“Again,” Meredith said coldly. As always, my body responded to her command; I ran back to beginning of the obstacle course, bow in hand and gripped the rope net, hurtling up and over the obstacle as I raced toward the next.

“Meredith please,” I sobbed as I ran, completely out of breath and barely able to keep upright. “Please just let me stop for a minute.”

“Stop talking,” She commanded. She wasn’t even yelling, or screaming. She was speaking in a normal tone of voice and that’s what scared me the most. She wasn’t doing this because she was angry; there was virtually no emotion behind it. “Keep your body upright, don’t sway like that.”

After the incident at the fair we’d ridden home in complete silence, and once in the house, Meredith had immediately taken me to a mirror. This place was like her other bunker, but contained a massive obstacle course complete with climbing walls, ropes, ladders, and jumping platforms. It might sound like fun, but we’d been at it for…I don’t even know how long.

“Please, I want mommy,” I choked out through my tears.

“I said stop talking,” She repeated. “This isn’t a punishment. Stop whining.”

“This isn’t fair!” I screamed as I jumped over a low hurdle, keeping the bow firmly in my blistering hand. “You know I can’t stop unless you let me!”

“Really? Then how are you talking to me right now?” She asked me as she fast-walked alongside me. “I told you to shut up but you’re still talking. Get the picture? You want it to end, you know what you have to do. You cleaned Angela’s house for eleven years, how long do you want to run this obstacle course?”

As I ran across a small balance beam, my foot slipped from underneath me and the bow dropped from my hand, clattering against the floor.

“Hey!” Meredith shouted, making a beeline onto the obstacle course, switch in hand. I tried to rush forward, to get away from her, but she immediately dug her nails into my neck and slammed me against the floor. The switch came down, once, twice, three times. I screamed and sobbed with every impact. “You keep the bow IN your hand! Do NOT drop that!”

“It’s heavy!” I shouted back, trying to wrestle out of her grip. Her nails dug in tighter, I flailed slapped my hand against the ground.

“Stop flopping around like a god damn fish and PICK UP THE BOW!” Her lips were maybe an inch from my ear. My hands desperately searched the floor as her grip tightened.

“Why are you doing this?!” I screamed, my throat parched and burning. When was the last time I’d had water?

“Oh you don’t like this?” She goaded. “You think this is bad? Are you uncomfortable? Just imagine what’s going to happen when someone else gets their hands on you and you can’t say no to them just because you thought it was fun to be coddled and controlled. Pick. Up. The. BOW!”

My fingers found it and wrapped around the grip, Meredith immediately released me and I dropped to the floor, momentarily enjoying the rest I was getting.

“Get up! Move!” She screamed. “Get to the end, then go back and do it again!”

“How many more times?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“Until you can walk out!” She continued walking alongside me, switch in hand. “What are you doing?! Climb that net the right wa- hold the hell on!”

All at once, she was climbing the rope net, not even breaking a sweat. She mounted the wall and grabbed me by the shoulders, glaring at me.

“You’re doing this like a fucking child,” She growled. “I swear to god I’m going to-“

I don’t know what came over me, one moment she was manhandling me, the next, I’d pulled my fist back and sent it rushing at her chest. The impact wasn’t severe, I wasn’t that strong, but it was enough to make her stumble, and suddenly, she slipped on the edge and hurtled toward the ground. I snarled and curled my lip, literally hurling myself off of the obstacle toward her, colliding with her body as she slammed into the ground.

“I’m done with this you bitch!” I screamed as I began to pound into her with both of my fists.

“Stop it!” She ordered. “Fucking stop it! Get off of me and get on your fucking knees!”

“No, no, no, no no!” I screamed, hitting her over, and over again.

“I’m giving you one last chance!” She exclaimed. I struck her in the face as hard as I could. I couldn’t see much; my vision was obscured by tears and blind rage. All at once, my fists stopped. She simply took both of them in her hands and pushed me off of her, but very gently. I expected her to stand and tower over me again, and maybe start screaming, but instead she knelt and placed her hands on my shoulders, pressing her forehead to mine. “How do you feel?”

I breathed heavily, I rolled my eyes up to meet hers.

“I…” I was breathless, speechless, I didn’t know what to say.

“Jasmine,” She said calmly. “Talk to me. What do you feel?”

“I can’t…I don’t…”

“Say something,” She told me. I shook my head violently.

“You need to vent,” She told me. “It’s not an order, I’m asking you to do it for your own sanity.”

“I feel…” I choked out. “I feel…free. Like…I don’t know.”

I couldn’t really describe what I was feeling. Something was different, she’d beaten something out of me, it was weird, I felt different. What had just happened?

“Jasmine?” She rubbed my cheek. “Come on, what’s going on in your head.”

“Get me out of here,” I begged. “I don’t want to be in here, please.”

She nodded and helped me to my feet, leading me toward a mirror on the nearby wall. She pressed my hand to it, and suddenly, the bunker around us vanished. It was replaced by a starfield, a black void around us, nothing beneath our feet. We were in space. I shrieked and flailed my arms, but I immediately noticed that I was standing upright, my feet were planted firmly on something. In front of me I could see two spiral galaxies, one right next to the other at a slight angle. At the center of one, a bright glowing light unlike anything I’d ever seen.

“Meredith,” I gasped. “What…how…”

“It’s…a bubble,” She explained. “I made it a long, long time ago. I’m a lot older than Angela. I’ve had time. I wanted you to see this, so you could understand.”

“Understand...what?” I was so confused.

“A fae is more than just immortality and being able to do parlor tricks. That’s cool and all but…a fae is her…or his collected knowledge. Experience, the ability to build the wall between thinking and feeling. It’s about the endless traditions and customs. It’s a whole new world. I can teach you customs, Angela and I can help you with a lot of things but…the experience needed to think like us? To think like us? To exist on our level? That’s going to be something entirely different. That’s why we had you enter into the Contract of Eaves. You cannot make it on your own in this world. I know you never asked for it, I know you didn’t want it, but you’re here now. So…I want to explain how this works.”

“How what works?” I asked, stepping away from her a bit, taking in the beauty of the scene before me. The galaxies stretched out endlessly in front of us; I couldn’t believe that we lived down there, somewhere. We were so tiny in comparison.

“Earth is…just one planet of many, many billions. They’re all connected, all part of this universe, and this universe…just one of billions. All of them surrounding Etherol…another name for the afterlife, you’d call it I guess. It’s where Fae, and human souls, and other creatures reside. A mortal soul can stay there for as long as it wants after death, but if it ever wants to ascend, it has to go back again, and again, and again until…”

“How long did you live?” I was still staring at the expanse before me, awestruck. “How long did it take you to ascend?”

“Ten thousand years,” She sighed. “It was…a pretty short ascension really. I wasn’t from Earth, obviously, my soul bounced around a lot, it wasn’t really bound. Angela ascended faster, she…had a knack for attuning souls. She was able to attune her own, and triggered her own ascension. It’s very rare, that’s why she was able to attune yours, even if she only meant it to be temporary.”

“Meredith…I have to know,” I turned to her. “You guys said…something about me being able to pick a side or…something like…I don’t have to be dark or light? What does that mean?”

“It just means one day you’ll be truly free,” She told me. “Free of this light and dark bullshit, free of the politics. You can live your own life, whatever that means. They’re going to want you, though. You have to understand. They’ll want you bad. Because, Jasmine, whether you want to, or plan to, or not, you have the ability to change the natural order. The multiverse is kept in balance by light and dark, but you’re an anomaly. I don’t know how it happened, I’ve never seen it before. Maybe you were born like this, maybe Angela made you this way on accident, I don’t know. It’s really hard to say. Fact is, I don’t think you want to do anything. I think you want to stay with Angela, be her daughter, and be coddled for all eternity and you know what? I think she’d let you. I think she’d even be happy. But you know what? I think it’s only a matter of time before someone notices you exist, they figure out what you are, and, well, let me tell you this: you can’t kill a soul. If you die in your soul form, in Etherol, you’re just wiped clean. Memories gone, you name it. That’s as close as a soul gets to death. Even if you were wiped clean your soul would STILL be unaligned, so what they would do, is keep you locked up somewhere. Probably in a box. Darkness, forever, and we wouldn’t be able to save you. Jasmine, I’m only a sadist to people who deserve it and I can tell you right now, you don’t. You’re going to have to start listening, because things are only going to get worse.”

“I think I should run the obstacle course again,” I suggested.

“I have something better than that.”