I collapsed to my side, my exhaustion finally overcoming me. My legs were bleeding, my feet aching, my heart… broken.
“I don’t belong here,” I whimpered, curling into a ball of despair. Leaves seemed to fold around me, cocooning me from the elements, soothing my spirit in a way I could hardly comprehend. But I allowed it. Because what else was I supposed to do?
“Who am I?” I asked, a sob ripping from my chest.
Claire… My name whispered on the wind, my vision blurred by the flutter of butterflies overhead. Claire…
I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear another word, refusing to acknowledge this insanity any longer.
This is not my home.
Titus
What a fucking morning. My head spun from the aftermath of what felt like a dream that had me in a fog for hours.
Something strange was happening, causing the campus to come alive in excitement. And I wasn’t in the mood for excitement, something most would say was out of character for me.
However, after my fuckup with Ignis last night, I had good reason. Sleeping with her had been a huge fucking mistake—not that I’d had much choice in the matter—and now she refused to understand the words never happening again. I didn’t do relationships, especially not with the likes of her. I just wanted to be alone. Heading to the gym and isolating myself in the guys’ locker room seemed to be the only place of solace I could find in this damned school.
Normally, I enjoyed the challenge a Fire Fae like Ignis would bring, maybe even indulge her with a round or two before I moved on, but I’d fallen into a temporary funk that I couldn’t explain.
I leaned back against the lockers and let my head thump against the unforgiving steel. It was the only place on the premises that wasn’t covered in nature and shit. I needed metal and grounding. I needed to focus. Closing my eyes, I focused on the flames licking at my insides and threatening to burst out of me. The air around me wavered, and I knew I risked melting school property if I didn’t get my shit under control.
“You okay, man?” River asked, wiping both the sweat and conjured water from his face with a towel.
As a Water Fae, he was the only guy who’d dare approach me in an enclosed locker room. That was predominantly why the shy fae and I had become friends over the past year. In some ways, I seemed to be even more isolated than him. A side effect of being the Powerless Champion—winner of the ring where fighting to the death was common and the use of powers meant execution in the most fantastical manner.
One rule: no powers—hence the title the “Powerless Champion.”
It took a certain kind of mental state for me to win in that kind of fighting ring, but that had been me for quite a few years. That was before the accident. Before the Academy. Before a friend like River.
Another spasm rushed through my body that left me feeling nauseous. I felt as if I were being pulled somewhere off campus, like my whole body wanted to run. I never ran from my problems, no matter how big or irritating they were.
Rubbing the back of my neck, I suppressed a groan. Everything hurt as if I’d been back in the fighting ring for weeks, but the days of bashing skulls were behind me. I was trying to turn over a new leaf and control my powers instead of pretending they didn’t exist—which had gotten half of my family killed when they finally demanded acknowledgment.
Fuck if that was going as planned.
“I must be sick,” I replied to River. I showed him my palm. Instead of veins, embers writhed under my skin like possessed snakes. After so many years of denying myself my powers, they were coming through with merciless greed—or something was calling them to the surface.
Instead of fear, River looked amused. “Must be the curse,” he said as he flicked his wrist and sent water splashing onto my skin. Steam hissed immediately and fogged the air, but it felt good.
Waving away the mist, I glowered at him. “Don’t tell me you believe in that bullshit, too.”
He cocked his brow and strapped the towel around the back of his neck. “So you heard about her?”
Of course I’d heard about her. News of the Halfling was spreading faster than any wildfire I could create. Maybe it was the anxiety surrounding her arrival that set me on edge.
“I have no interest in humans,” I said flatly, although the surge of heat in my core suggested otherwise, as if she were somehow the source of all my power trying to burst out of me. Ignoring it, I popped open the locker and snatched my fireproof shirt, stretching the fibers before pulling it over my head. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”
It was a poor attempt at tricking River into leaving me alone. The Water Fae didn’t need a proper shower, not with his powers fully under control.
Showing off, River spritzed himself with a splash of water and stepped closer to me to evaporate the excess. He grinned before pulling his shirt over his head.
“You know the Halfling is a female… right?” River waggled his brows, no doubt hoping to entice me to go check her out for ourselves. He would be far too shy to approach her, but he was always fascinated by humans. He took every elective and training session he could get his hands on to study the short-lived race.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t care what she is. I don’t want to see another girl right now.”
Just when I was about to lean back onto the lockers again, River took me by the wrist and yanked hard. He flushed his grip with water that sent fresh steam into the air and protected him against my burning skin. “Stop pouting,” he said. “We both know Ignis is waiting right outside, and you’ve been avoiding her. It’s time to confront her and get the bullshit out of the way. Then we can go sniff out the Halfling and see if she’s put a curse on you,” he added with a smirk.