Neela

Neela

Today was the day I would kill myself.

Whoever invented this way of coming into your full power ought to be kicked in the nuts—or the flaps, depending on their biology.

I had barely slept all night, tossing and turning and trying to get Ronan out of my thoughts. Trying to forget about all the blossoming friendships snatched from me. Trying to get some damn sleep.

Now I stood on the Plains of Forgetting, preparing to kill myself. I stared at the dense fog swirling with colors and gave myself a pep talk. “I’ve been alone my whole life, I don’t need anyone. I can do this.” Shit pep talk.

Liz stood beside me and was uncharacteristically solemn. “Your Ascension is one of the only things in life where you must be alone. But when you come back, we’ll be waiting for you.”

Doug rubbed against my ankle, her soft green fur a comfort. I bent down and patted her, tickling under her chin. “Thanks for being here.”

Doug and Herb had trundled after Liz and me when we’d left the palace this morning. It was unlike them to leave the forest or the Rose Palace, so they knew something was happening.

Even Herb let me pat him, and I hoped it wasn’t farewell forever.

“Ready?” Liz asked.

Definitely not. How could I be ready to kill myself? I straightened my shoulders and nodded. “Let’s do it.”

A familiar, deep, rumbling voice called my name, but I didn’t look up. The last thing I wanted was to complicate my emotions with Ronan—I had to focus on my Ascension. So I ignored the tug of his call and tried to peer into the fog.

The mist swirled with different colors and obscured the center of the plain. I had to step in—it called to me. I took a deep breath.

Fuck it.

As soon as I set foot inside the fog, I wanted to keep going. The smoke called to me with every promise from the realm of greed and excess.

My mood swelled, the air tasted of honey and strawberries, and my skin tingled with sensual awareness.

I breathed deeply in the scented air, working up the courage to take the plunge. I pulled the deadly larkspur sapling from my pocket. How could such a beautiful purple flower cause death?

This moment had played through my mind a hundred times, but picturing suicide and actually going through with it were two very different things. I stared at the bloom, the light green leaves, the strip of white along the inside of the petal.

“It’s just eating,” I told myself. “Just open your mouth and chew on the damn flower.”

I shoved the whole thing in my mouth, stalk and all, and chewed. It tasted bitter, like broken dreams, and every instinct begged me to spit it out, but I kept chewing and eventually forced myself to swallow.

The pain hit. I doubled over as a thousand knives stabbed into my gut, and spit bubbled around my mouth, trying to rid my body of the toxin.

Too late. I fell to the ground, my body wracked with agony, shaking uncontrollably. My legs spasmed, and my arms curled into my chest. I tried to move but could only twitch. Paralysis hardened every one of my muscles while the agony intensified. Death would be a relief.

I pissed myself, urine leaking around me, snot streaming from my nose, and pain, such pain, everywhere and forever.

I tried to feel my inner magic, but my focus couldn’t stick. I was too consumed by agony, the poison that leaked through every cell of my body.

The swirling smoke turned inky, and the world went black.

The pain stopped, and I knew I was dead. This was the part where I should come back to life, but my body remained inert, the darkness all-consuming, and panic wormed its way through my limbs, snaking up to my center and making my heart hammer.

I had to get up. Had to beat this death. A handful of fae didn’t survive their Ascension, and I didn’t want to be one of them.

The fear was overwhelming, and suddenly I was up and running through the dark, hearing scuffles of footsteps in pursuit. Why were the Shadow Walkers in my deathscape?

Would Ronan mourn me? How real had any of it been? He’d taken me for a fool, and he’d been right. He influenced mood, so I couldn’t trust anything between us—not his emotions, and certainly not my own.

I stopped running, and the pursuing Shadow Walker stopped too. This was fear. This was House Mentium. This wasn’t real, I just had to master my emotions. To Ascend, I had to pass a test from each House.

I pulled out every trick of relaxation I’d ever used on the streets, telling myself that tomorrow would be better. I thought of Liz and Herb and Doug, my true friends. Even if this shitshow went south, no one could take away the fact I’d made such pure friends.

My breathing slowed.

An arm snaked around my waist, and I realized I was naked. Another arm cupped my ass, then a tongue licked my breast and circled my nipple.

Bodies were everywhere, soft, firm flesh on display, breasts and dicks and legs and tongues. This was easy. Trust House Caro to be so transparent. I ignored the sizzling on my skin and strolled away.

Rounding a bend, I saw the most magnificent sunset I had ever seen, orange and pink with slashes of gold across the broad horizon. The beauty was mesmerizing, the test from House Allura. I wanted to sink to my knees and stare at the sky forever, but I knew I had to keep walking.

House Dionysus had no hope of trapping me because my vow to never taste Magirus food carried me even through death. I raced through the banquet hall that materialized around me and was quickly out the other side.

My mother stood as I’d seen her in the vision in the Library of Whispers, in a green velvet gown with a coronet of wildflowers around her lustrous dark hair, but she was in a field of grass and blooms. My father stood beside her in the same hunting leathers I’d seen him wearing before, and Sebarah was there too, not the toddler from my vision but a full-grown fae with the same dark hair as our mother and a broad smile on his face.

All three were beaming. My mother looked radiant and joyful, and my father looked relaxed and confident. I was glad to have this moment with them. It was a vision to replace the grief-filled one from the day they gave me away. My family pulled me into a four-way hug, and a sense of belonging and peace settled over me that I knew would stay with me forever.

“Go,” Mom said. “Go and be everything you can be. We’ll see you in the meadows when you’re ready.”

“I’m so proud of you, honey,” Dad murmured in my ear.

Seb squeezed my upper arm. “Go get ‘em, sis.”

Dozens of flowers bowed their heads before me and let me pass without challenge, and I walked on with power thrumming through me.

I opened my eyes, coughing, and found myself back in the Plains of Forgetting. The colorful mist had dispersed, and a ring of fae surrounded me. They applauded when I stood up. How much of that had they seen?

Power flowed through me, and I sensed every blade of grass in the field around me. Every single one.

Liz rushed up to me. “What was it like? Quick, tell me everything before you forget.”

I would never forget that experience. “First I was afraid, then….”

The memories jumbled together, a sensation of pain, fear, and beauty, then just power, oceans of power. Plus, an unshakable sense of peace and confidence and the feeling that my family was proud of me, wherever they were.

“I can’t remember,” I confessed.

She stamped her foot. “Dammit. I thought if I got in fast enough, you could tell me.” She beamed at me. “Anyway, you Ascended, bitch.” She pulled me into a tight hug which I didn’t return because I was overwhelmed by the millions of blades of grass around us.

Ronan was there, a shit-eating grin on his face which I didn’t repay. His pals were there too, my puppet masters, Gabrelle, Leif, and Dion.

I was more powerful than any of them now, and they would regret ever tormenting me.

Now was the perfect time to fulfill my vow and get revenge. The anger I’d taken with me into the Ascension Rite had solidified into granite, hard and unbreakable. The magical ritual had made my fury permanent.

I stalked the heirs as we left the plains, knowing we had to pass by a forest. Ronan lagged behind the others, and I lagged behind him, keeping his black head within sight.

As soon as we were within range of the forest, I sent my feelers of awareness in among the trees and found a long sturdy liana curling around a tree and summoned it to my will.

The thick vine responded immediately, snaking out of the forest and around Ronan’s ankle, snapping it to the side before he could move a muscle.

With my new fae hearing, the cracking bone was loud and very satisfying.

Anger lined Ronan’s face, and he stared at me with no trace of love, just pure venom. The vine whipped him upside-down, dangling from his broken foot.

Pushing down my emotions, I ignored him and focused on Dion, who was several paces ahead and had already rounded the next bend. I trotted to catch up, keeping my awareness of the living, breathing forest around us. I snagged the Magirus’s feet in tree roots so he couldn’t move, then stuffed a vine down his throat so it coiled slowly in his stomach, instructing the liana to keep feeding the chef. Forever.

“Choke on that,” I snarled.

Somebody would probably help him, stop him from actually dying, but if they didn’t, that was on him. He was prepared to let me feed on rocks until I died, and returning the favor felt awesome.

Gabrelle was next. She sauntered along loftily, swishing her hips in those perfect fawn leather pants, believing herself so superior. Happy to treat everybody in the world like her toys, including me.

I couldn’t control her body the way she’d handled mine, accessing it directly, but I could use roots and branches as my puppet strings. I captured her head and smashed her lips against Leif’s, reveling in the mess of pink hair and her shocked gasp.

I kept her there, immobilized by the trees and vines, vulnerable to any fae who wanted to kiss her. With her beauty, they would probably be lining up. She deserved that and worse.

Leif broke away from Gabrelle’s kiss, then winked across at me. Trust him to enjoy my torture. He was the least bad of the bunch, so I let him get off with just a long lick from a slimy creeper, which left a trail of grime up his bare chest. He wiped it away with a disgusted grimace.

Liz trailed behind me with a massive grin, gobbling up my platter of revenge as greedily as Dion gobbled that vine. “You are freaking awesome. Did I mention how awesome you are? Entirely. Fucking. Awesome.”

I felt it. Power thrummed through my body as I strode ahead, my friends by my side and my enemies strewn along the path behind me. If this is what it was to be an Ascended fae, I was here for it.

And no power on heaven or earth could make me leave.