The Faceless Woman by Emma Hamm (i love reading .txt) 📕

tearing out his hair at the loss of your sister. Your brother is still fighting everyone he can find and enjoying it a little too much.”

“Nothing has changed then.”

“Faeries don’t change. And that is the most important lesson I could ever teach you.”

When the fire flared, Aisling’s eyes were drawn to the light. She saw figures dancing in the flames. Men and women, bodies lithe, twisting in a macabre dance around a woman in the center. Her head tilted back, she screamed in pain or anger, Aisling couldn’t tell.

“Why did you bring me here?” she quietly asked.

“I didn’t.”

Aisling’s gaze cut across the fire and tangled with Badb’s. The patchwork woman shook her head.

“What?” Aisling asked. “Who would have brought me here, if not for you?”

“There are other people interested in you, granddaughter. I told you never to come here.”

“My life changing isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes it’s what we need to fly.”

“Or to fall.” Badb slowly stood and stretched her arms over her head. The fabric of her simple dress lifted, revealing powerful thighs thick with corded muscles.

“I don’t intend to fall, grandmother.”

“You’ve never intended anything in your life. You have drifted endlessly in your own world and are now unprepared for what this world will throw at you. I wanted to spare you this fate, but it appears you have chosen it for yourself.”

“At least it is a fate I have chosen.” Aisling twisted her fingers in her lap, refusing to give her grandmother the satisfaction of seeing her nerves. Tuatha de Danann were unpredictable creatures, and it mattered little that Aisling was her descendant. There were always others.

“Little changeling, there is nothing sweet about a fate you have chosen for yourself. Fate is cruel either way.” Badb lifted a long-fingered hand and pointed back to the entrance of the cave. “Someone is waiting to see you.”

“Then why did the hobgoblin bring me in here?”

“I wanted to give you a chance to change your mind. I see now you are set on this path, no matter what the end might be.”

“Have you seen the end?” Aisling asked. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Even I cannot see the future. But you are walking in the footsteps of many before you. I’ll protect you when I can, my favored grandchild.” She tucked a speckled hand under Aisling’s jaw, smoothing her thumb along the stubborn set of her chin. “I wish you the best of luck.”

Aisling worried she might need it. The entire world felt as if it were holding its breath, but she didn’t know why. What had her choice changed about her life? How could entering the Otherworld so thoroughly alter her destiny?

She stood, turned from her grandmother, and walked back the way she came.

There was light at the end of the tunnel, dull and weak. Even moonlight was sluggish in this place between places. The rough stone abraded her palm as she used the walls for guidance. The hobgoblin did not appear again. No hand held hers to lead her through the darkness safely.

It was how she’d lived her entire life. And though a small pang of self-pity echoed in the empty chambers of her soul, she also admitted she preferred it this way.

Being alone was safe. No one was going to stab her in the back, throw her to the wolves, tear her limb from limb when they finally left the changeling girl whose family hadn’t wanted her.

Her heart was safe, locked away from the rest of the world. She wanted to keep it that way.

Stones skittered at her feet as she brushed her feet over the exit to the cave and stepped into the waning moonlight. Her soul would disappear back to her body once sunlight hit her form. She didn’t know how she was so certain of it, but it was like all her magic. The knowledge hid in the deep well of her mind, surfacing only when she needed it most.

She should probably thank Badb for all the faerie spell books she’d stolen over the years. Aisling had absorbed the spells as if they were things she could consume. They stayed with her, although a few spells floated just out of reach.

A chunk of stone ledge moved beside her. She flicked her gaze toward it and then flinched back. Not a stone, a person, a… thing.

It shook its shoulders, unfurling to a height that made her stretch her neck to see its entire bulk. Gray fabric covered its shoulders, falling in haphazard pieces that were threadbare and moth-eaten. Like her, she couldn’t see its face at all.

Gasping, she covered her mouth. Antlers stretched up into the sky from its head. They were shedding even though it wasn’t spring, bloody strings of fur hanging from the tines. It shook its head, huffing out a breath and snorting at her.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

This was what waited for her? This creature was something out of a nightmare, not faerie but something else entirely. When it stepped toward her, she mirrored its action backward.

“What do you want from me?”

It lifted a clawed hand to its face and pressed a finger where its lips should have been. Mushrooms grew on its shoulders, the poisonous redcaps turned toward her, shifting listlessly with a life of their own.

The creature pointed at her, and a drop of blood fell from its horns onto its finger. She heard a croak behind her and scratching footsteps that were familiar.

A raven hopped next to her, staring up at her with a golden eye.

“One for sorrow,” the horned creature rasped.

Another raven joined the other. It flapped its wings, buffeting her legs with wind so powerful they made her stumble.

“Two for mirth.”

She saw another land on top of the tree above her, joined by another so dark its feather’s glistened.

“Three for a funeral and four for a birth.”

Aisling knew this rhyme. The children used to sing it when they saw magpies or ravens in the sky. They counted the numbers of birds in search of an omen. Little