ADELINE
I wake up in the dark, curled up on my pallet, wrapped in my worn blanket. I blink, listening. There had been a sound, hadn’t there? A voice?
But only silence greets me inside our small home, apart from Brogan’s gentle snoring. Nobody is talking.
I often have bad dreams, so waking up with the echo of screams and curses in my ear is not unusual for me. Still, that had been weird, and?—
“Are you listening?” a male voice says right into my ear, and I sit upright with a yelp, my heart crashing about inside my chest.
“Who is there?” I ask shakily.
“My name is Olm.”
“Where…? Where are you?” I hiss, scrambling to my knees and glancing wildly around. “Show yourself.”
“Use your ears instead, and listen. The book you found. You will take it to the royal palace tonight. You will steal a horse and ride?—”
“Are you crazy?” I demand.
“If I am crazy? What…?” The voice stutters to a halt. “What is happening?”
“Happening? I’m dreaming, that’s what’s happening.” I scrub my hands over my eyes. “I’m inside a dream.”
“No, you are resisting my voice. How are you doing it?”
Letting out a soft laugh, I lie back down. “Oh, this is a hell of a dream.”
“It’s not a dream.”
“Of course it is, but let me enlighten you. I know plenty of tales, Olm. My mother taught me all the stories she knows, and trust me, they are all the stories that exist in living memory. I can see patterns. And a voice in the night telling me to take a magical book to the palace is bad news.”
“But you’re human, you have no magic?—”
“I know stories. Stories are magic.” I close my eyes. “Now let me sleep. I’m tired.”
“Take the book,” Naida says the next morning as she brews a medicinal tea for Brogan, “and drop it back in the square where you found it. Perhaps the person who lost it will go looking for it.”
“I doubt the woman will be back for it,” I object, approaching Eiras who is eating bread and olives. I grab two olives from his plate and he grunts, eyes flashing. He attempts to cover the rest, and I take advantage to steal his bread. “She must be long gone by now.”
“Thief,” Eiras snarls, showing me his sharp fae canines. “Give that back.”
“Would you have shared otherwise?” I sit across from him and stuff the bread into my mouth. “There’s a reason thieves exist. Nobody wants to share, including you.”
“I told you I brought food.” He gestures at the bread basket. “Help yourself.”
I’m instantly on my feet and scrounging inside. More bread, rusk, biscuits. I cover the basket again. “Is that all?”
“Of course not. I brought olives, cheese, flour, oil, some sugar. And coin.”
Mollified, I return to the table. “And then you’ll leave again.”
“I have to, candy roll.”
“Don’t call me that.”
He smirks. “Girls like it when I call them that.”
“I’m not one of the girls you roll in the hay with,” I mutter, annoyed.
