Page 1 of Faerie Gift

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Since I didn’t have a home to return to for the holidays, I made do with a little fake Christmas tree that was supposed to have blinking colored lights. Most of the lights stayed onallthe time, while a few didn’t turn on at all. The branches of the little tree were bent nearly shapeless, and no matter how much fae magic I threw at the thing, the plastic needles continuously dropped anyway. It might as well have been a real tree.

I didn’t mind much. It was the tiny bit of Christmas cheer the school allowed in my dorm cubby. Anything else wouldn’t fit and I didn’t want to risk the ire of the staff as well as asecondlecture on fire hazards.

Was it wrong to say the tree and I matched on some level?

The holidays had come and gone with little fanfare, although most of the students at the Fae Academy for Halflings went home to visit with their parents and families. As for me, I spent the three-week break stuck at school, holed up in my bunk cubby or in the library poring over every book I could get my hands on to prepare for the coming semester.

Tavi Alderidge, top of her class, with a memory like a sieve.

I needed whatever help I could get.

Luckily, the Academy didn’t force their students to go home for school breaks. Those who wanted to leave were free to. I admit, it wassonice not hearing my bunkmate’s bullshit. Persephone Glaski was blonde, perfect, and a pain in my butt even though we both worked hard to keep our place at the school thanks to their cutthroat culling system.

You’d think a shared goal would have made us friends. Nope, she’d hated me on first sight.

She never let me forget: she was better than me, full stop, no further explanation required. It also didn’t seem to matter how I’d made it through our first term with higher marks than hers. She had a bigger head than most of the full-blooded Fae I’d met in my life and my good grades were icing on her cake of hatred.

The clock on the wall across from my bunk struck five, and my stomach rumbled right on time.

Throwing a coat over my shoulders, I walked out of the dorm toward the cafeteria, listening to the echo of my footsteps in the near-empty hallway, red hair tied back in a bouncing braid. I purposely turned to take the main hall, lined with golden-framed mirrors, stopping to stare at myself—and not because I had a head as big as Persephone’s.

For the entire first semester, I hadn’t been able to look into a mirror at all without suffering the consequences. My curse wouldn’t allow it.

Now I paused on purpose in front of a mirror to look at my reflection for the hell of it, taking in long rich auburn hair and the escaped curls close to my breasts. Green eyes slightly upturned. Full pouty mouth and high cheekbones, strong yet feminine features with a hint of badass to back them up. Or so I liked to think.

The expression I wore today was one of ease instead of worry. I’d managed to put on a little bit of weight to make up for what I’d lost—another aspect of the potion I took to suppress my shifter side: I couldn’t eat garlic, of which the school chef was a huge fan—and it helped round out my figure to keep me from looking like I knocked on death’s door.

With the school on break, I didn’t need to wear makeup or make sure I kept my school uniform neat and clean. I slouched around in whatever I wanted, which today included comfortable gray sweatpants and a tank top, with my favorite ratty pair of Converse sneakers.

Magic kept the castle insulated against the cold Massachusetts winter.

It didn’t take long to get to the cafeteria, recessed away from the main hallways of the castle and enchanted to replicate a fairy tea garden. Flowers and ferns grew year-round, and there were twinkling white lights intermingled among the low-hanging garlands of greenery and flowers dripping down from the ceiling. The tables were long and made of solid oak, the seats comfortable. Like a forest glen except smack dab in the middle of a castle repurposed as a school.

The rest was like any normal cafeteria in any high school across America. Except no one here wasnormal, and our ceiling had moss growing on it.

Today the tables held a scattered assortment of students who had also chosen not to go home for the holidays. I made my way toward the lone cafeteria worker, a Fae woman with pointed ears and long green hair twisted into a complicated knot on the top of her head. She had an apron looped around her tiny waist and delicate fingers some might call spindly and others artistic.

“Hi there, Sparrow,” I called out to her automatically. “How are you doing today? Do you have my meal?”

Sparrow said little but her expressions spoke volumes, and her eye roll was no exception. She disappeared for a moment before returning with a special plastic-wrapped preparation just for me.Sans garlic.

I tried to thank her because I knew what special allowances had to be made for me in this case. She’d already moved on, her attention focused on stirring a pot of something that matched her hair in color. I got a whiff of the concoction and it smelled like spring. It smelledhealthy. Yet underneath it all was the strong, overpowering stench of garlic.

The potion I used to keep my wolf-shifter half a secret had many rules going along with its use. Not as many as thefirstpotion I’d gotten—from a witch with definite hoarder tendencies—but some stipulations remained true for both of them. I still couldn’t go out in direct moonlight, touch quartz crystal, or eat garlic. The last one was unfortunate because the school chef was insanely fond of using garlic in everything he made.Everything.

I had found that out the hard way and had my spell broken immediately. In the middle of a busy breakfast. In front of all my peers who had no idea what lengths I’d gone to in order to hide who I really was.

At least I’d managed to work out a deal with the kitchen regarding my “food allergy” but the chef clearly didn’t believe me because my specially prepared meals seriously sucked. I think he did it on purpose because I refused to eat his regular food.

But at least my meals didn’t make my glamour fail. I’d had enough broken spells from accidental garlic ingestion to last me a lifetime, thank you very much.

Nurse Julie, one of the only people here at the Academy who knew my secrets, had taught me how to make my own potion so I wouldn’t be beholden to any more questionable-at-best witches to provide for me. She was a miracle worker.

Speaking of…

Nurse Julie rounded a corner with a flick of wings, her blue skin picking up a slightly golden hue from the overhead lights nestled among the greenery. Her eyes caught mine and she changed direction to head toward my empty table.

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