Chapter Thirty-three

 

 

Star

 

Fealty glanced over her shoulder, smiling widely at me. Her teeth were made of milky crystals, sharpened to points and terrifying. I made it a point to not stare at them, fighting a shudder.

“Come on. You’re a slow one, aren’t you?”

Her long, crystal-filament hair swayed in a thick braid that reached all the way to her bottom. The gauzy gown she wore exposed her thin arms and long, bare legs. Her skin was so pale she could’ve been made of marble. From what I remembered, Jarvin wasn’t pale. He had grey-black skin, black as night hair, and eyes like stars twinkling in the night sky. I frowned. He had been pale when he’d first emerged, but his skin had changed. I had a lot to learn about these creatures. I wondered if these two were related in any way.

I rubbed at my face, feeling the sleep still hanging on to me. Bleary eyed, I looked around. “Is Jarvin your husband?” I asked.

Fealty began to giggle, laughing as we continued. I frowned.

“Oh, no! I am not useful in that way. You are his consort. He told me humans were a bit slow to understand.”

I glared at her. What nerve.

“Did Jarvin bring me here?” I asked.

“Yes, he brought you here to our home last night.” Fealty reached out to touch my pendants, but I flinched at her nearness. She froze.

I cranked my neck to look at my necklace. I had Gideon’s totem as well as my own red crystal tied with twine, hanging together. I’d kept Gideon’s totem but wished I’d given it to him before this journey had started. I pressed my hand to them and gave them a squeeze.

“This one belongs to Gideon. The ruby pendant is mine.”

Fealty peered at me curiously, making her look more human than ever.

“Gideon can’t come here without his totem, right?” I asked.

“Depends. He is part fae. He might not even need it to come back.”

This statement calmed me somewhat. I hoped she was right.

“Jarvin is waiting. I told him you’ve awoken.” She waved me to her, insisting I follow.

“I don’t even know who Jarvin is,” I said sharply, frustration making my head pound. I rubbed at my eyes, still slightly itchy. “Aren’t there other fae besides you and Jarvin?”

“This is our home here. Each fae claims their own caverns and territory. Different caves belong to different families. We usually don’t mingle much, unless there are marriage unions, deaths ceremonies, or births. Those three things rarely happen.”

I stopped, realizing she wasn’t using words to speak anymore. There was no sound coming from her at all now. I was speaking out loud by myself. She noticed my discomfort and smiled again. Oh, geez, those teeth….

“We speak telepathically. It takes a while to get used to. Speaking out loud is so primitive.” She wrinkled her nose as though using her voice was a nuisance.

I threw her an incredulous look. I couldn’t believe this. I had to be dreaming. Only a dream would tell me speech was primitive.

“What are you?” I asked.

“We are fae.”

“I know that,” I groaned, rubbing at my eyes. Why did they feel so gritty? “I meant, what are you compared to me? To the humans? Are you humanoid or did you come from space? Are humans and fae related?” I felt silly asking her such things.

“Humans and Fae are similar but we are from two different worlds.”

Fealty tilted her head to the side, studying me curiously. I almost felt her thoughts floating about her head like a halo. I blinked over and over, my eyes stinging and dry. What was wrong with them? My vision was getting blurrier by the minute.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her head tilting to the other side.

“My eyes, they hurt. They’re so dry, and everything is blurry.” I tried hard not to rub them, afraid I’d scratch my corneas to oblivion. Tears leaked from my eyes but failed to clear them. “What’s happening?” I asked, frantic with the irritation.

Fealty watched for a second longer before she reached to her side, where several pouches hung from a belt. She pulled something out of one and plucked the cork off of it. She appeared to dump some of it onto her palm, dipping her fingertips into it before reaching out toward my face. I flinched, unsure of what she was doing.

“I won’t hurt you,” she reassured me.

“What is that?” I dodged her attempts to smear it on my eyelids.

“It’s prism ointment. For your eyes. You’re not used to seeing our world, and it burns. This relieves the pain and allows your vision to work in our domain.”

Blinking hard, I wiped at the tears, smearing them madly across my cheeks. Whatever the medicine was, it couldn’t be as bad as the searing pain, could it?

“All right,” I said, allowing her to close the distance between us. If this stuff didn’t work, I was afraid I would definitely scratch my eyes out. She reached out once more and smeared the ointment onto my eyes. I blinked hard, wondering if she’d gotten it on my corneas at all. Almost instantly, a cooling sensation slid over my eyes, relieving the stinging pain completely.

I flicked my eyes open, looked around, and noticed the cavern was now lit up with far more than just the lights from the crystals high in the cavern’s roof. The walls shimmered, much like the geode room. The crystals made up everything, and I could see that the grass was made up of thin crystals as well, but it swayed in some unseen breeze and was soft to the touch. The water gleamed like blue crystals floated around in it, but I bet it felt just like regular water.

My eyes felt fine, as though they’d never hurt. I reached up to see if any excess ointment remained but pulled my fingers away to find that there was none. It’d absorbed immediately into my eyes.

“What—?” I wondered out loud. “This place… what is it?”

“The underworld. We are the fae. We live where magic thrives. You truly have never been here?” Fealty held out a hand to me. I took it without any more apprehension. Instead of tugging me along, she reached out and scooped up Gideon’s totem, studying it so closely that I could feel her breath on my cheeks. I blushed but didn’t know why.

“Totems are part of the person they belong to.” She closed her eyes and squeezed it in her hand before letting it go. “The one it serves has a great love he adores. It holds his hopes and dreams, and I see your face in my mind’s eye. But I also see a great darkness looming close.” She smiled once more before taking my hands and clasping my fingers around it. “You hold more than just a totem in your hands.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You hold the heart of a fae,” Fealty stated, as though I should have known this. “Our hearts are made of crystal, and that is from where we draw our power. Holding the heart of a fae can either destroy you or save you.”

I inhaled sharply. Gideon was part fae. Did she mean he literally had a crystal heart? How could she know so much about Gideon and me? My heart thumped as I pressed my hand to my chest. I could almost smell Gideon’s scent emanating from the key. I’d never noticed that before. This place, this underworld, must have had an effect on people and objects, changing them in ways I couldn’t understand. I could almost swear it was doing the same to me, but I couldn’t say how.

“Can Jarvin really keep me here as his consort?” I asked.

She didn’t answer this question at all. Maybe she had been told not to. Before I could ask her again, she spoke out loud with her voice. I wondered if she’d done it to distract me or to throw me off.

“Come, you must have hunger. Jarvin will hunger as well.” She motioned for me to follow, walking as though slightly jumping from step to step. It was light and quick, as though she weighed nothing. I felt heavy and clumsy next to her. Crystals crunched beneath my feet with each step. I wondered if everything was made of crystal. What if the food was made of this as well? The thought made me apprehensive to touch anything.

I wondered what Jarvin wanted with me and if I’d ever escape. I prayed Gideon and Clyde were okay. The heat from Gideon’s totem gave me hope that he was all right.

Suddenly, I remembered the tracker key fob in my jacket pocket. I quietly slipped it out of its pocket and pressed my fingerprint to the screen to turn it on.

The screen flickered on, greeting me by name. I tapped it to change to the locator mode, praying I’d be able to see Clyde and Gideon’s trackers on the tiny screen. Before the tiny dots showed up on the radar, the key fob was snatched from my fingertips.

“Give it back!” I screeched, flinging myself toward Fealty. Without warning, another figure stepped between us. I slammed into his chest at full speed, and he spun me around, holding me at arm’s length.

“You won’t need that here, consort.” Jarvin turned toward Fealty. “Destroy it.”

“Yes, brother.” Fealty disappeared behind him as I struggled to loosen his grip on my arm.

“No! I need that! Give it back!” I begged. I felt my heart shattering into a million pieces as I watched Fealty hold it in front of her and send a tiny zap of what looked like electricity at it, shorting out the mechanism in an instant.

“No!” I wailed, crumbling to my knees. Without the fob, I wouldn’t be able to find Clyde or Gideon. “How could you?”

Jarvin, who pulled me up and proceeded to drag me toward a door in the wall of the cavern, didn’t say anything more, no matter how much I protested.

“Let me go! I need to find Gideon and Clyde!”

He stopped at the door and suddenly turned, letting me loose. I’d been pulling so hard to get away that I flew backward onto my rear.

Jarvin narrowed his inhuman eyes. “Did you say Gideon?”