Page 31 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
And perhaps would be, if it weren’t for the hatred the lady had for the sister that had born such a hideous creature.
Perhaps that was why she’d offered to help me take my place—because the mere look of me would add insult to injury.
Out of thecorner of my eye, I saw movement again from the crowd down below, and in that moment, I was torn from my innermost thoughts and placed, once again, in my physical body. All the word seemed to snap into place with me, a dizzying experience that had me struggling to stay on my feet.
The tower was suddenly not so tall as it had felt a moment earlier. The ground not so very fae below at all. The crowds still spread out from all sides down below, but we were really only a couple stories up. I was close enough to make out the faces of the fae down below, to see the way they turned towards their lady with all the rapture of a the moon gazing firmly upon the sun.
All, that was, but one.
That figure moving through the crowd, I recognized him.
While the advisors worked their magic—lips moving in some unspoken chant, talismans in their hands that had appeared while I was so self-absorbed I couldn’t see anything but myself, and feet shuffling as if they stood on hot coals—once more, I found my mind drawn to the last thing it should’ve been.
It was the boy, again, from before. And this time, try as I might to ignore him, I couldn’t. Not when the longer I looked at him, it wasn’t just some strange boy in the crowd, but myself. It was only weeks ago that the same hunger had consumed me. The fear of it still made my stomach rumble at the slightest scent of food, made me have to fight back the urge to overindulge everytime something was offered to me, for fear each meal might be my list.
This time, however, it seemed too that I wasn’t the only one who’s attention he’d caught.
The boy moved between the crowd with his head ducked low, as if expecting the blows that came often in the form of elbows and jostling shoulders, displeased faces turning towards him only to further turn down in disgust as they saw the grimy reason for their distraction.
More and more faces turned his way, the jostling of the crowd growing like a cancer, spreading as the Midsommar spell was slowly broken, one distracted fae at a time. This plague of distracted fae spread, and with it, something in the air began to shift.
That deafening humming sound, so loud that I hadn’t even realized it was there, quieted a little.
It was just enough to sense the shift, to suddenly become aware of the sound that had blocked out all others, so loud and so thorough that it had invaded my mind and taken over my other senses, drawing me into that trance-like state of the dance down below. At the same time, something else lessened.
In the moments that I’d become so self-absorbed, so lost first in myself and then in the sight of the boy parting the crowd down below, a strange new power had taken hold of me. This one was physical, wrapping around me, tightening, pulling across my skin like some thin film that drew too tight. It was, like that humming sound, pulling and pushing too hard all at once.
And in that moment, the moment my mind sharpened enough to become aware of it, it became excruciating.
I’d only known pain like this once before.
The moment I laid eyes on Shiel, the moment my life changed forever as I met a fae and was recognized as one of hisown. The moment the new glamour—theoldglamour—wracked through Luxia from the fae realm beyond.
Overhead, the bell began to toll as the hour of the Midsommar solstice arrived, and in that moment, once more, a glamour ripped through me.
But this time, it didn’t stop when it threw me to the ground.
This time, it didn’t stop until it ripped me apart.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The soundof screams awoke me, but this time, they weren’t my own.
It took me a long moment to realize it was my own name being shouted over and over, a moment longer to realize that the deafening, irregular beating sound was not that of my own fluttering heart, but instead heavy fists upon the door now pressed so firmly to my cheek.
I parted my lips, such a small sensation that felt somehow foreign all of a sudden, prepared to reassure Shiel and Zev and Finch that I was alright…when I had to stop.
Because everything was not alright.
I was not alright.
Because I was no longer me.
My vision had cleared enough for me to see the hands that now shook as they attempted to prop me up from where I’d crumpled to the ground.
They were not my hands.
The hands spread out beneath me where not the hands of a miller’s daughter, calloused by days spent at the wheel, nor were they darkened by the weeks spent travelling beneath the harshsummer sun. The hands that now shook more that ever were formed of a skin so soft and fresh and white that they looked as if they were freshly made. So perfect were they that my mind seemed completely unable to comprehend the fact that they were mine.
