“Not yet,” Nylah said sadly, turning her face toward the fireplace. Her sadness caught me off guard. “I know the humans don’t have value to some Fae, but all life has value to me. That includes you.”
“The King didn’t think I had value,” I spat. “He wanted me killed.”
She nodded. “I know, but that was before he knew what you are, and who you’re not. It’s hard to see the world through fresh eyes when all you know is your pain, but it will bode you well to try.”
I was angry. I wanted to get out of here. I wanted to go back to the world I understood. Nothing here made sense, and everything I tried to upset the High Priestess, to cause friction so I could fight my way out, failed. I was more comfortable with anger than with sorrow. I didn’t want pity. I couldn’t read her, and that was unsettling. I couldn’t fight her, and that made me feel untethered.
“When I take your hand, I’m going to ask the Goddess Terra to show me what we’re missing. If it’s right, she’ll share with us, and we can find out more.”
“And if she doesn’t think it’s right?” As much as I respected the Fae deity, I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do if she was in a mood.
“She will reveal to us what we need to know when we need to know it.”
It wasn’t an answer. When someone didn’t want me to know something, I would do what it took to figure it out myself.
I was out of my depth here. I was losing. Until I knew what the next step was, I had to be still and allow the High Priestess to figure out what had happened to me.
“May I?” Nylah asked again and held out her hand.
This time, I took it. I was still unsure, but I allowed it. I wanted to know as much as the King and Nylah did, and if she moved in the Second Realm and could ask the Goddess to show us what we wanted to know…what did I have to lose?
I put my bloody hand in hers. I was still filthy from the fight, and it looked so much worse against her pure cleanliness. But she didn’t flinch or recoil when I touched her.
Nylah’s skin was soft like the petals of a rose, and her power sighed along my arm, brushing against my skin and creating goosebumps on my shoulders.
She hummed a tune that sounded very much like an incantation or a chant.
“Goddess Terra, Divine Power, we call upon you this day to ask for a favor. We humbly approach you to ask what happened and how Ellie arrived to be among us. If you sent her here, show us how it came to be.”
What if Terrahadn’tsent me here?
I didn’t have time to figure out the rest, to argue with what was happening, even if it was just in my mind. Suddenly, visions appeared before me, and it was like Nylah and I stood in the same room, watching the same reel. We still held hands, but the vision unfolded before us.
I watched myself as I worked in the pub back home, pouring pints of beer behind the old wooden bar, scratched over the years. Someone in a booth grabbed me. It was clear I didn’t want it, but he continued harassing me.
I asked him to stop, as if words ever helped. When he didn’t, I elbowed him in the face. Blood poured from his nose and blossomed on his shirt when he howled.
This happened all the time. Seeing my reaction objectively was impressive.
Nylah’s tensed, and when I glanced at her, her mouth was open, the corners turned down. She was horrified.
We watched as Craig denied me my meal. I went to my room hungry and heard something downstairs. My heart beat in my throat when I watched myself going into the storage room. A shadowy figure knocked me out. Not with magic, but with a brick to the head.
I touched my head, feeling a bump. It had really happened. All this was true, although I didn’t remember a thing.
The shadow started with an incantation that sounded similar to what Nylah had done, and before our eyes, my body shifted and changed until I’d taken the form of the man I’d seen reflected in the metal siding.
“A shape shifting spell,” Nylah breathed. She’d seen this before.
The vision changed to where my male body lay on the floor in a cell. Guards came to take me away, and then I was in the arena, slaying the beast.
That was it. The vision disappeared as if someone had clicked off the projector.
“That’s it?” I asked. “It didn’t show how I got here.”
“It didn’t…” She looked deep in thought.
“Did the guards arrest me? Or did whoever that shadow was dump me here? Why can’t we see?”