The sand is grainy and slimy beneath my fingers as I lean back. Indifference soaks me in its unwavering grasp. The wish to sit here until either starvation or thirst takes me makes it hard to find the will to push upright. Madame Nika gave me a distraction for a time, a reason to feel fear and anger... but that is now gone. Drained from me as soon as she left.

Now all I feel is a languid anxiety. It's not even peaceful. Were it peaceful, it'd be easy to just not care any longer. To just give up and slide into a peaceful slumber and not fight anymore.

But this is a bone deep anxiety and coldness that makes your heart tremble and everything seem... dark. As if the world will never be right so why even try? Why keep going, keep breathing, if all that will ever be is pain, sorrow, and suffering? If everything you do only ends up making everything worse, until all you see is it all crashing around you and you are the center.

Ran nudges me with a whimper, but I can't even find the will to respond when she curls around me. And I realize I'm curled in around my heart, as if that would ease the pain and coldness deep within. But nothing can touch this. Nothing can help.

A part of me realizes this isn't true. That what I've done has had some effect. Yeah, I'm the reason my family was taken, but yet... I got them back, and through that, helped hundreds of bound fairies find freedom and saved Risia.

And yet, in this moment, with war rising from the literal depths of Risia and food growing in price and Jill fighting her Gifts and Momma trying to hide the way her fingers still tremble at loud sounds and Jack getting that look in his eye that says he's seen things no one his age should have to deal with... it feels overwhelming. More than overwhelming. As if each little problem is a weight pressing upon my soul until I am crushed and unable to rise.

And yet, typically, I can hold this at bay. Yeah, I'm facing things no sane person tries to fight... but I fight. I'm not a quitter.

But right now?

I feel like a quitter.

Ran whimpers again, shoving her nose in my ear. When even the feel of her cold nose gets no reaction, she burrows into our bond and sniffs around in my soul.

And that's when I feel it.

Something deep within feels… off.

I thought it was just the indifference and shoved it away while I spoke with Madame Nika, but... it’s more than that.

Should I even try to figure out what is causing this? It might seem a coward's way out, but the pull to just let go and not figure out the cause is more appealing than I can say. To just relax into the indifference and cold. To stop striving. To just... stop.

A pitiful wail, as if something were mourning, rose into the air as the sun bathed my skin in warmth that couldn't even touch the cold within.

And I realize I can't do that to my bond. To my family. To Silver or Jenny or Hans. To Risia.

This city gave me a reason to live again when Jill was sick. There are people here who are good, even if there are those who are terrible and terrifying.

Hans and Jenny took in a total stranger. A knight took death to protect me. Ran has been a rock in otherwise shifting sand.

And The King... a part of me is angry. So angry at him for what he put us through. Yet another part knows that he always has a reason, even if I can't yet understand why. And another part knows the bad is from the choices of people, the consequences of actions, both by action and inaction... and that is the problem with free will. The crux.

But without free will there cannot be right and wrong. And without right and wrong, there cannot be choice. And without choice, one cannot choose love, kindness, forgiveness, and joy.

And now, the choice is before me. Stop fighting and deal with the consequence. Or keep fighting... and deal with the consequence.

One is easy, it's just a simple matter of giving in and giving up. The other... it means fighting myself and striving to continue in a world that seeks to grind me beneath its dragon tail.

I know what I should do... but what if I don't wish to?

A tug to my hand sends a slight pain up my arm that the cold dulls as my teeth chatter, but I pry my eyelids open to Ran standing over me. Her ears flick back and forth, her nose twitching. But it's her eyes that strike me to the core.

They are not red, but not their usual amber, instead laying somewhere in between. But they are shimmering with a broken grief so deep it nearly causes my cold soul to feel.

Don't, sis. Please. Please don't leave me. She squeezes those eyes closed as if the very sight of me is heart-rending, then rubs her cheek against mine, a single tear dripping from her eye and dropping onto my forehead.

And somewhere, in the depths of my soul, a flickering candle becomes a little stronger. A little brighter.

When was I ever one to take the easy route?

Ran purrs, a sound emerging from the depths of her soul and warming me just a hair, granting me her strength for the battle ahead. The battle to find out why the Curse is getting worse instead of fading away since I am no longer using my Gift.

It's time to fight.

----------------------------------------

I rise to my knees, leaning against Ran and trying to breathe deeply and calm myself. I get to her back, wrapping my arms around her neck and huffing heavily as my bones feel like mush.

She begins the walk back home.

I will fight. I will fight, I chant. Then I grit my teeth and dive, falling into the area of my soul... and my Gift.

When I arrive, the garden is in turmoil. The surrounding strands are twisted and darting around instead of how they typically twine around but never touch each other. I touch one and feel the gut-wrenching pain of a child being screamed at by his father. I quickly back away, hitting others and trying not to become overwhelmed before I even reach the center.

I duck and weave, trying to keep ahead of the starnds. And at last, I reach my soul-tree. And there is a knot-like something near the branches. It's pulsating with weird colors, oddly pale in the light of so many colorful and sharp emotions.

The strand running from my heart meets with two others.

And the stands are trying to tug apart, but something almost in a rainbow of colorful ribbon circles them in a tight circle, pushing them together before they can get away, but I feel it. I feel it pulling me into three different directions.

I think the Gift tries to tamp it down, running constantly within.

Ran whimpers as I face plant into her mane.

I touch a strand that isn't mine.

Aria, you must stop. The voice is dainty, but breathy in my mind. Weak.

Sprite queen?

Ambrose, my dear. You must stop before you kill us.

The cold spreads. My fingers turn blue where they’re clutching Ran’s mane.

Library, I whisper in my mind. Before the thought finishes, Ran turns, nearly unseating me but crow-hopping to right me.

We reach the library in the cold, blanketing darkness of a city just after dawn. Shivers shake my entire body, not from the cold without but within.

The door is already open to the sprite king. His eyes are colder than I've ever seen... and he holds himself in the air without a flicker of his wings. My bleary eyes can hardly make him out, but power exudes from him, and I nearly lose my lunch as I feel just how easily he could squash me. Like a bug.

I sit upright with numb fingers clenched in Ran’s fur, fear skittering up my spine.

He turns without a word, floating up the passageways to the throne room. Ran has to trot to keep up.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Sprites line the passageways, and unlike when I normally arrive, they are all in sprite form, their wings drooping even as they flutter to keep upright.

It strikes me to my core.

Ran slows to a near-walk beneath me, but at a numb flare in me she breaks into a ground-eating trot, following the trail of sprites after the king.

The king leads us to the garden pagoda room with the sparkling stars in the dark sky. A ring of sprites surround an orb on the ground. It hits my stomach like a wall of acid when the only sound is the sobbing of a form with bright pink hair and wings huddled over the single orb on the ground, the pink wings quivering with each heaving sob.

I slip off Ran, who ducks her head under my arm to support my wobbly legs.

The walk to the queen seems to stretch wider the closer I come. It seems to last years instead of the mere seconds it surely was.

I feel her within the sputtering ball of light. Feel her trying to hold to the Spark my Gift is slowly strangling.

And that's when I realize my Gift isn't trying to tamp down the rainbow threads that's circling the knot. It is the rainbow knot, forcing us into a weave and trying to pull us together as we struggle to return to our normal bodies.

What have I done?

I’m not dead yet. Quit mourning me in advance. And straighten your shoulders and dry your tears. It’s improper for a lady to slump so.

H-How? I ask, sitting hard beside the sobbing pink-haired Natasha

When you reached for Rose, you nearly stole her from Natasha. Cold washes through me, making my lips numb. I intervened. Your Gift is powerful, child. More than any I’ve felt. You must be careful in its use… but you must let it free or else it will seek to control you, as it seeks to control my Spark.

That sounds… moronic.

A gentle laugh, then a gasp as my Gift wraps chains around something and reels it in. It begins feverishly wrapping and twining our souls like some sort of soul spinning wheel.

I feel the cold flush of my Gift but also its desperation. It's hope to keep me alive... in the only way it knows how. By grasping for power. It’s as if when I reached for Rose for help against the dragon, my emotions were so awry… the fear and desperation seeped into my Gift and it sought to help us survive… at any cost. And... my Gift felt the only way to survive was through stealing a Spark.

I reach for my Gift, detangling threads spreading from me to the queen. But with each thread I painstakingly pull away, another three rainbow ribbons reach out and grasp tightly to the red within the queen’s golden thread.

A desperate keen rises in my throat and chokes off my breath. I feel her slipping from this world, feel her spirit begin to detach from the tethers of her body.

The queen’s thread unravels as her Spark is pulled from her… by me.

I sense my Gift isn’t trying to harm the queen… it’s trying to protect me.

But that doesn't change the consequence.

I make a split second decision and gather the rainbow ribbons from me to the queen. It seems odd, but I feel it questioning me like a kitten meowing when you grab it by the pack of the neck.

A tear trails my cheek as I chop the ribbons much as I did the Bamshee threads when beneath the ground. But this... this is so much worse.

My Gift screams. A broken cry. A soulless cry of pain that gives way to a silence so deep. A silence where no cry and no tears are enough to portray the breaking, like the deep and aching cry of a child torn from its innocence.

Betrayal, pain, and broken grief comes from a glimmering white thread in my soul that teems with all colors in the rainbow and beyond, and then it abruptly retreats and slams itself into a dark box and I’m thrust from the inner home of my soul.

A loss so deep, so unspeakable, shakes me to my core. This… I… what did I do? What did I do?

A hole forms in my soul. It feels nearly worse than seeing Jack strung up and whipped. It hurts with an indescribable pain that dries the tears from my eyes. This is a pain tears cannot touch and whimpers cannot portray.

The queen pops into her fairy form, her cheeks whiter than the sheets of my bed and her lips blue. Her wings are frayed, as if they were burned at the edges. Will she… will she fly again?

I bow my head, choking back tears.

You must let it free, or else you risk creating a monster greater than all your enemies combined, the queen whispers into my mind before I pull back, cutting off from my Gift just as much as it cut off from me.

How am I to let it free when I cannot trust it?

You have a terrible trust problem, rider. Who betrayed you in your childhood?

I choke on a dry sob, the brokenness inside me too raw for even Ran’s flat attempt at humor.

Some of the numbness stops when the Gift went into its box, and now I wonder if it’s like Rose… if it’s almost alive.

If so, I just betrayed it just as badly as I did Rose in my fear. Perhaps worse.

It seeks to please you, Ran whispers.

By killing a friend?

By giving you power to protect your family and knowledge of what you walk into when you’re frightened.

Why are you just telling me this now?

I didn’t know until now. You need to apologize. Let her free.

No.

Don’t be an a—

Ran!

I stand by my words. Apologize. She growls low in her throat, rumbling the ground when she takes a step.

I bow my head, clenching her warm fur in a fist. How can I? I can’t offer something I do not have. And sorry... well, that is one thing I don’t feel. Anger, fear, worry, doubt, pain... yes. But if it saved Queen Ambrose, I would do it again, no matter the consequence.

I stand, letting Ran help me up. I back up at the stares. The king holds his wife’s hand as a healer in golden robes with brown hair casts some sort of light over the queen. But his eyes do not leave me. They are cold, hard as glass rock and frightening in how the rest of his features are blank. He always has a scowl or some sort of disapproval on his face, but this cool indifference… this is not the king I know. That is the gaze of a killer.

The sprites watch me, features slack, much like their king.

Thomas—the first little sprite I ever met even before I knew of sprites, who lit my books when I was researching for a cure for Jill—tries to reach me, but his father holds up his hand. Thomas’ brother and sister step in and hold him back by the wings. His eyes are hooded and his brows lowered as they forcibly hold his wings. He tries to fight, but I shake my head, forcing a small, sad smile to crease my lips to reassure him. But I’m unsure it does the job when he only pales further, his eyes pleading with me not to do what I am about to do.

I will not fight. This was my fault. Whatever sentence they pass… I will seek to uphold it unless it impedes on protecting the city and my family.

"You are banished from the library." The king stares at me as I struggle to stay upright. To be so small, his aura makes him feel a thousand times bigger than myself.

"Father, you know it was an accident," Thomas says, sagging in the hold of his siblings at something he sees on my face.

"She is a danger to all around her. Until she can leash what is hers, she will be more dangerous to this world than any war could ever be. She could kill us all, without even trying." That is when I see beneath the mask of indifference, perhaps by my Gift or perhaps by studying another stone-faced killer until I could see the minute changes in the eyes.

And within those eyes, beneath the anger and indifference, is something so raw and bare it nearly breaks me. Or perhaps it did and I no longer realize when I break.

It’s a look I’ve seen in my own eyes. A bone-chilling fear when you realize something is so far beyond your control and you know that nothing you do can change it. Cannot even grasp it. When you realize everything you hold dear is in danger and the broken parts of you wish to give up or strike dead those things you know are causing your inability to protect.

Fear so deep it cuts off all reason. Fear for himself. Fear for his people. Fear for his loved ones. Terror for all he holds dear.

A part of me protests. I was thrust into my Gift and my abilities with no one to train me, no one to say how I could control it. The sprites themselves couldn’t help me, so it’s rich coming from him.

And I know if his wife were awake, she would protest. But she’s not… because of me.

And yet… I understand. I know what it is to see things beyond you and fight with all you are to survive another day. To ensure those you love survive another day.

If I could banish those things to another world, banish them from my life, if I could rid myself of the problems before me… wouldn’t I?

That is what he is doing. He sees a problem and he is fixing it.

But… has all the good I’ve done, returning his daughter, freeing his people… has this all been forgotten? Do they not see me? Do they not know?

How do they forget so easily how we fought together? Why? Do I mean so little they can cast me aside when I go through a hard time or make a mistake?

My soul bleeds even as my eyes remain dry and aching, my body spent and mind fracturing.

All my worst fears are coming to bear. I almost killed a dear friend and have made an enemy of an acquaintance and an entire people.

At times, we make into existence those things we are fixated on, Ran whispers in a voice so unlike her I nearly jump from my own mind.

I blink at my bond. She doesn’t meet my gaze, merely flicks an ear, her oddly tinted red and brown eyes pinned on the Sprite king in some sort of stare down.

But he only has his eyes on me. As if my bond is inconsequential. All the sprites stare at me, no quarter in their eyes. This is the problem with fear, it eliminates empathy.

They feel nothing for my plight, only concerned with their own. I am a danger, and so they fear me.

Is that what I have done? Have I not considered the Gift as an equal because I feared it?

But how can I consider it when it does… this?

Ran lay before me, letting me climb up and lean into her warm fur, a purr vibrating through her and into me. It will be alright, Rider. You will see.

I remain silent, but deep within in a place that is dark and growing jaded, I wonder how she can say that. I solve one problem, save one person, save two, save a city… only for more to seek my help and heap responsibility on me and then throw me to the side when I become an inconvenience.

How can it be alright?

"Be brave, Sva." The voice is a low whisper, soft and child-like. I turn to see a child on the side of the path before me. She glances up through fringe-like blue hair, her eyes wide and innocent, yet with an agelessness that makes me question my sanity. As if I have any left.

"Stand strong, Guardian," another whispers, this one daring to reach out and touch my leg where it rests against Ran's flank. I flinch, but she merely smiles at me before fluttering back into line.

More give me tentative smiles, some I recognize from that night, so burned into my brain I see them in my nightmares, their skeletal and broken bodies finally freed from the ones holding them in chains.

But now... they are free from those who broke them, and I see in them how their wings are stronger, their arms not so thin; but their are cheeks still haggard and dark and... their eyes. So raw, so broken.

In their eyes, I see myself.

But also, there is something else within. They gaze at me with something altogether different than the indifference in most of the sprites. They watch me with compassion. With hope. With kindness.

And it is almost too much for me. I turn my head into Ran’s mane, burying my face into her fur that tickles my nose and makes me sneeze. But even as I squeeze my eyes shut, more hands graze my body, and with each touch, with each gentle reassurance, I realize not all put me aside. Some… some still see me, see where my heart lies. See what I want more than anything.

And that, more than anything else, puts a tiny bit of warmth back in my cold soul.