Besides, Ness had recently revealed her pregnancy. Ryder would kill me if I dragged his pregnant wife into the den of his greatest rival. Beryl would undoubtedly jump on that opportunity…Okay, so Beryl didn’t always have Lakesedge’s best interests in mind. Sometimes, she just wanted power.
When I closed my phone and looked up, I found myself standing outside Bad Moon Café. While the closed sign was turned out, the door was unlocked as if the space had been waiting for me. I pushed through the door and stepped into the quiet interior of the empty café.
At the back, a single figure lounged with an open newspaper in one hand and a white coffee cup in the other. Audra Miura was an enigmatic figure in Lakesedge. No one quite knew what she was. Her long black hair was swept up into a neat bun with sharp angled bangs hanging down to her chin.
When I entered, she looked up from her mug. Her eyes flashed with a myriad of color. The pupils sharpened, turning into narrow diamonds before snapping back to a normal circle. My heart flipped in my chest. I dug in my heels by instinct alone.
I’d been attacked too many times in the past few days. Audra wasn’t going to hurt me. I let out a sigh and buried my face in my hands. Distantly, I heard the sound of Audra’s mug being set atop her table. She was silent in her approach. Only when she gently touched my shoulder did I realize that she’d come to me.
I pulled my hands away from my face and tried to put on a reassuring smile. It was tight and probably did the exact opposite of what I wanted. Audra didn’t smile in return. In fact, her expression remained studious. She towered over me, taller than even Vi.
What is this woman?
We’d all put money on what Audra could be. While we knew that she was supernatural like the rest of us, we didn’t know exactly what she was. Once upon a time, I’d bet vampire, back before I met Luca. Now I knew better. One look at Luca, and anyone could tell that he wasn’t human. On the other hand, Audra passed as human pretty well.
She was just…otherworldly in a way that seemed inexplicable.
Audra tucked a stray curl behind my ear. “What brought you here today, Cerridwen?”
I nearly dissolved when I opened my mouth. Nothing came out save for the exhaustion that had been riding me like a soul-sucking ghost.
Audra tilted her head curiously.
“Why did you bring us all together?” I asked, instead.
When I looked to Audra, her eyes flashed brilliantly. A sly smile lifted the corners of her petite lips. “Ah, so you’ve noticed my hand in things?”
I nodded. “Are you an agent of fate? Is that your purpose? Because that seems antithetical when we look at everything the others have done so far. Addie literally altered fate to suit herself.”
Addie made the confession late one night when we were all drinking on Ness’s back porch—of course, Ness had a virgin daquiri.
“Fate and I aren’t on the best of terms,” Audra said with a vicious grin.
When she smiled like that, I could see the pointed canines that made me think she was a vampire. If the others asked me again, I would put good money on demon. Not the kind of demon that Vi fought. The Abrahamic pantheon had nothing on the vast power that Audra contained. She seemed like the kind of demon that possessed a divine level of power all on her own.
“I, myself, am a defier of fate. I escaped the prison that my people locked me in and set out to explore the world at my own pace. Fate is a bondage that no one asked for, however it is like any set of rules. It is meant to be followed until you find the best way to break it.” She gently touched my cheek.
I wanted to recoil from her words.
All my life, I’d followed every recipe to the letter. I explored making my own recipes only when I understood every last aspect of the original. Working by the book had gotten me this far. By all means, I should have been the first person to accept fate as it was. That was the kind of person I’d been up until now.
The moment fate turned against me, I rebelled. I didn’t want this. Couldn’t Audra understand that? Or did she not know what fate had asked of me.
“So, it turns out that I could be the lost princess of the local Seelie Court.” I stole a glance in Audra’s direction so I could read her expression.
Nothing changed. She’d known the whole time.
I cocked my head. “How do you know everything? You knew, when you brought all of us together, that we were different from everyone else in Lakesedge.”
Audra’s demure smile returned. “I am older than Vi’s father. Older than his father. When that many years have passed, you learn to recognize a few things.”
“Was this all a chess game to you?” I stepped back, my core stiffening in defiance.
Audra spread her hands wide. “Do I look like I’m trying to rise to power?”
We were standing in the middle of a downtown café that no one really knew about. It was a hole in the wall establishment, and Audra didn’t try too hard to promote it. She had four employees on roster, and she seemed content with only us under her wing.
She wasn’t trying to gain power. If anything, she was more like the enigmatic aunt who breezed in with advice before drifting back into her own strange life once more—that was how Vi had described Audra once, and it’d never really left me.