Author: Audrey Grey
Category: Fantasy
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When he doesn’t answer, desperation takes hold. “I haven’t touched them. Can’t you just, I don’t know, put them back with your magic or something?”
I can feel his glare behind his hood. “Put them back? You’ve touched them with your human fingers, meaning now the revered fruit is tainted.”
You mother cracker.
I would have laughed at the injustice of it, but his knuckles tighten over the hilt of his fine sword and suddenly I can’t breathe.
The scrape of the blade exiting its scabbard sends my heart ramming into my breastbone, my strangled breaths punching out in violent ivory bursts. The curved metal glimmers softly in the moonlight.
Whispers: Interactive StoriesMake your own choices and decide what happens next!
“On your knees,” he says casually. Icily. As if executions of starving mortals are an everyday occurrence.
That’s when I know, without a doubt, he’s going to kill me.
4
I jut out my chin, cramming every bit of my rage into my expression as I glare at the Fae. “Screw you, dickwad. If you’re going to kill me for taking a few stupid neverapples, I’m not making it easy for you.”
Maybe I should run. I should definitely run. Move! I order my legs, who straight up refuse to budge. Either from fear or shock or the freezing cold. My bet is all three.
“Have it your way.”
I’m working on coaxing my stubborn thighs into action when a flicker of white above calls my attention. We both glance up at the distraction to see a swarm of white moths fluttering down from the trees like giant drops of snowfall. They move as one, a cloud of sparkling wings that shimmer and glow.
I’m so in awe of their beauty that I nearly forget about the Fae and the blade he holds, or that I’m supposed to be fleeing.
Nearly.
One by one, they gather around my head. A few alight along my brow, the rest hovering a few inches above my messy, half-fallen topknot.
Like a crown.
One of the moths breaks from the others and alights on the tip of the Fae’s sword. Its gossamer wings open and close as we stare on in stunned silence, the creature’s ethereal beauty in stark contrast to the murderous blade and the monster holding it.
All at once, the moths take to the air and ascend into the darkness as quickly as they came, and my dark reality comes crashing down again.
“What is your name?” he asks.
“Why?” I scoff. “Do you need it to scratch into a murder notebook?”
Suddenly, I feel his focus flit behind me at something. A peek over my shoulder shows a young girl in worn overalls with bright red pigtail braids and freckles bounding up the hill on the other side of the Shimmer.
Jane. She’s calling my name and she has a flashlight.
Should have known she’d come looking for me. As the second oldest, she acts like an adult when she’s barely fourteen. Half the time she’s arguing with me; the other half she’s trying to be like me. Not two days ago I caught her shooting my bow into moldy hay bales.
Only instead of wild game, her target was black paint made into a long face with sharp, pointy ears.
Give her a couple years and she’ll be a fine shot, better than me. Not that I’d ever tell her as much.
After a few moments of staring at the Shimmer, she begins to draw close, ignoring every single warning and rule I’ve ever told her about the Everwilde.
“Don’t hurt her,” I blurt, looking from her to him. “She has nothing to do with this. She’s just a—a kid.”
The Fae says nothing as he watches her. She’s all gangly limbs and freckles as she peers into the Shimmer, her face covered in dirt and oil. Her thin lips are pursed, her brown eyes bright with the anger of someone just old enough to understand her world isn’t fair.
I watch her too, willing her away with my thoughts. Internally screaming all the ways I’ll punish her if she enters.
“Doesn’t your kind follow any rules?” he demands. “Stay away from our land. Why is that so hard for you mortals to obey?”