Page 61 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
I’d once blamed Icarus for being the force that drew me into the Wildness. But long before he knew I existed, I’d been feeling its call. I felt its pull as surely now as I had all of my life, a feeling I’d ignored until I quite literally had been unable to.
It was only this that drew me into the smoke, even once it grew thick enough to choke me. I pushed forward between the flames that rose to greet me, their golden tendrils licking at the trees they burned but did not consume.
Ash smudged my skin and burned my eyes, but still I continued. I couldn’t stop. I was drawn forward as if by a magnet, that invisible force that had been calling to me all my life now finally pulling me into its grasp.
If there was a face of fate, it was the face that rose to greet me the moment the smoke cleared.
I didn’t have to ask if the creature that emerged before me was the Oracle.
I already knew.
Just as she knew me.
That didn’t stop my mouth from going dry at the sight of her.
The last gust of smoke dissipated as an invisible wind pushed the pillars of fire away from us so that I could, at long last, lay eyes on the force that had drawn me here.
“Aurra…” her voice purred, her lips broadening in a hungry, satisfied smile. “I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.”
She was not fae, but she was not a demon either. She had the appearance of a woman in the way that a tree or a rock might look like a woman, if the light hit it just right. Her breaths were shallow and her voice smoke-scorched. She sat upon what once might have been a throne, but had long since turned to ash.
I tore my eyes from her, taking in the piles of burning wood and broken glass all around us.
“What happened?”
Her eyes glowed when I met them, a mistake I wouldn’t make again. For that one brief moment when I looked into her eyes, I saw too much. I saw not only into myself, but intoeverything.I was lost for an eternity, all that I learned forgotten the moment I looked away—but the emptiness of knowing and then not knowing remained.
It was all I could do not to gasp aloud at the pain of it.
“Not everyone who visits me likes what I have to say,” she answered. “Even fewer still who would be worried about the Oracle and her wellbeing.”
I forced myself to look at her again, though I was careful to avoid her eyes. There was no time to mourn the loss I felt.
“It must be a lonely job, then.”
She laughed, a terrible sound I wished I was able to forget. But unlike what I saw in her eyes, it lingered, imprinted on my brain forever.
“Surely, you didn’t come here to waste your one question to find out what happened to me.”
Fear futtered in my chest, a feeling the Oracle devoured in an instant. I’d barely had time to feel it, for it to flood into me before she stole it with a delighted sigh.
“You,” she said, after a moment of feasting, “have been avoiding me a very long time. I was surprised you answered this time.”
“It wasn’t exactly like I had a choice.”
Something about her posture shifted when I answered. The look on her face twisted into an emotion I couldn’t read.
“Oh, I do so look forward to this one,” she said. “Most people who come to me are so boring. Will I marry him? Will she love me back? How can I make my fortune?” She sat forward, eyes boring into me, daring me to glimpse into them again. “But you, you came here to ask something much more fun, didn’t you?”
Fun? Fun wasn’t quite what I would call it.
I hadn’t had much time to consider what I would ask the Oracle when I met her,ifI met her, but that was no one’s fault but my own. I’d had plenty of time of course, but I’d been so consumed with the two questions that I’d beentoldto ask, that I didn’t think about what I actually wanted to ask.
For myself.
The first question, the matter of my birthright, had already been answered.
As much as I was still struggling to believe it for myself, I was the lost princess—thoughlostmight not be the right answer for what I was. Was anyone reallylostif they were willingly secreted away?
