Page 46 of Fake Fae-Ancée

"And you will leave me alone forever."

"Would be no point not to," I gritted out.

"Excellent!" The Witch rose and clapped her hands once, beaming like she’d just won the lottery. "A ruse to be engaged — in order not to be married anymore. This is most intriguing, isn’t it?"

Kai

Once upon a time…

…there was a girl, dying in the snow.

Her parents had moved over to the world behind the veil, where they hoped to find a better life. But the Daemon guarding the portal would not let their daughter pass.

"Not her," he had snarled. "She carries the wrong blood."

Her parents had paid dearly for passage. Her mother had sold her golden hair, her father had sold everything they owned in order to cross over to the better world. But the Fae ruling over the strange land on the other side did not want little girls with dark hair and violet eyes.

So, the parents had moved on without her. The little girl had cried and wailed and pleaded. But the father had dragged the sobbing mother over the threshold and the Daemon had slammed the portal shut forever.

Night fell.

The girl died in the snow. Her tears froze on her face. The wind whipped and howled, but the girl was already sinking into the shadows, where the cold could no longer find her.

Something else found her, though.

Or someone.

* * *

I drifted awake.

The morning sun seeped through the stone-gray curtains. The remnants of the dream still dancing in my head fuzzed out, disappearing behind the event horizon of my sleepy brain. A dream, or a memory? I wasn't sure. It felt familiar, and kind of sad.

Yawning, I sat up.

Unfortunately, everything that had happened yesterday hadn't been a dream. I was still here, in the queen-sized bed in Kalinin's guest room, wrapped in bedding that had probably cost more than the entire contents of my closet.

Guest room, I repeated in my head. The friendly butler had told me this would be my room for the duration of my stay — and I was glad I had a door I could close behind me. Guest room, not my room. I wasn’t going to stay. At least not for long.

Test wise, I put out mental feelers to my inner self. But where my Anima usually hummed and buzzed like a busy swarm of bees, there was — nothing. Only mute blankness. And a feeling as if the world surrounding me was pressing down on me with a barrel weight.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ring on my finger.

That damn spell. What if I never get my powers back? A tight knot of fear coiled in my stomach.

What good are you without your powers?

I quickly got up, stretching my neck and reached for the sweater that I had thrown over the chair next to the bed, trying to shake the fear and the sad feeling the dream had left behind.

"You shouldn't even be here,"had been Aunt Gytha's favorite phrase whenever my parents' escape to Otherland had come up at dinner. Much to Aunt Gytha's chagrin, she as my last living relative and had been obligated by law to raise me.

I zipped the sweater up to my chin when there was a knock on the door.

"Er…. Come in?" I sputtered.

The door opened and in walked Bates, the butler, carrying a large silver tray with delicate china clattering faintly, and a teapot that was puffing little clouds of steam.

"Good Morning, milady," he said with a jovial smile.

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