Choose Your Enchantment

I smelled her as I walked down Granite’s steps with Frederick, who’d needed me to co-sign on his loan. I forgot what I was doing when the scent of wild nights in Fairyland mixed with sickly sweet pixie dust tickled my nostrils.

I searched the streets, looking for indigo hair and eyes dripping a galaxy of, well, galaxy. There was an ogre on the street, an elven couple, and far down the road a fairy who’d clearly been born in our world. Not my moon.

“You okay, boss?” Freddy asked.

I sighed and scratched my beard. Was I okay? No. I hadn’t been okay since that fateful day centuries ago when I’d allowed my ambition to talk me out of my soul. I’d willingly become a monster, not just a werewolf, who as a species tended to run on instincts, but a truly destructive force who lived to dominate. To subjugate.

Not that I was that person anymore. Every day, I chose to be someone else, born of the moon in the wilds, saved by a moon goddess I’d betrayed.

“My moon is too far away,” I said, searching the street of upper SingSong City again. She wasn’t here, but something had left that scent of pixie dust and fairyland behind. Was there a fresh refugee? There hadn’t been one for years. Years without news of my moon goddess.

Frederick slapped a hand on my shoulder. “Someday you’ll find your moon, your mate. The Alta was so sure you’d take up with sweet Delphi. It was almost like you had a real mate, the way you couldn’t step in and defend her in the ring of ignorance. I’m glad that the laws are being rewritten. After your meeting with the senator today, do you want to go to the shooting range?”

I sniffed the air and noticed the scent seemed to be stronger, fresher in one direction. “Can’t make it to the meeting today. Tell Cross I need to find my moon.”

I spent the rest of the day combing the city, searching for the scent of sickly sweet dust and fairyland. I followed that trailing, wandering scent all the way down to Song, through the city, and into the caverns past the werewolf district.

I finally caught up to her in the owl cavern, being swarmed by a whole host of owls while she curled up in one, tiny, helpless ball. You wouldn’t believe that fairies used to be the most terrifying force in any world with the way they acted now, after the war, pixie-dust addicts who couldn’t function in society.

I shifted to my beast enough that I could roar. That would terrify the little fairy if she was old enough to remember the war, but it couldn’t be helped. Also, it was good for fairies to fear. Link fear to pixie-dust use and you had a chink in the addiction that could be used to break it.

She ran, at least she tried to run, but she was clumsy, bleeding heavily, and looked like she’d been a homeless fugitive for a century. She smelled incredibly strong of pixie dust for someone who was on their feet at all. Good. She had some will. Her tattered wings also had blades that would slice me to pieces if I wasn’t careful.

I caught her by the base of her wings, and swung her around to look at me. The connection between my flesh and hers went through me like lightning, ripping me into all the pieces of my soul, connecting to every single one of them. She was my wolf’s mate, my beast’s poetry, my lupin sorcerer’s obsession, and my own personal salvation. It was her soul, tangling against mine in that one point of connection, my hand wrapped around the base of her shockingly tattered wings. I’d never seen wings in worse repair, but she was their queen.

Her eyes were pools of darkness in her pale face. Her hair midnight shadows, like her eyes and blood. She was the epitome of all things anguished and corrupt. Death. I’d heard that the Fairy Queen was sick after the war, that she refused to lead her people and do her duty, but this. Was this really my moon goddess? I knew her soul. I was mated to it, to her, every single piece of me. And she was here. She’d finally come to find me, to save me like the first time.

I barely noticed blocking her kicks while she struggled weakly in my grasp. She was vicious, but so incredibly weak. It couldn’t be my moon goddess. Could it? Was I finally going mad for real? My moon goddess wouldn’t ever come to my world. That was the deal. I would pine for her eternally, and she’d be forever beyond my grasp. If she came here, showing me her weakness, then I would have no choice but to do everything in my power to keep her. To heal her. To love her. No matter the price. No matter the pain. Somehow, I’d make her fall for me, at least some of my pieces, even if she couldn’t ever love all of them.