by N. M. Howell
Rhea inspected him up and down and then shook her head. “Nope, no way. Look at you, you all look like you’re straight out of the circus. We’re in the human world now, you guys better keep your heads down or you might get yourselves shot for being different. Happens more frequently here than I care to admit.”
She knew it was a stretch, but she didn’t have much of a choice. Grayson reluctantly agreed. “Fine, but be quick. We have much to discuss.”
Rhea nodded. “Sure thing. Back in a jiffy.” She grabbed her sweater and small sack, and with one last mournful look at her forgotten cupcake on the floor, turned and left her guardians alone in the only place she’d ever felt safe or at home.
When Rhea was sure she was out of sight and earshot of her building, she ran. She ran faster and farther than her legs had ever carried her. She was fueled by the desperation of preserving her new life and the person she’d become. She couldn’t go back. Not now, not ever. How dare they show up uninvited, asking her to return to the world that had damaged and destroyed her. The world where she had watched everyone she loved become damaged and destroyed. The world that had tied and bound her and made her watch the suffering around her without being able to put a stop to it. She wanted no part of it. It wasn’t who she was anymore.
Her lungs burned and her legs threatened to give out, but still she pushed on. Rows of low brick buildings passed her as she cut through the city, until finally the structures thinned and she pushed on toward her destination.
The sun still hung low in the sky, and early morning dampness settled into her bones as she ran. It took over half an hour before she finally arrived at the bus station on the outskirts of town. It was her best chance at escape. She trusted her own instincts and ran into the large, narrow building.
Frantic, she inspected the outgoing timetable and let out a quick sigh of relief when she saw there was a nine o’clock bus to Chicago. Glancing at the large stylized clock on the wall, she saw it was 8:30. Perfect timing. She then frowned when she saw the rate table on the wall. There was no way to afford that with the few dollars she scrounged that hung loosely at the bottom of her bag.
She paced around the station, trying to figure out what to do. She then went into the waiting room and sat down, eyeing the passengers who waited for their own journeys to begin. According to the schedule on the wall, the only outbound bus in the next two hours was to Chicago. It was likely that everyone in the room would be on the same bus. She sat and waited.
Observing each passenger closely in turn, her eyes finally settled on a middle-aged man who lay sprawled out over five seats, fast asleep and snoring. A young woman and her two young children stood in the far corner as there were no seats in groups of three that would allow them a place to sit together. The woman glared at the sleeping man, obviously contemplating waking him up and making him move to allow them room. She didn’t, but by the daggers in her eyes Rhea could tell she was thinking about it.
Rhea even contemplated waking him up for them, but that would go against the plan she had begun devising in her head. She had no time to think of others, because this was her only chance at escape. She had to remain focused.
She watched the clock tick slowly toward 9 o’clock as she sat there keeping an eye on the sleeping man. The passengers slowly stood up and made their way toward the bus with their tickets in hand. The man stayed asleep. When the room emptied, apart from her and the sleeping man, she scooted over toward him, coughing silently near his face to see if he’d wake. He was too deep asleep to even notice.
She casually leaned against the front of the chair, blocking the man’s bag from view of the security camera overhead. She yawned and stretched then reached her hand into the bag, feeling around for his ticket. Her skin came up against damp clothing and a scrunched paper bag that released a foul smell suggesting it held days-old lunch. She couldn’t find the ticket and a moment later pushed herself up and began pacing the room. Running her hands through her hair, she tried to stay focused on the task at hand. She then settled back down on the edge of the seat above the man’s knees and pretended to speak to him.
A security guard walked by outside the glass windows of the waiting room, and momentarily met her eyes. She offered him a quick smile and pretended to be waking the man. When the security guard was out of sight, she reached slowly into the front of his jacket and whistled silently when she clamped her fingers down on the large paper ticket. She quickly yanked it from his coat, scanned the text, and smiled widely when she saw it was for the nine o’clock to Chicago.
He obviously wouldn’t be needing it and likely wouldn’t even be able to get a refund, anyway. It made her feel a little bit less guilty about taking it. At least, that’s what she told herself.
Tucking it into her back pocket, she sprung from the waiting room and caught the bus just as it was about to pull out of the station. Thumping frantically at the door with the palm of her hand, she got the driver’s attention. He reluctantly opened the doors and grumbled something inaudible, stamped her ticket and let her on.
She could’ve cried, she was so relieved. She walked to the end of the bus and took a seat at the very back. Folding her knees up tight to her chest, she wrapped her arms around her legs and held herself close, rocking silently forward and back as she stared out the window at the disappearing city behind her.
“Sorry, guys,” she whispered. “But today isn’t the day I return to my old life. I’d rather die.”
As the bus rolled forward, she settled back into her seat and contemplated what that would’ve meant. Had she stayed with her guardians and returned to her first home, the Otherworld, she would’ve risked the freedom she’d fought so hard for over the past few years. There was no way she would allow herself to fall into that trap.
She allowed herself a moment for memories to return, vowing that the second she got off the bus, she would close her mind to it forever and return to her blissfully simple life as a nobody. She regretted having to start over in Chicago, but if it meant staying in hiding, protecting herself from the dangers of returning home, she would happily do it. Only this time, she wouldn’t use magic. If her magic did, in fact, have such a strong identity or connection to her, she would have to do this the human way. Hopefully her guardians wouldn’t be able to track her if she eliminated her magical trace. Letting out a slow sigh, she wondered just exactly how she would manage it. She had done it once, though, and she could do it again.
Rhea leaned her head back on the rough velvet of the seat. Images of her father and mother rolled in the back of her mind like an old movie, flashes of images both familiar and unfamiliar appearing in turn, causing her to squeeze her eyes shut tight and her muscles to clench. Even thinking about them gave her a strong physical reaction. She wondered what a therapist would say about it and laughed.
A light snow had begun to fall outside of the large window. Not enough to blanket the roads, but just enough to cast a gray veil over her surrounding view. Allowing her eyes to close, she ran her fingers up and down the rough textured armrest, letting her thoughts consume her.
Her heart ached just thinking about her. Her mother had grown up in the Otherworld, of course, as all fae creatures did. Her mother was born a guardian to Aeris, the God King who had ruled the Otherworld with an iron fist for the past hundred years. Daddy dearest, murderous ruler of the magical world.
It was rare for children to be born to the gods. She was Aeris’s only daughter, and as far as she knew she was the only child born to a god in the past thousand years, if not more. Any of her father’s siblings or their families were ancient, having been born in a time far beyond anything Rhea could comprehend. It made things simple, having true-born children when thrones were overthrown. There was no worry about any sort of rightful heir, as whoever was the strongest took over from whatever ruler they destroyed. In Rhea’s case, though, she was a legitimate heir to the Otherworld throne. A daughter born to Aeris, God King, and Kaylin, beautiful fae demigod warrior sworn to p
rotect him at all cost.
Her eyes flung open at the thought of demigod guardians. Her five guardians remained at her home on a rooftop in Detroit. She wondered whether they’d caught onto her escape yet, or if they still sat around waiting for her to come back with Chinese food. She rolled her eyes and looked back out the window. Shaking her head, she still couldn’t believe the events of the day.
Growing up in a world where her mother was a sworn protector of a god, she observed the life of a guardian from the day she was born. She didn’t understand it, never able to wrap her mind around the concept of being born sworn to protect somebody else. Her mother was a slave, in her mind, and the whole concept of guardians completely baffled her.
Every god of the Otherworld was born with his or her own guardians, demigods born or created the same moment as their sworn god. The whole purpose of their lives was to stay with and protect their god, their lives not ever being their own. She’d hated watching her mother with Aeris. She tried numerous times to pull her away, to get them both to escape, but her mother always refused. Her mother loved him beyond anything, and it made her feel sick to her stomach just thinking about it.
Rhea remembered the way her mother looked at him, her eyes smitten and sparkling as if he were the most important thing in her world. She didn’t even look at her own daughter that same way, and Rhea’s stomach twisted in knots at the memory. She’d loved her mother more than anything in the world and hated that she was born into that life.
Her mother told her constantly that she just didn’t understand it, but Rhea understood full well. She understood that to be born a guardian meant that your life was not your own, that you were a slave to the god you were sworn to protect, and she wanted nothing to do with it.
Growing up in that world, she promised herself she would not allow her guardians to waste their lives for her. She spent the majority of her earlier years trying to evade them, demanding they leave her alone and live their own lives. They refused and hung around the castle, never being farther than a few steps away from her. But still, she refused to acknowledge them as her own.
Her mother had sat her down and tried to explain it to her so many times, but she refused to accept it. She refused to allow them into her life. She refused to take their lives as her own.
They say the guardians are born with a part of their god’s souls within them. That, apart, they can never feel whole, but together they are stronger. She never believed it, never quite understanding how a soul could be split among more than one person. She’d even heard of a god who had eleven guardians, where typically somewhere between three and five was most common. She could never understand how someone’s soul could be split into so many pieces. Rhea always figured it was a story passed down by the gods to ensure their slaves remained with them until death.
She wasn’t sure she even believed in souls, to be honest, after watching the horrors her father had inflicted on their world. No one with a soul could hold that much hate in their heart. He was evil and vindictive, and every year that went by in her life, she observed her world become darker and more destroyed with every passing breath. When she finally left, when her mother died protecting him from an attack on the throne, the world was hardly recognizable.
Even when she was young, she recognized the darkness, but it still resembled something of what it had before. Something like the bright, magical place the Otherworld was, with its shining skies and lush landscapes before her father’s evil cast a shadow over the entire realm. The way the Otherworlders spoke about it in stories and faery tales. It was a sanctuary for magical creatures—gods, fae, vampires, elves, demons, anything that didn’t belong in the human realm called the Otherworld home. But as time went on, the magic darkened. The flowers that she remembered growing over all the buildings and across all the fields had begun to wilt and wither away. The sky even darkened and the last memories she held of the Otherworld were of nothing but stormy skies and death.
The human world had its own darkness, for sure, but it was nothing compared to the horrors she experienced in the Otherworld. She could still hear the screaming of her fellow Otherworlders as her father tortured and destroyed them, slowly twisting each and every man, woman, and child into a dark shadow of their former selves; obedient slaves who supported him and his cause of complete domination over the entire realm.
Aeris believed the Otherworld should be completely separated from the human realm, and he blocked many of the portals that so many of the creatures used to travel back and forth each and every day. There was a time when magic was prevalent in the human realm and some creatures even mated and bonded with humans, traveling frequently back and forth between both worlds with their crossbred children. It was a time her mother liked to reminisce about, but rarely spoke of. She was devoted to Aeris and supported his cause, despite the fact that Rhea knew deep within her heart that her mother was good and there was no way she could truly support his evil ways. There wasn’t an ounce of evil in her mother’s bones, yet still she doted upon and adored her King.
That adoration had gotten her killed.
No, Rhea would never be like that. She would never accept that life, that evil. She turned her back on it and refused her destiny as ruler of the Otherworld. Even though Aeris was now gone, which she couldn’t yet wrap her mind around and had to admit she wasn’t even sure she believed, the realm would still be a dark place. It would still be full of the evils and darkness Aeris left behind, filled with his dark and twisted creatures who supported his cause. Returning to her old home would be a death trap.
Should Rhea’s return guarantee the safety of her realm, she would do it in a heartbeat. But she knew there was nothing she could do to help, so it was a moot point.
A sudden sadness filled her heart at the realization that if Aeris was dead, that meant the rest of his guardians had died, too. It’s impossible to kill a god without first killing his guardians, going back to the whole soul thing that she didn’t really understand. Part of the reason guardians bore fragments of their god’s soul was to protect them from outside danger. While the guardians survive, their god can’t be killed, as part of its soul would still remain in the world. If Aeris was dead, that meant his entire soul had been destroyed. All of his guardians were dead.
Growing up with her mother in the castle, she had spent much of her time with Aeris’s six other guardians, all beautiful women of varying magical races who helped her mother raise her as they could.
Rhea never quite bonded with any of them. Growing up watching Aeris take his turn between each woman, or with them all at once, as Rhea had the displeasure of hearing on many occasions through the castle walls, she had grown to dislike them all. Aeris hadn’t exactly been discreet with his sexual exploits, and she hated the fact that she saw him with anyone else besides her mother.
Her mother was never bothered by it, and tried often to explain how they were all one partnership and that no one guardian claimed Aeris’s heart, and in turn Aeris devoted himself to all seven of his guardians equally. It was how it worked, the relationship between a god and his or her guardians. They were all one, only complete when they were together. They shared a bond and a love greater than anything anyone could imagine, or so her mother tended to impress on her on a daily basis.
But Rhea saw how awfully Aeris treated his guardians at times, and the thought of each of them being with him made her heart ache. But now that they were all dead, likely murdered in the attack that had finally taken her father down, she felt incredibly sad. She mourned those women who had made every effort to help make her life growing up in that world the best it could be under the circumstances of an evil king. They hadn’t done a very good job, mind you, but they did what they could, given what they had.
Rhea tried to push them from her thoughts, pulling an image of her mother into her mind. Her mother had worn her deep crimson hair long, and it had been so silky and smooth that it nearly flew around her face as if there were constant wind blowing over he
r. Her pale porcelain skin and dainty fae features made it look as if she was carved from perfect stone. She was one of the most beautiful women Rhea had ever seen.
People often told her that she looked like her mother, but it wasn’t true. She wasn’t half as beautiful as her mother had been, but even still she was happy to hold onto some resemblance of her. She was just grateful that she held more of her mother in her than she did her father.
Rhea had repressed these memories for so long, she had grown used to the idea that she didn’t have any family. Well, apart from Lanei, she supposed, who had become something of a sister to her.
Lanei. She had left without saying goodbye. Guilt set into her stomach as she imagined Lanei showing up at the rooftop only to find Rhea’s shelter empty. Lanei would assume the worst, that Rhea had gotten killed or kidnapped or something.
Rhea pulled out her phone and stared at the black screen for a long minute. She flipped it open and then closed again, numerous times, trying to think of what she would tell her. She was leaving for good and couldn’t turn back. Maybe it was for the best that Lanei assumed her dead, it would prevent her from trying to convince Rhea to come home, or worse, come after her. If her guardians were right and she really was a target, then Lanei wouldn’t be safe with her. It was for the best that Rhea keep her distance, no matter how much it broke her heart.
She flipped open the phone again and pressed it on. A soft jingle sounded as the old phone powered on, and she bit her lower lip as she tried to come up with the smartest way to handle this. She wanted so bad for Lanei to come with her, to keep the one friend she had in the world, to start a new life in Chicago together…but it was too great a risk. She wasn’t going to drag her friend, her new family, into the mess she was in.
I have to leave. I’m sorry. I love you. She watched the phone flash as the text message sent. Then she immediately turned it off and slid it back in her pocket without a second glance.