Of Fae and Hate

Zo taps her fingers on the table and not for the first time I wonder if the girl has ADHD, she never seems to be capable of sitting still. If anything, she’s definitely odd. Who rubs their face on someone when they first meet them?

I haven’t gotten to spend as much time with her or Nala, who only appears at the dorm to sleep.

“Kylu X is having another party,” she says in excitement before she reaches into her pocket, pulling out a black card. She slams it down onto the table and I barely glimpse at the gold writing on the paper.

I don’t want to go back to another damn party at that house.

Who would want to return to the place of their death?

Definitely not this girl.

Clemmen’s brow pull together, “That’s what you’re excited about, Zo?” she asks, raising a brow. “Listen to me when I say that the last party fucking sucked, right, Nerys?” She looks over at me.

I nod in agreement, “zero out of ten, wouldn’t recommend going again.”

Clemmen snorts out a laugh and for the first time since I woke up, a smile makes my lips twitch. My shoulders relax slightly and I inhale a deep breath. There’s a weird twitching feeling that moves through me and I still, trying to ignore it, but it only seems to thump a little harder.

It’s uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong with you? You look like you’re constipated or something.” Clemmen says as she leans close to me, studying my face.

I pinch my lips together and shake my head. “It’s nothing,” I tell her, even as I look around the room, my eyes seeking out Soskia.

She’s sitting at one of the tables now, most of her clique talking loudly and waving their hands around as they laugh. Soskia sticks out like a sore thumb. Appearance wise, she may look like that girl I met the first day I arrived here, but it's clear from the deep set of her shoulders that something is wrong.

My mind has been swirling wanting to know why she’s had the reaction she did to whatever that monster thing had been. What did they call it? Something with an a.

My lips twist and I look over at Clemmen, finding her still watching me. Zo is on her phone now, paying no attention to either Clemmen or I.

“Got a question?” Clemmen asks and I realize I’m just staring at her.

I shake my head, “Sorry,” I clear my throat, “yeah, what’s an abaron?’ I’m not sure that I’ve said it right until I watch the way that Clemmen’s face twists.

Zo peeks up from her phone and for once the excitement is wiped from her features.

A couple of people from the nearby tables try to look at us discreetly, but they fail. It definitely confirms my suspicions that the fae are heavy eavesdroppers.

“You don’t know what an abaron is,” Clemmen says slowly.

“No.”

Her lips pinch together and she looks around before sighing and leaning closer to me. She drops her voice low, eliminating the eavesdroppers with less sensitive hearing, but I know there’s still some listening in.

“The abarons are monsters who feed off of the fae,” she says. “They infect them and once you’re infected they feed off of your energy until there’s nothing left. The lucky ones die.”

“And the unlucky ones?”

“They turn into an abaron,” she says. “Whatever they once were dies off completely and they become one of the bloodthirsty creatures. There’s no way to cure them or restore them into a fae once they’ve been turned. You can only kill them.”

I think about the way the abaron had been flying back and forth through the attic, the way the others had scurried away. “I assume they’re hard to kill?”

Clemmen gives a humorless laugh. “Damn near impossible if you aren’t trained and even then, it's hard as hell.” Her eyes move to the side and she taps a finger on the table. “You’re little friend has killed one.”

“Who?” I ask, my brows pulling together in confusion, considering she’s my only friend here.

“The princess peach herself,” she says and when turns around to look at Soskia, she doesn’t leave any doubt.

The rose gold girl’s eyes are on us now and I suspect she’s been listening in to the conversation, likely knowing what I wanted to really ask when I brought the topic up with Clemmen.