"Let's move," I whispered turning to walk away. I felt like I was going to pass out and we needed to be somewhere safe before I could do so. I didn’t miss hearing Ryder tell Zahruk to pull his men off the warehouse. He had known where we'd had been hiding this entire time.
When we were a safe distance away Larissa spun on us. "Okay, what the fuck!? What the hell just happened and why are your eyes glowing?"
I wiped my eyes and shook my head. "I don’t know, I don’t know what's happening to me," I mumbled, I couldn’t explain it to her any more than I could to myself. Adam looked as upset as I did. He kept looking at his hands like they belonged to someone else.
"We need to go to the Guild, now," Larissa said keeping a safe distance from us, as if we suddenly had become strangers. "Did you get what we came for?" She continued.
"Arianna, well she's made of at least a few of the victims. She's been sewn together magically for lack of a better description—with pieces. But something or someone is controlling her. She has no blood, no heat. She's just dead. Like a puppet, taking her down would be easy, but it wouldn’t stop whoever is controlling her."
"So she's a zombie, one who is made up of other people's parts?" Larissa asked as she sheepishly looked from me to Adam and back again.
"How bad do we look Lari?" I asked reading the fear in her eyes.
She smiled but it didn’t touch her eyes, "You both look Fae right now, we have to get you back to the Guild, Alden will know how to stop it."
"Stop what? Larissa you don't just choose to become Fae, if we look Fae, then we were born Fae." She was in denial, hell, I was in denial. I turned and looked at Adam, he looked exactly as he had before, but his eyes glowed in two different colors now. "The Guild can't help us Larissa, they don’t allow Fae inside. We need to go home and figure out how we can find the killer before he kills more innocent people."
She nodded but didn’t move from where she stood at a safe distance, "I need to know something first," she hesitated, as if she was picking each word carefully, "Did either of you know what you were? I need you to be honest, because if you did—we need to be prepared for when the Guild comes after us."
"Larissa, I don’t even know how this is possible. I hate the Fae, they killed my parents. Look, we lived inside the Guild with you, how could we have known?" The panic showed in my voice as it shook with tears.
"I'm so sorry guys. I mean I know you couldn’t have known. I just had to ask, this doesn’t change who you are and you’re my family. Fae or not, we only have each other," she whispered before stepping closer.
We walked home silently, the mission had been successful and yet it felt like a loss. I'd felt myself changing, I'd watched the horror on the innocent faces around me that I'd hurt. I had hurt them, not Ryder, not the dead puppet—me. Everything was happening too fast, how could I be Fae? It made no sense and I wasn’t ready to accept it.
~~~~~~~~~~*
I stood in the mirror inside my room, just staring at myself as I listened to Larissa comfort Adam in her bedroom. My eyes now had two layers of iris surrounding the pupil. The first layer closest to the pupil was the same turbulent azure blue it had always been and around it was a ring in a light color of purple surrounded by a very thin black ring.
The muffled sounds told me that Larissa was doing a little more than just comforting Adam, so I grabbed a jacket and headed out. I had no idea of where I was going until I stood in front of my parent's house.
The Victorian style house I had spent a small part of my childhood in was still standing. It was canary yellow. I could still remember my father painting it. Mom had said he should've just hired someone to do the job, but he'd laughed and said it was his home and it was a labor of love.
Had they been hiding me as Ryder and his men had been discussing when they'd thought I couldn't hear them? Why would Guild Witches take in a Fae child? I let out a deep breath realizing it didn’t matter now, no one could answer those questions since they had died protecting me.
"Synthia," Alden's voice penetrated my mind as he slipped his bigger hand inside mine, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what Alden?" I whispered turning my eyes to him.
"I always knew you were different, knew something was off about you. You have to understand something Synthia, my sister—your mother…she loved you. Made me promise to raise you up with other Witches if anything happened to her, she never did say why, but after watching the news today…well I can only assume she knew what you were."
"I got them killed Alden," I murmured wiping at the angry tears that tried to fight free and won.
"Nah, they chose to help you. They couldn’t have kids, you filled a void Synthia. You became the center of their universe. They died protecting you, from what…well I have no idea, but you need to let them go, it's time. You can't keep doing this, blaming yourself. I can't keep blaming you either. We both need to let them go."