, sitting on the cold floor.
My little arms went up and pressed my hands against my ears to keep the sound out, humming a song I couldn't recognize.
Then there were footsteps moving closer.
I looked down at their bare feet, caked with mud.
Then I was picked up, held at arm's length like I was contagious. I was placed on a long stone table.
Everything in me told me not to look up, but I always did.
And there they were with their pale, grayish skin, their awful beady eyes, their sneers, then, further up, their sticky red heads.
One reached out, viciously pinching my little arm, making me wail as my shield went up instinctively, making one of them cackle and clap his hands together victoriously.
But I was so little, so cold, tired, and hungry.
I couldn't keep the shield up. The second it fell, another reached out, sharp fingernails scratching open the sensitive skin on the side of my neck as he grabbed the chain and tried to pull.
The chain bit into my neck, but didn't give way.
"Let's just get it done already," another said, reaching into his pants and pulling out a long, jagged knife.
He came at me quickly, yelling at one of the others to hold my arm still.
Then the knife ripped into the skin on my arm, drawing a scream out of my tiny lungs.
The blood beaded up on the skin, unnaturally bright even in the dark light.
The man with the knife grabbed a small glass slide, swiping it across my skin to collect some of the blood. "There. He'll be happy now."
Then he reached out, squeezing my arm around the cut, making more blood spill out.
He swiped his filthy fingers across it then brought his fingers up and swiped them across his forehead.
Then he turned his head up to the ceiling, eyes closed, chanting something as he moved away.
All the others followed suit, taking my blood, smearing it, chanting, then leaving.
Until I was all alone.
"Go over to him," Doyle demanded as soon as consciousness came to me again, my body sticky with sweat, my heart slamming in my chest, the tiny scar on my arm that I always attributed to a fall as a baby stinging.
"I'm fine," I said, sitting up and rocking slightly. I wasn't fine, not in the least. But I was too full of pride and stubbornness to go over to Jasper's sleeping form and take any kind of comfort from him.
"Okay, sweetheart. If you need me," he said, giving me a nod before rolling over and falling back to sleep.
Alone, I ran my finger over the scar, humming the only song I could think of, a song I had never heard in my life before, the song from the dream.
Except I knew with a blinding sort of clarity that it wasn't a dream at all.
It was a memory. I had been in The Green as a baby.
No, as a toddler. I figured when Jasper told me about being a changeling, that I had been switched as a newborn with tiny, fat, indistinguishable features.
How else did it make sense? How had they passed me off as my human parents' when I had hair and teeth and definite bone structure?
Was there some sort of fae magic involved or something?
And why had I been given away when I hadn't seemed sick? Who had my parents been and why hadn't they protected me from the Dark fae with the knives? Why had they wanted my blood? Who had demanded they take it from me?
I let out a deep sigh. It seemed like every day brought more questions and no answers.
Off in the distance, I heard the wailing again, the haunting scream of the banshee.
I stiffened, wondering if the reason I kept hearing it was because I was the one who was going to die.
The past few days certainly hadn't pointed to safety and security.
I could have died half a dozen times that I knew about.
And who knew how many things might have been out of sight, lurking.
A freaking gnome had popped out of the ground for fuck's sake. Anything was apparently possible.
But, worse yet, I feared the banshee was calling for Jade wherever she was in the Dark, why ever she was there.
Was she in a cell somewhere like Jasper had been?
Was she being starved, beaten, or worse?
My stomach clenched at the idea. She wasn't like her brother.
She wasn't full of pride and stubbornness that would allow her to step out of the pain, to endure without breaking.
How long could she possibly survive? A few days?
A few weeks? How much longer would it take us to find her?
The nymphs were practically useless. Yes, they had seen her, but had it been three days ago or just that morning?
We were behind and we were heading into enemy territory.
If the faun and the Winters had been Light or unaligned and they had wanted to enslave, beat, poison, or kill us, what the hell were the Dark fae capable of?
I looked over at Jasper with a growing sense of need.
I had to stop thinking. I needed to sleep.
I could have gone over, let the tip of my toe touch him somewhere and drift off.
But I didn't want anything to do with touching him, with letting him think I needed him for anything.
Which was ridiculous. In the grand scheme of things, what went down wasn't a big deal.
So we made out. So I let him touch me. So he was an asshole afterward.
I was making mountains out of molehills and I knew it.
There was no room for stubborn and bitter and petty between us.
We both had the same mission: to find Jade.
We both needed to at least be able to tolerate each other to do so.
If he hadn't been such a freaking dick all day...
"Ugh, guys suck," I grumbled, feeling foolishly, selfishly sorry for myself.
It was right then that I saw it. I blinked my tired eyes several times, thinking I was seeing things.
But even when my eyes fully adjusted to my surroundings, it was still there.
It was a strange, bright, flickering light.
Almost like a firefly, but brighter. It danced around Jasper for a second.
It moved toward me, flickering around, but never close enough for me to get a good look at it.
Was it some kind of firefly fae? Did things like that exist?
I got up, inching closer to it. I looked back at Jasper, just a couple yards away. It was okay to take a few more steps.
Then a few more.
I knew I should have stopped. I knew something was wrong.
I knew it wasn't me that wanted to follow it.
I knew it was something pulling me toward it.
It was a pull, like that of the faun. I had to get closer.
I had to catch it. I knew I should have looked away, planted my feet to the ground, screamed, anything.
But I really, really wanted to catch it.
I found myself skipping after it like a schoolgirl, my ankle screaming in objection, but I was barely aware of it.
Everything in me that had been dark and weighted for the past few days, hell, for my entire life, drifted away.
Inside, I felt happy, carefree, light. So very light.
Like I could fly. In fact, I was sure that if it led me to a cliff and I stepped off, that I would rise right up and soar like a bird.
"Come on," I pleaded, though I wasn't sure what I was asking for.
It flickered almost blindingly bright for a moment, flying suddenly over top a small cottage like its own personal little moon.
With a little distance between me and the light, the glee, the childish happiness, slowly started to slip away, leaving nothing in its wake but dread. Again. I was tricked by a fae... again.
Christ, when Jasper found out about it, I would never live it down.
I turned, moving back a few steps, expecting to see him and Doyle.
It felt like I'd only gone a couple yards.
But they were nowhere in sight. My heart started to pick up speed, feeling like it was dead set on breaking free from the confines of my ribcage.
I spun in a circle, not even sure what direction I had come from.
And in woods that dark, if I took off running blindly, who the hell knew where I might have ended up.
Into the Dark realm alone. Or, worse yet, back onto Winters land.
In front of me, the cottage was nestled back against a line of trees.
The front yard had a soft-looking covering of moss.
The flowerbeds and window boxes were overflowing with greens.
They looked like herbs. Maybe it was the house of the healer that Doyle had gone to.
If that was the case, maybe I didn't have anything to worry about.
It was a normal cottage, small and brown with aged shingles.
The roof was living, a beautiful cascade of greens and flowers.
And right in the center of the large front window, a single candle was flickering.
Welcoming.
Did I really have any other choice? If I stayed still, who knew what could happen along. Another faun, the twinkling light thing that seemed like it may have wanted to kill me some way. If I tried to go back, I could get even more lost.
Maybe I could play the changeling card again, act stupid. It almost worked on Jasper's family.