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  I had been with him because he was such a change from my life, because he was so different, and because being with him was a break from all the burdens that my life produced. I could just be when I was around him, just be a person, and be myself. I was allowed to have goals and dreams and ideals for me and not the coven, and not only did he like that about me but he encouraged it. These were all the reasons I fell in love with him.

  But now, it felt like being in love with him, being with him, was a bigger burden than the ones I was running away from when I met him. It was heavier than before. I couldn’t relax anymore, ever, and even though I didn’t blame him for it, it came together. Devan went hand in hand with strain and trouble. And I didn’t know if I wanted that anymore.

  Maybe I just wanted to go back to how things were before. Yes, losing him would hurt, but was I willing to sacrifice him for my own selfishness? I would have no problem breaking up with a human like the ones who tried to hit on me at the bars. But Devan…

  The thought of losing him knotted my stomach. It was like an iron fist, clenching my gut. A sob built up in my chest and I could feel the salty sting of tears behind my lids. If I were this emotional just at the thought of it, how much worse would I be when it actually happened?

  I sighed and got off the bed. In the kitchen I filled Kitten’s bowl with food and tried to touch her as she was approaching her bowl, but she shied away from me as always. It didn’t offend me when Kitten didn’t want me touch her anymore. It had gone on for long enough, and, in all honesty, if I were an animal, I’d probably be scared of myself too.

  That’s what I liked about Alex, Devan’s dog. He liked me. He didn’t love me, he didn’t really come close to me, but he didn’t run away and I touched him once or twice without issues. It was almost the same with Devan. I could touch him without him shying away from me, like so many people did.

  I dropped my head into my hands with my elbows on the kitchen counter. I wouldn’t be able to let him go, I knew it. I wouldn’t be able to sever our relationship, without feeling like I was cutting a part of myself off. I chose him, and the burden that came with it was just something I would have to deal with.

  I had dealt with burdens my whole life, and I’d been happy before. Surely I could do it again?

  Chapter 3: Devan – Present and Past

  It was different now. I hadn’t minded who I was before because I’d grown up as the only person being like that. I had come to a place where I knew I was different and it didn’t bother me anymore. When I was much younger, I realized I was different; I realized I had powers and I worked at knowing how to deal with them. I could use them if I wanted to, and when I was younger I was really good at it.

  But I grew up.

  I didn’t use my powers because in the real world, I didn’t need to, and even though I knew what I could do and how to do it, it sort of became dormant. Humans just didn’t need powers, and living a human life didn’t require me to use them.

  But now, now that I knew Cherry was in some sort of danger, and now that witch Nema had approached me, threatening me about my family, it was different. The hollow feeling that had opened up in my chest wouldn’t go away. I was aware of my power, aware of everything around me, and even though I knew how to handle myself, it suddenly seemed so much harder to be normal, so much harder to carry the responsibility that came with who I was.

  I couldn’t let Cherry find out that I was fae. We were natural enemies, and if she knew, no matter how she felt about me, she might go back to her roots. And I couldn’t risk that. I loved her too much.

  All of this was on my mind as I was on my way to my parents. My hands were in my pocket, following my thighs with every step, and I curled my fingers, trying to ground myself in the now, trying to focus only on the moment.

  I felt different. I was aware of myself so much more than usual, and I noticed so many things around me that I wouldn’t before. I found myself looking at everyone with new eyes, with questions and mistrust. I felt panic creep up on me when I couldn’t decide if someone was dangerous or not, and by the time I reached my parents’ block I was exhausted.

  “Are you alright?” my mother asked when she pulled the old front door open.

  “I’m fine,” I said and hugged her. Her hair smelled like the apple-scented shampoo that she must have used earlier in the day. I stepped inside.

  My parents were traditional people, people of routine, and unless they had to change something, they would keep it the same. The old living room still had its floral print carpet, with dusty green sofas facing the antiquated TV and my dad sitting in his chair like no time had passed at all.

  A gnawing feeling started at the back of my mind, like something was wrong, but it was faint, and when my dad smiled at me I forgot about it again.

  “Devan, look at you,” he said and half-stood up to shake my hand before lowering himself back into the worn leather. He folded the paper he was reading and put it in front of him on the wooden coffee table.

  I looked at them, the two wonderful souls who raised me. They may not have been my blood, but I loved them as much as anyone could love two people.

  I felt an unpleasant shifting under my skin, the first signs that I was getting angry. I hadn’t been angry since Nema’s visit, I had only been worried. But now that I saw my parents and that they were alright, the worry was slowly being replaced by anger. Anger that someone would threaten to hurt people who had done nothing wrong and knew nothing about what was threatening them. I was reminded of the gnawing feeling, more clear now, something that asked for my attention but it wasn’t strong enough to get it yet. The comfort of being at home and being able to relax completely drowned it out.

  My mom busied herself in the kitchen making coffee, and my dad stared at the flickering images on the muted screen. It was just like when I still lived here. He had nothing to say to me, but we sat together and it was comfortable.

  My mom came in carrying a tray and I took it from her, put it down on the coffee table. My dad took his mug, the same one as always, and I sat back on the couch with mine.

  It all felt wrong. We sat there like we always did, and they smiled like they always did, happy that I was there, but something was wrong. The gnawing feeling at the back of my mind screamed at me, forcing me to pay attention to it, and even though nothing looked wrong, it didn’t feel right.

  I got that more often. I couldn’t see the future or read people’s minds or smell what creatures were around like they have us depicted in myths, but I get a feeling when something is wrong. It’s like a sixth sense; that’s how humans describe it, but it has nothing to do with the future. It’s only present and past.

  “Are you guys alright?” I asked, not sure how to word it.

  “Of course we are,” my mother said with her happy smile, and if it weren’t for her eyes drifting off to the side for a second, I would have believed her. My dad didn’t say anything, but that wasn’t unusual. He’d never been a man of many words.

  “What’s happened?” I asked, leaning forward. I wasn’t trying to hide it now. I was never wrong when it came to these feelings I had, but I tried generally not to step on any toes.

  “Now it’s nothing you have to be concerned about,” my dad said, and I knew exactly what that meant. It was most definitely something I had to be concerned about.

  “We just didn’t want you to worry, sweetheart,” my mom said, her smile faltering a little. I could see her trying hard to keep it up.

  “What happened?” I repeated, annoyed with their not confiding in him.

  “Your father nearly ran off the road today. We don’t know what happened, but, as you can see, we’re perfectly safe. It was just a bit of a scare…”

  Her voice trailed off as she spoke. I prodded but all I could find out was that they didn’t know what had happened; one moment he had control and the next, they were veering off into the forest.

  “Luckily, your father, strong as he is, managed to regain control of that c
ar.” She looked at me and then at my father. “I told you years ago we needed to trade that old boat of yours in for something a little more compact,” she groused, and her attention was back on me. “But he doesn’t listen to me, you know, not when it comes to his '67 Chevy Belaire.” She put her hand on my knee as she spoke, but I wasn’t listening anymore.

  I knew what had happened. It wasn’t an accident; my dad was the safest driver I had ever seen, the safest driver in the county if it came down to it. He never in his life caused an accident and his first priority was road safety. No, this was a warning, a warning to me that the witches weren’t joking. I was under no illusion that they tried and merely failed; they were better than that, stronger than that. It was just a message to me that they meant what they said, in case I thought they were playing around. They weren’t.

  “You really don’t have to worry, though,” my mom said, mistaking the concern on my face as worry. “Your dad knows what he’s doing and we’re going to see Dr. Greene tomorrow. She’ll tell us if he’s not fit to drive anymore; although, if you ask me, he’s more than fit. He’s not that old.

  They both laughed at that, and the conversation snapped back to normal, with their silly jokes and the way to make me feel right at home, even though I hadn’t lived there for years. They managed to get me to forget my worries for a while.

  When I left, my mood was almost completely restored. I was full of my mom’s cooking, my father had had a drink with me and we were just as close as we’d always been, despite the fact that I’d grown up. Sometimes, I regretted having moved out at all. You hear stories about people who became so restricted by the systems that were in their parents’ home that they had to move out. But I moved out because it had been the time to do it, I had been old enough and earning a living. I didn’t move for the sake of keeping the relationship with my parents or because I felt I needed to spread my wings. I had done that my whole life without them knowing.

  When I walked down the street, my good mood slowly disintegrated. Worry took its place when I thought about them and the danger they were in, so by the time I reached my apartment, there was nothing of the mood left that they’d sent me off in.

  It wasn’t their fault they weren’t my real parents. They didn’t know who or what I was, and they didn’t know that I wasn’t theirs. The fae are strange, they’re said to be malicious, but I didn’t know if it were true or not. I hadn’t had any contact with fae, I just knew what I was and I wasn't malicious.

  So called “experts” always thought they knew everything about these things. They loved pretending like they knew everything about paranormal. It probably made them feel better thinking they understood something they really knew nothing about, making them believe they were stronger because of it and that they would know what they were living with. Knowledge is power, that’s what they believed.

  But what they had to say about creatures like me wasn’t at all accurate. I’d read the stories, googled my kind, and what I found wasn’t close to what I was. Yes, I could do magic, and yes, I was the natural enemy of the witch, but that was about where it stopped. I was closer to the “spirit” definition that they had of me than the insect-like version I read in some places: beady eyes, antennae, wings; it was all ridiculous. I looked like everyone else, everyone who knew me thought I was a human just like them. I looked it and I acted it, partly because I was raised that way, and partly because we fae weren’t really all that different.

  I didn’t know the extent of the spells I could cast, I hadn’t pushed myself to the limit. But I knew that I could sense things, know what had happened even though I shouldn’t have, and that I could sense if people were upset or angry or happy. Emotions were something that I was just tuned into. But there were people like that too.

  How did I end up with two normal humans? The fae sometimes replace human babies with their own. I wasn’t sure why but that's what had happened to me. I don’t know what became of Maxwell and Margret Nowell’s real son, but that’s how I ended up with them, and I’m glad it happened. I didn’t deserve people as amazing as them in my life.

  Chapter 4: Cherry – Sinking Feeling

  I couldn’t ignore the heavy, sinking feeling in my stomach. It was like my gut had become heavy and it was pulling down. It hurt everything in my stomach and I struggled to breathe. I had never been this nervous to see Devan before, not even after I’d met him the first time. But something didn’t feel right; it felt dark. The last time it had been this dark in my home, even with the lights on full, was when the witches had attacked me to try and convince me that I didn’t have a choice but to be the high priestess.

  I had been able to fight them off but only barely and I ended up in the hospital because of it, even though I could heal faster than humans. It was there that Devan had asked me to marry him, but despite having won, having survived, despite it having such amazing memories for me, it still left me cold to think about it. No one got jumped like that and didn’t hold something like fear or paranoia left over from it, not even a witch.

  I went to look for Kitten just to have something to do, something to distract me. I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach that was brought on by stress. I didn’t want to admit to myself that it felt more like stress than panic. I tried to ignore the memories of the attack, tried not to break out in a cold sweat as I purred and cooed for Kitten to come out.

  I knew she wouldn’t, she never let me touch her anymore, so why should she? But I needed something, anything, to keep me occupied until Devan came. I knew it would be better when he came, I just knew it. He always made me feel better, he was the sunshine in my life, even on the darkest days, and that was one of the biggest reasons I loved him so much. It took a lot for someone to be able to drive out the darkness that I felt, especially because it wasn’t only my own darkness he had to fight. He didn’t know it, of course, but that was what made him so much more amazing.

  I hadn’t found her yet when the buzzer by the front door went off, and I ran to answer. I buzzed him up and stood at the door, fidgeting, and waiting for him to climb the stairs.

  Before he could knock, I pulled open the door and hugged him. He wrapped his arms around me, and it felt like he breathed out in relief just as much as I did. The weight in my stomach eased up when he touched me, and I finally felt like it was alright to be in my skin again.

  When he pulled away I was disappointed to find that the weight in my stomach hadn’t gone completely, but when he looked into my eyes the soft, rich brown of his made me melt the way it always did. They were warm and they looked at me without shame or reserve.

  We went to the living room. I offered that we watch a movie and was surprised that he agreed because he usually preferred to talk. He would always say that he didn’t want to spend the time he had with me doing something in which we really didn’t spend time together, but it was different tonight. I think he felt it too.

  I put on a chick flick movie, and he fell into it. He held my hand, but the whole time we were watching, he wasn’t next to me. He was somewhere else, his eyes glued to the screen, never flitting to me, and his mind somewhere else. His stare was vacant, his face expressionless. Devan didn’t look like this.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked after a while.

  “I’m fine,” he said, hardly looking away from the screen at all. The words were there, they were positive, but the sinking in my stomach pulled down harder again and the atmosphere around us turned somber, sad. I didn’t know if it was mine or his, but I didn’t like it.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked again, and this time he looked at me fully before answering.

  “Nothing is wrong, love,” he said and smiled half a smile. I loved it when the one corner of his mouth pulled up like that, completely throwing his smile off-balance, but it wasn't matched by his eyes like it normally did.

  I didn’t know what to say about it. We hadn’t been together long enough for me to call him on it, to demand an explanation, and the heavines
s of being unacquainted rested on my shoulders. That was what I hated about meeting new people. It took so long before I felt the liberty to do and say whatever I wanted; it took so long before they wanted to do the same with me.

  I tried to ignore the feeling, but it wouldn’t go away. The longer Devan carried on watching like it was just him alone, despite our physical contact, the more I felt like it definitely wasn’t fine, and the more I argued with myself about whether or not I should say something about it.

  He would talk to me if something were really wrong, if it had something to do with us, wouldn’t he? I had to trust that he would. He knew me, he knew that he could talk to me, it had to be nothing if he decided he didn’t want to tell me. Or maybe it really was fine.

  But no, it wouldn’t look like this if it really were fine. If it everything were okay, I wouldn’t want to ask at all, I wouldn’t feel like he wasn’t here, even though he was sitting right next to me.

  “You seem… distant,” I tried again. I was worried that I would push the topic too hard, that I would ask when it wasn’t necessary and that it would make me look as paranoid as I had been feeling all day.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his eyes still a little vacant, but his voice smooth as always, “it’s just been a long day, I haven’t had the chance to wind down.”

  It made sense, what he said. He just needed time to wind down. I was just being ridiculous. I would just let it go, that would be the best. I didn’t want him to think that I was clingy or anything like that. I was such an independent person, generally. I didn’t really care what people thought of me, which made them feel intimidated by me, and when it came around to it, I wasn’t scared to speak my mind either. But that had been before I’d met him, before I’d cared so much about someone and what that person thought of me. It was easy to be blunt and upfront to someone I didn’t mind not ever seeing again, and the witches in the coven knew me that way. Some of them were intimidated by me, because of my power, and that suited me.