by L. C. Mawson
“But, as I said, my Coven Head doesn’t think it’ll cause too much trouble.”
“Yeah, I think she might be wrong on that. Someone I trust just hinted that something bad was heading this way.”
“Any specifics?”
“Annoyingly not.”
“Sounds like you were talking to a Seer. I didn’t know you knew a Seer.”
“Neither did I...”
Chapter Three
Freya woke up the next morning missing the regular ache of healing battle wounds. The sign of a job well done. No, that morning, she awoke to an aching back and neck as she sat up from her desk, realising that she had drifted off over her textbook.
“Can I just drop out and do bounty work full time?” Freya asked as she leaned back in her chair, prompting Amber to appear. Her tone was joking, but she was really trying to test the waters. She wanted to know just how on-the-nose Alice’s observations had been.
“And what if you lose a fight and become seriously injured? What would you do for money then?”
She shrugged, having to admit that her guardian had a point. “Become a magician.”
“The Council of Light would kill you in a heartbeat.”
Freya groaned. “That’s because they’re no fun,” she said as she stood up. “I just don’t get this. I have to get good grades, to spend four years racking up huge amounts of debt before spending the rest of my life working a job I’m not even sure I want, but is one of the handful of careers that might actually allow me to make enough money to own my own home before I’m fifty. Which, again, I’m not sure I want.
“The system is bull and I don’t like playing by their rules.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “So bitch about it on Tumblr and vote for the Green Party when the elections come around. For now, this is the world you live in.”
“Yeah, well, I hate the world.”
“Wait until you’ve lived through three dystopian alternate timelines. Then you can complain about hating the world.”
Freya frowned. “You lived through two others besides the one my mother ended?”
“The fifth and sixth, yes. And, no, I don’t want to tell you about them. They make the seventh look like a stroll in the park.”
“You said that if the seventh had continued, all life on Earth would have probably perished, with Creation following not long after.”
“Exactly.”
Freya shuddered at that. “Right. A-Levels aren’t as scary as the apocalypse.”
Though, she couldn’t help but think that her words weren’t entirely truthful. She was pretty sure that she’d prefer an apocalypse. At least they were occasionally vulnerable to swords and magic.
“Speaking of the apocalypse,” Amber muttered, folding her arms. “How did your meeting with Alice go?”
“Okay, seriously, what is up with you and her? Why do you get so fussy about me spending time with her?”
“Because... Because I know what she is.”
“Yeah, she said. Kind of. She has magic.”
“But what kind? Light, Dark, Neutral?”
Freya shrugged. “I don’t know. It kind of felt like mine, but not quite. Are you going to keep me guessing, or are you just going to tell me?”
“What do you know of Seers?”
“Um, Mel mentioned them yesterday?”
Amber gave her a disapproving look. “I thought Mel had let you borrow her magic texts to get you up to scratch on the basics.”
“She did, but I don’t have time to read more than a couple of chapters. So, what’s a Seer?”
“Beings who are linked to Fate and can see parts of her plan. When Fate needs a new Oracle, she chooses from the Seers. Some are simply Sensitive Humans, but I would guess that Alice is something else as well.”
“And you don’t trust Fate,” Freya said with a roll of her eyes. Amber’s distrust of other magical beings was certainly tiring at times.
“Of course I don’t trust Fate!” Amber’s tone was sharper than Freya had ever heard from her before, freezing her in place. “She manipulates events to serve her needs. And when she needs a powerful warrior? She makes sure that it happens. She gave my grandmother the power to seal away the Old Worlds. She made sure that she died so that I would have to take her power, when I was too young and angry to control it properly. She got me out of the way and killed my husband so that we wouldn’t be there to protect our son. Our son who she carefully removed from every sensible adult in his life so that there was no one there to tell him how much of an astronomically bad idea it was to marry an Angel of Life! She made sure that the Angel Twilight was born and then, as soon as she was done, she made sure that she died so that she was no longer a dangerous factor. Not to mention-”
Amber cut herself off, shaking her head.
“So, Freya, you’re right. I don’t trust Fate, or anyone associated with her.”
Freya shifted awkwardly. She didn’t really have a response to that. She would probably hate Fate too if she’d been through as much crap as Amber. Though she didn’t miss the way Amber had stopped herself halfway through her rant.
“And what about me?”
“What?”
“You don’t trust a lot of people, Amber. Where do I fall?”
“What are you talking about? You think I don’t trust you?”
“Wouldn’t you, in my position? You deliberately keep the truth from me all the time.”
Amber sighed, shaking her head. “Let me guess, Alice said something?”
“She said that I should ask you about my grandmother. About Hope.”
Amber visibly flinched at that, reminding Freya why she hadn’t pushed in the past. Amber blamed herself for Hope’s death, and Freya hadn’t wanted to reopen that wound. But she was tired of being kept in the dark.
“What is it? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Freya, there are some things better left in the past...”
“But it’s not in the past!” Freya folded her arms. “Alice thinks that the fact that I was conceived in the Shadow Realm means that I circumvent the whole ‘no Angels’ rule. And she said that my mother had been an Angel too. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s so damn weighted, Freya. Why do you think your mother lost control? She couldn’t deal with the pressure of being an Angel, especially not the daughter of-”
“What? What the hell is it that you’re keeping from me? I get that you blame yourself for Hope’s death, but it’s been years and I deserve answers-”
“And I deserve to not have to relive my granddaughter’s suicide!”
Freya frowned as Amber seemed shocked at her own outburst.
“Your... granddaughter? You mean the Angel Twilight? What does that have to do with...”
Freya trailed off as everything clicked into place.
Hope. Hope had been the Angel Twilight.
She had been Amber’s granddaughter, and her mother’s mother.
And she had killed herself when Freya’s mother had been young.
Freya’s mother had been left alone, the only child of the most famous magical being of the time.
It was no wonder she had cracked.
Freya’s veins flooded with fury as she realised what that had meant.
Amber knew that Freya had been searching for her family for as long as she could remember.
And here Amber was, pretending that they weren’t related because, what? She had a few bad memories?
“Get out,” Freya eventually managed, her voice quiet as she kept all of her concentration on dampening her magic.
“Freya...”
“Unless you want me to risk banishing you, I suggest you leave.”
Amber nodded before disappearing.
As soon as she was gone, Freya’s hold on her magic failed, causing her radiator to explode out and send shards of metal across the room.
Freya sighed. The use of magic had calmed her, but she had no idea how to even begin fixing the mess it ha
d caused.
She set up a temporary glamour to cover up her loss of control, before making her way out of her room.
She paused at the top of the stairs, her sharp hearing picking up hushed whispers from the kitchen.
“-if it’s the same as before...”
“We won’t know that until Monday.”
“But, Ryan, if it is... I don’t know that I can try again. It’s too hard.”
“I... I know. But we can talk about this on Monday.”
Freya stopped listening at that, heading into the bathroom.
Freya just wanted her foster parents to no longer be so stressed. With everything else, she just didn’t have the energy for it.
I hope Margaret gets the results she wants on Monday, she thought to herself before deciding that the library would be the best place to study, and to take her mind off of Amber, as she brushed her teeth, very aware of how the hushed whispers had gotten louder.
“FANCY SEEING YOU HERE.”
Freya had barely sat down at the library table with her textbook when someone came over to talk to her. She lifted her head to see her friend Jamie.
“Hey,” she whispered back as Jamie sat next to her. “What’s up?”
“Isn’t the next exam period months away?” Jamie asked as she sat down next to her, putting down her small pile of romance novels.
“Extra preparation can’t hurt after the results I got...”
“You think you’ll need to resit?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” She sighed. “Have you ever felt as if your entire life is falling apart?”
“Yeah, but my mum says that half of her mental health referrals are from kids doing their A-levels, so...” Jamie’s mum was a GP. “Can’t you talk to someone? About your autism, I mean. If they knew, you would get accommodations. If you told them now, I’m sure they’d give you some leeway.”
Freya grimaced. “Do you honestly think they’d do anything after the fact? No, chances are, they’ll just tell me to resit anyway.”
“How come you’re studying here and not at home?”
“I... Margaret and Ryan are trying to get pregnant. It’s stressing them out.”
“I can imagine. You can’t study at Damon’s?”
Freya snorted, shaking her head. “Definitely not. We...” She trailed off as she remembered that Jamie was Damon’s ex-girlfriend. “It’s complicated.”
“Is that your official Facebook status now? ‘It’s complicated’?”
Freya took a moment too long to realise that it had been a joke. “Do you really want to talk about it?”
“Freya, I can handle talking about my ex. Seriously, what’s wrong?”
“He kissed me and then he told me that he doesn’t want to date me because he has too many secrets.”
“God, that boy is like a one man drama machine sometimes. Like, too many secrets? What does that even mean?”
Freya shrugged. “Don’t know, but I don’t exactly feel like hanging out with him right now.”
“Fair enough.”
Freya decided to change the subject. After her fight with Amber, she didn’t exactly want to confront any kind of taxing emotion. She wasn’t sure that she could keep her magic in check.
She leaned over to pick up one of Jamie’s romance books.
“You know fanfiction exists, right?” Freya said as she read the back. On the one hand, it sounded interesting. On the other, she was pretty sure that she’d read a Mass Effect fic along the same lines.
“I’m not really into any fandoms enough to get into it, though. And the stuff I do like never has any fics.”
“Yeah, Damon and I were pretty disappointed at the lack of Con Air fics.”
“Con Air?”
“It’s a Nicholas Cage movie. We were bored and it was on Film4.”
“And then you went on a hunt for fanfiction?”
“Our friendship is based on his enthusiastic responses to my quirky and often questionable ideas.”
“You’re like the human incarnations of Pinky and the Brain.”
“I know, right? It’s awesome.”
Jamie sighed. “I know you don’t want to, and you have every right to be mad at him, but I think you should call him. You two are too good together to let him being an idiot mess it up.”
“What if him being an idiot is a red flag?”
Jamie snorted. “Red flag? Seriously? This is Damon we’re talking about. He’s like a cross between a ball of sunshine and an excitable puppy.”
Before Freya could say anything else, the librarian yelled “Library closes in ten minutes.”
“I guess I’d better check these out,” Jamie said, picking up her books.
Freya nodded. “And I guess I’d better get home.”
Chapter Four
By the time Freya got to school on Monday, she still had no idea what she was going to do about her school work. What had once come so easily to her now felt like running into a brick wall. She seemed to struggle with the things everyone else took for granted, and the things everyone struggled with came as easily to her as breathing.
She figured that it was probably an autism thing. She decided to ask Alice when she got back to town. She was more than a little annoyed at her sister’s disappearing act. She had felt so alone before meeting Mel, even more isolated from her peers than she had been before. And all the while, Alice had known exactly what was going on but had kept it from her, for whatever reason. She wished things were simple, that there wasn’t so much secrecy in the magical world, but she understood why it was the case. Though, it turned out that understanding didn’t make her any less annoyed with the situation.
She didn’t have a free period that morning, which meant that she didn’t have an opportunity to see Damon. She wasn’t free until lunch, in fact.
Damon usually spent lunch with his other friends, but Freya wasn’t having it. She decided that it was time to take Jamie’s advice and talk to him, no matter how awkward it would be.
As Freya headed to the common room, she caught her reflection on one of the displays in the hall and stopped still at the overabundance of white that looked out of place. She turned to get a proper look and almost gave a squeal of surprise. Her reflection looked as it usually did, except for the pair of large, white wings behind her. She turned her head to look over her shoulder and saw that they were, indeed, there.
Thankfully, no one else was in the hallway, and she managed to make her way to the empty bathroom without being seen.
The bathroom mirrors told the same story as the display case had, albeit more clearly. She had a pair of wings. She reached out behind her, tentatively, and felt a sudden surge of nausea at the strange sensation of feeling her hand through her feathers.
Her feathers.
The hand in question jumped up and down, as if trying to rid herself of the sensation, while the wings flexed rhythmically, as if her nervous fidgeting wasn’t noticeable enough to begin with.
She pulled out her phone, taking deep breaths to calm herself as she rang Mel.
“Hello?” her friend answered.
“I have a problem.”
“How come you never call about fun things anymore? What happened to calling just because you got to the end of Dragon Age?”
“Huh?”
“That was a joke.”
“Right, no, I just... I’m distracted.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Wings.”
“Wings?”
“Yup. Big wings. My wings. They kind of appeared out of nowhere. I am so glad I was wearing a racer back top today...”
Before she could say anything else, she heard the door open and had to quickly glamour herself before the entrant got the chance to see her.
“Freya? You still there?”
“Yeah,” Freya answered. “I just... I can’t stay here. Can’t hide it for long.”
Mel seemed to have taken her meaning as she responded with, “You’ve glamoured and
aren’t sure you can maintain it?”
“Not with the risk of running into Damon. It kind of has me all over the place.”
“I could leave the assistant in charge of the library today if you want to meet up and talk it over.”
“Or I could come meet you at the library.”
Mel sighed. “You know my Coven Head doesn’t like strangers knowing where to find us. It’s too dangerous.”
“I know. Okay, high street?” It wasn’t ideal but it would have to do. “I can change myself to ill in the school register. Thanks for teaching me that, by the way.”
“Thanks for testing it. My Coven Head still thinks that getting magic and technology to mix is impossible.”
“Tell that to the Dwarves.”
“That’s what I said! She seems to think that their technological ability is completely beyond other races. I think she’s just a little exhausted, though.”
“Exhausted?”
“Think about the technological advancements that have happened in the last five years alone. We’re talking about someone who remembers the Salem witch trials here. She’s not used to technology moving so quickly, and she’s definitely not used to it rivalling magic. Plus, I think the War made everyone who remembers it wary of technology.”
“I guess you can’t really blame them for that.”
“No, I guess not. Alright, I’ll be at the coffee shop in ten minutes. See you there?”
“Yeah. See you there.”
“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO tell you,” Mel said with a shrug as she sipped at her coffee. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Freya rolled her eyes. “Did you really drag me out of school to tell me that you don’t know anything? You couldn’t have said that over the phone?”
Mel shrugged sheepishly. “I was bored.”
“Bored? I thought today was the day Ally worked with you in the library. Weren’t you complaining last week about not getting to spend enough time with her?”
Mel looked sheepish, her hands moving to hover over the wheels of her wheelchair. Even Freya, who was completely oblivious to such things, had picked up on Mel’s habit of doing so when she was uncomfortable.