Page 36 of Faerie Marked

Finally, Mike disappeared in the crowd and I lost sight of him. The girl let loose a sigh at his disappearance. “Pure gorgeousness.” She’d been watching Mike as well, her mouth rounded in an O of surprise. “Goodness, just when I thought I’d seen everything. Tavi Alderidge, you are one lucky girl. A hell of a lucky girl. YouareTavi Alderidge, right? I had your picture in my files but I left them on my desk. Jeez, I’m sorry. Melia Haversham.” The girl made the introduction as more of an afterthought, too wrapped up in Mike’s presence to remember her manners.

I could understand.

Shrugging, I reached out to shake her hand. “Are you my mentor?”

“Girl,yes. I’ve been assigned to you for the duration of your stay at the academy. Well, until I graduate, of course.” Then she broke off on another sigh. “I still can’t believe you rode here with Michael.No big deal, you say. Yeah, it’s a big deal becausehe’sa big deal. Oh damn, we’re going to be late. Okay, let’s hurry. I’ve got something to show you first.”

She pulled me away from the cafeteria doors and I cast a glance over my shoulder filled with wistful desire. No snacks for me.

If Melia was flabbergasted at my interaction with Mike, I felt the same way trying to follow her in conversation. She didn’t make it easy as she led me back the way I came.

“Come on, come on. You’re going to want to see this, Tavi. Can I call you Tavi? Is it short for anything? Like, would you prefer I call you by your full name?”

“Tavi is my full name,” I told her.

She hurried me up the staircase and along a small hallway off the main entryway. The space opened up into a grand ballroom with oil portraits hung on three of the walls. The fourth wall was cut through with floor to ceiling sliding glass doors leading out onto a pretty garden patio. Beyond the patio was extensive greenspace perfect for games and lounging in the summer.

“Look.” Melia gestured dramatically to an oil painting dominating the wall to my left, hung centered over a marble fireplace. “Now you’ll see why I’m acting a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

I stepped closer, rubbing my eyes to clear them. The painting showed a handsome gray-haired gentleman in regal navy-and-red clothes with his arm around the shoulder of a smiling woman sitting on a velvet chair before him. To the woman’s right, a young man stood, one hand curved around the lapel of his suit jacket. A man who looked suspiciously like Mike.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. Why are you showing me this? Who are these people?”

Melia laughed, the sound rich and honeyed. “Oh Tavi, you are sweet. You don’t know a thing about Faerie, do you? That’s King Tywin and Queen Laina with their son Michael. Michael Thornwood, thecrownprinceof Faerie.”

13

Mike had lied to me about his identity. Everything I thought I knew fell away, and I was left holding the shattered remnants of everything we’d started to build…

“No,” I told Melia with a shake of my head, brows drawn together in disbelief. “No, you can’t be right. If Mike is the prince of Faerie…”Dear God!“…then he’sfullFae. Why would he be here?”

I stared at the painting for what felt like hours, my head continuing to shake and causing the ache between my ears to deepen.

Melia shrugged, the movement emphasizing her delicate shoulders clad in a white button-up shirt leading down to a dark skirt. School uniform? I’d need to ask her where I could get one. When I came down from the delirium cloud I currently rode.

She was a few inches taller than me with the delicate build I now expected from the Fae. Despite her slender frame, Melia looked as though she could handle her own in a fight. I didn’t expect there to be one.

“I wish I knew,” she replied with equal disbelief. “I’d heard a whisper he was coming, and the rumor mill said it had something to do with King Ty wanting him to understand more about their people in the mortal realm. Or something like that. But you know how rumors are. You hear dozens of statements and only one is correct. Or maybe none.”

“I don’t understand.”

I floundered to keep up with this new piece of information, my gaze riveted on the painted rendition of Mike. The same Mike who’d carried me into the nurse’s office hours earlier and waited for me outside the door. The same guy who’d offered me a ride when I’d been broken down on the side of the road. The same one who’d helped me find my dorm last night.

“I don’t either, but at least we can be confused together.” Melia flashed me a smile showing very white teeth. “And now you know who he really is and how crazy it seems to see you guys are buddy-buddy.”

My chest hollowed out and I merely said, “Yes, I do.”

The one friend I’d been grateful to have turned out to not only be a liar, but a royal liar. Someone I could absolutely, positively, under no circumstances let into my life on the off chance he’d find out my secret.

“Come on,” she said, hustling me out of the room. “We have a lot to get through today. Time to begin your tour, new friend!”

The more time I spent with Melia, the more I saw how her inside matched her beautiful outside. Her eyes were a vibrant golden-brown lit with an inner fire. Her hair fell in a heavy curled fall of rich brown and dark bronze, the ends brushing around her narrow waist to offset the caramel of her skin.

She moved with ease and grace as though she didn’t notice how, when she crossed a room, people stopped to stare at her. A year or two older than me if I had to guess, yet decades ahead when it came to poise.

And she was kind. The kindness took me by surprise.

“You really are going to like it here, I can tell,” she told me on our tour as we walked side by side along a third-floor corridor “You aren’t one of those first-years who thinks they can make it through probationjustbecause you’re half Fae. There are so many kids like that, it’s honestly shocking. They think they’re tough shit until they figure out this isn’t a game of favoritism and their so-called natural powers are shared by, like, literallyeveryone.”

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