{A Wattpad Featured Book}
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Her heart or her people. Only she can decide.
Hated, cursed, outcasted. It was Eleena Asterin's life ever since she was blamed to have betrayed her village. So when she is offered a task to earn back her honour and prid...
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I hardly had the time to roll out of the way before the stinger plunged cleanly into the soil. Dirt and faevenom yielded like butter under its touch.
To say I was horrified was beyond true. Fear is shackles, fear is a knife in the gut slowly twisted, fear is a constant hammer on the head. Yet fear also evaporates like water under an early summer sun. When fear comes, I have to walk with confidence right past, because like ghosts of children's nightmares, fear is an illusion.
I'd learned that through the years I spent climbing from tree to tree, letting my open pores absorb the icy winds. Desperation is my fuel during these treacherous times. But through it all, I'd understood and turned this fear into my challenge and my demon to slay, for it will come until I do, unannounced and gnarly. So though it feels as though my bones have no more strength and my muscles are all out of power, I might still have the option to remain still, to be quiet enough to choose how to fight.
An angry hiss and loud clicks snapped me out of my thoughts and I dodged as the stinger jabbed again. Earlier on, I hadn't had the chance to fully examine the creature as well as its weaknesses and strengths but now...
Now, just paces away from where a hulking mass of copper-swirled obsidian armour stood, I shivered and plucked an arrow from my quiver. Watching.
Splatter. Hiss. Splatter. Hiss.
The greenish venom's dripping and sizzling burned away at the night's misty cloak, stifling my nose and throat like smoke. My fingers ached as I tugged a little more at the bowstring, eyes searching for the perfect spot to strike. The creature's pincers twitched anxiously and it scurried around, trying to find its prey—me.
It was a giant scorpion—bigger than any I would have ever dreamed of—and it was intelligent. But as it scuttled around again, like a final answer to a riddle, I came face to face with misty eyes that resembled the moon hanging above us.
It was blind.
That's why it was always twitching, always jumpy and moving around—all because it couldn't see and needed to rely on its other senses. This was why this was its weak point and one that I could use to my advantage.
Scouring the area for the perfect position for an ambush, I kept my footsteps light and dainty—just like how Aslan had taught me. Those memories had fluttered away like ashes in the wind long before I arrived in faerie lands but I kept clinging to them, some pathetic hope I longed to go back to.
One thought repeated over and over. I should've stayed. I should've stayed. I should've stayed.
What had I been thinking of back then to make a choice that rash? Sure I was helping the humans by giving them a fighting chance against the fae but what was I thinking to risk everything I had back then for this? Was I that desperate and hungry for a better life for my family? Or had I been selfish without even realising?
