The silence that settles over a room of powerful people is much heavier than when silence descends in a nursery or a kitchen. This silence felt like being in the mines again. And then they were crowding me, shoving forward, demanding answers I didn't have.
"Stop." I needed to hear myself think without their aggressive questioning. "Please, just be quiet, I shouldn't have said what I did."
I clapped my hands over my ears and pressed hard. I was crying, but it wasn't out of sadness or fear; I was angry with myself for spilling those secrets. Kiliyan and I hadn't even told Clark about the Kryjia male. No one else had known about him except me and Kiliyan.
"Stop talking!" I screeched.
Evound grasper my shoulders hard and stared me in the eye. "No one is speaking," he said. His voice, more garbled continued, "The girl has gone mad."
"I haven't gone mad—" I whispered, realizing that his lips hadn't moved for the second part of his commentary. He looked genuinely stunned.
"My head hurts," I said. And it did, a slow pulsating stab behind my eyes.
"Vas, lock the door. Dikan, make sure the hallway is clear. No one is to come down this way but the three of us." Evound's voice was even. He gave his orders and as soon as Dikan disappeared into the hallway, Vas locked the door and turned back to stare at us.
"Looks like the Gulsha has worn off," Vas said. Evound modded.
"Still a decent amount of time for her body to recover from it."
"What are you thinking she is?"
"I'd like to test out a few more things before I claim an answer." I closed my eyes against their voices.
Selkie, Fae, Pixie... no. Nymph? Ah, but what kind?
"What's a Nymph?" I asked.
"Wha—where did you hear that?" Vas demanded.
"You just said it." I didn't open my eyes.
"No, no I didn't."
"But did you think it?" Evound asked.
"Yes, but..."
"She's definitely part faerie. Just not sure what kind."
"Like a tinkerbell?" I scoffed. "You're crazier than I am. Those things don't exist. And if they did, they should have helped us when you arrived to take over."
"They probably would have, but we attacked them before our kind came through the veil. They were worse off than you when humanity fell from power, all the iron and pollution your kind was pumping into nature weakened them exponentially," Vas supplied.
"Clearly not all of them though," Evound said, his gaze on me curious.
YOU ARE READING
Flock
FantasyThe Kryjia have taken up residence amongst the human population, using them as laborers. They are mining a special, ever-cold metal for reasons beyond human understanding-a metal that humans can not physically touch without intense injury-until one...
