As ridiculous as the notion sounded, I turned and headed outside, my feet moving of their own volition. Each step happened almost without my permission, like I was an ant in this body of mine, being steered and veered by another force, one that I couldn’t deny or defend myself against.
At the bottom of the stairs, I went out the door. The cool wind of the morning slapped me in the face while tendrils of iciness spindled up my legs, making me enfold my arms around my torso tighter, hoping the bite of the coldness wouldn’t reach there.
My chest swelled as though something foreign were invading it from the inside, that tugging sensation I now recognized burrowed into me and gripped me under my sternum. This time the pull was stronger, twice as much even as I followed its silent call toward the veil. It was right in my sights, that cloudy, misty pink glow that shimmered with the sun’s decision to rise and make the day come to life.
I swallowed against the curiosity and excitement in my throat, realizing I should’ve been scared of the veil, terrified of what would happen if I stepped into it, through it, beyond it.
But I wasn’t. The other side beckoned me as though it held all the answers I sought in this life.
I felt a smile raise both sides of my mouth as I stepped into the length of salmon-colored glistening mist. There was promise in that step and hope in the gathering of puffiness that danced around my calves and hugged onto my ankles. Gurgling excitement spindled down my spine as I took another step and another and another. All of my restlessness about school and wings and powers fluttered away as though the veil had given them wings and permission to flee from me.
“Endymion, stop!” I heard the voice and recognized it as Bain but simply laughed off his command. There was nothing in the world that could take me from this feeling, from this otherworldliness that had infiltrated my cells and ignited my veins.
“No, I have to go. It’s okay,” I whispered, though I didn’t recognize my voice.
“Endy, no!” A strong hold on my arm pulled me backward as the grip on my chest intensified. What was once a pull on my sternum was now a fisted jerking that began to burn in place and then branched out like lightning through the rest of my chest. An ache formed where my heart fluttered and skipped beats. I wrenched against Bain’s hold on me, begging him to let me go, though I couldn’t hear my voice, and my mouth didn’t move once.
“Not yet!” he screamed and wrapped his arms around my chest. He pulled and pulled while I fought against him. I reached for what was beyond the veil, for what I didn’t know, for something I needed, craved, hungered for, just out of reach.
He won. In seconds, I was on top of him, heaving for my next breath, destroyed and hollow.
“Why?” I whirled on him. “I was almost in. Why? Why did you take me from it?” I beat on his chest with my fists, feeling like someone else, like I’d clicked into another personality without being aware of it.
“Endy, please. Sweetheart, it’s not what you think. It tricked you. It has manipulated you. It will do anything to get you to cross. Please, listen to me.”
He held my fists down until I had no more energy to fight him. Warm tears ran down my face in thin rivers, helping with the cold of my cheeks, but I took no solace in the relief.
“I wanted to go in,” I replied, relaxing and calming my breaths and my heartbeat by sheer will alone.
“I know. It was pulling you in. It took all the strength in me to get you out.” His breaths were shallow as he sat up but never let me go. “I’m scared of what’s happening to you, Endy. If I hadn’t been here…”
I hefted out a long breath. If he hadn’t been there, I might’ve finally found answers.
“Speaking of, what were you doing here anyway? Do you just watch me all the time, stroll the quarter, waiting for me to fuck up and cross the veil?” My anger bubbled inside like a tempest storm.
“What? No, but I felt…”
I reeled back from his touch. “You felt me come out and go to the veil? Come on, Bain, give me a break.”
He looked to the ground. “You don’t understand.”
I stood and brushed off my legs. “You’re right. I don’t understand. And you just took my chance to understand, to actually know something around here other than the fact that I’m not like anyone else here. I don’t belong here and yet, maybe, on the other side, I might… just forget it. I have to get to class.”
I stomped away, refusing to look at his expression. It hurt me to speak to him that way, but everyone spoke in riddles, and I was up to my eyeballs sick of being confused and in the dark about things that pertained to my life.
Chapter Thirteen
I found a place near the veil but far enough away its call was more a pulsing than a yanking. I could fight it from here, although I still wasn’t entirely sure why I’d even want to. My parents were from there, and their parents before them, I had to assume. So why was my making a move to my “hometown” so problematic.
Oh, sure, Bain explained that while I traversed it I might be letting something evil through, but didn’t others come and go? I’d heard that some of the students and many of the staff lived in Fairyland or whatever was over there. The only term I’d heard so far was “beyond the veil,” but that couldn’t be the name really, could it?”
I had about a half hour before a study session with Bain. After he ripped me back from the veil the other day, and I stalked off, he’d tracked me down and tried to make nice by offering to help me with all the memorization that tormented me. So...we had a tentative peace, but I still didn’t know why my going through the veil, going home was such a big freaking deal.
Settling in, I watched the rainbow fluttering as the misty wall advanced and retreated by inches, beautiful, mysterious, and the only thing between me and a magical place where I might have actual relatives.
Growing up, there had been no grandparents, no aunts and uncles, no cousins...just Mom and Dad and me. I’d never asked about other family members because I’d never thought it was possible that I had family who we didn’t connect with. Had I thought my grandparents were dead? Both sets? Maybe, but nobody had actually told me that, had they?
For the first time, I wondered about that. My parents had left their world behind; that much they’d revealed, but they’d given no details about what that world included. Although I sat with my back against the stone wall at least five or six yards from the veil, I reached out. Wanting to touch the magic, to learn what my fairy ancestors were like. Or anyone from my actual generation, like cousins. I wanted—