Fated Loss Read online

  The first thing I noticed was the musty and moldy smell. I walked to the twin-size bed on the left of the room and set my luggage on it. The wooden bed frame shuddered and creaked, threatening to snap. I turned away to explore the rest of the room, but there wasn't much to see other than walls covered in a thick layer of dust and a decaying dresser.

  Creaakk. I looked back, expecting to see the bed frame had caved in. But a girl emerged from the bathroom instead. She looked about fifteen and had long, wavy hair that was covering half of her face. Her hair was a muted shade of red, but I had a feeling that it had been much brighter before.

  She closed the bathroom door, and it made a sound like a dying cat. When she saw me, she ducked her head and quickly walked over to fold a rumpled jacket that was thrown onto her bed.

  “I'm Roselyn Diaz,” I said.

  “Ariel Reed,” she replied in a small voice.

  “What type of faery are you?”

  “A nature faery from the valley.” Ariel sat on the bed and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  “What's wrong?” I asked, hoping I can casually dig up some more information about what's going on here. And it wasn't obvious, but there was sadness in the way she hugged her legs and set her chin on her knees.

  Ariel remained silent for a few seconds before replying. “The valley is cold and crumbling. It's not safe to live there anymore. Everyone was forced to move to the central kingdom about a year ago then…” She stopped and stared at her lap. “I am sorry. I shouldn't complain.”

  “That's not complaining. But why is everything dying anyway?”

  An expression of suspicion crossed Ariel's face, but she quickly masked it. “You mean you don't feel it?”

  I could bluff and say that I know exactly what she means, but this information would be another piece to the puzzle.

  I dusted out the pieces of chipped paint that were inside the dresser drawer and tried to act casual. “Feel what?”

  “Our life source, Astella, is dying. Every faery is affected by it if you live here long enough.” Ariel briefly looked me up and down, probably checking to see if I was a real faery.

  Now would be the time to drop the subject because anything else I say would sound stupid and clueless for someone that should've known all this. But I was too baffled not to ask questions.

  “Did you just mean you are connected to Astella. But how?”

  With one last glance at my damaged wings, Ariel went on to explain how Astella was a real flower that was just covered with earth and that it is every faery's life source. If Astella dies then faeries die too, but if faeries start dying in massive numbers, Astella will slowly crumble away because it will have no reason to exist.

  “So you are saying, Astella dies then you die as well and the other way around,” I asked after Ariel's lesson.

  Ariel nodded mutely.

  That is beyond awful, I wanted to say. But I remembered the days when my parents were king and queen. Everything was warm, sunny, and healthy. The exact opposite of here.

  “It's the way the new queen is ruling isn't it?” I said.

  Ariel mumbled something under her breath, and I only caught the word Ash and not queen. Finally! Now I know her name, and it is very fitting.

  “Yes, Ash is making the place cold and dark,” Ariel continued. “She cast a spell on the land to become this way so she could add more territory to the Fifth Petal.”

  “But how?” I said, feeling like a clueless kindergartner who was asking a teacher why one plus one equals two.

  If I was stuck here, I should know this already. Ariel shouldn't have to explain, but Ariel didn't ask any more questions which made me more uneasy than if she did.

  “She disconnected the Fifth Petal from Astella somehow and transformed it from a forest into treacherous mountains. With her Dark Magic, she cast a spell so when the other petals crumble it would add to fifth.”

  “But doesn't she know she is killing everything?” I asked. Though I already knew the answer to that.

  “She knows, but she doesn't care, and it doesn't affect her. It affects everyone else,” Ariel said.

  I pictured the family of faeries and the small boy I met in the streets. So Ash wasn't just demented. She was power hungry, ruthless, and selfish as well.

  “Why doesn't anybody try to stop her?” I asked.

  “Lots of people tried, but they didn't come back.”

  “Oh.”

  I hope Skylar and I weren't going to have the same fate.

  Ariel and I must've been talking for over an hour because a bell rang. I wanted to ask her about Ash's Dark Magic. But I figured I pushed my luck enough for today, and it was time for orientation.

  Ariel led the way to the auditorium while I was zoned out. Ash is intentionally destroying Astella while knowing she is killing everything, and even worse she doesn't care.

  To darkness the world must fall.

  ROSE

  Chapter 12

  After orientation, which just explained how everything worked at this school, I tried to text Skylar, telling her to come to my dorm room. Ariel was in the bathroom, so we could have a few moments to talk in private. But my phone didn't work because it was meant for the human world, not the faery world, so I had to manually find her room.

  A few minutes later, Skylar was on my bed listening as I was explaining everything Ariel told me. After I finished the story, Skylar was quiet for a full minute—almost a new record for her.

  “So,” she finally asked, “why aren't we affected again?”

  “Because we were living in the human world all this time and haven't built a connection with Astella yet,” I replied.

  Skylar gave me a fake smile and nod that told me she did not understand this at all. “Build a relationship with a flower. How is that possible?”

  I paused to think of a way to explain this. Building a bond with a flower did sound ridiculous.

  “Well, don't you like Gramma and Gramp's house?” I said after a few seconds.

  “Yeah, but what does it have to do with the connection thingy?”

  “It has everything to do with the connection thingy. You grew up in Gramma and Gramp's house, you have fond memories of the place, and it is your home. That is the connection. Faeries in Astella lived here all their lives. They love their homes, and they built a link with Astella,” I said.

  Skylar gripped her hair as if trying to grasp this concept as well. “And Ash isn't affected even though she was here all this time?”

  “Yeah, that is the mysterious part. She somehow disconnected herself from Faery Flow—”

  The bathroom door creaked, and Ariel walked out.

  “This is Sky, my sister,” I said.

  “Hi,” Skylar replied.

  The three of us politely chatted for the next few minutes, but then a bell rang, signaling that it was time for bed.

  After Skylar left I crawled under thin blankets and tried to sleep, but the mattress was actually a coarse, lumpy, and uncomfortable straw-filled bag that I wasn't used to.

  During the four hours when I couldn't catch any z's, I had way too much time to think. I either can't wait for tomorrow, all the classes seemed interesting and exciting, or I dread it knowing that I will be one step closer to trying to defeat Ash, and if I failed… No, I just have to learn my powers first. Hopefully, I will get a few weeks of time.

  ROSE

  Chapter 13

  I woke up late, skipped breakfast because I couldn't get up in time, (I wonder how people in the old days get a good night's sleep on those horrible straw mattresses.) dressed warmly, and dashed into the classroom of my first-ever fire magic lesson.

  “Hello, Roselyn,” Mr. Davenport said, reading my name off the list. “Take a seat.”

  I picked the desk by the window and took in my surroundings. The classroom was in the same condition as the rest of the school. The wooden chair I was sitting on was the quality of the bed frame i
n my dorm room. The other ten students had wings out, and instead of reading books or talking to each other while waiting for the class to start, everybody was practicing their fire powers. A few naughty kids made paper balls catch on fire then started to lob them everywhere.

  “Settle down everyone,” Mr. Davenport said. “Welcome to a new year, fire faeries. Today we are going to learn how to use our fire powers.”

  

  So basically at the end of class, I was wiped out, sweating, and I almost scorched myself a dozen times. But I was sure I earned myself a D just like I planned.

  I couldn't let any of the teachers know I was the Savior, so my strategy was to flunk every class except flying as long as I can so my powers can stay undetermined. Though I will practice when I am alone. But I did learn a neat trick. Fire faeries can stay dry when they want to. That explains what happened in Jefferson High's bathroom.

  The next class was worse than gym. We were standing outside in the frigid cold as Ms. Silva explained how to summon our wings and use them. Though everybody here was seasoned faeries except me.

  I glanced back at my wings. The high-speed wind whipped through the holes, gradually making them larger. When I first came here, the rips were only about the size of quarters. Now some are two inches wide. I get questions about my damaged wings all the time. I don't need bad flying to add to the mix.

  “Just have to try my best and not bump into that guy next to me,” I whispered to myself.

  “All right, fly as high as you can,” Ms. Silva said.

  I jumped off the ground with the rest of the faeries and flew straight up.

  The wind rammed into me and was intent on making me lose my balance, but I managed to stay in the air. As I flew higher and higher, Ether's large school building started to look small.

  Something numbingly cold stung me. I thought a chunk of snow had landed on my wings, but I looked back and realized I was wrong. Instead, they were encased in a thick layer of ice. I stopped rising and started falling instead.

  My wings felt like a heavy stone backpack and was frozen stiff. When I managed to move them a bit, they made a crackling sound like when you bend an ice cube tray full of freshly frozen water. That couldn't be a good sign.

  At first I thought everybody else was falling as well, but all the students and Ms. Silva were still in the air and getting higher. Then a gust of air made me flip, and I cried out for help. But the wind swallowed my words.

  I hurtled toward the ground, unable to do anything. I shut my eyes and braced myself for impact.

  One

  Two

  Three… It never came.

  I cracked open my eyes and saw that I was hovering three feet above the ground. I looked up. A boy about my age had caught my forearm to stop me from falling. Gray snow flecked his short blond hair, and silver and azure wings complemented the bluest eyes I have ever seen.

  I didn't realize I was holding my breath until my lungs screamed for air. But all I could manage was a shallow, shaky inhale.

  “I got you,” he assured me.

  He lowered us both to the ground.

  “Thanks for catching me. If you didn't, I-I...” I shuddered, imagining what would happen if he didn't catch me or didn't care.

  He gave me a warm and understanding smile. The cold that had seeped into my bones receded.

  “Don't worry. I'll be there for you.”

  “Roselyn! Roselyn!” Ms. Silva raced toward me, out of breath. “What happened? Are you all right?”

  “I am fine. I just lost my bala—”

  “And your wings are frozen,” Ms. Silva continued. “Let's get you inside and warm.”

  She ushered me back inside the school before I could ask my hero his name.

  

  After the next class, (Sadly, I didn't see him there.) I went to lunch and found Ariel sitting alone at a table in the back of the cafeteria. I walked over to her and set down my tray of food if you can call it food. It was more like a single rock-hard biscuit and a tin can of cold, metallic-tasting water.

  “Is this what you eat every day?” I tried to crack the biscuit.

  Ariel motioned for me to dip it into the water. “Yup, the land is dying. All the good food goes to Ash, and we get her leftovers.”

  Ash's leftovers. Suddenly, I wasn't feeling very hungry anymore.

  We sat in silence while I nibbled on my biscuit. Even though I just met her yesterday, I learned that Ariel doesn't talk a lot and is pretty much a clam when I ask for her opinion on anything. She would tell me what I wanted to hear, but I knew she wasn't being honest. The only thing she could do with some confidence is telling me information about Astella or reciting facts, and I wonder why.

  I got tired of the silence, so I told her about my flying lesson. I told her about the guy who noticed I was falling when nobody else did.

  “Wait, that's him.” I pointed across the cafeteria at the same boy who caught me.

  He saw me looking and made his way to our table. “I never got to introduce myself. I'm Logan Hart, water faery.”

  “Roselyn Diaz,” I replied.

  I waited for Ariel to introduce herself, but she just stared at her plate.

  “And this is Ariel Reed,” I said for her.

  “Mind if I have lunch with you?” Logan asked.

  I looked at Ariel, but she was immersed by the bread crumbs on her dish. She was acting even shyer than normal.

  “Not at all,” I said since Ariel didn't answer.

  Logan took the seat next to me.

  I had a nice lunch other than learning Astella was deteriorating faster than I thought and just how quickly the faeries were dying. I didn't notice it before, but Ariel and Logan did look less than healthy. Logan's hair was bleached-out blond, and Ariel was a little pale. It didn't seem like they had a lot of time left.

  ROSE

  Chapter 14

  For the next two days, I was antsy. Every minor earthquake reminded me of Astella crumbling and the dying faeries. I knew Skylar and I had to learn our basic powers first before we could stand the slightest chance against Ash, but it still didn't stop me from feeling time was being wasted.

  But meanwhile I became good friends with Logan, who helped me in flying class. Though I was still pretty terrible. It was like the wind was trying to knock me down on purpose. Once he caught me by the waist and pulled me close to keep me from falling. I don't know whose heart beat faster—Logan's for having to dive after me or mine.

  I kept to my plan and purposely flunked all of my magic training classes, but when I was alone, I practiced any time I could. Though it was hard to find moments when Ariel was out of the dorm room to train. I almost got busted once or twice by her.

  One afternoon she either came into the dorm room so quietly or I was too focused on practicing my water powers that I didn't know she was in the room until she walked by me.

  I quickly let the water fall back into the bowl and put on a smile. “So how was your day?”

  “Fine,” Ariel said.

  She didn't say anything about the water, but I could tell she suspected something.

  Another afternoon during a walk outside, I accidentally fed her suspicion that I was the Savior. She was asking me questions about where I disappear to between classes and at lunch and to describe my home before Ash took over. But I couldn't because I never actually lived at the outskirts of the kingdom.

  Ariel didn't seem at all comfortable with asking me questions, and the whole time she avoided eye contact and picked at the holes in her jacket. But even though she was shy, she was also persistent. I couldn't walk away because I didn't want to be rude, and that will just prove to her that I am hiding something. I tried to answer the best I could, but I can tell from Ariel's brief expressions before she masked it that my description of the kingdom's outskirts wasn't really accurate. I attempted to change the subject, but she kept pressing the same topic until I was really nervous.

>   I happened to glance behind me and see a trail of tiny blue forget-me-not flowers that sprouted everywhere I step. I quickly looked away, hoping Ariel didn't notice. But it was too late. Ariel's eyes scanned the trail of flowers. She didn't say anything, but she nodded slightly as if that was just what she needed, and she backed off on the questions.

  Just great. I don't think I could keep my secret from Ariel any longer. In fact, it was today when I snuck up from lunch hoping to get another hour of magic practice.

  I was practicing all my powers in the supposedly empty dorm room (I was decent at water, ice, and nature magic. Fire still needed some work, though.) when a small cough came from behind the almost-closed bathroom door. I extinguished the fireball in my hand, walked over, and opened the door. There standing in the shadows with her red hair hiding her face was Ariel.

  “So you are the person from the prophecy,” she said in a whisper.

  There was no point in telling lies since Ariel already had all the proof she needs, so I told the truth.

  “My name is Rose Kristal, and I am the faery from the prophecy. Arrest me already, and take me to Ash,” I replied.

  Ariel stepped out of the shadows. “Are you joking? I'm not going to turn you in. I want to help. I have been looking for the Savior as soon as Ash took over.”

  I stared at her. I knew Ariel was a good friend but not this good. Ash surely promised a reward for anyone who could capture me, and Ariel caught me red-handed. She could take me prisoner, but she didn't.

  “So you're not turning me in?” I asked again just to make sure I heard correctly.

  “Yes, but please tell me your story,” she said.

  I told her everything about my mission to defeat Ash and hopefully rescue my parents if they are still alive.

  “Wow, you are brave,” Ariel said after I finished. “I know I am not the most courageous person, but I do know a lot about Astella, and I want to help.”