She’s the true threat, though my mother cannot see it.
Or no, not cannot.
Will not.
Five hundred years of peace. And I am the catalyst for breaking it. I rub the bracelet that locks around my wrist. The fetch can’t see me while I wear this, though the bone-white imprint of its hand is still scarred into a manacle around my wrist from where it grabbed me.
“I need you back,” I tell Eris. “I even asked Thalia to use Theron and his assassins to help us. That’s how desperate I am.”
Nothing.
I know Thiago’s tried. I know Thalia’s tried. Even Finn, in his own manner.
But I’ve never tried.
My gifts from my fae heritage are negligible. Thiago thinks they’ll grow stronger with practice—my mother’s curse didn’t just take my memories of him, but everything I’ve ever learned about magic too.
But I’m not talking about my fae gifts.
It’s far too easy to reach out and pluck at the power of the ley line. Ceres was built right over the top of a nexus point, where several ley lines cross. Perfect for inter-Hallow travel, but also… the power of the lands is stronger here. It doesn’t just vibrate through me. It sings. It feels like a pair of warm hands curling around me, finally welcoming me home.
“Wake up,” I whisper, setting my hands on her chest. “Come back, Eris. Wake up.”
In my mind I see a glimmer of light deep within her, like a seed. Darkness surrounds it. The light remains trapped like it’s in a dark maze, with nowhere to go, no way out, except to twist and run through the shadowy hedges of her own mind.
There’s also something else there.
Something deep and dark and hungry. It doesn’t feel like an enemy. No. It feels like part of Eris herself. It turns into my touch, drawing in a breath as if it can scent me.
“Who are you?” it asks, turning its full attention to me.
Something about it feels wrong. It’s too hungry, and it captures my mind, nibbling at a delicate thread of my power. Instantly, the storm of darkness doubles in size, until the seed of light is lost even further. Sharpened hooks latch on to me, siphoning away my strength, and through them, the power of the ley lines.
“Free me,” it suggests. “Free me and she will wake.”
But the words are merely meant to stall.
I try to pull away, but it’s as if my resistance only encourages it. Its teeth sink into me, and it’s lapping at my power, drinking it down in hot, greedy gulps—
I lash out, cleaving straight through the darkness with my power, and it parts like smoke. And then I’m free, staggering back from the bed even as Eris cries out softly.
What in the Underworld was that?
“Eris?”
Her head writhes as if she’s suffering a bad dream, but then she slowly, slowly subsides. Silent once more. Still once more.
And I’m left trembling, feeling as though half of my soul has been gouged out.
A shaking fills me. I need to sit. Badly.
But even as I think it, I eye the chair and how close it is to the bed.
If that thing reaches out for me again—
Sweat presses a clammy hand down my spine. I know what they say about her. The Morai called her the Devourer, and even they—as monstrous as they were—feared her.
But this is Eris.
And she’s alone and helpless right now, and as much as I don’t want to go near the bed, she’s my friend.
I’ve been alone before. Ever since I turned twelve, if I’m being honest.
So I force myself to haul the chair next to her bed, and I sit there and, while I don’t dare touch her, I tell her that I’m here.
And that I’m staying.
It’s nearly dawn when I slowly lean forward on the bed and rest my head on my arms. Every inch of me aches as if something big and gnarly has taken bloody, invisible bites of me, but the wounds no longer feel raw.
I’m healing.
Just tired.
“So tired,” someone says.
And as something tinkles and falls to the coverlet, I swear I sense a man’s hand caress the back of my neck before he pushes me down into sleep.
I dream of spiders crawling all over my skin.
And a forest where I’m running, always running….
And somewhere ahead of me, a baby cries.
“Not that way,” whispers a voice.
We explode into a different forest, but this one is green and verdant and somehow alive. It’s like no other forest I’ve ever seen, for there are ferns and soft fronds of barely formed plants that thicken the undergrowth. There’s a hint of the untouched about this forest, as if we’re so far from the nearest civilization that it’s forgotten what a city looks like.
Sunset falls, bringing with it a thousand shining stars as we creep through the trees. Plants part before me, as if to welcome me.
Ahead of us, voices chant in unison.
There’s laughter. Smoke from a fire. And children squealing as they chase each other through the ferns.
We walk among the camp, unseen and unknown, and though there’s a hand in mine, leading me, I find it impossible to turn and look at my companion.
The creatures wear ragged deer pelts and simple homespun smocks. Stubby horns peek through their hair, and I catch a glimpse of hooves and tails on some of them. One even wears a set of bat-like wings. Some of them have swept gold dust along the angle of their cheekbones and painted thin black lines along the bridge of their noses, sweeping it across their foreheads.
All of them have black eyes.
No pupil. No iris.
Just bottomless depths.
I don’t know if there are different clans depending on their animalistic features, though I notice the ones with horns seem to linger together, and the little children leaping through the forest on hooves seem all of a kind.
And through it all, the creatures I know as demi-fey weave like
