As if he can sense what I’m doing, Derrick turns sharply toward me. I stroke a finger down his wings to reassure him, but he shakes his head rapidly, fingernails sinking into my neck. I can’t help the startled jerk that causes me to lose control over my powers.
The small nudge I had intended to give the fae becomes a shove. An obvious declaration: I’m right here.
Oh, bloody hell.
A ripple of awareness moves through the group. Their powers search the air, grasping at mine and prodding to find its source—
My power retaliates. It fills me, the ache in my chest growing. It screams at me to let it out let it out let it out. I’m dimly aware of Derrick whispering things in my ear, saying my name to try to bring me back. His power attempts to wrap around mine.
Mistake. My power shoves him out, and Derrick tumbles from my shoulder. His wings barely beat in time to save him from slamming into the ground.
“Aileana!”
His startled cry isn’t enough to break through the pounding, unrelenting power roaring to get out. I can’t stop it. I can’t control it.
I let it go.
It wraps me in a cloak of darkness, thick and impenetrable. I am suddenly calm, my pulse a steady cadence. My mind slides right back into the instinct of a hunt. It’s so easy. My power assures me that I am perfect. I am untouchable. Without my memory, it’s the only thing that can help me feel complete again.
I ease away from the tree, ignoring the pixie attempting to grasp at my hair. He says a name—my name—but I’m too far gone to care. I don’t remember that name. I don’t remember that girl. I flick him away with my power so easily.
Then I’m moving fast. To the next trunk, then the next, an unseen predator stalking her prey. I move as if I were part of the shadows. As languid and easy as smoke through the trees.
The fae never even see me as I whirl between them. Not when I whisper in their ears, counting down the moments until their deaths. You first. Then you. I’ll save you for last.
The Unseelie stir, their breath coming fast. Their fear is an elixir.
Until another thread of energy—of fright—makes me pause. Derrick. He’s afraid of me. Just the sick, rancid taste of it makes me lose my concentration. I brush against the tree with an audible scratch, and the nearest fae turns with a blade in his hand.
He strikes high and I barely move in time. He slices me across the shoulder.
That’s all it takes. I throw back my head with a rough, savage hiss. My blade is in my hands before he can move again. I lash out, catch his throat. I feel the eyes of the others on me, taking in the sight of my dripping blade, shadows rising around me, the body at my feet.
One of them screams—a sharp cry that echoes through the forest. As one, they dive for me.
My sword whistles through the air, nothing more than a blur. Skin breaks beneath my blade; blood splatters across the ground. I am faster than they could ever hope to be. I move like a dancer, in graceful whirls and kicks and rapid slashes.
I am powerful. I am merciless. Each kill fills me up, gives me more energy. My massacre is as swift as spreading darkness.
Something comes at me, a light out of the corner of my eye. I grasp it before I even know what it is, a small body in my hand, my fingers closing over tiny bones and soft, breakable wings.
“Aileana!”
That’s Derrick’s voice. Derrick’s scream. I stare down at him in shock, catching his stricken expression before he flies off into the trees.
I drag in a breath as I survey my kills. I did this. Derrick saw me do this. He saw me lose control.
Why don’t I feel anything?
Not even pride or accomplishment—and something tells me I felt those things about battle once. That later, I fought only out of necessity, survival. Kill or be killed. Either way, I felt something.
I gaze at the dozen dead fae across the forest floor and I know this: I didn’t do this out of necessity. I could have forced them away. I could have run and they wouldn’t have captured me. If I disarmed them, none could have defeated me. I slaughtered them all, because I could.
I would have killed Derrick, too.
A rough sound escapes Derrick’s throat. He’s settled on a branch in a nearby tree, examining the bent tip of his wing. Then he turns and stares down at me through a glistening veil of tears. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel his fear again. The taste of it is foul, bile down the back of my throat.
I did that. I injured his wing. I did that.
“You hurt me,” he says, his voice trembling with anger and . . . something else. Something like betrayal. “You hurt me.”
I know from his voice that I’ve never hurt him before. Not once.
That’s all it takes for me to rein in my power. To stuff it back into its too-small bone case and let it settle inside me with the ache that I deserve. And when I do, I’m suddenly aware of Derrick’s thoughts. I can hear them so clearly, as if he were saying the words aloud.
She slaughtered a dozen fae in under a minute.
She’s a monster wearing the skin of a girl.
She came back wrong.
Is that how he sees me?
Without thinking, I shove into Derrick’s mind. His thoughts are prismlike, a cacophony of colors and images. At first they’re unclear, difficult for me to understand. My mind doesn’t work this way; even now, it’s still too human, too simple.
Each thought is layered, never one at a time. It’s a complex intermingling of observations and smatterings of gold and red hues and images. His sounds have taste. His tastes have texture. His colors evoke feelings and desires.
The color he had given me—the old Aileana—was amber; the texture and taste is like honey. His favorite thing in the world other than me. A girl with wild copper hair and a smile as devious as his own. A girl whose bravery he admired. A girl he felt so close to that she became his family when all the rest had died.
I’ve eclipsed that Aileana and become something less than human. Because that’s what I am: a creature. Not human, not fae—a girl in-between, powerful and formidable. Someone dangerous. Someone who could easily hurt him without meaning to.
I bite back a gasp when I see myself through Derrick’s eyes. He sees his friend—the girl he searched for these last two months, wishing that she’d come back from the dead. And here I am, right in front of him: dripping with blood, my face covered in it. My eyes glow fierce and bright and inhuman; freakish eyes. As uncanny as any fae. Shadows gather around me like a cloak, a shroud.
And beyond the images and colors and textures, a single thought of Derrick’s rings as clear as a bell: She’s not my Aileana.
That thought makes my chest ache. Not his Aileana. Not his friend. I’m just a monster who doesn’t remember where she came from or who she is.
I don’t care what she looks like, his thoughts continue. She’s not my Aileana.
“Get. Out. Of. My. Head,” Derrick says through clenched teeth.
I hadn’t realized I had forced him to stay unmoving while I read his thoughts. I used my powers against him effortlessly, without giving any thought to them at all. First I hurt him, then I broke into his mind.