Winter

After retirement, a shadow can ask any favor of their Fae; many go on to be incredibly powerful influencers on the other side.

Just for kicks, I click on the link over the word darkling and am rewarded by a terrifying photo. All-black eyes stare wildly at me above bared incisors. Once human ears rise sharply into points.

The darkling in the photo, taken God knows where, still wears her human clothes: an orange-and-blue flannel and ripped jeans.

Bad fashion sense aside, the wild, hungry look in the darkling’s twisted expression scares me more than the way her back has hunched and her bones have malformed so that she runs on all fours. The way her body has grown larger even as her muscles and flesh have withered.

I skim the words below. Infested with the residual dark magic that seeps daily into the tainted borderland, this used to be a happy, seventeen-year-old girl named Samantha Stevens.

More pictures of turned darklings fill the page, and I quickly close the tab.

The Wiki for the Fae themselves is much more thorough, with everything from their appearance (super good looking,) lifespan (immortal, duh,) and weaknesses (iron, ash, rowan berries, salt,) to conspiracies on why they came.

Annoyed at the lack of any real information, I push my laptop away. I need to focus on my letters, anyway.

I feel especially guilty for not telling Aunt Zinnia. Ever since she rescued me from a human trafficking ring in Dallas, she’s been nothing but amazing. Treating me like the daughter she lost.

When the Fae arrived and took over the west, the Shimmer was erected almost immediately.

Anyone on the other side was just gone. The Fae sent a few of their leaders to talk to our side, and they quickly confirmed that not a single mortal survived what they called a terrible accident of magic.

It wasn’t until later that we were told the truth: The twisted magic from the explosion turned the humans who didn’t die into darklings. And the residue from that same polluted darkness was present everywhere in the borderlands.

The attacks began shortly afterward. Some of the darklings came from breaches in the Shimmer. Some spontaneously transformed in public places. A girl even changed in my high school. I didn’t see it, but they said horns sprouted from her head and her bones twisted and bent, her body growing into some grotesque monster not quite Fae, and not quite human.

She escaped out a window. Most darklings only attack humans if they’re cornered, injured, or starving. They prefer Fae flesh.

Still, the human government erected borders between the borderlands and the outside world as they worked to contain the spread of tainted magic.

Both Aunts were home during the Lightmare, waiting for their families to come back from an auction near Denton. When Aunt Zinnia rescued me in Dallas, she was there looking for her daughter, Grace. Someone had called to say they spotted Grace, but it ended up being a false lead.

Instead, she found me. Not that I could ever replace her daughter. That was obvious. But somewhere in mending my wounds, physical and mental, she’d helped heal her own.

And now I’m about to break her heart again. The thought makes me sick. I grab my favorite pen and start her note. It takes nearly all evening to properly convey how grateful I am that she first saved me and then adopted me all those years ago.

More than once, I have to blink back tears.

For Aunt Violet, I write a more practical letter with the information I’ve found on the neverapples, plus a detailed account of the area of the Shimmer to avoid. I mention Chatty Cat too, begging her to keep him for the kids’ sake. Every kid needs a pet, even a feral, mangy one.

I also detail everything I can recall about the Fae who harassed me in the woods, along with a description of the brand on my arm.

I don’t think for a second the police will do anything. They’ve pretty much disbanded in the borderlands anyway. Taken over by prominent families like Cal’s who pretend to maintain law and order while really just consolidating their power.

But, in case I just disappear, never to be heard from again . . . I want there to be an account of my story.

By the time I get to Jane’s letter, the gibbous moon has already peaked over the ridge, and my clock says 11:20 p.m. An owl hoots nearby. Probably the same one I saw earlier.

I’m starting to wonder if he’s a spy for the Fae.

Remembering the Evermore’s warning, I scribble out a haphazard note on the location of my traps, the best places to find edible berries and best rivers to fish. I add in useful tips on stuff I’d always thought I had time to teach her—how to cut up cotton flannel to use for pads, making a tincture of fennel, ginger, and cinnamon for cramps—but that brings tears to my eyes.

I should be here for her. Aunt Zinnia will try, but she disappears for days on end sometimes, hiding in her sewing room or whatever chore she can throw herself into to forget her lost daughter. And Aunt Violet can be helpful, but she’s trapped behind a prison of grief that no one can break through.

Jane is about to go through the toughest, most confusing years of her life, and I won’t be there.

There’s no time to really say what’s in my heart, the sorrow and guilt I feel for leaving her without a proper goodbye, so I simply scrawl:

I’m so sorry. Please don’t hate me, and understand that I had no choice. Don’t come looking for me. And remember, mind Aunt Z and Aunt Vi.

Also, don’t pick on Tanner. Or Julia or Gabe. Or anyone.

Also, ALSO. I love you. See you in four years. That’s a promise.

I almost don’t write that last bit. What if I don’t return? Is it fair to give her false hope?

But if I don’t make myself believe that I can survive, then I won’t. From this moment forward, I have to cling to that hope, have to believe it with everything I have.

“I’m coming back home,” I say aloud, breathing my own sort of magic into the words. Then I fold the three letters and place them on top of my made bed for them to find.

The house has gone completely quiet, the only sound the owl hooting near my window.

I throw on a huge blue-and-gray Dallas Cowboys hoodie, a pair of heavy jeans a size too big, and two pairs of inside out wool socks that cramp my old work boots. The rowan-berry charm goes in my pocket.

Finally, the hideous lilac and chartreuse scarf and mittens Aunt Zinnia knitted for me last Christmas add a pop of color.

I’m a hot mess and a half.

The girl in the cracked dresser mirror agrees. My snowy-white hair tangles around me in chaotic waves, branches and leaves caught in the knots. My cheekbones come up at sharp angles and cast deep shadows in craterous dimples below. Even tinted by the sun from days outside, my skin carries an unhealthy pallor from months of living off canned goods.

And Fae’s teeth, my clothes . . .

Not my most fashionable ensemble—and, for me, that’s saying a lot. But it will have to do until I can figure out something better.

Surely they have clothes in Everwilde? Something to help me fit in?

Lord knows I didn’t even do that here in our human high school, which makes my chances of fitting in at this new immortal academy slim to none.

Panic lances my chest. I know so little about the school/prison, or what to expect, and what I gleaned from my tormentor yesterday is not comforting.

They will hate me because I am a mortal. They will despise me because they are cruel, merciless, beautiful things and I am weak and plain in comparison.

Oh, God, Summer. What have you gotten yourself into?

For a moment, fear roots me to my bedroom floor. I haven’t had time to mourn the loss of my future properly. Haven’t had time to mentally prepare.

I’m not ready.

The tattoo on my arm begins to burn, and I drag my gaze to the window. The moon is halfway over the rise.

I need to go, but I’m frozen with fear.

Nerves in a jumble, I collapse to my knees and drag a shoebox out from beneath my bed. My small ruby necklace sits on the top. The silver charm is shaped like a wolf’s head holding a pea-sized ruby inside its fangs.

The details are painstakingly etched to perfection, right down to the gleam of the beast’s large nose and his thick, shaggy fur. There’s no denying this was made by the best silversmiths in Everwilde.

The second the cold pendant slips over my head and rests against my breastbone, I breathe a sigh of relief. Before taking a few choice items off Cal’s hands earlier, I’d removed my pendant—just in case.

But I never feel right without it. It holds the memory of my parents, and is the only thing connecting me to them besides their picture.

That’s harder to find. It sits at the very bottom, beneath my adoption paperwork.

I rub a thumb over the faces in the photo; a man dressed smartly in a brown corduroy jacket next to a Christmas tree, his arm around a pretty woman with dark hair pulled into a bun and an easy smile. Their happy eyes fill me with courage.

“I can’t leave you guys,” I say to my parents.

With the photo stored safely in my jean pocket, and the pendant around my neck, a hidden well of strength bubbles to the surface. My boots clop softly over the wood floor as I tiptoe to my open window, carefully push the screen out, and duck through.

Chatty Cat tries to follow, but I shake my head. “Stay. Watch over Jane and the others.”

As if he understands, Chatty Cat jumps down to the floor and sits on his haunches, watching me with those too-bright lime-green eyes.

From the roof to the ground is a ten-foot drop. I manage to lower myself and then jump, landing hard on the scratchy rose bushes near the front porch.

An army of stars march across the indigo sky. I make sure to leave no tracks as I slip across the prairie toward the Shimmer. When I’m close enough to see the spot from yesterday where I entered, a distant voice calls my name.

Jane. Somehow she suspected. But she’s too late.

“See you in four years,” I promise, ignoring the throb of my heart.

Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I pass into Everwilde.

8

The first thing I notice when I cross the Shimmer to Everwilde is that I didn’t dress warmly enough. At all. Somehow it’s even colder than before. A blizzard rages. The icy breeze piercing my flimsy clothes and taking up permanent residence in my bones.