Page 10 of These Fractured Bonds

“Any chance we can talk about it once we’ve rinsed the blood out of our clothes?” August’s expression was hard to read through the blur.

“Can’t Erick snap his fingers and clean our clothes?” she countered, not willing to let it go just yet. She had a feeling that if she let August slip away, she might not get the answers she wanted.

“I’m not a maid!” Erick protested, but he did it anyway. The blood was wiped from existence with a snap of his fingers.

A realization dawned on her. She whipped her head between the two; she could see Erick clearly—although, if she looked closely, there was a slight shimmer around his ears—but she couldn’t see August very well.

“Why can’t I see August?” she asked.

Erick’s face went slack, an unusual state, for his typical expression tended to skew toward the jovial side. Yareli narrowed her eyes; she had been right. Something fishy… something magical was happening here, and she was right in the middle of it. The words left her lips without hesitation.

“Are you guys wizards?”

Erick burst out laughing, but August remained silent.

“No.” August’s voice was quiet, gentle, like it always was when he was about to say something that could be upsetting. “We’re Fae.”

His confession brought an onslaught of information to the forefront of Yareli’s mind. Popular fiction described Fae as tall, powerful, and most importantly, hot. She cross-checked that with what she knew of August. Tall? Check. Hot? Double, no, triple-checked. Powerful? Nowthatshe couldn’t answer, but she didn’t doubt his words; she had, after all, witnessed magic in person. The frays of her mind stretched toward an unknown territory where magic existed in the world, but she anchored herself to reality, using her trust in August as her center of gravity. He would clarify everything.

“Okay, then.” She stood in one stiff motion, almost robotic. “How about you explain some of this over a cup of Erick’s hot chocolate?”

At Erick’s face of dissent, Yareli said, “You were late. Go.”

“Fine!” He marched off, picking up his duffel bag. “But someone owes me another joy meal. A double burger soaked in blood isnotedible.”

She rolled her eyes, turning her attention back to August, who had a heck of a lot of explaining to do. She held her hand out to him, where it hung in the air for a moment longer than she liked before he took it. Biting her lip, she helped him up. He would make it make sense. He had to, or she would lose her footing and spiral into the unknowns of her world.

Chapter 5

Yarelireadherfirstfantasy book when she was seven. The magical door that transported kids to different worlds had been an instant hit. She had fallen in love with the idea of magic, which, in her mind, made the world a lot more remarkable. She had seen the world’s darkness, and magic washed the world in a new light. Maybe life had more to offer. As the years passed, her interest had waned—replaced by drab adulthood—but as she sat across from August, still covered in a gold curtain, her old curiosity flared. She hadsomany questions; she didn’t know where to start.

August cleared his throat. “I’m sure this is a shock for you.”

Yareli contemplated this, but she was decidedly not shocked; she shook her head. Then, adding an afterthought, she said, “I’d like to be able to see your face.”

There was a brief silence—she realized this might be a common occurrence with August now, and she wasn’t sure she liked it—before he answered.

“I fear you require an explanation before you see it.”

“Why? Are you scared that I’ll think you’re ugly?” Yareli thumbed her cup of hot chocolate. When August didn’t take the bait, a whisper of doubt coursed through her. Did she really know him as well as she thought? In fact, whatdidshe know of him? He didn’t let her continue that train of thought, interrupting.

“No, nothing like that. What you’re seeing is our glamor.”

“Glamor?”

August explained, “Glamor hides our appearances to non-magical folk. It hides our homes, our restaurants, our presence. What you see is its residue; your mind is telling you that what you’re seeing has been tampered with.”

Yareli peered at Erick, who sat at a mushroom table a few feet away with his thumb flying over his phone’s screen—doomscrolling, she thought. Since she could still see him, she deduced that Erick hadn’t changed much. It only made her more curious about August’s real appearance.

August continued. “To see my face, I’d have to remove the glamor. In other words, you’d see the world beyond the veil of illusion that has sheltered you thus far.”

The thought should have scared her; it would have frightened anyone else, but she wasn’t just anyone. She was, at heart, a girl with her head in the clouds, and her heart set on the magical man in front of her. Her decision had been made the moment she ran to him.

“Do it.”

“The world will be different,” August said, but his argument fell flat in her ears. She thought he might have actually meant, ‘I will be different.’

She repeated her resolve, and perhaps it had been her tone, or perhaps he had remembered how stubborn she could be, but he didn’t argue again.