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  Publisher’s Note:

  This is a work of fiction,

  the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to real persons or events is

  coincidental.

  Copyright December 2019 – Ana Calin

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER I

  Arielle

  THE MOMENT I STEP INTO the Alpha Sigma fraternity house, I have second thoughts. The place is packed with boisterous football players coming on to tipsy girls, a couple getting it on right next to the main door. I try to back out, but my client Jasmine grips my arm, dragging me in.

  “There he is,” she says in my ear, pointing not very discreetly at a guy in the main room. He leans with his elbow on the mantelpiece, acting all seductive to a girl so drunk that she’s reeling.

  “The campus golden boy or what?” I say under my breath. “I don’t know, Jazz. He doesn’t seem right for you.”

  “It’s who I want, and that’s that.” She creases her tiny nose, trying to look the boss. But she actually reminds me of a Tinker Bell illustration from a Peter Pan book. Even her dyed pink hair suits the vibe.

  “Things aren’t that simple.”

  “I’m paying you good money, aren’t I?”

  “Which is exactly why I should be completely honest with you.”

  “Oh, so generous of you.”

  “Jazz, don’t you want to be with a guy who’s truly head over heels for you, one who desires you, who genuinely—”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit, Arielle, ‘cause I won’t take it, not from you. You were a fucking prom queen, you can have any guy you want. Look at you.” She motions to my body that’s wrapped in a black wool dress that doesn’t manage to hide my curves as much as I’d like. “The body of a mermaid, and the face of a Disney princess.”

  “Jazz—” I want to tell her it’s not like that, that I’ve had my share of unrequited loves, that no one is exempt from that no matter their looks, but she won’t have it.

  “Just drop it, and do what I’m paying you to do.”

  “No, not until I’m sure that you fully understand what that involves.” I straighten my back, taking advantage of the fact that I’m taller than her, considerably so in my high heels. I’ve got my hair tied in a strict bun, and my eyebrows are naturally highly arched, which should add to my air of authority. “What I’m doing will make him crazy about you for a few weeks, but the effect will wear off eventually. If he’s not genuinely attracted to you, what you have won’t last.” I look at him and the girl by the mantelpiece. “You’re not his type, and sooner or later he will return to, well, to that.”

  “It worked for my roommate,” Jasmine insists with hunger in her eyes. “She’s been with the guy ever since you cast your spell, I want what they have.”

  “That was different, he was already interested in her, but just too much of a chicken to make a move. My magic, it just nudged him, that’s all.” I place my hands gently on her shoulders that feel tiny under the leather jacket. “Listen, I don’t want to lie to you. If there isn’t some underlying attraction there, my magic will only spark a few days of crazy lust, that’s all. Then the effect will gradually wear off, and he’ll be left scratching his head and wondering what he saw in you in the first place. And that will hurt like hell, believe me.”

  She grips my wrists.

  “I’ll take him in whatever form I can have him, Arielle. Please.”

  I search her eyes, realizing just how deeply she wants this. I can read the hope in her eyes that she’ll get the guy to genuinely fall for her in those few days of closeness. It’s just self-delusion, and I know it, but she won’t have it any other way. I decide on one last try to make her change her mind.

  “You have a little brother, Jazz, imagine if someone were to do something like this to him. A girl using magic to manipulate his behavior.”

  “You’re stalling,” she growls. “Do it already.”

  I breathe in deeply. Okay, here it goes. I pull Jasmine in a corner of the busy main room. I went for the black wool dress and the tight bun with reason, namely that it helps stay more or less under the radar. Usually my half-fae appearance draws attention, mostly because of the unusual clearness of the skin, and the shine of my hair. My eyes don’t glow quite like a fae’s, but still more than a human’s, and I can’t always blame it on the lighting. Which is why I’m wearing glasses with a thick, black rim.

  I focus my attention on the boy by the mantelpiece. Aunt Miriam’s words keep spinning in my head, the words she repeats to me every time I leave the house on a gig like this.

  “You should stop using your magic once and for all.” Her old crinkled eyes would deepen with worry. “It’s forbidden for fae and half fae to live in the mortal realm, let alone use their powers. We have to keep a low profile, if we want to survive.”

  Not to mention that it’s beyond forbidden to use our powers in order to help humans, and even more so for money. But I don’t have much choice. Aunt Miriam wanted me to go to college, and that means I’m amassing student debt with every breath I take. I won’t let her work herself to death in a women’s prison to pay off my studies, just because she wants me to graduate like a human, and have a chance at a normal life.

  “You need an actual career,” she said. “You won’t be winning your bread with magic, or if you do, it won’t be long until the Council of the Arcane gets hold of you, and throws you into the pit.”

  Besides, she argued, we’re not even witches to render magic services, but half fae. Our magic is different, we don’t need Voodoo dolls, worms or lamb entrails, even though we could use them, if we wanted to. But that’s beneath us. We’re superior to witches, she says.

  I focus on the guy, and connect my mind to the lake behind the house. I open my pores to feel the magic of water, and become one with it. As a half fae of water, water is what feeds my powers, along with the full moon, and the night. I can act much like a mermaid that sings and lures men to her, driving them insane with yearning, but I don’t use my voice on gigs like this. The guys could actually lose their minds. So all I do is drive my magic into the guy’s blood, drawing his attention like a magnet towards us.

  I can feel Jasmine’s hand clench around my arm, her blood pumping when his bad boy eyes rest on her. My magic ripples through him as he falls in love with Jasmine.

  My eyes flutter, about to shut as I seal the deal quite literally with his blood, but the sound of thunder tears through the house, making the walls shake. I snap to attention just as lightning flashes through the large windows. The blood freezes inside me.

  A hooded figure stands in the middle of the room. He just popped up out of nowhere. I squint at it. It’s a man, a large one. I focus on his face, and my breath catches—he’s fae. Even though this is the first time I’ve laid eyes on one since Aunt Miriam last showed her fae face, there’s no mistaking the perfectly smooth skin, and the brightness of the eyes. Aunt Miriam has been wearing the disguise of an old woman for so long that I barely remember her features besides the perfectly straight ebony hair identical to mine, and maybe the strict shape of her mouth, but I remember the impact.

  The fae man stares straight at me. Under his magic, time seems to have slowed down so much that nobody moves. But then I realize he must have frozen them all, since ice flowers spread over everything around him. He emits coldness. People are slowly turning into statues of ice.

  The magic of water that was rippling under my skin turns to chills. Aunt Miriam used to tell me stories about the winter fae, a highly dangerous kind. They rarely ever cross the boundaries into the mortal realm, and when they do, it’s always in order to punish wayward supernaturals.

  Like me.

  The fae is watching me out of dangerous eyes. His skin is so hard it glistens like wet stone, and the sharp contours of his face show that he’s used to violence. A hood covers his head, and his cape hangs from unusually broad shoulders. He heads to me slowly, the wooden floor creaking under his heavy steps.

  “Arielle de Saelaria.” His voice is low like rumbling thunder, I can feel it vibrate between my ribs. “You are charged with high treason against the Council of the Arcane.”

  I should say something, but I can’t even move my lips. All I can do is stare at him as he walks closer.

  “You’ve been using magic for money, placing fae powers in the service of humans.” Ice spreads over the walls as he speaks, creeping over the ceiling. The temperature dropped so much I’m afraid one touch would be enough to make the frozen humans explode into shards. Who the hell is this guy, some kind of executioner?

  Speak, defend yourself, I scream on the inside, but I can’t get my tongue to unstick from my palate. My body is frozen under his power. I want to look down at myself, but discover I can’t move anything except my eyeballs. Thick strings of ice crawl up my body, the fae’s ice magic chaining me from ankles t
o shoulders, hands behind my back. An icy feeling runs over my chest like an ice cube pressed against my bare skin, the cold piercing through my wool dress and the lace underwear underneath.

  “Please,” I manage faintly through cracking lips. “Let me, let me—” But even my thoughts freeze inside my head.

  “You knew what you were doing, half fae,” he says, now close enough that I can see his face clearly. “You can’t blame this on lack of knowledge. You have deliberately misused fae powers.”

  A strand of hair as bright as gold falls from under his hood. He seems a vision straight out of a 3D fantasy movie, and if I wasn’t frozen solid, I’d probably react somehow. His face seems sculpted in ice, and the strand of hair falling over his forehead makes me think of liquid gold. I have a strange urge to reach out and touch it, feel the fluid silk of it on my finger, but I can’t freaking move.

  He winds an arm around me that feels like a block of ice under his garment. He flexes just a little, but it’s enough to throw me over his shoulder. I should try to scream and kick, but he’s definitely larger than any human man could naturally be, and I’m worried about the consequences of antagonizing him. A beast on steroids must be hiding underneath his cloak.

  With me over his shoulder, he moves so fast things speed by in a blur. The fraternity house loses itself in the distance, looking like it’s been gripped in tentacles of snow, like an island of winter among the other houses.

  How come there’s no one out in the streets, no one to witness all this? I’m aware the fae must have frozen time along with the place, it’s a correlation that Aunt Miriam told me about, but the other houses stayed untouched by snow. Must be his magic, he must have cast the fog of confusion over the humans’ minds. By the time they’ll come back to themselves, there will be little evidence left of all this.

  The image warps, and disappears in a whirling spiral, like a centrifuge. My brain scrambles inside my skull, and I’m about to lose consciousness. My last coherent thought is that he must have plunged with me inside a portal between realms.

  Arielle

  THE SOUND OF DRIPPING water wakes me up. I open my eyelids slowly, but they’re so heavy that it’s a struggle. But the sound of water promises healing. I need to feel the power of water inside of me again in order to regain my strength.

  I manage to lift my head from the cold ground. It smells rancid in here, and it’s cold as fuck, snowflakes covering me. Things start coming back—the fraternity house, Jasmine, my magic on her crush, the fae man.

  “Hey, you’re alive,” someone whispers.

  I try to move my head in the direction it comes from, but a sharp pain stabs me in the nape of my neck.

  “Help me, please.” Damn it, my lips hurt with every word. They’re deeply cracked, licking them I can taste the blood that has frozen to them.

  There’s a shuffle in the darkness. I strain to focus my vision, but it’s blurred from the snowflakes clinging to my lashes. It takes a few moments of blinking to clear my eyes, and make out a pale heart-shaped face framed by white hair.

  But the face looking at me isn’t that of an old person. It’s a girl with dirty cheeks, dressed in rags. She’s clearly fae, with big beautiful brown eyes that sparkle with a lively spirit. Yet her eyes are the only thing that seems alive about her.

  “I hear you used your magic in the mortal realm. Poor thing. They won’t go easy on you for that.”

  “Please, help me.”

  She draws closer, looking down at my body to assess the state I’m in.

  “I can’t, you’re wrapped in winter magic,” she says.

  “But you’re a winter fae, aren’t you? Your white hair... It emits cold, like snow. You must be able to do something.”

  “I am a winter fae, but a much lesser one than the man who wrapped you in these magic winter chains. I have nothing on that kind of magic.”

  I tense my chained body in such a way that I can look around, even if I can only pull off a few basic moves.

  Jesus Christ, this is a dungeon. Frosty stone walls, emitting a chill that permeates my flesh and my bones. The bridge of my nose hurts from it, and my breath turns to steam in the air. As for my body, it’s wrapped in what looks like thorny vines of ice, the thorns tearing through my wool dress and my black stockings.

  My skin is so white from the cold, I resemble a corpse from the morgue. Aunt Miriam used to call me Snow White back when I was a kid because of my skin that was naturally white as milk, and contrasted with my ebony hair, but this is a whole new level of white.

  “Oh, God, I’m going to die.”

  “That’s it, despair,” the girl says. “That will get your blood pumping, and heat you up.”

  “How can you stay so freakin’ calm,” I screech at her. “We’re both in a dungeon, a frozen cell that’s making us sick.” I look at my bound body again, trying to check for wounds. “Not to mention that if we get wounded it’ll draw rats and other creatures.” I cringe as I imagine it, but the girl lets out a crystalline laugh.

  “There are no rats in here, doll, it’s too fucking cold.”

  “All right, all right, don’t panic,” I tell myself, looking around as much as my stiff neck allows, and trying to pull myself together. “There’s got to be a reasonable way out of this.” It hits me. “The man, the fae who brought me here. If I could just talk to him, explain. He took me because of the magic, I know he did, but if I told him—””

  The girl laughs and shakes her head like I’m an innocent child.

  “Oh, you’d try to reason with him, yes? You’re funny. No one will listen to anything you have to say, doll. If you’re here, it’s because you used magic in the mortal world.” She motions to the grates. “Like many other prisoners here. That’s an unforgiveable offense, no matter the reasons that prompted it.”

  “There are more people in here?” I whisper, my breath misting the air.

  “Fewer than there used to be, but yes. The dungeons were once full of wayward fae, shifters, vampires, and even witches who actually used their skills for financial benefit.” She leans over a bit like she’s letting me in on a secret. “It’s okay to trick people, you see, take their money like a charlatan, but not to actually use your magic to their benefit. Anyways, the Wards showed that they meant business by sending most of the wrongdoers to burn in the pit for tens of years, so not many supernaturals dare to go against the rules anymore.”

  “Are you saying they’re going to burn me for this?” I don’t know if I’m scared or just plain enraged. “For having cast a few spells, and helped a few girls with a crush?”

  She shrugs. “They burned others for less, like influencing crops to grow faster. But there is hope, look at me. I’m still here.”

  “That’s no surprise. You’re only a child. They’re just teaching you a lesson, for sure.”

  “A child, oh, wow, thanks for the compliment. But I’m a full-blood fae, that’s why I look so young to you. You’re used to humans, and their aging, and it’s understandable that you’re confused. But I’ve been around for a few good decades already.”

  Decades isn’t old for a fae, I know that much from Aunt Miriam. I smile. “So you’re around sixteen, only that in fae years. How long have they been keeping you here?”

  “A few months, I think.” She purses her lips, tapping them with her filthy finger as if she’s not so sure anymore. “Could be a year or so.”

  “What in the world did you do to deserve this?” I can hardly still contain my rage. Now that I realize she’s basically a teenager, it’s making my stomach churn.

  “Crossing into the mortal world, and going to parties. Humans may live the lifespans of ants, but don’t they get all the fun.” She smiles widely as she reminisces, her pretty brown eyes sparkling with fond memories.

  “Parties? If that’s what they’re keeping you locked up for, they’ll surely behead me.”

  “Well, as a fae I did draw some serious attention.”

  I let her talk, and tell me about her adventure in the mortal world; it helps me stay awake, not lose my consciousness again. I manage to crawl into a proper sitting position with my back against the wall, but the magic wrapped around me feels like a frozen cocoon, and I’m stiff all over. My eyelids fall heavy, it’s a struggle to keep them open.