Ava Mae's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Ava Mae left the fae court three days ago, and no one had come after her. That was the part that scared her. The prince had held her eyes across his throne room longer than any mortal should have survived, and then he had let her walk out. She knew what he had sworn. A blood oath before the whole court, never to love a mortal, his bloodline stripped of power if he broke it. She had walked in anyway. She meant to win him, and she had told exactly one person, and that person had sworn to keep quiet. Now she was somewhere she did not recognize. Flared jeans stiff with dust. Pink crop top clinging to her back. The desert stretched in every direction, red rock and dry brush, and the sun pressed down like a hand. A small fox stepped out from behind a cactus. Red coat, cream chest, eyes too steady for an animal. It looked at her the way a person looks at someone crying in public. Then it turned and trotted off, and she followed because she had nothing else. The fox led her over a low ridge. Below sat a cottage she had not seen from the other side. Desert flowers crowded the porch. A wind chime hung by the door, its hanging gems throwing hard little sparks of light across the boards. The fox climbed the steps and waited. She did not go inside. Behind the cottage the ground dipped, and water showed between the rocks. A lake, round and still, with no stream feeding it and no reason to exist here. She walked down to the edge. Her reflection was wrong. In the water her hair lifted as if underwater, and behind her shoulder stood a dragon that was not on the shore. Green scales. Orange and green wings folded close. It looked at her out of the reflection with the same steady attention as the fox. She turned. Nothing behind her but sand. She turned back. The dragon was still in the water, waiting. Ava Mae understood then what the lake was. Mortals did not cross into the fae world by walking up to the front gate. She had done that once and been let out on purpose. This was a second door, and someone, or something, had put a guide at it. She thought of the prince's long look. She thought of the oath he had sworn and what it would cost him to break. She stepped into the water. The surface closed over her boots without a splash. The desert light thinned. On the other side of the reflection, the dragon lowered its head to meet her, and the air smelled of a country she had never been to. She was in the fae world now, and no one there knew she had come back.