Winter

Suddenly she hovers in place, her eyes traveling over my clothes. “Fae hells. You’re a weird one.”

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I snatch the creature from the air, holding her gently around the waist. My fingers cover her entire body. She wriggles and kicks, and I can’t stop staring at the tiny clothes she wears. The shoes made out of bean pods and soft dress spun from spider silk.

She’s like the Barbies Julia plays with, only her hair isn’t colored with crayons, but a deep, beautiful magenta, and she’s warm and alive.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demands. Her wings beat the air in a blur, sending cold puffs of wind at my face.

“What are you?” I ask.

She gives up on trying to pry my pointer finger back with her hands and glares up at me, arms crossed. “I’m a sprite, and your escort for the next four years. And if you make any Tinkerbell jokes—any at all—I will cast a spell to give you hemorrhoids so bad you’ll never sit down again.”

Well, that sounds horrible.

She bares her ruby lips, revealing razor-sharp teeth. I think I recall something about sprites carrying a toxin, so I release her before she can bite me.

The moment she’s free, she buzzes around my head, a string of curses spewing from her little mouth.

Then she says in her tinkling voice, “Follow me. We’re already late for the Shadow Selection.”

“The what?” I call. But she zooms so fast over the courtyard that I have no choice but to run to keep up. I zigzag around a statue of a faun and lunge over hedges, my boots slipping and sliding on the gravel.

Why did I ever love running?

Her sparkling form disappears through a propped open door into another building, this one tall and spiky. I follow. Those orb thingies from before spin inside delicate glass bulbs affixed to the walls, casting light over marble hallways and warming the air.

Soon I’m sweating. My hair plastered to my face and mouth hanging open in a pant.

The sprite ducks into an open door of deep mahogany, and I burst after her, swearing under my breath . . . into a giant auditorium full of people.

Crap.

Not people. Fae. Note to self. I suck at remembering that.

Hundreds of Fae eyes pin me to the spot, the air in the room heavy with a sense of magic.

I freeze, suddenly recalling my overwhelming hatred of crowds and attention. Perhaps if I hadn’t slammed the door open l could have snuck in unnoticed . . .

Shoving my fear down deep, I force my legs to move, shuffling forward.

Why can’t I breathe?

One of the Fae near the back calls out, “Who’s the fresh meat?”

My gaze darts around the crowd, the exoticness of their features spinning my heart into overdrive. Some are wild-looking, with beaks and hooves and claws. Some only come up to my waist and are strange colors. Varying shades of mauve and teal and chartreuse.

But most look like versions of us, just with pointy ears, expensively tailored clothes that are a mix between modern fashion and a renaissance fair, and like a million times the hot factor.

In contrast, my frumpy, spaghettiOs stained hoodie, clunky Salvation Army boots, and unattractive jeans feel like a prison yard uniform.

I take a few more tentative steps, scouring the room for my sprite guide, whom I’ve already developed a love/hate relationship with.

Where are you, tiny person?

Instead I find massive chandeliers in the shape of vines hanging from high, arched ceilings. Magical orbs drip from their golden branches, each orb of light a little sun that illuminates the room. A layer of shimmery frost covers the entire thing.

Wooden bleachers filled with students surround the chamber, looking down upon a marble floor that appears to be a giant map, segmented into seven distinct locations. Great leafy mosaic trees of orange and yellow and red spread across the section I stand on . . .

I suddenly get what each segment represents. The Fae Courts. This area is Autumn. The one next to it, Winter.

The crowd on the floor is smaller, less than a hundred Fae, all dressed in extravagant clothes beyond imagining. Headdresses made of gold-spun leaves; cloaks weaved from spider silk and butterfly wings; armor carved from ice.

The clothes match the theme of the floor each Fae stands on, and I quickly realize these students are split up by court, meaning everyone has their place.

Everyone but me.

Desperately, I search for an indication of where to go.

A dais of obsidian rises in the center of the room. As I take in the black pedestal and the very human, very terrified group that huddles there inside a silver cage, I answer my own question.

That’s where I belong.

A pang of dread pierces my gut.

They’re inside a cage. A Mother. Freaking. Cage.

My nostrils flare as I try to pull in air, panic tightening my chest. I don’t do well in tight, enclosed spaces.

The sprite that led me here flits over, an anxious look scrunching her face. “What are you doing, weird one? Get up there with your people.”

“No!” I didn’t plan on yelling my refusal, but the combination of acoustics and fear amplify my voice and it reverberates through the room, even echoing for dramatic affect.

Oh. My. God.

A collective gasp goes through the crowd. Hide. Where can I hide?

A few of the closest Fae gape at me, obviously not used to anyone disobeying. But most stare at me with a mixture of curiosity and disgust.

A Fae girl breaks off from the crowd on Winter’s side, her clear ice heels clacking loudly as she marches toward me, two other girls in tow. Everyone she passes cowers a little.

Great. Resident mean girl incoming.

Why am I not surprised? Mean girls tend to target me, probably because I can’t just fall in line like everyone else. It’s not in my nature. At my high school there was Mary Louise, homecoming queen and sometimes girlfriend of Cal and half the football team.

But compared to the Fae girl and two others stalking toward me, Mary Louise is a nun.

Crap on a stick. This is not going the way I planned at all.

The sprite hisses in fear and starts tugging at my earlobe. “Oberon’s teeth, girl. That’s Inara Winterspell. I suggest you move your ass, now.”

But her words have no effect. My brain has already decided I won’t go inside the cage—bad things are going to happen there—and even someone as intimidating as Inara Winterspell can’t break me out of my terror.

“No,” I spit through clenched teeth. “I . . . can’t.”

Memories flood my brain like poison. I was only ten when my parents died. Instead of letting the government throw me into foster care, I took to the streets. But ten was way too young to fend for myself, and I was caught up in the human trafficking that runs rampant in the Tainted Zone, especially the bigger cities.

If not for Aunt Zinnia’s help, I would have been sold to the Fae years ago.

A shiver begins deep in my torso. I cross my arms over my chest. I can still feel the bars from the cramped dog cage they shoved me in cutting my skin. Can remember screaming and thrashing and crying to get out. I half lost my mind between those steely bars.

Bile slams into my throat. No way in hell I’m going back in a cage. Any cage.

The sprite yanks hard on my ear, and I try to swat her away. She’s strong, though, and fast.

I’m so focused on struggling with this pint-sized bundle of aggression that I miss Inara and the two girls until they’re right next to me.

The sprite releases my ear and drops into a dramatic bow, her beautiful magenta hair falling over her shoulder and to her waist.

But Inara doesn’t even look at the sprite. Her icy gaze sweeps over me with disgust, her lips curled into a sneer. She’s model-tall with porcelain skin over delicate features, long silky ultramarine blue hair that tumbles artfully over one shoulder, and legs for days that end in seven-inch crystal pumps.

But it’s her eyes that chill me to the bone; her irises are an ashy-white hue, like frost.

“We have held the Selection ceremony for thousands of years,” she snarls through lips as blue as her hair, “and never once has a shadow recruit acted with as much disrespect as you do now.” She cuts her strange eyes at the sprite. “Why haven’t you glamoured her into submission?”

“I apologize, oh good and wise Evermore,” the sprite begins, giving me the side-eye. “But she just arrived moments ago and according to the new rules this year . . . we are only allowed to glamour them if they try to flee.”

“What do you mean, just arrived?”

The poor sprite is trembling. “All I know is I was ordered to make sure she made it to the Selection.”

“Ordered by whom?” Inara demands in a soft, horrible tone that scrapes down every knob of my spine.

The sprite’s petrified gaze drifts from Inara to someone near the Winter Court’s side, although I can’t see who. Whoever it is, she must find them more terrifying than Inara because she says in a quiet voice, “I don’t think I should tell you.”

Inara glares at the sprite. “Stupid sprite! I should freeze you for a couple hundred years and see if your tiny idiot brain grows any smarter.”

My sprite guide darts behind my head and nestles into the back of my neck. She’s trying to hide. We’re not exactly buddies, but I feel a sudden urge to protect her.

She’s tiny, after all. An easy target.

“Wow,” I say, forgetting where I am or what I’m talking to. “Picking on creatures smaller than you must make you feel really big and strong.”

For a split second, Inara is too stunned to say anything. Her impossibly blue lips part, a look of outrage slowly twisting them into a sneer as her friends tighten the circle around me. The sprite has gone completely still, as has the entire room.

I catch sight of Magus near the doorway. His horrified expression sends my heart into a tailspin.

Way to not grab attention.

A menacing grin flashes across Inara’s jaw. She holds a manicured hand up between us to reveal blue and white magic crackling between her delicate fingers.

“This is going to be fun,” she purrs, turning to her two friends. “Which part should I freeze first?”