Page 3 of The Court the Fae Forgot
Be wary of strangers.
It was the same thing every time we came to market, but something about the repeated warning felt different today.
Our little village wasn’t exactly the destination spot for tourists with bad intentions. It wasn’t even the destination spot forlocalswith bad intentions. It was too small to be a destination. Even now, with the streets as busy as ever for market, I didn’t see a single face I didn’t recognize.
But it wasn’t really strangers I needed protection from. Not when, despite my best efforts, my father was still talking to Rayner with a worrying gleam in both pairs of eyes. My mother could warn me off from strange travelers all she wanted, but I think we both knew where the true danger lied.
There may not have been any new faces in the passing crowd, but I realized a moment too late that there was one familiar one that was missing.
Ada.
She’d taken the opportunity to disappear off into the sorry excuse for a crowd, of course.
As she always did.
But this time, as I searched the exhausted, haunted faces of the townsfolk and farmers who I’d come to know over a lifetime of market days, something felt … off. Once more, that same dark feeling from earlier began to reach out and threaten to take hold of me. My shoulders hunched up as if against an invisible wind, a sour taste building in the back of my throat as I found no sign of my missing sister among them.
Goddamn it, Ada, if I actually lose you …
I grunted and pulled away until my mother finally relented. It took me a second to readjust the heavy bag of flour in my arms, but as I did, I thought I finally caught a little glint of short golden curls beyond the hunched back of the farmer who always tried to stick his hand up my skirt if I wasn’t paying attention.
Relief flooded my body, banishing the chill before it fully took hold of me.
I risked skirting by the farmer to keep Ada in my sight and was rewarded with an all-too-anticipated pinch on the bottom. In retaliation, I spared a precious moment to slap his hand away and looked straight into his eyes as I picked a random apple from his cart without paying. He opened his stubbly, gap-toothed mouth to protest but was met with such a look that only a high-pitched whistle escaped from the back of his throat before I escaped, too.
“That’s right,” I called back, taking a massive bite of the apple as I glared at him for one last, lingering second. “Keep your hands to yourself, Arnold, or next time I’ll be taking more than an apple.”
Even I wasn’t sure what I was threatening to take, but it didn’t really matter.
I’d made a scene again, I knew, but it couldn’t be helped.What am I supposed to do, just let it happen?Probably.
My moment’s indulgence had served a second purpose. When I did turn back to the crowd, Ada was once again nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, the faces I’d once thought were so familiar began to look a little … strange. Even when I glanced back at Arnold, this time for reassurance, I didn’t find any. I found myself staring, eyes searching the sagging jowls of his face and hollows of his eyes for some sense of familiarity. But the longer I looked, the more he looked like a stranger.
That chill began to creep in again, and this time, I wasn’t able to shake it.
Arnold caught my eye and winked at me, but there was a menace to it this time that sent me stumbling away.
I pushed through the crowd of people, panic starting to build when I still didn’t see Ada. I shifted the sack of flour from my arm to my hip, the weight of it increasing by the second. The apple began to taste bitter in my mouth, the sweetness leaching from it with every lurching step. Someone bumped into me, knocking me to the side, the apple falling from my grasp. With a swear, I glanced behind me—but whoever ran into me was no longer there.
For a moment, I was alone, standing by myself in the middle of an abandoned street. The crowds, familiar or otherwise, were simply … gone. The air around me hummed, the noise of it rattling through me louder than the murmur of the missing crowd.
But just as quickly as they disappeared, I blinked, and they were back. The buzzing was still there, but it had dulled to a quiet hum that droned beneath the chatter of the crowd. Another shoulder bumped into mine, jolting me the rest of the way back to reality.
What was wrong with me today?
Frowning, I looked back down to the apple at my feet, the waxy red surface leering up at me from where it had lodged itself decidedly into the manure-caked mud.
So much for my consolation prize.
I was still debating whether or not to pick it up and simply wipe it off anyway when something else caught my attention. Over the dull hum that had settled firmly into the backdrop of my mind, like the ever-growing warning of an oncoming migraine, whispers had started breaking out around me.
At first, I thought I was imagining them too. But then, just as I was reaching down for the apple I’d decided to take another chance on, I heard a muttered word that made me stop.
I didn’t believe I’d heard it right the first time. Or the second.
I didn’t believe it until the whispers of the crowd had turned to one thing, and one thing alone
