Gifts of Elysielle - Inner Origins Book Three

Chapter 1 I should have known better. This was never going to work. There just wasn’t any way. I checked the special countdown app I had going on my phone. Five days, six hours, and thirty-two minutes left until my Choosing. Less than six days until my birthday, the day when I could officially Choose the Light and unlock my full fae potential. No big deal. Everything was going totally perfectly, really. My ex-boyfriend was still a dark fae. We still didn’t have a solution to stop the anti-serum, a virus that blocked the light in people and either sent them into deep hibernation or turned them into mindless slaves. And we still didn’t know exactly how I was supposed to help the Light win its war against the Dark. But hey, no worries, everything was peachy. Over the last few weeks, people had been telling me not to stress out, but here I was, stuck in a tiny little white room, with lots of options and not one clear choice. No perfect fit, anyway. “Siri, have you made a decision?” someone called from outside the door. I was getting really tired of people asking me that. Seriously. I puffed my cheeks and blew a strand of hair out of my mouth, taking in the chaos of the room before I looked at myself in the mirror, clad only in Aeden-issued silk undergarments. “Siri?” another voice repeated, sounding out of patience. Well, I wasn’t happy, either. “No,” I called back, not bothering to hide my irritation. “I can’t decide.” I looked in the mirror again, taking in the fresh bruises on my ribs and legs from this morning. When I turned, I could see a small cut that was already starting to heal on the back of my shoulder where someone had sliced me with a small dagger. You would have thought I’d been tortured at the hands of the Dark, but it was actually some of my closest friends who had done this to me. They’d spent the morning trying to attack me, and now they had put me in this room. Suddenly, the door was yanked open from the outside, letting in more light and a whole lot of fresh air. “Amber! What are you doing?!” I grabbed a piece of fabric off the chair next to me and tried to cover myself. Amber rolled her eyes and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “What’s the holdup?” she asked. “You’ve been in here forever.” I looked around the cramped changing room and kicked at a particularly offensive dress that lay crumpled on the ground. “I can’t find anything I like. This is torture. Can’t you guys just pick something for me?” “Nope, sorry.” Amber grinned. “You don’t have to get something here. We can try another shop, Siri. Don’t worry so much. We’ll find you the best dress in all of Elysielle for your Choosing. We still have five days.” “Five days?” I slumped down on top of the clothes in the chair and groaned. “I hate dresses. I hate shopping. This sucks.” Amber laughed and ruffled through the things on the floor. She picked out my training clothes, then handed them to me. “Put these on. I think you need sustenance before we shop anymore.” “Gods below, finally something we agree on.” I hugged my pair of grey linen capris and coordinating armless shirt like old friends. She left the room and I heard her talking and giggling with Claire in hushed tones outside the changing room. Traitors. We’d arrived in Elysielle three days ago to make arrangements for my Choosing ceremony. Originally it was supposed to happen at my grandmother’s estate in Ireland, but with the Shades on the warpath everyone agreed that Aeden was the safest place for me right now. I hated that, being told what was best for me. As if I couldn’t take care of myself. In less than one week I would be eighteen years old. A legal adult both in Aeden and throughout most countries in the world above. I pulled on my clothes roughly, annoyed about the way everyone had been coddling me lately. As if I was an infant. As if I wasn’t about to become one of the most powerful fae on earth in the last millennia. And here I was, trying to find a dress. Didn’t we have more important things to be doing? I knew that we did. This morning, we’d all been training – Mom, Alec, Amber, Ewan, Claire and Mialloch – like we had every morning for the last two weeks. Bran had been absent, work calling him away after breakfast, but the rest of us had been working on krav maga techniques after warming up with some tai chi. I’d been teaching Mialloch some knife-fighting techniques when a messenger had barged into the room. That’s how I’d wound up getting tagged by mistake, not paying attention as I spun around at the interruption. I knew I’d never hear the end of that from my mom later at dinner. The messenger had dragged both my mom and Alec away on “urgent Light Guard business,” saying only that there had been a development. I knew what that meant. The Shades were up to no good again. So why was I here, stuck trying on dresses? I was the one who was supposed to save the world. I was the one in the prophecy. Shouldn’t I have been at the meeting? My father’s guards had enjoyed ignoring me when I’d tried to tell them just that, barring me from his temporary headquarters in Elysielle. One of these days, I really needed to get Dorian in the training room with me for a little sparring. So far, he’d ignored all my invitations to get knocked out. That’s okay. I was nothing if not persistent.