The Fated Fire Princess

The Farnethia Museum

Harper’s POV

Scylla is one of my favorite teachers, and usually I pay rapt attention when she talks.

Today, though, I’m having trouble focusing on anything other than the back of Jack’s head.

Does he really expect me not to say anything to anyone, again? Sure, it was only one bruise this time, but it was also darker and deeper than most of the others. It’s obviously going to happen again; it’s already happened more times than I can count. How am I supposed to keep sitting by and doing nothing but cover them up?

“What good would it do?” he asked me when I demanded this of him. “Your parents would just kick him out of the HQ, and he’d take me and Ma with him.”

I doubt he’s right about that. If I explained the situation to my parents, they would probably find some way to protect Jack and his mother and keep them here. But Jack’s mother never liked me or my parents, and I’m not sure she’d be a willing participant in that plan.

I hate the thought of anybody hurting him—truly, it makes my blood boil.

But I hate the thought of him being taken away from me even more.

“And that was when I lost her,” Scylla tells the class, pulling me out of my Jack concern long enough to remind me that she’s giving her annual Bee remembrance speech. Once a year, Scylla tells us the tale of the Battle of Hyatha and how she lost Bee, her sister—who, in her final breaths, attempted to tell Nell about the prophecy.

That damned prophecy. I hate how often they talk about it at the Academy. Every teacher who brings it up seems to root their gaze to mine. Some of them smile while doing so—glad, clearly, that my parents fulfilled the prophecy and brought about change for the warring world they came from. Others, though, look like they want me dead. They hate Earth, and they want to return home.

Well, sorry, assholes, I think grumpily. There’s no more Farnethia, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Wasn’t exactly my choice to bring you here.

Sometimes I wish I could see Farnethia. Despite all the art and descriptions people give about it, I still can’t quite picture it. It’s hard to imagine Dad growing up in the Castle of Darkness, and equally hard to imagine Mom and Dad staying in the Castle of Light together after he brought her south.

And Archie the unicorn? Well, I certainly can’t imagine that.

I barely remember Archie, but I know from my mother’s expressions of sorrow and longing when his name comes up that he meant a lot to her. I don’t really understand why he left. “He misses home too much,” Mom always says when I ask, which doesn’t really strike me as an explanation. It’s not like he left to go to Farnethia; he left to get away from us. Why?

Sometimes I get the feeling there are things my parents don’t tell me.

Just before the bell rings to let us out of class, I catch a glimpse of something through the mirror: a pair of bright, turquoise eyes, squinting at me from behind the bushes.

I start so sharply, the girl next to me leans forward to see if I’m alright. But as soon as I do, the eyes disappear in a flash of blond and white, and it’s as if they were never there at all.

When I turn my gaze forward again, I’m surprised to see Jack’s eyes gazing back at me.

Blue eyes, he says in my head. Blond hair. You saw it, too?

I nod. Someone’s watching us?

He nods, too. I think we’d better talk to your parents.

- - - - -

Despite Jack’s insistence that we should tell my parents as soon as possible, I suggest we go somewhere else first: the Museum.

“Now?” asks Effie, who joined us in the hallway after class. She’s two grades below us, so we rarely have classes together, but she almost always finds us in the halls. “I’m down to ditch.”

Jack and I have Mermaid Studies next, which, frankly, I’m perfectly fine to miss. Learning about mermaids was interesting when I was ten, but there’s only so much to know about them, and I’ve long since mastered it. So I nod. “Me, too. Jack?”

He doesn’t looked thrilled by the idea, but he’s also not about to let two girls—both of which are younger than him—make him feel like a chicken. “Fine. Lead the way.”

Effie, the master rule-breaker of our threesome, skillfully maneuvers us to the back stairwell of the Academy, which we follow to the first floor. Me being the smallest and lightest of the bunch, Jack hoists me onto his shoulders to open the window and crawl out of it. Once I do, he shoves Effie into it, and then Effie hoists me back up so that I can extend my hands down to pull him up.

Jack’s skinny for his age, but still a lot bigger than me; it’s not easy, hoisting him up into that window. As soon as he claws his way onto the sill, he pauses to make sure I’m okay. For the briefest instant, our eyes meet, and it’s as if Effie and the rest of the school don’t exist at all. I don’t know what he’s trying to tell me with that look, but I know that it’s important.

“Were you two planning on sitting there all day?” asks Effie grumpily. “Or are you ready to jump down?”

I laugh, reluctantly turning my gaze from Jack’s and jumping down to the ground below the window. He does the same, scanning me upon landing to make sure I’m fine, which I am. Finally, the three of us head for the Museum.

The Farnethia Museum is one of the hottest tourist attractions in the world, and one of the biggest money-makers for the HQ. It contains art, artifacts, recorded speeches, and other historical documents that help explain what Farnethia was like to a group of people who have only ever known Earth. Tickets are outrageously expensive, and even with tickets, people tend to wait hours every morning just to get into the Museum.

For those that live in the HQ, of course, there’s a separate line.

“Suckers,” Effie giggles as we wave nonchalantly at the long, yawning queue of regulars waiting to get into the Museum. We nod easily at Marsha, the ex-faerie in charge of the HQ entrance, who lets us in without a moment’s hesitation.

I’ve been to the Museum more times than I can count, so I can’t explain exactly what I’m looking for. Those blue eyes, though, and that blond hair… There was just something strangely familiar about them.

The Museum has sections for each type of Farnethian creature, along with a section dedicated to the War of the Moons and another dedicated to Peter and Alexandria—the “doomed lovers,” as my parents call them. It even has a section dedicated to them—my parents—entitled The Prophecy and the Fated Lovers.

Gross.

I’m not sure why, but my instincts tell me to search that section—the Fated Lovers one—to find what I’m looking for. I don’t know what the blue eyes and blond hair have to do with them, but there’s something.

“Harp,” Jack says as I scan the paintings, speeches, photographs, and artifacts in their section. “What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know,” I admit as I come to stop in the shrine dedicated to King Peter’s prophecy about them—and me. “I just… remember something.”

I squint at the list of witnesses to the prophecy. I’ve read it before, and they teach it at the Academy, too: Rupert Drexel, my great-grandfather on my dad’s side, who is long dead; Clara Tomlinson, my grandmother on my father’s side, who is also dead; Marion Rivers, my grandmother on my mother’s side—also dead; Scylla Sphinx, our teacher at the Academy; Ramina Stark, the legendary mermaid who now lives somewhere in Greece; Lilith Black, who nearly killed my mother during the Battle of Hyatha; Ace Crowe, Effie’s father; and Kenton Crowley.

Kenton Crowley…

I’ve heard his name many times. He was the right-hand elf of Queen Ava, who my parents despise. Despite their feelings toward him, people say he was more or less on my parents’ side—a general in the war who fought to protect them when the time came to, well, fulfill the prophecy.

(Yes, in case you were wondering, I do know that “fulfill the prophecy” basically means “have passionate end-of-the-world s*x in order to create Harper’s fetus and thus bring about the end of Farnethia. I’m a virgin, not an idiot.)

I squint my eyes at the small headshot next to Kenton Crowley’s name. He was an elf on Farnethia, which means he must look different now. And yet, the blond hair, the blue eyes…

It’s him.

“What do you two know about this guy?” I ask them, gesturing to the image and the small description.

Effie squints at it and frowns. “Think Mom used to be in love with him. She hates him now, though. So do yours, right?”

They do, as far as I can remember; and yet, I can't remember why. Did I never think to ask?

“It’s him,” Jack says, scanning the image. “It’s the guy who’s been watching us.”

I really need to talk to my parents.