Highest rating: #19 in fantasy!
Edlyn has never fit in. With her unusual white hair and silver eyes, she sticks out from her village of brown. To make matters worse, unexplainable things tend to happen around her-things that she can't control. In a...
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Cedric interrupts my pity party several hours later. He shows no sign of resentment over the results of the vote, which I'm grateful for.
"Edlyn," he greets me, nodding. I stand, my joints popping after sitting for so long, and bow quickly. He folds his hands formally behind his back.
"Your majesty."
"You might as well call me Cedric now. Everyone else does, and it looks like you'll be staying here a while." He smiles very faintly.
I smile back. "Okay, Cedric." That will take some getting used to. Human royalty always demands to be honored with their full titles.
"I wanted to thank you for what you tried to do," he says. He scratches the back of his neck. He's more addressing the ground than he is me. "You thought of their wellbeing instead of your own." I decide to stay quiet. I was thinking of Alec, not myself. But is that worse? "Anyways, I was thinking—Alec said that you can't fight, correct?"
"I can't do anything," I admit. My cheeks redden. I'm the definition of a liability. "I have no control over it."
"That's common for people who haven't grown up learning the art of magic," he says. "Usually you learn the the basics by five years old, but..." He grins.
"I'll pick it up quickly," I tell him. Fighting. Me fighting. Something I'll need to be able to do if I want to protect Alec. He can't defend us all by himself. He'll get himself killed trying.
"I'm sure." His voice hints at doubt, but I'll show him. I'll show Alec too. "We have plenty of fine teachers—"
"How are you at fighting?" I interrupt.
He grins widely, his eyes darkening. "I was hoping you'd ask that."
He takes me down a few tunnels, back through the throne room, and down a few more to a dimly lit cavern with a domed ceiling. The walls are lined with racks of weapons and several pales of murky water. Only a few fairies take up the huge space, each of them standing in pairs within a square drawn from charcoal into the ground. They circle each other, arms raised in defense. Once one of them makes a move, the stiff fighting stance is broken and the pair become locked in a mix between a fist fight and a dangerous dance of fire. Some fight with their wings retracted, while others use them to their advantage as a shield.
"Oh," is all I can say as the brutal fights unfold in front of me. The faces of the fairies show nothing but intense concentration and many have perspiration forming on their skin.
"Don't worry," Cedric says. He watches the fairies sparring with swelling pride. "It's harder than it looks."
