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The fae laughed. “Your life has no worth to me. Not you alone.”
“What do you want?” I said. “Revenge? I didn’t want to kill Lissa. She was your daughter, wasn’t she?”
The fae tilted her head, studying me as if I were just some curiosity. Then, she reached out and touched my face. Just that one instant, one point of contact. And she told me her truth as much as a fae can. I saw it all.
“You didn’t want her back,” I said. “Lissa told me she made a deal with Anson. She sensed your curse, your magic in him. You're the one who split him in half and made him into X. She was the one who undid it. She was trying to find her way back to you. But you never wanted her. You’re the one who cast her out in the first place. You wanted her to die. You…foresaw it.”
The fae smiled. She spoke, but her lips never moved. She projected her voice inside my head.
“Lissa did what she was meant to do. She brought you to me. You’re here now. It took you long enough.”
“Meant to do,” I said. “You used her to poison my brother. To poison the rest of my family.”
She brought her other hand up and cupped my face. “It was the only way,” she said. “The only way you’d come to me willingly, my dear.”
Come to her. Come to her! My God. Anson. X.
“You…” I said. “You cursed him. You set all of this in motion. Cursed Anson. Poisoned Jarred and my family.”
“For this moment,” she said. “You’re the answer, Tempest. It’s been you all along.”
“No,” I said. “No!”
“You’re here,” she said. “You had to call me forth of your own free will. I couldn’t do it for you. I couldn’t chase you.”
“I want you to free them,” I said. “The wolves of Wild Lake don’t deserve what’s happened to them.”
“The wolves of Wild Lake have fought against my kind for decades.”
“No,” I said. “They’ve never laid a hand on the fae. Not them. Only me. So if someone has to pay for killing Lissa, then it’s me you want.”
I was a fool. I thought I’d summoned her. But it was the fae who had summoned me all along. She could see everything. The future. The past. The present. She knew what I was going to do. Killing Lissa. Tricking Anson. All of it. A trap she had set and I’d just marched right into it.
“Undo it,” I said. “If I’m the one you’ve wanted all along, then undo it. You have the power to cure the people of Wild Lake. My parents. My brother. So do it.”
She let me go. Her face changed, becoming longer, more angular. Her teeth grew to sharp points.
“What will you give us if I let them go?”
I knew what she wanted. I knew what I was.
An Alpha female. There was only a handful of us. I was the rarest thing she could acquire. I had the power to give life. If the fae wanted to capture the essence of a shifter, who better than me to experiment on?
“I’ll go with you,” I said. “I’ll…I’ll serve you if you let my family go. They don’t deserve to die.”
“Who deserves to live?” she said.
“They do!”
She circled me, reaching for my hair, my sleeve. She inspected me as if I were a curiosity. A specimen. A prize. I realized then that’s exactly what I was to the fae. Something they could collect and control. It would be worth it though, if I could save my family. If I could save Wild Lake.
“You’re strong,” she said.
Suddenly, I heard other voices. Shadows appeared. They grew darker, then lighter, then took on human shapes. No. Not human at all. I was surrounded by a circle of fae.
A Ring…
“You can’t come back,” I said. The truth of my words rang out. They couldn’t come back. Their conduit to this realm was closed. Hopefully forever. They’d left one or two behind. The weakest among them, like Lissa. But she couldn’t get back, because they couldn’t open the door either. But…they could pull me through if I didn’t fight back.
