Crown of Faeries

10 | Ephemeral

And then out of no where, I stopped in the middle of the next bend through the maze and lifted my head to the sky. A large and painful cry escaped my lips.

Tears poured down my face without control and the image of my mother faded with a look of shock on her face. Fear rumbled through my blood and my knees quaked before failing on me.

I hit the floor.

The soft clank and hiss of the pebbles rang out as my voice choked and cracked. My breathing heaved as I reached up to my face and wiped away my tears.

I was so absorbed in my own pain and lost memories, that I didn't notice the soft crunch of boots behind me.

"Caelia?" The familiar velvet tone of a rich voice sounded behind me and I scrambled onto my feet.

My soft smile on my face widened when I met those god damned earthy eyes. "Kieran." I whispered.

His eyes dropped to the ground and I looked down to see his boot digging in a small circle where he stood. "Why are you--sad?" He seemed lost looking at me. And when he raised his eyes to truly look into my eyes, I saw something that was odd. He was looking at me as if he'd never met me. As if he wasn't the same Kieran that had saved my life and risked his own far too many times in just a time span of two days. The Kieran that had promised a kiss and love the next time I saw him...was not the man I was looking at now.

His arms were behind his back, grasping tightly at his wrist. His stance so formal, it looked like if he straightened any more, his back would break.

I took a stumbling step away from the man before me. "Why are you back?" My eyes narrowed in on his eyes and I didn't see the same response I would have seen a day or two ago.

Kieran tilted his head to the side as if he didn't understand my question. "Back? I never left."

His words shocked me and a grand sense of misunderstanding came over me. My head spun as I pressed my back against the roses. "You were here this whole time?" I asked him with a weary voice.

He nodded his head slowly. "What's the matter?"

"Who are you?" I shouted at him and he looked at me with a curious dip of his head to his opposite side.

"Who are you?" He repeated and to my utter horror and shock, his jaw dropped in a sound of cracking bone.

I gasped as I tripped on my own feet and fell backwards into the thorns of the rose bushes. I didn't even back away as their sharp tips dug deeper into my skin, too entranced by the thing that had made itself out to be my Kieran.

"Who are you!" I shrilled as the thing that was once Kieran shifted.

With wide eyes, I witness Kieran's face melt in a smell of burning flesh and roses, turning into a destroyed and cracked figure of maleficence. A cry escaped my lips as pure terror bounded from my chest as I watched the once male figure turn into a distorted frame of a slacked shoulder and dangling limbs.

It's knees shook as it took a rough step forward. The pebbles on the floor scrambled in an arching wave of preternatural pressure. It's hands outstretched in a show of bleeding warts, molding skin, and rotting muscle.