Fae by Emily White Read Free Book Online Page A

standing sentinel
before the sealed door came into sight I remembered the message on
my wall.
    Duha'i ni. Orsilani.
Ba.
    And right then I knew it
was Ladeshian. It had to be. It wasn't coded at all. And I
remembered the few times I'd heard Ranen speak his native language.
I'd always gotten the sense he'd preferred it. Like the time we
walked into his house and he'd hidden in the shadows, spitting
those Ladeshian words at us.
    Now more than ever, we
needed to talk to Ranen. I wouldn't let the guards turn me away
this time.
    They were ready for us,
though. The flaming red walls pulsed in warning not only to us, but
to the guards as well. They had their staffs up--I had a feeling
the long, metal rods did more than make the soldiers look
pretty--and pointed at our hearts long before we stopped several
feet away.
    "You don't have clearance
here," the one on the right said. His voice was smooth and
perfectly calm and I knew at no point did they think we stood a
chance of getting past them. The behavior seemed odd to me,
actually. They'd never pointed their weapons at me the dozen times
I'd come. Something had changed.
    "We're here to see Ranen,"
I replied.
    I caught the gaze of the
soldier on the left. His mouth quirked.
    "You don't have
clearance," the other one repeated.
    "We're his friends,"
Cailen said in a light, seemingly disinterested tone. Only I could
feel the energy coming off him. "He will want to see
us."
    "If he wanted to see you,
he would have given you clearance."
    Energy prickled off
Cailen's skin. Irritation spiked, quickly replaced with calm. "If
we cannot go in, could you please tell him we are here so that he
can come out?"
    The one who had spoken
paused, seeming to think about it. "No," he finally
said.
    Wind blew around me and
tickled at the guards' plumed helmets. The red feathers danced.
Both guards visibly tensed, their mouths pulling down and their
fingers clenching around the staffs.
    "Turn around and leave,"
the guard on the right said. With that one command, both guards
stretched to their full height and stepped forward, both staffs
still trained on our hearts. The message was clear: we weren't
getting through.
    Annoyance prickled from
Cailen to me, and with a growl that came from deep within his
throat, he said, "You know who we are. You know what we can do."
And then he turned on his heels and left.
    I stayed a moment longer,
staring at the guards as they stared back, and I brushed my hand
through my hair. Heat flared in their eyes. I wouldn't be able to
get past without a fight and I wasn't ready to do that. Not
now.
    Not yet.

Part II

 
    Manoo rejoiced for new
plans and old plans alike. Something was going on behind the locked
doors of the Ladeshian compound. He felt the sinister stirrings of
deceit like vibrations against his spirit and decided then to
inspect it later that evening.
    But for his old plan, he
rejoiced all the more for he had just succeeded in doing something
he'd been trying to do since invading Ella's mind.
    He'd made her move her
hand through her hair.
     

Chapter One
    Sprite
     
    Bright red letters smeared
across my bedroom door like a disease.
    Die
    Sprite
    Die
    Cailen had gone to see if
anything had been written on his door, but I knew the truth even
before he came back and shook his head. This had been an attack
on me.
    I flipped over the door's
datapad to use the touch screen. The walls were changeable with
hundreds of different decor options available. But when I hit the
erase button to get my door back to its stark silver hue, I got an
error message. Whoever had done this--and I had an inkling it was
either the boy who'd called me a sprite earlier or one of his
lackeys--had put a lock on my door. I no longer had access to
anything but basic functions like opening and closing
it.
    "You can stay in my room
with me," Cailen said with a hint of amusement hidden under the
cold dread I felt coming off him.
    But anger ripped through
me at the suggestion. I would not be scared