Soul (Chaos #1)

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

I could have been eating apples on that bed for seconds or lifetimes. All I knew was that I had to eat until my stomach bulged, because the very moment I stopped, I would waste away with hunger.

I chomped through the apples steadily, idly tossing away the cores once I had nibbled as much flesh from them as possible. I kept going, focused on my task, my thoughts full of succulent red apples.

I was sucking juice out of an apple only to have it pulled right out of my hands. I moaned, clutching wildly for another, but the basket was knocked out of my reach. Someone pushed me back on the bed, and strong fingers squeezed my jaws.

Apples. I just needed...

Cold water was poured down my throat. The icy liquid blasted me into lucidity, and I stared at the silver-haired faery in horror. I touched my swollen lips and swallowed hard, feeling an ache in my throat that I hadn't noticed.

"Don'teat." He held my face still and made me drink more water.

I obeyed without argument, unable to look away from him. He studied me in return, his violet eyes flashing with anger. The apples didn't matter anymore; my obsession had transferred to him. I didn't snatch an apple as soon as he let me go, and his frown cleared.

"Are you with me?" he asked.

"Yes." I gazed around the room and wondered how a few apples could have distracted me from everything else. Not even I made sense to me anymore. "Where am I?"

"Somewhere you shouldn't be." He stared at me keenly. "Who brought you here? What are you supposed to do?"

I tried to remember what had happened, but my memories seemed to be funnelled through a kaleidoscope, making them distorted and weird. Clutching at my thought processes was like being drunk and trying to force my body to walk in a straight line. "Nobody brought me," I said at last, fairly sure that was true. Although I hadn't been myself since I'd seen those bloody lights.

He shook his head. "Then how did you get here? You don't just happen upon us on a night like this. Why are you here?" Irritation coloured his words.

I looked away, thinking of the people who were important to me: my mother, my friends. Their faces were hazy and distant, as if it had been decades since I'd last seen them. "I... I followed the lights. And the music. I just wanted to see. But the entrance disappeared, and the people... or whatever they are..." I shook my head. "They started hurting each other, and I'd like to go home now, please."

"You heard the music?" He punched the basket, knocking it off the bed. The last few apples rolled across the floor, leaving me bereft. "Why tonight?"

"I didn't... Ididn't mean it. I just want to go home."

He ignored me, his eyes distant.

I reached out for his wings, unable to stop myself. They fluttered even faster."What are you?"

"Just a faery." He took my hands before I could make contact and looked me straight in the eye. "Please stop doing that."

"Are you real? Faeries and magic and whatever. Is any of this real? I'm not hallucinating or having some kind of breakdown?"

He smiled, and my heart pretty much skipped a beat. His smile was sunshine, and I was eager to soak up the rays. "You're not hallucinating. The Irish fae are hosting a very important event here tonight. And I was supposed to..." He closed his hands into fists. "It doesn't matter now. It's all wrong."

I bit my lip."It's real. Not that I... I mean, wow." Okay, so I was kind of a faery fan girl. As a kid, my bedtime stories had been dark faery tales, and I left bowls of milk out to thank the house brownies Granddad said helped us while we slept. At Halloween, I was the girl in the slutty faery costume. I even had a faery tattoo on my hip. But none of that was why I felt so relieved. If I wasn't dreaming, that meant other things might have been real, things I had been shamed into keeping secret.