Page 13 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
“Lucky for you, the Wildness Court is renowned for this kind of magic,” she said, her voice low and secretive. “This here, in my hands, is the key to unlocking your fortune.”
“My…fortune?”
I’d seen enough wandering gypsies fleece my fake of a father over the years for her words to bring out a level of skepticism in me that I didn’t know I possessed.
“Your past, your present, your future…all of that. This here can give you answers.”
Her hands practically shook with excitement, but for the first time, it made me uneasy.
“Isn’t there some kind of Oracle here for that?”
Once again, the very mention of the Oracle brought something like a fit.
“Don’t you mention thatcreaturehere,” she hissed at me. Her eyes were wide still, but now in fear. She dropped the heavy, round object on the counter suddenly, her hands scrambling along the top of the counter for something she desperately needed even more.
While her hands were busy, a great glass ball rolled out from beneath the cover she’d placed over it, threatening to plunge over the edge of the counter and shatter on the hardened floor the roots had woven beneath my feet.
I reached for it on instinct, but the moment my hands touched the glass, I knew what a mistake I’d made.
All at once, I was no longer standing in the shop.
I stood in a void surrounded by nothing but thick, choking smoke. Somewhere, not too far off, I heard the sound of crackling fire. From between the clouds of smoke and ash, I caught glimpses of that orange fire’s glow. Heat radiated towards me, threatening to singe my hair and skin—if I had any body to speak of. I was weightless, drifting, nothing more than a specter here.
I needed no body to feel, however and I felt myself pulled towards that fire.
That need grew as the fire did too.
The orange and yellow tendrils of it climbed higher and higher, reaching up towards a sky obscured by smoke.
The more I ignored the call to draw near, the more I felt that need deepen and darken into something that tugged at my very soul. I was overwhelmed with a deep dream, the sensation that something terrible was going to happen if I didn’t go towards that fire, but without a body to answer the call, that demand only grew and grew until it consumed me.
It dragged me so deep into that bottomless, endless pit of dread that I feared I’d never crawl out of it.
Just as I was sure I was lost inside the vision, it finally chose to let me go.
I dropped the ball the moment I felt its hold loosen on me. It fell not to the floor, but straight into the waiting cloth-wrapped arms of the shopkeeper. She bundled it away in a flash, her eyes never leaving mine for a moment—not until she’d reached out once again and this time dug her long, curling claws deep into the flesh of my arm.
Gone was the friendly female that had beckoned me into her shop. She’d been replaced my something far more evil, something that now bared its teeth at me as it yanked me halfway across the counter between us.
“Pay up, now. You’ve gotten what you came for, fortune-seeker, now give me the gold.”
I blinked up at her in shock, surprise freezing me to the spot. Not that I could have pried myself free of her if I wanted to, it was all I could do to keep from crying out as her claws broke the surface of my skin and sank into me like hooks.
“I—I didn’t mean to—”
“You knew exactly what you were doing when you came into my shop,” she snapped at me. “They all do. They all think they can get a little looksie for free. Well, you want to know what I do to the fae that try and trick me? Do you?”
Despite the fact that I was furiously shaking my head, telling her that I didnotin fact have any desire to know what she did to the fae that she tricked into taking part in her little charade, she was determined to show me. She dragged me along the edge of the counter, barely avoiding knocking over those dark fogging cauldrons as she did, to a curtain separating the front part of her shop from a back room. With one fluid, jerking motion, she used her free hand to pull it back—revealing the horrors beyond.
Row upon row of skulls—not even pretty white skulls, skulls in various states of decay.
Some at the very far back, looked like they still had skin and flesh attached.
I tried not to look at them, to see the fate this fae was trying to condemn me to, but I couldn’t avoid thesmell.
“Didn’t anyone ever warn you not to mess with the dark fae of the forests?” she hissed at me again, grip tightening again as she started trying to pull me back behind the curtain with her. My heart thundered in my ears, drowning out any thought of escape. My mind had gone blank at the overwhelming stench of rotting flesh. I couldn’t even scream at the way her nails dug deeper, piercing now into muscle.
Then I saw the table laid out behind the rows of skulls, the implements already prepared and ready to remove my head from its proper place upon my shoulders, and I knew this had been no mere coincidence. She hadn’t intended to have me pay. She probably wouldn’t have even taken my money.
