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Hey Ballz.
Look, I want to say that I got the hint, but I’m worried.
Give us a yell to let me know you’re okay and I’ll leave you alone.
Buns x
I click send on a regretful sigh, my melancholy interrupted by rustling in the next aisle over. It sounds like someone is having amuchbetter day than me if the whisper-shouted “fuck yeah!” is anything to go by. Good for them.
Without really looking at what I pick up, I throw some pasta into the wobbly cart, and move down the aisle, watching the message sitting on unread, as if I can somehow telepathically get it through to Tor.
Which is why it shocks me to the core whenGlitterballz’saccount suddenly flicks to online and the message goes from grey to green. He isonline.
He is onlineright now.
Tor
This week hassucked. This whole month, actually.
Actually, for someone whose supernatural talent isluck,things have been remarkably shitty for a while now. I am really done with it.
First, my asshole parents tried to block my inheritance, the one I already had, until I got a job “suitable to my station and lineage”,pretentious wankers.
Then they hadsuccessfully gotten me fired from my lush job working the bar atFaetesque, the city’s hottest fae-slash-being nightclub, using their connections and getting it shut down temporarily. My boss had forgiven me, but no one was quite willing to forget just yet. Work had been tense, to say the least, when I’d gone back.
And then my younger brother, the only shining light in the viper nest we call a family, had managed to disappear off the face of the earth on some ridiculous lark chasing fae heritage or something.
Theo had been going on about finding the key to long-lost fae magic. It had been his latest wild hair. And apparently the Whisper Woods held the key. He’d toddled off into theliteral magical woods, leaving vague coordinates on a map and a darling little letter saying he’d be back in a month, and that he was “safe,” having been invited on some insane expedition. Safe, travelling into the bloody Whisper Woods, in the darkest depths of winter, with the Gods know who.
Sure.
I had been irate. But Theo had purposely left when I had been away with friends to the coast for the weekend. He had been moaning about being babied and this, this, was how he decided to show how “mature” he was. I didn’t trust it in the least, and I still don’t.
It’s not just that Theo is seven years younger than me. It’s that Theo isdifferent. He is softer. Quieter. He was never built for the cutthroat, social climbing, money grasping, narcissistic world we were born into, thanks to our illustrious lineage.
Theo was always socially awkward, shy even. Because he was so different, and didn’t go to school with other kids his age, he never really had any friends growing up. He was always on his own with his nose in a book, studying something or other. It used to enrage our parents when he would run off at parties to read in a corner or break into a library to find their books. I am like ninety nine percent sure he is still a virgin.
But he has the most brilliant mind I have ever seen. My gift may have been luck, and all fae are gifted withknowing, but Theo? Theo’s gift was his brain. He didn’t justknow,fae’s gift for claircognizance, our intuition; heknew. It was like he kneweverything, just there in his head.
He had blown through his schooling, ending up in the prestigious Loqueaur University by the time he was twelve. He had amassed more doctorates, degrees and honours than he knew what to do with. And yet he thoughtthiswas a good idea.
But despite my misgivings about Theo’s adventure, I had let it go. Theo still lives with our parents and when I followed up with them, they hadn’t even noticed he had left.
A week and my discomfort had grown, two weeks and, on top of everything else going on in my life, my instincts were screaming. And now it’s been nearly three weeks with no sign or word from my misguided little brother, so I’ve decided that it is time to go looking for him.
It hadn’t taken long to get packed to go, not that my plan was much better than Theo’s.
I arranged for a friend from work to watch my apartment, packed a bag and grabbed the letter my brother left. The map was marked somewhere in the middle of Whisper Woods.
Maps of the area aren’t exactly specific. What is in there doesn’t exactly want to be found and the Woods themselves are known for being contrary, changingtheir paths and landscape to suit their own wishes and the needs of those that dwell within. It is all for a very good reason.
The deepest, darkest heart of Whisper Woods is rumoured to be the home of the most fierce magical beings in existence.
Whisper Woods dominates the continent, darkening the southern and western coastlines, mostly barricaded in by an impassable mountain terrain. Only two entrances are truly available for any but the bravest adventurer, or the incredibly stupid.
The first, and the only route not previously blocked by winter snow, so Theo’s only option, is the popular coastal township called Twin Heads.
They named it after the two-headed sea dragon that had been slain on the beaches during the Great War. The beast’s suffering had finally ended the battle between the magical and human, ending in the semi-peaceful treaty that had settled over our country for the past five hundred years.
