by D. N. Hoxa
I almost cried. She’d worked on it? I was counting on it not fitting me!
But Kate didn’t care. She grabbed my wrists and pulled me to the bathroom. She made me sit on the toilet and gave me clear instructions before I had the chance to comment. "You will not open your eyes until I say so.”
I didn’t dare argue. I just nodded, swallowed hard, and closed my eyes.
***
A long time later, when my head was still humming with the noise of a blow-dryer, Kate said I could open my eyes. She didn’t let me look in the mirror, though.
"Dress first,” she said, and she pulled me out of the bathroom as if I wasn’t capable of walking on my own. My eyelids felt heavy, and the lipstick on my lips tasted weird. Like strawberry but weirder.
Ella had a huge smile on her face as she watched me, as if she really liked what she was seeing. That gave me some reassurance.
She and Kate both got me out of my clothes, with extra care on the shirt I was wearing because of the hair, and I couldn’t wait to look at the mirror. When Kate zipped the red dress behind my back, I could tell that she really had done something to it. To my horror, it fit me perfectly.
Without waiting for a word, I turned and walked back into the bathroom where the mirror was.
The woman staring back at me looked nothing like me. Her eyes, surrounded by black and grey eyeshadow looked bigger. Sharper. A whole lot sexier than they normally were. Her lips, coated with a perfect wine red color, looked like they never had before, and her cheeks were perfectly defined with lots of browns and coral shades.
And the hair! It fell straight and shiny down my shoulders, from where it started to slightly curl into large waves. I seriously didn’t recognize myself. It had been a long time since I had paid attention to my looks. I hadn't even tried to look at least decent in what felt like forever, even though it had only been around two months. My days were pretty damn long.
"Wow, Kate,” was all I managed to say. Because the dress was perfect now and it fit me like a glove. I felt like a freaking princess and wanted to giggle. How long had it been since I’d had a normal night of getting ready with friends like this?
That ended soon, though.
"We have to go. We're already late,” Kate said and quickly checked herself in the mirror for one last time.
"I wish I could go, too,” Ella said again, pouting.
"Next time. Promise,” I said with a wink. She smiled brightly and pushed us both out the door.
"I have to go meet with Karly, but I'll see you there?" Kate asked me.
"Yeah. I have to go to Thomas first, anyway,” I said reluctantly, and Kate disappeared with a wave behind the corner.
"Have fun, and good luck,” Ella called after me as she watched me leave.
I hated having to see Thomas, especially before meeting Kyahen, but Ralf said that I was to get all the details from him. I still had no idea where I was going and how I was going to get there. But it was the perfect opportunity to remind him that he’d still not brought me the Base data I’d asked for more than a week ago.
When I turned the corner that led to his office, I stopped in my tracks. Aaron was right there by the door, and my heart skipped a long freaking beat at the sight of him. He was wearing a dark blue tux with a white shirt underneath—no tie. Just like I had pictured him, the jacket looked like it melted around his shape. His wide shoulders gave him that hard, sexy look and the pants, strictly to his ankles, hung loose enough around his long legs. My mouth went dry as I analyzed the piece of skin showing behind the first button of his shirt that was undone. It looked delicious.
He looked freshly showered and shaved—my favorite look. But who was I kidding? I pretty much drooled at the sight of every one of his looks. Mentally.
Still, this look was a fucking force of nature.
Physically, I ignored him and put an ice-cold barrier in front of me. Easier said than done, but I somehow managed. He turned to look my way as the sound of the black heels I had on echoed through the long hallway. Well, it wasn't that long, but it sure felt like it was to me.
As soon as his eyes took me in, they grew really wide and his lips parted a little. My knees shook. It wasn’t fair that he could still do that to me, especially since I was almost a hundred percent sure that I was reading too much into it. Because he’d run away from me, hadn’t he?
And that reminder helped me get my shit back together.
“You…um, you are…you are beautiful…uh, look great."
Fuck me, I thought to myself. I never thought I’d see the day…
”Thanks,” I mumbled, and because I felt very uncomfortable, I added: "you, too,” without even realizing it. Ugh. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second and mentally kicked myself in the gut. “What are you doing here?” I asked after clearing my throat.
Aaron stared at me for a couple more seconds before he swallowed hard and spoke again. “Taking you to the fairy ball, of course.”
Was he really uncomfortable in the tux, or was that my imagination, too? I really couldn’t figure.
“I am going alone to the Ball. Not with you. You weren't invited.” At least I very much hoped so because I definitely didn't need any distraction.
“We both are. Remember, I am in charge of reporting,” Aaron said, a small smile on his face, like he was showing me. Douche.
I rolled my eyes at him and folded my arms in front of me to try and mask my panic. I couldn’t go anywhere with him, least of all when he looked the way he did. I was going to ruin it!
“Says who?” I asked, a lame attempt at winning myself more time.
“Grandmother herself.” Oh shit.
“And let me guess: you already know where we’re going,” I said sarcastically. This was really happening. Aaron was going with me.
“You guessed right. And I have the car keys, too. Let’s go.” He didn’t wait for my reply. He simply walked around me and disappeared around the corner. A deep breath later, I followed. At least I wouldn’t need to see Thomas that night.
16
——————————
The radio wasn’t working for whatever reason, and the silence in the car threatened to swallow me whole. Why wasn’t he saying anything? And why did I need to break the awkwardness so badly?
“So, I asked your dad to provide me with information about the Base. He hasn’t given anything to me yet,” I said after what felt like hours but were barely minutes. I couldn’t hold it in me any longer and the safest topic I could think of was this. Aaron nodded.
“Yeah, he told me. He’s been really busy. I don’t think he even sleeps these days. He’s reorganizing everything and everyone in this Base.”
I could have been mistaken, but his voice held a hint of pride as he spoke about his father. Thomas being busy hadn’t even crossed my mind, in all honesty. I just thought he was holding the papers intentionally to piss me off.
“Everything was a mess when we first came here. He’s rearranging security protocols, appointing guards, food, finances—everything.”
“Can’t he get any help?” There were plenty of people hanging around, doing nothing at the Base.
“No, he wants to do all the arrangements himself before he lets people in. He won’t even let me help him.”
Aaron shook his head with a smile. It was obvious he loved his old man, and for the first time, I thought of Thomas as someone more, not just the cold shifter who hated me and didn’t talk to anyone because he was so full of himself. I thought of him as a father.
“What about your mom?” I asked as curiosity reared its ugly head. Aaron flinched. I regretted asking immediately when his face took on a dark expression and his eyes shone with hatred.
“I don’t have a mother.” His voice was so low, so cold that I was almost intimidated by him. I so desperately wanted to know what the hell that meant and who his mother was, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him because I could see how much pain my question caused him. So I shut my mouth
and ignored my curiosity.
We didn’t talk for the rest of the way.
When the car stopped, I almost jumped out. I was eager to get this over with. Aaron followed silently. We were in front of what looked like an ordinary house but probably wasn’t. Its walls were painted in a light shade of yellow, its windows white. Other houses like it were on the other side of the road, too, and a couple of people walked down the street, but no other supernatural, except for us.
I let my senses stretch as wide as they could as I followed Aaron. He walked on the grass of the house’s front yard and to its side. The light of the moon couldn’t penetrate through the thick branches of the trees all around, so when he stopped abruptly, I didn’t see and bumped into his hard back. Shit. I almost fell because of the awkwardness.
To his credit, Aaron didn’t say anything. He simply cleared his throat and put his right hand on the yellow wall of the side of the house. The whispers that began to come out of his mouth were strange to say the least, but I knew exactly what he was doing. He was pulling the veil to a portal that was no doubt placed on that wall.
Shivers washed over me as the strange words reached my ears for two long minutes. And finally, the blue light began to brighten the night, starting from where Aaron’s hand was touching the wall. I’d seen pictures in the books Simmons made me study in Lyndor, but I’d never witnessed an actual portal. I’d never had to travel to the other world, and I honestly never thought that night would come.
The blue circle took its full shape and the yellow wall in the middle of it disappeared, leaving place for only darkness. The energy that poured out of the portal was nothing like I’d imagined. It was strong, so strong it made me dizzy, so I turned my senses off as fast as I could.
Aaron must’ve sensed my discomfort because he took my hand in his without even asking. I didn’t refuse because frankly, I needed to hold onto something desperately. Whatever that energy coming from the portal was, it was going to only get worse when we crossed to the other side. I was sure of it.
A deep breath later, Aaron took a step forward and pulled me into the portal. I wasn’t ready, but I doubted I would ever be so I just held my breath. A freezing cold gripped me tightly, and my lungs felt like they were going to explode. I saw nothing but black in front of me, and for a second, I felt like something thick and liquid enveloped my whole body. I held Aaron’s hand tightly as he did the same.
In the next second, we found ourselves in a middle of a dark, smelly wood, all alone—the strange, cold feeling completely gone.
“Where the hell are we?” I asked before I realized I was breathless. Goosebumps still covered my arms.
“Necterram,” Aaron said. He didn’t look like he was going to let go of my hand any time soon—like I expected him to.
“Where?” I asked again, confused. I had never heard of something called Necterram. I was pretty sure that the Otherworld had the Seelie and Unseelie Court—Summer and Winter land—only.
“It’s the land of no one. Necterram literally means No Land. Neither of the Courts have claim to it. This place is…dead,” Aaron said, but I could already see that for myself. The trees that surrounded us were gray and leafless, and the ground was muddy, not a single green grass blade.
It was very unsettling to realize that an entire piece of land could just die. I very slowly turned my senses on to feel it because I couldn’t keep my curiosity at bay.
I regretted it the same second. But it was too late.
The coldness and darkness that resided in the ground we walked on gripped me by the throat. I couldn’t breathe. Every cell in my body froze before I realized it and trying to push it away was almost useless. It was too strong. It was so much worse than dead.
The land reeked of magic, so much magic, such evil magic—worse than anything I’d ever felt. The empty trees had lost their essence—their spirits. It was taken from them. They were empty and so was the land. I wanted to weep for them because no one deserved to be stripped of life like that. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t let go.
“Star,” someone called me, and I recognized Aaron’s voice. He gripped my arms first, and then he grabbed my neck while he pushed my hair out of my face. It felt so good to be touched by something living that I held on to it with everything I had, but I could still strongly feel the darkness slithering around me.
“Star, what’s wrong?” Aaron said again, and I struggled to look up. “Open your eyes, Star. Look at me!” His hands on my face were so warm. His voice was filled with panic. I needed to tell him that I was okay, so I forced some air into my lungs and with all the strength I could muster, I forced my eyes to open.
His ocean blue ones were the first thing I saw. They were as breathtaking as they had been first time. I held on to them, and I focused on shutting my senses down. I imagined my concrete walls and two giant iron doors closing on everything, leaving it all outside. It had been hard to learn that trick in Lyndor, especially since I had to teach myself, but that night, in Nectrram, it was harder than all the other hard times combined. My walls just wouldn’t build to shut the darkness out because it slithered like a snake and always seemed to find a way into my mind.
“Come on, Star!” Aaron urged me, and I pushed a little harder. I could do it. I had to, because it felt like, if the darkness got to me, it was never going to let me go, just like it wouldn’t all that land. There was no other choice. And the iron doors finally closed around my mind.
I gripped Aaron’s hands that were still framing my face. I needed some space to breathe as much as I needed his hand on me, anywhere—and for the first time, it was nothing sexual. It was purely my need to feel alive.
“Are you okay?” he asked in barely a whisper as he searched my face.
“Yeah,” I managed to breathe. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What the hell happened to you?”
I shook my head as the last shiver ran down my spine. “I let in the energy of this place. It’s not dead, Aaron. It’s being possessed in some way by something dark, something evil that will not let it breathe. It has emptied the land and the trees of…life.” I sighed and shook my head. I never wanted to feel like that again.
“Can you make sure to not let this in again? You scared the shit out of me,” he whispered after a sigh of relief. Then, “Do you want to go back? We can go back—”
“God, no!” Had he lost his mind? I couldn’t believe he would even suggest something like that. “Kyahen is waiting for us, and we need to be on our way.”
“We can reschedule if you don’t feel like yourself,” he insisted as he analyzed my face once again, almost as if he could see in my eyes exactly what I was feeling.
“No, we can’t. I’m perfectly fine,” I said. It wasn’t completely a lie because I was feeling better. I’d endured torture without an ounce of energy in my body in Lyndor. I could handle this.
“Are you sure?” Aaron asked again but I didn’t get the chance to reply.
Someone appeared a few feet away from us. Bob was out of my leather thigh holster, and I was ready to fight whoever it was. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
A fairy with wings of three colors that reached down to his ankles looked at us with his brows raised. I’d never seen a fairy’s wings before. They kept them hidden in the mortal world with glamour. They were more beautiful than anything else I’d ever seen—and I’d seen some pretty cool things.
The fairy’s face was pure perfection. He had long ash blond hair tied in string of silver behind his back. His amber eyes glowed, literally. I could bet my life that if he smiled, he’d have dimples. The dark green outfit he wore, that looked like both pants and a dress, was knitted in strings of silver as well. His face didn’t change expression even once.
“Your carriage is waiting,” he said in an accent I’d never heard before, his voice a honey-sweet melody. A second after, a real freaking carriage appeared behind him. A gorgeous black horse stood alone, a wooden carriage attached to his back. No
driver. The giant wheels of the carriage looked so thin that for a second, I feared they were going to break from our weight.
Aaron took my hand in his again. The fairy disappeared the same way it had appeared in front of us. We had no choice but to get in the carriage.
The fey had the best means of transportation. It sufficed to be welcomed in one place, or rather not be unwelcome, and they could pop in front of your eyes in any second. I wasn’t sure how magic worked in Necterram, but on Earth, everybody always kept unwelcoming spells up for fey in their homes. If they could just appear everywhere at any time they please, it wouldn’t have been pretty for other supernaturals.
“Once we get there, don’t eat or drink anything,” Aaron said when we got in, and the horse began to walk ahead. I almost rolled my eyes.
“I know.” It was no secret that non-fairy creatures couldn’t eat or drink anything in the Otherworld, unless they wanted to be held prisoners there forever. That was why other sups so rarely crossed realms. Fey logic dictated that once a creature took what they so generously gave, that creature belonged to the Courts and to them because it had been fed by them. Yeah. “Stay with me at all times.” I didn’t want him out of my sight for a second. Nasty things, fairies. They could not be trusted.
“Don’t worry. I don’t plan to stay away,” Aaron said, and before I could allow myself to think about his use of words, I shut my mind down.
Not long after, the carriage stopped. In front of us was a one-story building that looked abandoned. Aaron looked at it suspiciously, too. Had the horse maybe mistaken the way? Because it didn't seem like a place that could stand on its own for much longer, let alone have a freaking Ball in it.
But the horse was no longer moving, so without a word, we jumped off the carriage, and the horse took off right after, disappearing behind the dark trees. We could hear nothing, not even the sound of animals that was supposed to come from the woods. No insect noises, either. I didn't dare turn my senses on again. I was better off not knowing.