Around her, blooms flourished among the trees. Her feet crunched through the crisp green grass, but they weren’t the only ones.
The man followed her.
“Brea, wait.”
“I’m ready to wake up now.” She reached a clearing and lifted her face to the sky, begging for some higher power to make this all go away.
“You’re not asleep, and you’re not imagining things.”
She turned to face the man who’d called himself Griff. He was ridiculously attractive—if you were into that kind of thing. His long auburn hair was tied back away from the flawless skin of his face. Intense green eyes—no longer flashing violet—locked on her, but she refused to meet them, focusing instead on the pointed tips of his ears.
“You’re a delusion.”
“I’m not.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“I just want to go home.” To wake up in the twin bed she’d slept in since she was a kid and start this day all over again. “I never left the institute. Myles isn’t dead.”
Griff’s expression softened, and he took a step toward her. “I’m sorry about your friend. But it wasn’t your fault. You don’t know how to control what’s happening to you.”
“Nothing is happening to me except my mind imagining things.” But she felt it, the energy within her. There was no denying how it kicked her heart up a notch and latched onto her anger, her sadness.
Among all these lies, that felt like the only truth she had.
Something was very wrong with her.
Without thinking, she turned and started running, ducking back into the trees. Branches whipped her face, causing a trickle of blood to drip down over her parted lips as she crashed through the woods, trying to get away from the man pursuing her.
She panted as she leaped over a fallen tree and burst past the tree line, stopping dead in her tracks at the sight before her. Rolling green hills stretched into the distance like a painting of a lonely land, untouched and wild.
Clear blue skies topped off the picturesque landscape without a cloud in sight.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Griff stopped beside her.
Her jaw clenched. “No.” Lies, illusions, were never beautiful.
She could barely make out a house in the distance surrounded by pastures where horses grazed.
“That’s home.” Griff pointed to the house. “I tried to get the portal as close as I could without scaring the horses with the energy it emitted.”
“Portal?” She shook her head. None of this made any sense. She walked back into the woods and sat down on the fallen tree she’d jumped over while trying to escape only moments before.
The events of the day played in her mind like a movie. Returning to school and facing the stares of her classmates. Myles’… death. The word sat heavy in her mind.
Then the police station and the man who took her away from there. How did it all fit together?
Griff dropped to the log beside her. “I know this is all a little much, but I promise you it’s real. I just need you to come with me.”
“I don’t even know him,” she whispered to herself. On her many stays at the institute, she’d spent hours and sometimes days with no company but herself. When she got scared or nervous, she talked to herself. At school, she worked hard to hide the habit, but now the words tumbled out. “What does he want from me?”
“I’ll explain everything in time.” He nudged her shoulder like they were old friends, like Myles would have done.
She scooted away so he couldn’t do it again. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Where’s the police officer? I want him.” Policemen were supposed to keep people safe, right?
Griff’s congeniality dropped away and he stood. “That was no human.” His eyes narrowed. “Lochlan is not to be trusted, do you understand?”
“And you are? I don’t know you. I don’t know where I am or how any of this is possible if I’m not just imagining it.”
“You don’t have a choice, Brea.”
“How do you know my name?” Back in the wintery forest, he’d said her name when he pulled her away from Lochlan.
“You’ll learn in time.”
Anger burned through her. In time? She deserved answers right away if he wanted her to trust him. Unable to control herself, she lunged from the log, springing toward him and taking him by surprise as she tackled him to the ground.
“I want to go home,” she yelled. A home she no longer had if her parents truly had signed over their parental rights. A home that no longer included Myles.
Griff struggled beneath her before finally flipping her off and rolling them over so he pinned her to the ground. “Calm. Down.”
“No.” She jerked her knees up, connecting with his crotch. His face twisted in pain, but he didn’t release her.
“Brea, stop.”
Light exploded from her just as it had before. The pressure on top of her vanished as Griff flew across the clearing.
Unlike her mother with the Christmas tree or Myles outside the school, Griff didn’t collapse to the ground. Instead, he landed in a crouch before straightening.
“Well.” He grimaced. “That’s something we will have to get a handle on. Get up, Brea.”
She refused. Her chest heaved as she stared up at him with wide eyes. “What’s happening to me? What did I do?” She buried her face in her hands.
She truly was a freak.
Griff sighed. “Cut it out with the self-pity. I want to make it home before dark.”
She lifted her face to him. “I’m not going to your home.” She had to find a way back to hers.
Griff shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just be careful of the wolves.” He turned and started walking away.
“Wolves?” She scrambled after him.
“These woods are dangerous at night. I wouldn’t want to be caught in them after dark.”
“At least tell me where we are?” she pleaded.
He didn’t stop walking. “The world of the fae welcomes you, Brea Robinson.”
Fae? She truly had lost it.
Chapter Four
“Why am I doing this?” Brea mumbled as she followed Griff. He even had a name that sounded like one of those characters Myles used to pretend to be when they were kids.
Why hadn’t she read more fantasy books? Or paid attention to her best friend’s every word about the worlds he disappeared into every night? No, instead, she nagged him about all the reading he did and waited for the movies and TV shows to come out.
During the summer, they’d hang out in one of the fields with Captain America, alternating between riding the horse and sitting against the base of a giant oak tree at the edge of the property. Myles always had a book propped up in his lap while Brea busied herself picking at the blades of grass and imagining shapes in the clouds overhead.
But that was before.
Before some kind of power she couldn’t explain lived inside her.
Before she told anyone about the pointed ears and flashing eyes she saw amid crowds of people.
Before she killed Myles.
“You’re going too fast.” She struggled to keep up with Griff. They’d been walking for way too long, and her feet ached. “How much longer?”