Two minutes later, Aiden arrives. “I’m sorry it took so long. There was a line, and they make the food fresh. Here you go.”
He hands me a drink, a sandwich, a bag of chips, and a white macadamia nut cookie. He has the same for himself.
“Wow. Thank you.”
“If it’s too much, I can eat the rest,” he says.
I force a smile. “I’ll eat what I can.”
As soon as I unwrap my sandwich, the scent of its meat makes me realize I am hungry. Very hungry. The melted cheese is sharp and delicious. He’s right about the sauce and its tanginess, a perfect complement to the heated meat. The sandwich is downed very quickly, and I wash it down with a sip of honeyed water.
I glance at him. “That’s… I never had that before.”
“A roast beef sandwich?” he asks.
“No, honeyed water.”
“Oh.” He laughs slightly. “I love honey, and my mom started to give me honeyed water when I was young. It’s too sweet and thick to drink by itself. If you don’t like it—”
“I love it,” I say, smiling broadly.
But the next second, my smile dies. Sophie would love this so much that she would have it at every meal.
You’ll just have to get her out of that prison very soon so she can have some.
I nod to myself and reach for my cookie.
Aiden laughs.
“What’s so funny?”
“You don’t want your chips?”
“Maybe.” I take a bite. The cookie is fall-apart-fresh, and I hum my appreciation. “Thank you. This is amazing.”
“I’m glad you like it.” He sits back and takes another bite of his sandwich. He’s been alternating bites between it and his chips.
We sit in silence and eat some more. When I polish off the cookie, I just sit there and don’t make a move to touch the bag.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I shrug. “Are you?”
“I know I will be.”
“That’s a good way to look at things.”
“It’s better when you believe it.” He heaves a sigh. “I won’t pry, and I appreciate you not asking me questions about what’s going on with me. I want to afford you that same courtesy, so if anything I said earlier crossed the line and hurt you, I want to apologize.”
I make a scoffing sound. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
We sit there in silence. The weight of the future presses down on me, and I don’t think I can handle everything that will happen, everything that is to come. For this moment, I need a bit of peace of mind.
I also need to not feel so very much alone.
Before I can say anything, though, Aiden chuckles. “I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t sing at all during the flight here.”
“Why?”
"I don't know if I'm a good singer or not," he says honestly. "I've never sung in front of anyone before."
“I would love to hear you sing. Just… not today.”
He nods slowly. I can see the question in his eyes, but I appreciate it so much that he doesn’t press me for an answer I’m not willing to give.
I inhale deeply and lean forward. “Aiden, have you ever had a premonition? A vision?”
Aiden shakes his head. “No. They’re rare, premonitions.”
I sit up even straighter. “I know. Do you know of anyone who has them?”
“I thought I heard that you do. Or Sophie. One of you. I’m not sure who else.”
“Me. I do. Not Sophie.” I swallow hard. “Our only difference.”
“That’s not true. You two aren’t the same.”
“No?”
“She’s more… You’re…”
“You can’t say, huh?” I smirk.
“It’s not easy to find the words,” he protests. “You’re both smart, but she has more intelligence. You’re more… cunning. If that makes sense.”
I shiver. “Cunning can have a… dark connotation.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t mean it like that. You’re just smart in a different way. She likes more fantasy type stuff. To write stories. You are more likely to go out and do something, to fly up to the moon.”
“We can’t reach it.” I grin. “Ask me how I know.”
We both laugh, and the tension in me relaxes slightly.
“You aren’t your twin, and that’s a good thing. You’re your own fairy, Jessa. Don’t worry about that.”
"That's not what I'm worried about. Trust me," I murmur.
“Why are you asking about premonitions?” He eyes me with his gorgeous amber eyes, and I feel as if I’ve been put on the spot.
“I don’t know if fairies who have premonitions tend to have the same ones or not.” I bite my lower lip. Maybe if I had attended Magical Hunters Academy, I would know more about this elusive magic within me that controls me more than I control it.
And that’s my biggest issue with premonitions. I cannot bring them on, or at least I haven't learned how to yet. What if I try to break into the prison to save Sophie and one grips me then? What if we have to fight our way out? I could get Sophie or me killed.
“I’m not sure. I don’t know a whole lot about premonitions.” His smile turns rueful. “I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
“It’s not your fault. I should know more about my magic, but no. I have to have the most capricious bit of magic there is.” I grimace.
“Some say that fairies with premonitions are the fairest of fairies,” he says.
“They don’t say that,” I protest.
He nods. “Yes, they do.”
“Really? I’ve never heard of that.”
“Just because you haven’t heard it doesn’t mean it’s not true.” He grins. “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Who all is they?” I ask suspiciously.
Aiden bursts out laughing.
“What is so funny?”
“I do know of one fairy who has premonitions. A friend of mine is dating her. He's the one to say it."
“Oh. So it’s not a real thing then.”
“It’s been said,” he protests.
“As a cheesy line to pick up a girl.” I roll my eyes. “Who’s the girl?”
“Eloise.”
I wince. Eloise isn’t a fairy I know all that well, and Sophie has a bit of a grudge against her.
“She might know more about premonitions,” Aiden says.
“She might, yes,” I mutter.
He furrows his brow. “You don’t like her?”
“I just want to talk to a sage about it.”
Aiden nods a few times and brushes his hands together. “They’ll have to know something.”
“Yes.”
I heave a sigh, though, because the sages aren’t an option.
Fairies live under a king and queen, but their counsel is made up of sages, the wisest of the wise fairies, the masters of each kind of fairy magic. They would be the ones I need to talk to, but they’ll be able to see through me, see my premonitions, see my past, see my guilt. They’ll know what I did, and they will turn me over. I don’t have to have a premonition to know that.
I swallow hard and bite my lower lip. Honestly, it’s times like these that I wish I could go back in time and just curl onto my mom’s lap like a child fairy and be rocked to sleep as she sings me a song. Life was so very simple then, and I long to return to that.
Aiden stands. “I need to get back. Fly with me?”
I try to smile and maybe succeed. “I need a moment yet, but thank you for the flight and the food. I will pay you back.”
“You’re welcome. I was glad to have some company. Sometimes being alone is terrible, but then I don’t think you’re alone that often considering Sophie.”
My grin is plastered on my face, as fake as can be. He doesn’t seem to realize and takes off with a wave.
I’m alone. So very alone.
Worse, Sophie’s not alone but in the presence of guards and criminals, real criminals who deserve to be locked up.
With a sigh, I try to focus on the positive. The food has replenished me, but also throughout the meal, I kept touching the plant in the center of our table. When I stand, the plant is dead, but I am almost entirely dead. As much as it pains me that I took so very much from the plant, I have to do whatever is necessary to free my sister. That's my goal, and nothing will stop me. Not my wounds, not my body, nothing at all.
It’s looked down upon to do what I just did, but I don’t regret it. Not at all. Fairies and nature have a bond, a balance, and I’ve taken more into myself than I should’ve. If I continue to do that, over time, it’s quite possible that nature will see me as an enemy. Legend tells of fairies that turned dark and used nature to fulfill their evil, twisted desires until nature herself rose up against them and entombed them in the earth, their bodies bound by vines. In some version, the legend tells of the vines ripping the fairies apart, their wings first.
A de-winged fairy. There’s nothing worse. Most de-winged fairies go mad, and more than a few can’t bear to live like that at all.
Do I know the limits? Honestly, as of right now—no. As of the moment that Sophie had those magic-dampening cuffs put on her, I no longer have limits. If that means that nature will one day turn against me, so be it, but that day had better not come until after Sophie is free.
Yes. I will find a way to break into the magical prison and break her out.
If the breeze is kind, I will also break out, but my main objective is Sophie.
With renewed energy and purpose, I fly back to the scene of the crime. At least, this should be where the demolished office should be, but the entire building is gone. There’s no trace of it at all. Not even the blades of grass are bent from a structure being erected there.
Confused, I fly over the place and then walk through and around it, but there is nothing to see here. Nothing at all. As far as I'm willing to test, there's no magic to make it seem as if the building is gone. There's no illusion.
How? Clearly, the building had been dismantled.
But why? To serve what end?
The proof is staring me in the face. Jaidos can't possibly have been working alone, or else no one would have taken the time and effort to completely remove every last bit of the building. As soon as they set the fire, I suspected that something was very wrong. Now, there's no mistaking it for anything else.
Someone is covering up for him.
Not for me. Not that he was murdered.
Jaidos wanted to control the humans, to dominate over them, to kill them. Someone else wants that as well. Maybe multiple someones.
And to think that it was guards who set the fire…
That is chilling, so very chilling. How far does this corruption go? Where will this road lead?
Death. Despair. Depression.
Murder. Grief. Sorrow.
The world is at a tipping point. The magical world, that is. And if it tips over and spills out onto the human world, who knows if the earth can handle the coming war.
And me, I’m just one fairy. Yes, I took out Jaidos, and that should be a huge victory, but it feels so very shallow. There’s so much more to be done, and I feel pulled in a hundred different directions. How can I save Sophie?
How can I save the world?
Not by getting into the prison via a crime. There's too much corruption, and I can't tell who to trust. The guards could very well make me disappear, just like they did the building.
And what if… what if they didn’t take Sophie to Magical Prison? What if that was just a show and they made her disappear too?
No. No, I can’t make up worries. I can’t just think. My mind will turn to darkness, and I’ll end up going crazy. No, I need to act, and I need to act now.
Only my body can sometimes prove traitorous, as it does right now.
Because right when I go to fly, my vision fades away, replaced by pure light.
Another premonition is about to plague me.