All of this is pretty pointless when money means nothing—but it’s tradition, after all.
“Enough,” Aunt Violet says. One gray-shot eyebrow lifts high above her forehead, the final warning rattle before she strikes. “Unless this house is a family full of heathens, I expect manners and clean language. Understood?”
Jane glares at her boots, but she nods along with Tanner.
“Good,” Aunt Violet continues. “Now go set the table.”
Every night without exception, Aunt Violet has everyone dress the cherrywood dining table with the gilded china from her walnut curio cabinet. Even when there’s nothing to eat but bullion flavored broth, we drink that out of the china tea set passed down from her mother-in-law.
Aunt Zinnia is the last to sit. She comes sweeping in with a vase full of sunflowers picked near the road, smiling ear to ear.
Gosh, I love that woman.
I drink everything in. The loud chatter as everyone talks over each other. The way Julia and Gabe, both five-year-olds rescued from Houston, fight over who set the table better (definitely Julia). The way Aunt Violet primly cuts her meat into tiny cubes, and Jane only eats half her meal before sharing with Julia, who’s given up her fork in favor of her fingers.
I’m going to miss this.
The thought hits me square in the gut. I don’t have the words to tell them this is my last dinner. I’ve already decided to write out the letters to both Aunts, plus one to Jane. I’m afraid she’ll try to come after me. To save me . . . or to avenge me, I can’t be sure.
The other children are young enough that they’ll soon forget I ever existed. That truth hurts more than I thought it would.
Perhaps my tormentor did exactly what he said: turned me into a girl of ice, to whittle down at his pleasure.
And when he’s done, there will be nothing left for anyone to remember.
7
A sudden panic quells my appetite. I swallow down the last bite of (admittedly dry) cornbread and quickly excuse myself, my mind on making my abrupt absence as seamless as possible for everyone. There’s so much that could go wrong with me gone, and I need to ensure they’ll be okay.
Julia and Gabe try to follow me. Usually I read them a story after dinner—or five—but Aunt Zinnia grabs them before they can follow.
She must sense something’s off with me. If only she knew the horrible truth.
My room is hot as the Summer Court, and I quickly open a window. As the oldest, I’m the only one with a private room, even if, technically, it’s the attic. Usually by morning I find Jane curled in a pile of quilts by the desk in the corner, and Julia and Gabe nestled at the foot of my brass-framed bed.
Tonight, I let in Chatty Cat, who’s been following me from a distance like he’s too cool, and then lock my door. The little ones could sleep through a four alarm fire, but Jane’s like me. A troubled sleeper.
I can’t take any chance that she’ll follow me into Everwilde.
While Chatty busies himself chasing the dust devils across my wooden floor, I slide into the red wooden chair at my desk and flip open my laptop. It’s nearly ten years old and takes forever to load our crappy internet, but I wait.
I need to know more about the place I’m going. I nearly looked it up earlier when I checked out the neverapples, but then I lost my nerve.
What if I discover the Fae torture us for kicks, or find human flesh a tasty snack? It’s not like I can choose not to go.
My homepage finally loads. Before I can stop myself, I scan the first article at the top. The headline reads: “She Lost Her Daughter Because of the Fae, Now She’s Forced to Live Next to One.”
I don’t bother reading the article; my stress level is high enough, and the last thing I need is to be reminded that the Fae destroyed half our world, trapped me here in this cesspool, then somehow talked our government into giving them temporary visas to stay in the Untouched Zone.
How is that even remotely fair? Especially when we’re stuck here, slowly starving to death.
Grimacing, I focus on the task and type in Evermore Academy. Then I hold my breath as the cursor makes the rainbow swirly disc . . . only to be disappointed with one result.
I stare in disbelief at the old Wikipedia page. Which I’ve already visited like a million times.
How can I find literally ten pages of information on a piece of magical fruit, but almost nothing on an infamous academy?
The first paragraph tells me nothing new. The noble sons and daughters of all ten Seelie and Unseelie Courts go through its hallowed grounds, blah blah. The next paragraph is more interesting, but still too brief.
Sources say every year children from the most esteemed families travel to Evermore Academy to serve the Fae students and further the diplomacy between humans and Fae.
Huh. Something tells me diplomacy has nothing to do with it, but what do I know?
The rest of the summary describes how the mortal students at the academy are trained to protect their Fae keepers from the darklings. Upon graduation, most usually go into service as shadow guardians who protect high-ranking Evermore Fae from darklings.
After retirement, a shadow can ask any favor of their Fae; many go on to be incredibly powerful influencers on the other side.
Just for kicks, I click on the link over the word darkling and am rewarded by a terrifying photo. All-black eyes stare wildly at me above bared incisors. Once human ears rise sharply into points.
The darkling in the photo, taken God knows where, still wears her human clothes: an orange-and-blue flannel and ripped jeans.
Bad fashion sense aside, the wild, hungry look in the darkling’s twisted expression scares me more than the way her back has hunched and her bones have malformed so that she runs on all fours. The way her body has grown larger even as her muscles and flesh have withered.
I skim the words below. Infested with the residual dark magic that seeps daily into the tainted borderland, this used to be a happy, seventeen-year-old girl named Samantha Stevens.
More pictures of turned darklings fill the page, and I quickly close the tab.
The Wiki for the Fae themselves is much more thorough, with everything from their appearance (super good looking,) lifespan (immortal, duh,) and weaknesses (iron, ash, rowan berries, salt,) to conspiracies on why they came.
Annoyed at the lack of any real information, I push my laptop away. I need to focus on my letters, anyway.
I feel especially guilty for not telling Aunt Zinnia. Ever since she rescued me from a human trafficking ring in Dallas, she’s been nothing but amazing. Treating me like the daughter she lost.
When the Fae arrived and took over the west, the Shimmer was erected almost immediately.
Anyone on the other side was just gone. The Fae sent a few of their leaders to talk to our side, and they quickly confirmed that not a single mortal survived what they called a terrible accident of magic.
It wasn’t until later that we were told the truth: The twisted magic from the explosion turned the humans who didn’t die into darklings. And the residue from that same polluted darkness was present everywhere in the borderlands.
The attacks began shortly afterward. Some of the darklings came from breaches in the Shimmer. Some spontaneously transformed in public places. A girl even changed in my high school. I didn’t see it, but they said horns sprouted from her head and her bones twisted and bent, her body growing into some grotesque monster not quite Fae, and not quite human.