“Shhhh! Bite your tongue, Carwynn! Ya don’t mean that,” she blurted. She looked toward the hole apologetically. “I swear she doesn’t mean that! Forgive her, she’s new around here. Still learning our ways.”She reprimanded me with a look, then dropped her voice. “They can hear ya! You betterapologize. Or leave ‘em an offering before they break our plumbing!”
I narrowed my eyes, whispering back.
“What am I supposed to do? They keep stealing my shit!”
“Show ‘em kindness, Carwynn!You’d be surprised.” An amused smile pulled at her mouth. “They are small but mighty. Ya don’t wanna be on their bad side. They’re ancient!”
I grunted, striding back to the hole.
“Fine!” I dropped the earrings down with a thud. “Take them, they’re yours. Truce?”
A moment passed.
Then, the tiniest transparent arm reached out of the hole. It grabbed the earrings and quickly retreated.
When I first heard we had Brownies in our house, I got excited. Anything chocolate and decadent was my happy downfall. In my first rude awakening, I learned that in this land, Brownies were tiny sprite-like creatures that thrived on being a complete pain in the ass. They’d burrow into mound homes, curiously spying. They’d either become a cute accessory to the home or an absolute plague. In our case, I was settling on the latter.They’d been stealing my stuff since day one.
Breena shook her head at me, still entertained by my misery.
“You’re the only one they steal from. I think it means they like ya!”
“Oooo, lucky me!” I said sarcastically.
Breena only laughed harder.
“Ya look fit by the way!” She motioned the outline of an hourglass with her hands. “Got a cute date?” She waggled her eyebrows.
“I wish!” I said, smirking. “No, I’m headed to the Golden Oak.”
Breena halted. Her sparkling freckles squished together along with her face.
“Ohhhh no. Your silver fox, fairy godfather is going tokillyou!” Her eyes drilled into me. “Last time I checked, didn’t he say he’d drag your arse back to the Human Realm if he caught ya ‘working for that mobster again?’” She used her hands to quote David.
I dismissively waved a hand in response.
“He’s just being overprotective. I get it—I’m semi-new to the Ferie Realm and haven’t exactly learned all the creatures, places, risks, blah, blah, blah . . .” I gave her a flat look. “He can’t baby me forever. I have to experience things for myself. Especially when it comes to controlling my Soulsayer ability. Working for Lochlainn—I get to practice talking to the deadandget something out of it.”I shrugged.
David was always paranoid about my safety. We met the day my Soulsayer ability appeared when I was thirteen. Apparently, my power shot off like a flare gun, sending a ripple across the Ferie Realm. Alerting the Hallow Land king—the Skell King—of my existence. When the Cherubs, David’s most trusted friends and guardians of Loveland, confirmedthe Skell King thought I was dead, he decided it was safest for me to remain hidden among humans.To live an ordinary life, as he put it. So that’s where I’d been the majority of my life. Forced to endure puberty, college, and grad school like a totally normal human, who mostdefinitelydidn’t hear voices of the dead whispering in her mind.Ugh.
It took me a while to come back from the horrors of that night as a kid. The dark serpent that dwelled within the depths of my soul—the Soulsayer in me—had awoken. Whether by maturity or by mere need, it stirred, and somehow, that awakening called tohim. The Skell King felt it,knewmy poweremerged, and because of that, his men hunted me down that day.
Would hunt me down again, if they ever found out I was still alive.
In the teenage years that followed my attempted murder, I was a shell of a human. Ironic, since I wasn’t human at all. And that was the exact problem—I had no idea who I was. In the most basic, innate way, didn’t knowwhatI was.
But David had remained my rock through it all. He’d moved to the Human Realm to raise me through those years, never leaving my side. Whenever he sensed me getting pulled by the riptide of the depths of my mind, he’d find a way to swim me back to shore. His go-to was keeping me busy, figuring the less time I had to think, the less likely I’d find myself mentally wandering into that dark abyss. So my teenage years were made up of movie-binging weekends, road trips to every town and city, baking competitions, and my absolute favorite, driving David nuts when the Cherubs visited.
I even got along with his boyfriend, Wyatt. He’d occasionally visit from the Ferie Realm, bringing me fancy chocolates and teaching me self-defense for fun, despite David’s protests. Wyatt would argue, “Every young lady should know the art of kicking ass!” That won me over.
Overall, David and I were two peas in a pod for a long while, but things gradually changed as adolescence blurred into adulthood. With each passing year came questions that I demanded answers to. David offered less and less.
It was in my final semester of grad school when the first crack in our relationshipappeared.
My hands froze,glued to the delicate paper that laid between my fingers. It felt so light, yet, had the heaviness of a thousand cracking hearts.
My mother.
Hot tears trailed down my face.
