{A Wattpad Featured Book}
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Her heart or her people. Only she can decide.
Hated, cursed, outcasted. It was Eleena Asterin's life ever since she was blamed to have betrayed her village. So when she is offered a task to earn back her honour and prid...
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Three laps around the manor and still, I couldn't seem to find Kallistê. I wrung my hands before bringing them to rub my eyes as I dropped into one of the many benches that were lining the hallway. My feet were already aching and sore from climbing flight over flight of stairs and when they felt near less from dropping off, I stood. Since I had no clue as to where she might be, I might as well waste my time doing more research. Sighing in defeat, I made my way back to the study.
I didn't waste a second of time as I eased into my seat and found my place in the book, my face warming as I glanced at the illustrations scattered throughout. A children's book, and yet I could scarcely make it through its twenty or so pages. Why did Phoebus have children's books in his library? Were they from his own childhood, or in anticipation of children to come? It didn't matter. I couldn't even read them. I hated the smell of these books—the decaying rot of the pages, the mocking whisper of the paper, the rough skin of the binding. I looked at the piece of paper, now crumpled up and lying in the bin.
"I could help you practice reading and writing if that's why you're in here."
I jerked back in my seat, almost knocking over the chair, and whirled to find Phoebus behind me, a stack of books in his arms. I pushed back against the heat rising in my cheeks and ears, the panic at the information he might be guessing I'd been trying to gain answers for. "Help? You mean a faerie is passing up the opportunity to mock an ignorant mortal?"
He set the books down on the table, his jaw tight. I couldn't read the titles glinting on the leather spines. "Why should I mock you for a shortcoming that isn't your fault? Let me help you. I owe you for the hand."
Shortcoming. It was a shortcoming.
Yet it was one thing to bandage his hand, to talk to him as if he wasn't a predator built to kill and destroy, but to reveal how little I truly knew, to let him see that part of me that was still a child, unfinished and raw ... His face was unreadable. Though there had been no pity in his voice, I straightened. "I'm fine."
"You think I've got nothing better to do with my time than come up with elaborate ways to humiliate you?"
My mind went back to the way the artist had put so little detail to render the humans' lands, and didn't have an answer—at least, not one that was polite. I'd given enough already to them—to him.
Phoebus shook his head. "So you'll let Kallistê take you on hunts and—"
"Kallistê," I interrupted quietly, but not gently, "doesn't pretend to be anything but what she is."
"What's that supposed to mean?" he growled, but his talons stayed retracted, even as he clenched his hands into fists at his sides.
I was definitely walking a dangerous line, but I didn't care. Even if he'd offered me a sanctuary, I didn't have to fall at his feet. "It means," I said with the same cold quiet, "that I don't know you. I don't know who you are, or what you really are, or what you want."
