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should be more careful if you asked me.
    When I had been in the tunnels with
Roger Wayne back at school, he had said something that had bothered
me then but doubly so now. He had blatantly told me the Order
hadn’t reached the point where they didn’t need the fae to
accomplish their designs. I’d taken that declaration to mean they
were working toward that end. Maybe whatever Luke had seen on the
island was dangerous to the fae. Maybe he and Zach had walked into
a trap?
    I cringed at the thought. Even though
they couldn’t be killed, I had been around these immortals long
enough to know they still had emotions like humans. They
experienced physical pain, too, although they tried not to show
it.
    I had seen a guy get pulverized by a
giant chunk of ice just two days ago. It hadn’t taken long for a
group of brownies to scuttle from the castle and levitate the thing
off him, but they had exhausted all of their power in doing it and
had to carry him back to the castle on a stretcher. He was groaning
the whole time, but not as much as the four brownies supporting his
weight.
    Brownies are a short people. None I had
seen had been over three feet tall. They all had pale orange skin
with a light dusting of white fur that covered their bodies. They
looked virtually identical from the back. The only real distinction
between male and female, other than obvious things, had been the
slight difference in skin tone. The males had dime sized freckles
only a bit darker than the rest of their skin. The females had a
uniform skin color. Both genders wore their hair long and braided,
as was the custom of the royal house of Ignis.
    As it turned out, the brownies are one
of the lesser fae races that came to earth for asylum after the
first five nations claimed the planet. They weren’t allowed to
share in the elemental power enjoyed by the royals, but they had
been fast learners of earth magic. They can manipulate matter, just
not to the heightened degree of the five houses. It takes a bunch
of them to accomplish the same task a royal could do with one
thought.
    After hearing Luke explain how cold and
lonely his existence had been before he found Earth, I realized how
someone might be happy to just have a home. Even if all they ever
did was serve other people, it was better than wandering the vast
expanse of space for eternity.
    I hadn’t seen any other fae races in
Ignis, but Finn told me there were countless numbers of them. They
all served some purpose so the royals could take care of watching
over humans without having to grow food or worry about
technological advances and such.
    I was still having a hard time
accepting that the fae actually believed they were serving humans
by causing calamities or interfering behind the scenes when the
balance of power was weighted too heavily to one side. Finn had
told Cassie many things he wouldn’t even think about telling me. I
wasn’t sure if he realized she would tell me anyway, but either
way, his thinking was weird to me.
    I heard the clomping of Cassie’s shoes
hitting the stone floor before I felt a light touch on my back. I
hadn’t even felt her sit down. My new bed was the most comfortable
thing I had ever slept on. Even Cassie’s memory-foam mattress
couldn’t compare. I was weightless when I was on my bed. I should
have been able to rest rather soundly under ordinary circumstances,
but being here was anything but normal. It didn’t help that I kept
having nightmares. Every night since coming here, I had fallen
asleep with the hope I would get some rest, and every night I had
been vastly disappointed.
    I rolled over and looked at Cassie’s
concerned face. Here I was feeling sorry for myself when she had it
way worse than I did. All I had to do was pick a guy to spend a few
hundred years with. It shouldn’t be that difficult, especially
considering whom I have to choose from. Cassie’s future wasn’t so
certain. She didn’t know how much of an Elemental she really was
and