Working in a dead-end, post office job in the heart of a primarily-Human city, Arya Salcrest cannot let her secret out else she loses her rights and her safety. Norren Sterling, a member of the Council whom she met after a failed museum trip, is det...
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It was the grandest wedding Arya has ever seen. The palace, which was once a gray slab of stone with windows, burst with colors. Woven banners streamed from the spires, arcing downward to the lesser ones. Flowers of every color lined the roofs, the sills, and the cobbled paths in the courtyard.
Carriages pulled inside, dropping off richly dressed people, each more sparkly than the last. Arya sifted through the crowd, having been brought directly into the midst of bodies and garlands. The carpet on the floor didn't sink under her footsteps, telling her enough about her presence in this dreamworld. She glided through the masses, noting the wide smiles, the excited bounce in most of the people's steps, and the beaming sparkle seemingly scattered in the air.
Just after showing her a gruesome death of a friend, this joyous occasion felt out of place. Good job on that, dreamworld.
Arya's heart wrenched at the thought of Eury's death. Even in sleep, it wasn't ebbing away from her memory, not when her brain was as active as this.
There must be a reason why Arya saw this particular scene on this particular day. The dreams warned her about Eury. It confirmed something she had only speculated for so long. Against all odds, Arya was connected to the girl in her dream. They have the same red hair, the same eyes, the same fate. They met the same people, lost the same ones too. As much as Arya was scared to admit it, this girl could only be her past life. Against all rational belief and logic, Arya was a fae's reincarnation, a figment of old in another place, in another time.
So, why in Ouine's Socks was everything happening again? If Arya looked at it, everything had been going the same way since she met Norren. She met Norren, ended up caring about him more than she ever thought it would, and now...what's next? Would she marry Norren and become part of the elite class? No way in hell. That's why she broke it off with him in the first place.
Arya paused. She broke it off with him. She did something different. They're not together and getting married would be the last thing on their heads after that. So that raised the question: would it proceed the same way now that she was away from Norren as much as possible?
Her thoughts flew back to Eury. The circumstances had been different but the outcome was the same. Perhaps, she and Norren wouldn't end up together like how the girl and the prince did but there was something else that's common with them. Something that Arya seemed to be missing.
Hence the dream. Hence the need to know how it ended. Perhaps through that, she would also find out why she was chosen to be the next life. Maybe.
Arya tore off her attention on the guests and wandered away from the ballroom the dream dropped her into. The smaller corridors blurred in her memory as they shifted and glitched. This dreamworld made sense as much as it didn't anyway.
What other thing tied her and Norren into this whole madness? The wedding. Something about the wedding. It clicked. Of course, it's the wedding. This was the Old Kingdom, right? Fae weren't treated as people in this era. These were the times filled with violence against anyone who wasn't human. Fae killings were normal. Owning fae slaves were allowed. What has changed? What had happened for the whole empire to suddenly welcome a fae in their midst, much less be married to their prince?
