Monsters in Suburbia

Chapter 5 Divided We Fall

Holly

"Who are you anyway?" I asked.

"It is none of your business, changeling." The Faerie woman replied curtly. She had long red hair that fell down to her waist and wore armor made of dark blue metal that glinted green in the sunlight.

"Actually, it is, I have been kidnapped twice in less than forty eight hours." I wasn't really that afraid of the Faerie knight, she said she needed to keep me alive.

"It's your problem you can't defend yourself." She used a large bladed knife to slice up a pink star shaped fruit.

"Well I'm sorry if they don't teach you how to kill people sixty different ways with a spoon at school!" I snapped. "None of this is my fault, and it is certainty not my frickin' problem!"

The woman raised an eyebrow at me. "For a royal, you don't act like one."

"When one's mother abandons her only child..." I let it hang in the air.

The woman started choking on the fruit. "Only-only." She swallowed. "You think you're the only one?" At my sullen expression she threw he head back with laughter. "The Queen has thousands of children. You're just the only one stupid enough to get thrown back into this hell hole."

I ran a hand through my hair.

The woman lifted her head as if she had heard something and sheathed her knife. "Let's go." She wandered over to me and untied the rope around my waist, leaving the rope from her hand to my bound wrists so she could lead me like a dog.

I walked with her in silence as she marched me over hills and through woodlands until all that lay ahead of us was barren land littered with volcanoes and lightning storms.

With an expression that almost looked like apprehensiveness the woman pushed me onward.

It must have been another two hours before we came across our destination, a large dark blue metal castle that's spires rose high into the stormy sky. It looked like something out of a Grimm's fairytale.

The woman escorted me right inside the structure, and right before what could only be the Unseelie Queen. The Queen's long hair touched the floor like my mother, but it was the colour of the castle and the knight's armor. Her expression bore the one of a person who had never laughed with her pale upturned nose and fathomless eyes. Her dress was silver, embroided with patterns of roses and lightning bolts.

"Princess Holeane, it's been a long time." Her accent was very southern. Out of place for the Faerie Lands.

"Have we met?" I asked.

She smiled crisply. "You wouldn't remember you were but a child. But how could I forget such a memorable face."

I had always looked different to other Faeries, with my tanned skin, wide hips and dark hair.

The Unseelie Queen rose from her throne and the knight beside me stiffened. "Do you have any idea how long it has been since a child was born from Faerie and Dryad?" Her heels clacked as she stalked toward me. She groaned and tossed her endless hair over her shoulder. "Far too long, far too long." Her silver eyes flicked to the knight. "You are excused Dawn." Her tone left no questioning.

Dawn, the knight dipped her head before leaving the room.

"There is something that I desperately need, and it just so happens, you are the only one who had retrieve it."

"And that would be?" I ask.

The Queen smiled. "A wand made from the wood of the last Dryad of course." She took my hand and slipped a bangle around my wrist. "You will be, as the humans say...our bloodhound."