by Juniper King
The girl wet some paper towels and dabbed at my back. “I’m really sorry,” she apologized again as she handed me a few so I could clean my side.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m the one who bumped into you.” Somehow she didn’t have even a drop of alcohol on her.
I caught a glimpse of her in the cracked mirror on the wall. With her tiny frame, short bob of brown hair, and ultra-feminine looks, she appeared more out of place in this town than I did.
The noise picked up again as a brunette in too-high heels staggered through the doors. She gave us an intoxicated smile and wave before teetering into one of the stalls.
“So, what brings you here? This doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” I commented, making conversation to cover up the sound of splashing. “No offense.”
She chuckled, “None taken. I was here with my friend, but she left with someone about half an hour ago. She’s a little more… adventurous than I am. It was her idea to come here in the first place. I’m not worried, she can take care of herself, but I do wonder what kind of person—or Super—she’s gone home with.”
I wouldn’t say Korinth was a tourist destination, but from what I’d heard, a special variety of humans came here as something of a test of courage. Hooking up with mercs or Supers wasn’t uncommon.
The girl met my eyes in the mirror, “But you’re here with someone too, aren’t you? You were sitting with that handsome satyr,” she chuckled.
I snickered along in female camaraderie, it had been too long since I’d been around another woman. It was nice to just chat a little bit. Especially after being surrounded by testosterone for the last three weeks. “I guess you could say we’re together. We’re not planning on staying though, we just came to meet someone. I’m hoping the three of us will get out of here tonight.”
“Oh, three of you? I guess you’re pretty adventurous too.”
Heat flooded up my spine. I turned to face her, waving my hands. “Oh, no, no, no, don’t misunderstand, we’re all just friends, we’re not getting out of here to do anything tonight.” I flung out my empty hand to change the subject. “I’m Selynna, by the way.” Though I was a little late on the introductions.
“Sera. Nice to meet you, Selynna,” she said politely, taking my hand with a delicate grip.
The toilet flushed and the brunette walked towards the sinks. Sera and I shifted over so she could wash her hands.
“So, you’re not here to meet anyone?” I nudged Sera after the other girl had left.
“Well, now that you mention it, I did have my eye on someone,” her gaze met mine, her current grin more assured than the demure ones she had been giving me only moments ago.
Another girl barged into the bathroom and Sera’s smile slipped.
“Really?” I had been kidding, but now I was in full gossip mode. “Human or Super?”
“Oh, it’s not important,” she mumbled, glancing towards the stall the woman had entered. I guess she was too shy to talk about it with another woman around.
“So, where are you and your friend from?” I asked, changing the subject in my haste to find something to cover up the sounds of this new girl being sick. Poor girl, I’d seen it countless times at The Sluggish Nymph.
“We’re from Stonehaven. And yourself?”
Stonehaven… I believed that was a town somewhere Northeast of here, a bit of a trek if I remembered my geography correctly.
“I’m from Woodburne,” I said hesitantly.
“Oh, Woodburne! I have a cousin who lives there,” she said with a broad grin before her features pulled together in a worried grimace. “Selynna, what’s wrong? You seem a little sick all of a sudden.”
My heart sank, she must not have heard. “Sera, there was a fire…” I hedged. She would be devastated.
Her brows knit together, “A fire? Did a building burn down?”
“Three weeks ago… The whole town was caught in it. There were no survivors.”
“No survivors? Selynna, I don’t know who told you that, but there was no fire.”
14
“No fire?” The paper towel fell from my hand, my entire body hollow and ready to collapse into a heap on the bathroom floor.
Sera shook her head. “No, if there had been a fire that big word would have spread by now.”
“But… but I saw it.” I murmured more to myself than to Sera. “Aksel and Ayre, they were there too, they saw it too.”
Many conflicting emotions seemed to cross Sera’s face in that moment. Her features stilled, then seemed to almost brighten before pulling into a grimace. “Selynna, I don’t know what they told you, but I guarantee you there was no fire. I just spoke to my cousin the other day,” she added after a moment of hesitation.
I needed to sit down, I was going to throw up.
“Are you okay? You look pale. Come with me, let’s get you some fresh air.” She took my hand and I ripped mine away like hers was a red-hot iron. I staggered out of the bathroom, leaving Sera behind in my wake.
I elbowed my way through the crowded bar, like a fish swimming upstream, the conversation and clatter blurring to white noise in my ears. I didn’t know what was driving me, but I knew I needed air. I was suffocating.
Bursting through the back door, I gasped in air like I’d just burst from the sea, the rush of cool night air hitting me like a gale. I was desperate for quiet. A moment to think. Lurching towards the darkness of the forest, I barely registered the sharp pain on my arm holding me back.
I was spun around and Aksel’s irate face stared down at me. “Didn’t you hear me calling you, where the hell are you going? I told you; you can’t wander around by yourself, especially not here.”
“You saw it didn’t you—the fire?”
His features softened as his eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Selynna, what—”
“In Woodburne! I was just… There was a girl in there, her cousin, she said she just talked to them.” I was starting to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.
“Selynna, slow down, look at me.” His voice grabbed my attention and our eyes locked, his grip moving to my shoulders, grounding me like he had done all those nights ago. The night all of this began. “Just breathe.” He drew in a long deep breath, and I followed his lead, my own breath shaky.
“You saw the fire in Woodburne, didn’t you? I wasn’t imagining it.” I pleaded, begging for some rationalization.
Aksel didn’t respond, a deep line etched between his brows. He looked… ashamed? Guilty?
“Aksel?”
A movement in my periphery caught my attention. My eyes flicked over to Ayre quietly approaching behind Aksel, the expression on their faces a mirror image.
“I’m not crazy, I saw the fire! You said—” The looks on their faces were breaking my heart. “You said…” My eyes prickled.
Aksel looked at me with guilt-ridden eyes before glancing down as his feet, his hair concealing whatever emotion was haunting his face. “There was no fire,” he said almost inaudibly.
My heart plummeted. I felt like I would be sick all over my boots. If Aksel wasn’t supporting my shoulders, I’m certain I would have collapsed.
“But…” I saw it. I’d felt it.
“The hotel did burn down, and we brought you outside.” Aksel said as his grip on my shoulders loosened. “Where I took the opportunity to create an illusion of the city in flames.” He couldn’t even look up at me as he confessed.
I couldn’t keep my tears at bay any longer; they rolled freely down my face, a squeezing pressure building in my chest, threatening to suffocate me. The confusion was agonizing. “Why? Why would you do something like that?” My voice cracked. I broke out of Aksel’s grip, taking a few staggering steps backwards, creating some distance so I could think.
They couldn’t have done something so heinous to me. They were my friends. I trusted them.
“It wasn’t part of the plan,” Aksel continued, his voice void of emotio
n. “After what happened with Ilane and those flereous, Woodburne was too dangerous for you to stay. We needed to get you out of town. Keep you close.”
My head shook involuntarily. “I don’t understand, you staged a fire so I would leave town?” I wrapped my arms around me to try and abate the shaking. “What plan?”
Neither Aksel nor Ayre answered. Why? What were they hiding from me? What was so secret that they couldn’t tell me?
I shook my head, trying to make sense of things, my fingers digging into my arms to the point of pain. Everything that had happened up to this point replayed in my mind in a vertiginous rush. All the seemingly random coincidences in Woodburne—all the conversations and chance meetings.
A dizzying sickness suddenly assaulted me, my limbs going numb as the revelation hit me with a blinding force.
“You.” My voice was almost inaudible even to my own ears, as I took a hesitating step backwards. It was like I was seeing them for the first time. “You’re not weapons merchants. You two were after the bounty all along. That was your plan. You lied to me. You’ve been lying to me this entire time.” Real anger started to break through my voice.
I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid. It all seemed so obvious now.
I’d believed their lies so willingly, believed that Ilane—their gods send of a scapegoat—had been the real villain. Gods, I must have been such an easy mark for them. I wanted to believe they were trustworthy so that’s exactly what I did.
“That’s why you never wanted me to wander off on my own, isn’t it? Afraid you would lose your captive?” I jeered, their prolonged silence only making me angrier. “You tried to make me trust you, to feel safe around you! You manipulated me, you, you—”
“You’re right,” Aksel cut me off with a calm firmness. “We did lie to you. We came to Woodburne because we were after the bounty. But then we met you and things changed.”
“You expect me to believe you now? After everything you’ve done?” I asked scathingly.
A faint shake of his head. “It’s your choice to believe it or not, but after seeing you, we knew there was something wrong with the job, something suspicious about the one who contracted it—”
“You knew who placed the bounty?” I gasped. “This whole time?”
“Someone approached us,” Ayre hedged as he took a few steps closer.
“This whole time you knew,” my voice clawed its way from my tight throat. “It was all just a show then, not wanting me to come with you. You wanted me to think it was my idea, like bringing me with you was such a burden so I would be compliant and meek and do whatever you asked.” I’d thought I’d been helping them find whoever did this, but I was just tagging along like some dimwitted child.
Aksel reached out a hand, “Selynna, that’s not—”
“Stop lying!” I shrieked. My rage only served to feed my magic. A violent surge of power threw the two Supers to the ground.
Everything had been a lie. Every moment, every kind word, every touch. The safeness I’d felt with them was all manufactured by their lies.
Ayre was the first to get to his feet. “We wanted to keep you with us so we could keep you safe—protect you, at least—”
“Protect me? You call this protection? You made me think all my friends and family were dead. For weeks you lied right to my face!”
“Would you have even believed the truth? That we had a change of heart? That we were trying to help you? You never would have willingly come with us,” Aksel said.
“Don’t try to shift the blame on me, you didn’t even give me a chance to decide! Gods, I can’t believe you two! I can’t believe I was stupid enough to trust you!”
“Selynna, regardless of the mistakes we made, we’ve been trying to protect you—” His voice continued to rise, mimicking my own anger, which only spurred me on more. He had no right to be angry.
“I never asked you to protect me, I don’t want your protection! I want my life back!” I raved, drowning in my emotions. My chest hurt, like my heart was being twisted and crushed in a harsh, iron grip.
“Your life is gone!” Aksel shouted and I recoiled as if he’d struck me. “Like it or not, you’re being hunted. You can’t go back.” His gaze pierced through mine as he loomed over me.
“That’s not for you to decide,” I snapped.
“You would rather go back and leave yourself vulnerable to creatures like Ilane or those flereous, just to spite us?”
“How are you two any better? You think you’re any less immoral because you manipulated me into coming with you instead of kidnapping me? You were after the same bounty. You treated me like a joke—an object. You ruined my life!” I shrieked.
It was his turn to look offended.
Ayre stepped in to try to quell the situation, “Guys, calm down, Aksel—”
“If you want to blame anyone for ‘ruining your life’, blame your damn father!” Aksel shouted.
I stopped dead, his words slapping me across the face. I couldn’t have heard him right. “My… father?”
“You want to know the truth so damn badly?” he bit out, “Your father put the bounty on your head. He’s the one paying us to find you.”
“Aksel, stop,” Ayre warned.
“I-I don’t…” Bounties, mercenaries, tangled webs of deceit and broken trust, and now my father? My father knew about me? That was too much. My entire axis tilted.
Aksel and Ayre have been working for my father this entire time?
“And you know what else?” Aksel continued mercilessly, “Those ones who tried to kidnap you? Who hurt you? They didn’t give a shit about you as long as they got paid. And your father doesn’t care either,” he spat.
I slapped his face as hard as I could. He bared his teeth at me, a rumble permeating his chest, but I refused to be cowed.
“Don’t you dare act so superior. You weren’t protecting me; you were protecting your meal ticket. All I was to you was some quarry. Just a paycheck!” Just like everyone else who’s ever looked at me, they didn’t see me as a real person. I was a tool to be used and discarded at their leisure.
I turned and began to stomp off, but a hand grabbed my wrist with bruising force.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Aksel growled.
I twisted around and stared him down. You don’t scare me. “Home.”
“Didn’t you listen to a word I said, you stubborn idiot? You’re being hunted. What are you going to do, wait until the next set of mercenaries comes to fetch you after we don’t deliver? How would you even get back there by yourself?”
I looked at his hand, fingernails biting into my arm. “Don’t touch me,” I seethed, “Don’t you ever touch me again.” The thought of how he had touched me, how it had felt when he’d touched me. A renewed wave of humiliation and anger surged through me.
“You’re acting like an irrational child!” He growled, his grip getting even tighter.
“Better an irrational child than a heartless monster!” I shrieked.
For a split second I saw hurt flash across Aksel’s face. Then, for the first time, real anger piqued in his eyes.
“I’m heartless? Oh, Selynna…” he drawled, his fangs showing in a malicious grin. “I’m a fucking saint compared to the other monsters you’ll find out there.” He leaned closer, face hovering inches in front of mine, his voice intimate. “Monsters that would enjoy ripping a pretty little thing like you to pieces.”
“Aksel!” Ayre roared, grabbing Aksel and pulling him away, his fingernails scraping against my arm. “That’s enough.”
For the first time since I’d met him, I actually felt threatened by Aksel.
Tears rolled down my cheeks “I never want to see you again,” I breathed before running into the darkness of the forest.
I gasped for breath, bracing my hands on my knees as I sucked in air. My lungs were on fire and my vision was clouded with spots. I had pushed myself hard to create as much distance between those two traitors as I coul
d. After catching my breath, I continued at a slower pace, eventually coming up on the edge of the tree line where I was greeted with the familiar scent of the beach.
Though Woodburne was technically coastal, it was still a fair jaunt to get to the beach, at least three hours by foot. I’d always loved the beach. I wasn’t the best swimmer, but I could get from point A to point B just fine. Jess and I had made a point to go to the shore at least once every summer since we’d met. Our favourite thing to do was camp overnight on the waterfront. We would sit around a campfire, cook dinner, and tell ghost stories. The smell of the fire lingering on our clothing the next day.
Jess and I had even gone with Leanne and the children last year and tried to teach Paige how to swim. She had worn a bright green bathing suit that clashed horribly with her orange water wings. I held her tiny hands and pulled her along in the water while she kicked her feet, splashing everyone in her wake.
They were alive.
The relief hit me hard, like a physical blow to my stomach. With a trembling hand, I braced myself on a thin tree as my body slumped forward.
They’d been alive this whole time. Did they wonder where I’d gone? Did they think I’d died in the fire?
Did anyone even care?
Aside from the handful of people who would be saddened by my death, most of Woodburne would probably be happy I was no longer a plague upon the town.
Maybe I should just stay away. Maybe this really was for the best.
I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
Was my father really involved in all this, or was that just another way for Aksel to control me? I bared my teeth, clenched so tightly my jaw hurt. This was all their fault. Everything fell apart when they came to Woodburne.
It just went to show trust was for idiots. I didn’t need them. I was fine on my own. I could protect my own damn self. I wasn’t some weak little damsel!
I continued forward with a wobbly gait until grass and dirt turned to sand. I crumbled down on the cold beach and watched the waves roll up the shore, moonlight dancing across the water.