CORRUPTED FILE [Lumina Chronicles Past Drafts]

Level Seven

[MAGGIE'S PoV]

Time passed in a blur of paint, fabric, and nights spent staring up at a sky that wasn't mine. It had taken me a week to get out of bed and accept my fate, and a week after that saw me rising at dawn to help Faye with whatever gown she was working on that day. Today marked my third week here. Wherever here was.

Waitressing had been my first and only job. Working wasn't particularly fun, and at nine dollars an hour it's not like I was rolling in cash, but I was proud of myself regardless. My parents insisted on paying for the entirety of my education, as well as basically everything else in my life, and it felt nice to do something for myself.

Here with Faye the work was more labor intensive, and I wasn't paid at all, but as I quickly found out, neither was she. Which, come to think of it, was probably slavery? But she didn't seem to be complaining.

I liked listening to her stories and lessening her burden. She said it was nice to have someone helping her, since she'd been working alone for about five years, after her friend Carlyle passed away.

"You kind of remind me of him," Faye noted one afternoon as I wrapped my finger in a bandage after accidentally sticking it with a pin.

"Was he bad with sharp things too?" I asked.

"No, he was very good with a needle." She smiled and pushed her curls behind her ears before sitting down at her sewing machine with some satin and lace. "You're both chatty humans with a flare for dramatics."

I gasped and pressed a hand to my heart. "Me? Dramatic?"

Faye giggled. "Yes yes, a baseless accusation. I'm very sorry."

"...Faye, you wound me, as if anyone could be as dramatic as me..."

I kept my expression neutral and ignored the quiet voice. During my first week out of bed, I started hearing the voice of a man— only in the back of my mind, and only every so often. I'd written it off as shock, but it still made me uneasy. Especially since the voice was sometimes accompanied by flashes of red hair out of the corner of my eye.

I took a calming breath and sat down next to Faye and continued pinning the cloth I'd been assigned. She'd offered to teach me how to operate the sewing machine, but after seeing how prone to injury I was, that idea was abandoned quickly.

"Why is everything so purple?" I asked. "It's like the only color of fabric you have." Even the dress I was wearing, a simple frock she'd sewn for me one evening, was a gentle shade of lilac.

"Ah, that would be the queen's fault. That girl simply adores her purple." Without looking up from her sewing, Faye nodded toward the magnificent ball gown I'd noticed in the corner during my first week. At the time, I had assumed it was for a child.

"How old is the queen? Because I don't know any adults who could wear that."

"She's eighteen, but very petite for her age. It's a fairy thing." Faye said, her mouth curving into the slightest frown.

The few times the queen had come up in conversation between Faye and Kindle, neither seemed all that pleased to know her. I wanted to learn more about her, but I didn't want to make Faye uncomfortable.

"So," I pressed carefully, "the queen is a fairy?"

Faye nodded. "Silver hair, purple eyes, pointy ears, a bad attitude... the whole deal."

I made a mental note of all the traits that apparently identified a fairy, trying to form an image of what Queen Lydianna D'Norse might look like. She was hard to imagine. "And you're a... a mermaid?"