Page 5

Chapter five

Jade

T he wine glass is motionless on the table.

It catches a flicker of light from the streetlamp beyond the open window, shimmering against the wall like it’s pretending to be something magical.

Like it belongs in a painting. Not in my unglamorous shared kitchen, not next to the chipped bowl in the sink or the cleaning rota stuck to the fridge with magnets.

The whole house is quiet. Everyone is either asleep or out living their lives. I feel alone. Very alone, like I have been transported to a shadow realm and I’m the only living soul.

I should go to bed.

It’s good that no one is around. I’d be miserable company.

I should pour the wine out and put the glass in the sink. I should brush my teeth. Sleep. Dream something forgettable.

Instead, I’m sitting here in the half-dark, still wearing my hoodie even though the night is warm. Elbows on the table. Hands around the wine stem like I’m waiting for it to say something. Waiting for it to explain how dinner turned into whatever that was.

Because it wasn’t a date. Right?

We both said it. Repeated it, even. Not a date. Just catching up. Just two friends, ex-colleagues, reconnecting after a year of radio silence and one random coffee. Totally normal.

So why did it feel like I was glowing the whole time? Why did every smile feel like it was made just for me? Why did his hand brush mine on purpose ?

I close my eyes, but all it does is make the memory sharper.

Flyn’s laugh. His low, easy voice. The way he looked at me when I said I’d been... touchier than usual. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away. Just smiled and said, “I don’t mind.”

I almost reached for his hand again. I didn’t, but I thought about it. A thousand times.

He told me he’d thought about me.

Like it was nothing. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like I hadn’t disappeared without explanation. Like I hadn’t ghosted him for an entire year. Like I hadn’t almost destroyed everything.

I sigh heavily. I had such a wonderful night. It was pretty much magical. Flyn was great company, as always. I should be still glowing. Singing. Walking on clouds.

So why has the strange melancholy settled over me? It feels like I’m suffocating. Or drowning. Weighted by all the things that can never be.

Dinner. It was just dinner.

Yet it was also a taunt and a tease. A glimpse of how my life could be if I were normal.

If I wasn’t half-fey, if I wasn’t a former sex slave, or the person who nearly destroyed the world.

How, if I were none of those things, I could go on nice dates with wonderful men and maybe fall in love.

Perhaps build a life together. A life of simple domesticity.

A home, a garden. Coffee on the porch. Hurried kisses before work. Arguments over the dishwasher.

But that’s never going to happen. Because I am all those things and that’s an awful long way from normal.

I run my hands through my hair, pulling just enough to feel the pinch.

I’m pretty sure my stupid longing has already moved past, ‘ dates with wonderful men.’ My wishful thinking has already repainted all those, ‘ arguing about whose turn it is to load the dishwasher, ’ daydreams. The images are no longer merely some faceless man.

It’s not a blurry figure kissing me good morning. It’s not a vague man holding my hand. It’s not a shadowy outline sitting next to me in the cinema.

It’s Flyn, in every single image. It’s Flyn.

My mind has moved on from wanting someone, to wanting Flyn.

After one coffee and one dinner.

I really am absurd. Ridiculous. Pathetic. I need to get a grip. If I want to be normal, I have to start by at least acting the part.

I drag myself out of the kitchen, the wine glass abandoned. My legs feel weirdly floaty, my chest tight. I pass the dark living room, climb the stairs and push open my bedroom door, stepping into the quiet.

I flick on the lamp beside the bed, but the warm light doesn’t help. The shadows still feel like they’re watching me.

There’s a mirror across from the foot of the bed. I catch my reflection as I move. And freeze.

I look human enough, I suppose. My otherness is usually translated in human minds as attractiveness. They choose not to see that my cheekbones are a little too sharp. My eyes a little too large, too bright. They don’t see the inhuman.

But I can still see it. I feel it. Like something just behind the skin, pressing up against the mask I’ve forced it to wear.

I hate mirrors. I hate seeing myself and not knowing who’s looking back.

I sit on the bed, hoodie pulled tight around me. The room’s quiet, except for the faint creak of the floorboards settling and the city murmuring through the window.

I pull my phone out of my jeans pocket and? throw it down onto the bed beside me. I stare down at it and it glares back up at me.

New phone. Sleek, expensive. Uncomfortably large and a little too heavy. It scans my face now to unlock, and every time it does, I want to throw it across the room.

Because what it sees, what it records, is a lie.

But I pick it up anyway. Out of habit. Loneliness. Hope .

The message is still there.

Flyn, ‘Thanks for tonight. I’m really glad we caught up. :)’

The smiley face ruins me.

Like it’s casual. Like he’s not curling in my thoughts like smoke. Like I didn’t sit across from him tonight and nearly say, “You’ve made me feel like I’m not broken.”

I type a reply. ‘ Me too.’ Then delete it.

‘It was really good seeing you.’ Delete.

‘I missed you.’ Delete. Delete. Fuck.

I throw the phone down, harder than I mean to. It bounces once on the mattress, then stills, dark screen glowing faintly like an accusation.

I press my fists against my eyes until the world behind them sparks.

You don’t get this, the voice whispers. You don’t get happy endings. You don’t get soft things. You don’t get to be wanted.

I used to think the worst thing in the world was being owned. Trapped. Controlled.

It’s not.

The worst thing is coming to miss the cage because at least inside it, I knew what I was. I knew the rules.

Here, in the quiet, in this halfway version of a life, I don’t know anything.

Except that I’m still not free.

I lie back on the bed, hoodie bunched at the back of my neck. I stare up at the ceiling and think about the veil between realms.

How it felt the night I almost opened it.

There was a wind, even though the night was still. A low, rising hum in the back of my skull. Magic tugging at every inch of me like strings on a marionette. I could hear them calling me.

“Jade.”

It sounded so sweet on their tongues. So welcoming. Just open the way. Just a sliver. Just a heartbeat.

They promised freedom. Power. Belonging. Safety.

I almost believed them.

If my friends hadn’t found me. If Pink hadn’t pleaded with me, his voice cutting through the sweetly calling voices of the fey. If Ned hadn’t forced me to sleep.

I might have done it.

I might have destroyed the world. Reopened the portals and allowed the fey to return. Ancestors who I have never met, but whose cruelty I can feel beating in my own heart.

They promised me everything I’ve ever wanted, and once I’d done their bidding and destroyed the world… well, there would be no need to turn their gifts down.

I would have been rich, powerful, feared.

And now?

Now I can’t even text a man back without coming undone.

Flyn doesn’t know any of this.

Not the fey. Not that other worlds exist. Not the portals. Not what I am. Not what I’ve done.

To him, I’m just a pretty, slightly odd guy he used to work with. The one he flirted with sometimes, probably just for fun. He doesn’t know the shape of my shame. He doesn’t know that the touch of a kind hand can make me flinch harder than violence ever did.

He doesn’t know that some nights, I still wake up screaming silently in the dark.

Or that I’ve only just stopped dreaming in the eerie music of the fey.

I turn my head, stare at the phone again.

The screen lights up one last time before it dims. His message sits there, waiting. Mocking me softly.

I type something.

‘I don’t know if this is a good idea.’

My thumb hovers over the send button.

I delete it.

Then I type again .

‘Don’t thank me! I want to thank you.’ Pause. ‘It meant a lot.’

I don’t add a smiley. I don’t sign it with my name. I just hit send and lock the screen before I can take it back.

Then I turn over and bury my face in the pillow.

Let him read into it whatever he wants.

Let the night swallow it whole.