The Fae World: Jessie: Fae Families and Being A Spy

[k_a_webb]

This may not be canon. It was interesting to write though.

My uncle had never felt he was a part of the family. There was a couple of months between us, and I was the elder, so we’d grown up thinking of each other as friends, rather than uncle and niece. Yes, fae families are strange. When my father was born he was the youngest sibling, until my grandfather had an affair with his best friend’s wife, who became my uncle’s mother. People blamed it on the stress of moving from Kalinia to Earth, because that wasn’t normal fae behaviour. Affairs were rare, as were children born outside of a handfasting, and my uncle had been stuck in the position of being the product of an affair born outside of a handfasting. I think he was thankful it never bothered me, even though my father told me not to go anywhere near his younger brother.

Listening to my father would have led to me having a very different life. If I’d been like the rest of my family, apart from my grandfather, looking down on a child who’d never had any choice in whether he was going to be born or not I would never have become one of my uncle’s spies. To a human looking in on the fae from the outside it was weird. Some of the fae thought it was weird too, and that was coming from people who were used to the way the families worked. That was the sort of thing that happened when a race lived for at least three hundred years with well over two hundred of them being a time when they could have children.

At the age of seven I was betrothed to the son of one of my father’s allies. My father thought it might make me realise how important I was to him, because I was the only daughter he’d had so far. Personally I looked on it as a way for him to get rid of me. Even at seven I hadn’t listened to him, spending too much time in the family library with a brother he wished didn’t exist, and even now I’m not sure why he didn’t think it was going to happen. We were too alike for us not to be friends. The betrothal ended when I followed my uncle to a warded settlement he created, knowing there was no way I was going to marry someone I’d never met before.

Later, when I did meet the man I was betrothed to, we fell in love, which amused us both. Of course that’s me going too far ahead with the story I’m trying to tell. I was born on Earth just over a year after the fae left Kalinia behind. Willow convinced me to go to the fae school when I turned fourteen, going against my father’s wishes not to even talk to me (my family is related to the Queen’s, although it’s so distant that Father never mentioned it to me), and she also convinced my uncle. Back then the school was a very different place, because Willow was in control, and if you ask nicely I might tell you about that time. It was easily one of the best times of my life, in part because I could spend time with Mike without my father lecturing me.

Together Mike and I spent six years at the school, learning what we could do with our magic. If it had been down to my father I don’t think I’d ever have been taught anything about my magic, even though I was strong. To him it would be another way to show me he was in control. During those six years Mike created his hidden settlement, with Willow’s blessing, because she knew that there were too many fae who believed that she should have gone to war with the humans who already inhabited Earth, like her father would have done if he survived. None of them know for certain that he would have done and sometimes I wonder if they were right or if he might actually have listened to the daughter who saved his life.

After we graduated we both moved in. For the first time I felt safe, knowing that only the people Mike trusted would be permitted to enter it, but the mechanism for getting into the settlement annoyed me. Somewhere in his bloodline he had someone who could do mechanical magic, which was something I didn’t have, so it must have been his mother’s side, and to guard his settlement he created a magical arcade machine. That was why I was once again stood in front of the damned thing, trying to work out what he’d changed the password to. When I’d last checked in he’d been using the buttons pressed in a certain way, the time before that it had been putting a magical coin into the slot in the correct fashion, but he never thought to tell me what the new password was before I found myself glaring at the machine that kept telling me that I could win, win, win.

For longer than I should have done I thought long and hard about smashing it to pieces with something heavy. If I’d been trying to get into the settlement because I was in danger I probably would have been dead. Sighing, I looked around the arcade, thankful that it was almost entirely empty. After pressing the buttons one last time I took a coin out of my pocket.

“Spin it,” a voice said from behind me, making me jump.

Turning, my eyes met those of my younger brother, and we smiled at each other. “How come you know the way to get in and I don’t?”

“Pure luck.” He sighed. “Mike’s worried, so he’s been changing the password every other day.”

Running a hand through my hair I did my best not to swear. “Lorcan hasn’t checked in, has he?”

My brother shook his head. “We don’t know why.” He reached out to touch my shoulder. “It’s possible he’s just been held up for some reason.”

Nodding, slowly, I stared down at the coin in my hand. Even now I don’t remember thinking about what I was going to do, all I knew was that someone I loved was in danger, and I knew that I could do something about it, so the coin went back into my pocket. “Tell Mike I was here,” I said, my voice sounding faraway even to me.

“Jessie…”

Travelling using the magic within me was something I didn’t do often. It drained me faster than any other magic I did, but with Lorcan missing I knew it was my only option because I could lock in on him. As I left I wrapped invisibility around me, knowing that I couldn’t be seen. He was probably fine and Mike was worrying about nothing. My problem was not knowing one way or the other, so finding out as quickly as possible was, to me, the best idea. Knowing Mike he probably wouldn’t agree with me.

Normally the location of each of Mike’s operatives was kept a secret even from me and I was his second in command. I would never have asked where anyone was, unless I believed that they might be in danger, no matter who it was. My brother was an operative, another of my family who went against my father’s wishes, as was my lover, so there were times when I worried about both of them, but I still followed the rules to keep them safe. There was always a possibility that someone would work out who I was and try to get as much information about Mike’s operation as possible from me, including where everyone was.

When I arrived it wasn’t a surprise to see Lorcan with a girl. I’m the first to admit that my lover is gorgeous, but she made me jump when she started screaming, “I see death in your eyes.”

Lorcan looked over at where I was standing so I could see the pain in his eyes. For a moment I even thought he could see me, but that was impossible. A part of me wanted to go straight over to him to comfort him, knowing better than any other the hard choices we often had to make. To stop myself I started studying her and realised he was with Pearl, one of my father’s youngest sisters. She was almost thirty years younger than me, which again is evidence of how weird fae families are, so we weren’t close.

The man who walked through the door, looking perplexed, was someone I knew much better, and I pulled my invisibility tighter around me hoping that it would be enough. If he saw me… I shook my head. He wasn’t going to see me, so I wasn’t going to finish the thought. Pearl was retching on the bed, making me want to go over there and slap her for being so bloody stupid. Grandfather should have taught her better how to deal with her sensitivity instead of burying his head in the sand.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.