out at a great speed. So loud that they echoed in my mind. I heard them but didn’t comprehend each word until several seconds after it was spoken. I was still too shocked. I’d been raised by humans my whole life. Up until a few short months ago, I’d thought I was human, but never had I suffered this kind of hatred in another creature as he so obviously did.
Not even the nuns. Some had been cruel. Downright uncaring to an orphan with nowhere else to go, but never before had I hated another person. Ariana was the first—I hated her—but not in the same way this man hated Fae.
As I raised my head and slowly got off the floor, I listened to him spew his anger and all I saw in him was sadness. Why was there so much sorrow emanating from him? Why did it pierce me so?
The louder he screamed, the more I felt it. Until it was as if a thousand knives were stabbing into my skin. Stop! I wanted to cry out. Please! It hurts!
I didn’t know what led me to reach for him, but it was intrinsic knowing—I had to touch him. Or else something bad would happen. He didn’t even see it coming. One moment he was there, screaming his lungs out, and then my fingers had barely brushed the side of his arm.
Geoffrey froze, his lips parted, but no words came out. His eyes dropped down to where I touched him and they widened when he realized that my skin was illuminated. It wasn’t enough. My arm rose, further and further, until I felt flesh against the inside of my palm. The side of his neck and then his cheek as I pulled it in my hand. All of the pain I felt in him was magnified at the very moment of contact. Tears sprang to my eyes as a vision appeared in my mind’s eye.
A beautiful woman with a happy, smiling face. Long dark hair. Running away from me … no, not me. Him. These were his memories I was seeing. And something awful was about to happen.
The memory changed, morphing into something darker. Clouds rolled into the sky of the image I was seeing. Lightning and fire. Brimstone and death. I could smell it as if it were actually there. That same woman’s face appeared once more, only this time, she wasn’t smiling. She was crying. Silent tears ran down her face, clearing it from the sudden grime and blood that appeared on her skin.
“Amelie…” Geoffrey’s croak broke the spell that had woven itself over the two of us. He blinked and then I did as well. The memory was gone, but the sorrow remained. “How did you…?”
“I-I don’t know,” I answered him honestly.
He stumbled back, trembling even as I tried to reach for him again. I didn’t know why I wanted to comfort him so, not when he was just saying such horrible things about Fae—about creatures like Orion and Roan and Sorrell. Perhaps it was a deeper part of my being, the part that understood loss and pain the same that he had experienced.
“Keep away from me!” he said as he hurried towards the door. He banged on it once and it opened.
There was no chance to go after him. And even if I’d managed to, what would I have done? The door banged shut behind him as he disappeared. I lowered my arm and sank back down onto the floor, drawing my dirty legs up and wrapping my arms around them as I let myself cry.
She must have been someone very important to him, I realized. And even if she’d died because of the war, that didn’t mean that others hadn’t suffered a similar loss.
A new memory arose in the back of my mind—both a recent and old one. My parents in the forest. Was it real? I wondered. Had they really left me to save my life?
I sniffed hard and pressed my forehead to the tops of my knees. Hopefully, their sacrifice hadn’t been in vain because even if I wanted to save the Kingdom and the Fae from their own deep rooted hatred of each other, there was no way I could do it from a prison cell, and there was even less of a way for me to do it once I was dead.
Chapter Nine
Cress
I stared at the gray stone of my cell wall. A bug crawled out of the cracks, skittered up the