Dark Promise by Annika West

28

“There’s no right or wrong answer.”

“Fuck you.”

She snarled, showing me a fang. “You know how many people I’ve told this to?”

I stated the obvious. “No.”

“Three. Including you. What a waste of fucking time and energy. I don’t even like you.”

I felt metaphorical sparkles radiating from me. Hope filled my heart to the brim as I shifted to my knees and stared up at Willow’s incandescently angry face. “Really? Who else?”

Her scowl deepened. “August. My Aunt. Now, for some reason, you. Don’t you dare touch me.”

I froze mid-crouch. Ready to leap.

“I wasn’t going to,” I scoffed, covering the lie by pretending to stretch. “Nothing suspicious to see here.”

Inside, I was burning with happiness. Bubbling. Exploding.

“You’re crying,” Willow stated with disgust.

“Just trying to hold the happiness in,” I wheezed, wiping my cheeks. “I’m cool. You’re cool. We’re cool. No biggie. Everything’s normal.”

I slumped back down to the floor. “You were supposed to tell me the right thing to do, Willow.”

“Since when have you listened to anyone? Ever?”

I considered. She was right. “You know, I’m not sure.”

Willow smirked and peeked out the window again, looking as satisfied as a cat who just got the dog in trouble. “You trust me.”

Uh… what?

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You think I’m responsible. And smart. You look up to me.”

The gasp of outrage was instant. “Now you’re just getting off on your own ego. Pipe down, goth Barbie.”

“Barbie?”

“Not the astronaut one, don’t worry. I know you’d never get caught dead in that suit.”

She shook her head, crimson eyes glittering with cold amusement. “I can’t believe I understand your wavelength sometimes. It really fucking creeps me out.”

Silence settled over the room. This kind of quiet was comfortable, though. Content.

Almost… friendly.

I looked out the window but couldn’t see shit with my eyes and then flumped myself onto the bed.

“Okay,” I admitted. “Maybe I do look up to you. A little. You tend to escape death more often than I do, and that’s enough to impress anyone.”

“High praise,” she mocked, but again, I caught a teeny little smirk.

I had to perform deep-breathing exercises to keep my shit in check. Finally, after all these months of wooing her, she was admitting our deep friendship.

Keep it cool, Aster. Cool as Gladys’s freezer body. Cool as a spy with a martini. Cool as a spy-detective who used to work for the Union but now works for a homicidal dragon and her absentee faery DNA donor.

The night ended, anticlimactic.

Peaceful.

Adair let us know that the Spring Court was secure. Willow returned to her room. Hux didn’t enter mine, though he walked by every five minutes.

I knew his irritating, confident gait.

Everything was… okay. Safe, for now. If only I could say that my resolve was just as content.

What do I actually want from Huxley Cayne?

That was the question of the quarter-century, wasn’t it?

* * *

The next morning was irritating.

Now, I wasn’t being bossed around by one stupidly-old dude.

But three.

“Concentrate on the image in your mind,” Adair instructed. He tapped his temple. “This is the key to unleashing your illusion magic. Before, it has emerged out of pure erratic emotion. This will not do.”

Hux was staring at me from across the room. He touched his chest and took in an exaggerated breath.

Breathe, I could almost hear him say.

Which, I wasn’t.

Breathing, I mean.

I gasped, feeling the oxygen rush to my brain.

Damn dragon caught everything, didn’t he?

Oz clapped me on the shoulder, making everyone in the garden flinch. “Don’t overthink it, Aster. It’s magic. You already know how to work magic. Trust your instincts and fly.”

He sighed and straightened his shoulders, clearly already proud of the award-winning teaching he thought he’d done today.

Hux’s eyes simmered with amber and anger.

He still hadn’t gotten any answers from his brother. And to everyone’s surprise, he also hadn’t demanded anything.

He was… ignoring Oz. As much as possible.

Normally, I’d be picking Hux’s brain trying to figure out what he was feeling, but I didn’t want to care about what he was feeling right now.

He still hadn’t even tried to apologize for what he’d done.

“…and when you just feel the magic inside of you — hey! Are you even listening?”

“Nope.”

Oz huffed. “My efforts, wasted!”

“You all need to shut the fuck up,” I said to them all.

Adair frowned. “Huxley hasn’t said a single thing since arriving.”

I bared my teeth at Hux. “And yet, somehow, he’s the loudest. Adair, what’s the point of having illusion magic? Like, how do you use it? Is it just a trick thing?”

Adair strode in front of me to the middle of the room, blocking Hux from my view.

Smart man.

He held out his arms, and his image rippled.

He… disappeared.

When he reappeared, he was in a luau outfit, complete with the grass skirt and coconut bra. His hair was tied up in yellow ribbons.

Then, he winked and returned to his normal clothes. The next moment had the entire sky turning to darkness, then the garden melding into smoke.

My heart thudded. It was… well, it was terrifying.

And then, a more sinister glint appeared in his eyes.

Darkness pooled around me, and on the ground were Oz and Hux, dead in a pool of blood. Their eyes stared at me, accusing. Their skin was sunken and waxy.

A cold, sour sweat broke out across my body.

The image flashed, and I found myself on a mountaintop, the world smoking beneath me.

When Adair released his power, I was panting. Hux was beside me, looking into my eyes.

Again, he didn’t say a word. He just placed something small in my hand.

I looked down.

A chocolate truffle.

He’d just given me a chocolate truffle.

Hux sat down again behind Adair.

In the name of Aunt Shirley’s dead poodle, that man is such a nuisance. Why can’t he just make it easy for me to be mad at him?

I shoved the chocolate into my mouth and chewed, forcing myself to remember he was a dick. But it was hard when he gave me truffles.

The man fought dirty.

“Alright. So, you can change your own appearance, make yourself invisible, and scare the fuck out of anyone else.”

“More or less,” he agreed. “The power of our legacy’s magic comes down to energy. We shift realms and can see the energy that isn’t available to our eyes normally. With illusion, we are impacting the energy within others. Our illusions cannot be touched. However, once you are powerful enough, you can make people believe that they are feeling pleasure or pain. You can make them smell things, taste things, and hear things that aren’t there.”

I swallowed. “That is so creepy.”

“It is also high-level. I doubt you will master illusion to such an extent until you are well into your second century.”

I snorted. “Dude, I’m mortal.”

“Have you turned twenty-three yet?”

“No, but faeries are different.”

“Oh?” he asked, amused. “How so?”

“Pointy ears, duh. Terrible fashion sense. Great food. Better food than ours.”

“And yet, we, too, gain a sort of manifestation of power in our twenty-third year of life.”

“It’s… the same?”

“For all fae, yes. No matter the Court or the number of feathers. We all share the legacy. Magic is consistent, no matter the universe. At least, the ones that we know of.”

“Interesting,” I admitted.

Adair seemed to realize something. “You don’t believe you’ll reach immortality, do you?”

“Nope!”

“And why is that?”

“What’s the point of believing I will?” I challenged. “What will it do? Either I’ll be immortal, or I won’t. The worse-case scenario is that I won’t, since I’ll grow old and die while my family and friends don’t. I’ve already accepted that as my fate. Why change my mindset when nothing has even been proven? People with strong powers stay mortal often enough. Who’s to say that won’t happen to me?”

Adair considered this, smiled, and said, “What do the Earthlings say? Agree to not agree?”

“Nailed it.”

Oz yawned and asked, “Wait, I thought she turned invisible with her other power? She can just turn herself invisible with illusion?”

“The dimensional shifting truly takes her to another place. One that the physical realm cannot touch. She is entirely gone. Untouchable. Illusions, on the other hand, can be broken. Since we affect the energy in another person’s mind and perception, they can certainly break that influence that we have. Illusion is not certain. It is powerful and flexible, but not foolproof.”

He settled his ancient attention on me, smiling softly like the unicorn mascot he was. “Now, daughter. Let’s see how far we can push your limits.”