Chapter Two

The eggs would have melted on his tongue if he wasn’t so exhausted. He wanted to go throw it all up but out of the corner of his eye, he could see his sisters watching him. They were scared for his health, he had heard Posy whispering that he looked like a bag of bones before Avery shut her up. She was right, he looked like he was anorexic these days with how little he weighed. If someone was shown a picture of how much he used to weigh compared to now, they’d be in disbelief.

The teenager was turning into a shell of a human being and a creature of the fey. Their kind needed to eat to conserve their energy in the human world and he just refused to. His grief was consuming him and he knew he should get help but he just couldn’t. In his dreams he heard her voice, crying out for help, shivering in the darkness as he ran blindly searching for her. She sounded cold, her voice would tremble with each syllable she managed to utter. Aiden would worry about his health and focus on getting better once she was in his arms.

‘You have to rest.’ Posy’s soft, but the harsh voice whispered in the back of his mind as he watched her take his now empty plate away. She had a knowing look in her eyes, one that judged him silently as she spoke without their sister being aware. ‘Cassandra wouldn’t want this for you.’

He wanted to argue back that she didn’t know what Cassandra would want but he didn’t have the energy or the heart. The rest of the day went the same with his sisters watching from afar, worry on their faces as he just laid on the couch. Their dog came in from playing and laid on his legs, whimpering but he felt too weak to comfort him. Eventually, the little thing gave up and ran over to Posy who just shook her head and carried it upstairs. Soon after Avery announced that she was going to work and offered to pick him something up to eat. He didn’t reply and after asking two more times, she just left with the front door slamming shut with a loud bang.

Aiden knew treating his family like this was wrong. But all he could do was just lay there, curled up in a ball with his arms covering his face. He didn’t want to think about anything besides his last few weeks with Cassandra and how he could have treated her better. He had been a jerk, an asshole who was too worried about his feelings instead of communicating them with her. And now he was sitting here, doing the same with his little sisters. He wondered why they even put up with him. ‘God I’m such a piece of shit.’

‘You aren’t a piece of shit dummy,’ He heard the sound of feet slapping onto the carpet. A hand grabbed his arm to move it from in front of his face and he was met by Posy’s teary eyes. It made him feel awful seeing her upset and immediately he got up to speak to her.

“I am sis. Cassandra wanted me to be a better person and I just treated her like dirt.” Aiden sighed once he heard his voice crack in the middle of his sentence.

Posy sat down next to him and held his hand in her lap. She was red in the face from crying, her eyes visibly puffy as she rolled them at his words. “There’s a billion asshole boyfriends in the world but there isn’t a billion that wouldn’t shed a tear when their girlfriend disappeared. You regret your behavior and you’ve been trying to make it up to her for months. And you will once we find her.”

“But what if…we don’t find her. What if she doesn’t want to see me?” He felt sick to a stomach saying it but those words had haunted him for days. There was a chance Cassandra just wouldn’t want to face him once she was found if she was ever found with the months growing day by day.

The younger of the two turned to glare at him, annoyance clear as day, “Okay I doubt Cassandra would give up a scholarship due to a shitty relationship. And if she doesn’t want to speak to you after all of this, well that’s just her choice. But I doubt that will happen.”

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The teenager gulped thinking of the possibility that his sister was wrong and Cassandra would hate him when she came back. But he didn’t want to argue with her when she was only trying to ease his mind and give him some sort of comfort. Her nails scratched against his skin, they were long and kind of curled, a genetic thing from being half-fey he guessed. While watching her do this, he noticed there was something under her nails that looked dark. Dark enough to be a reddish-brown, like it was dried remnants of blood.

‘I can see you looking.’ She commented catching him off guard and making him wish that her telepathic abilities weren’t so evasive. But for now, he was more focused on if she was hurt or not.

“What happened?” If someone had attacked her because of him and hadn’t said anything, he felt his heart drop. Instead of answering at first, he felt her pull back and wave her hand dismissively at him.

“I started to grow my fey teeth and one of my adult chompers fell out.” With that, she opened her mouth and there he saw what looked like canines where her back teeth should be. There was also some blood in her saliva which made him wince. “Mom wasn’t kidding when she said these bad boys come in at random and heart like a bitch.”

“That looks painful, have you taken any pain medicine for that? Or rubbed some of mom’s herbs on it?” He shuttered at the memory of crying his eyes out with his mother helping him drink ice water as his teeth lengthed.

Fey puberty was hell on earth for him to go through and made him nauseated to even think about it. Thankfully, his fey teeth had come in rather early at age seven and finished by his freshman year of high school, resembling rather long adult teeth. But Posy was a late bloomer along with Avery whose teeth suddenly stopped coming in around age twelve which gave their father and dentist a heart attack. So he knew it must feel like torture having them grow in when you were nearly an adult.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I rubbed some on last night which helped me sleep but I don’t think anything will work permanently. Swallowing pills made me want to puke all over my dresser yesterday.”

“But are you alright ?” He asked feeling unnerved from how much pain she had been in without him noticing. Any guilt he felt was buried as he wanted to focus on his little sister’s health instead of his issues.

“Well… something is bothering me still,” She said slowly as if she was trying to figure out a way to say whatever it was without causing him to panic. “Mom visited me in my head last night and she kinda freaked me out.” One of her nails went into her mouth as she began to anxiously bite it.

His balance wavered, they had long become immune to their mother’s weirdness so if Posy was freaked out by her something must be wrong. His throat became dry as he spoke. “What did she say? What happened? Is she alright do we need to call d-”

“No no no! She made me promise that we wouldn’t tell dad anything!” She yelled causing their dog to bark a few times and him to instinctively hold his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, I won’t mention any of this to dad but calm down before you make her lose it.” He nodded over to their dog who was bouncing around by their feet, having run over to see what caused her to yell.

Posy sighed, taking a breath before continuing. There was sweat on her forehead and she had started to get red in the face again. “Thank you. Mom burst into one of my dreams and told me that she’s coming home early and that we are going to be mad at her but we will understand when she tells me.”

“And what did she say?” He earned a half-hearted sneer at his interruption.

“She said that there’s a new law being proposed by the Seelie court. This law would prohibit creatures of the fey from breeding with humans. And not only that but the law might pass meaning her relationship with dad? It can get her arrested, us going to a human school can get her arrested, our existence would be seen as a mistake to the Seelie court.” She sounded terrified, her teeth biting onto her nail with an uncomfortable crunch. Some blood started to drip down her skin, staining it red.

“Half of the Unseelie court is supporting this law and half are prepared to fight it but it doesn’t look good so she’s coming to take us to the fey realm.” Posy shook herself, sniffling. “Our human lives are over, she’ll be here by the time Avery gets back from the mall.”