Page 12 of Unfettered

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.