I wish I'd been able to tell him that he was wrong, but I’m the Light Elf who’s no better than a Dark one.
Lysander was once no more than a guard to me, but I must admit, he’s become my friend. I don’t blame him for his strictness. Lysander’s guardian is far harsher with him, than Lysander has ever been to me.
He’s never struck me, after all.
If I disobey Lysander, however, then he shall report me to Darby. I shudder at the thought of my brother tightening my suit, as he did when I first arrived at the academy and earned too many Punishment Points.
I had to battle for every breath.
I need to pay penance. I understand that. Every night, Lysander must watch over me as I write the lines that my brother insists upon.
One hundred times, I write: I am a changeling, Dark Elf, and killer.
Inside, I'm numb.
Yet those words are the only ones that can still make me smart, and burn my eyes with tears.
Tonight was the first time that those words could not touch me because of the witch.
She does not know me as a killer. Perhaps, she could even see me as I truly am?
I wish that I could sleep in her arms at night, rather than in this cursed bed, alone. I'd be cocooned in her comforting magic, as well as the embraces of her other lovers because the way that the whipping boy and incubus spoke to me (like I was neither prisoner nor deadly), made my soul sing.
I desire them.
Yet I should sleep now because in these pages, I've allowed myself to dream. The Immortals' friendship and the witch's love is only a fantasy fit for the secrecy of my Crystal Diary.
It's as dangerous as I am.
A monster lies within me. One day, a professor or Lysander will reveal my buried self to these new students. Then they won't even wish to look at me.
The more that I allow myself to care, then when that day comes, the more that I'll be crushed...
This diary was elven magic and dark grief. I shook, desperate to break the enchantment.
Sweet Hecate, nobody should hear such heart-breaking truths. They belonged to Willoughby alone.
Bubbling cauldrons, no more...
My magic wound around the book, battling the blue magic, which glowed from its pages.
Back inside.
I bared my teeth, snarling like I could scare the Crystal Diary into behaving. The cold nipped at me, but I snarled again, forcing the book to close with a snap. The words faded, along with the melancholy of Willoughby's voice.
I was desperate to hold him as he wished and tell him that it wasn't a dream. Immortals could love Princes; he wasn't alone.
Yet how could I do that without him knowing that I'd read his diary? It'd destroy him to find out that anyone knew his private thoughts.
I'd written a diary when I'd been growing up, which had mostly contained my love of tea, hatred of embroidery, and determination to free Robin (or how much I adored snuggling him in his squirrel Mr. Tailsy form). I'd have died a slow, red-faced death of humiliation if anyone had ever read it, and it'd never contained my fantasies, shame, or desires.
What had happened to Willoughby to destroy him in such a way or to make his brother insist that he write such terrible things about himself? He believed that we'd hate or fear him, when we discovered that he was monstrous.
Sleipnir had thought the same about his shifter form.
I didn't think that either of them were monsters. Yet even if they were, monsters deserved love too.
Willoughby wasn't a slave who had no control over his own mind. Whoever this brother was who'd cursed and controlled him, I hated him with a witching passion. I was quite certain that my thoughts against the so-called elven king ran towards the traitorous.
Why were my cheeks wet?
I reached up to wipe at them with my sleeve. When I glanced at Bask, I saw my own tears reflected in his eyes, although his cheeks were dry.
Bask squeezed my fingers. "We're saving that elf."
I nodded. "Most certainly, but first, I have a crow to have serious words with, since he decided to open a book that didn’t belong to his feathery self."
I fixed Echo with a stern glare.
“The word you need to say quickly is sorry,” Bask mock whispered.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry..." Echo sang at the top of his tone-deaf voice.
"Not as sorry as you're going to be," Flair snapped. "Get your feathery arse over here. My wing's itching to spank you, until you caw for mercy."
Echo lowered his head. "By my blood, I'd do anything to make Magenta happy, and I know that this will in the end.” He hopped towards me with a hopeful glint in his eye. “I’m only a familiar. I understand about dreaming that you could want me, when I know that you shouldn't. Every time that he sings, the elf sounds sad. I long for you to kiss that away. Now you’ve listened to the diary, could you love a Prince?"
Flair swooped to his brother, but instead of pecking him like I'd feared, Flair threw his wing around his twin consolingly. "Fuck me, that was quite the speech."
Could I love a Prince?
I didn't know. It was rather like asking whether I adored pizza. Fox insisted that the strange flat dough was delicious but never having tasted one, I could only say that others urged me to adore them.
Except, the difference was that I'd never nearly been forced to marry a pizza.
“You knew,” I said, staring at Echo, “what was inside the diary. You assuredly had every notion what I’d hear. Did you watch Willoughby write it?”
Echo ruffled his feathers (I was fairly certain with pride). “I was sitting on his shoulder. I seized the opportunity, like you always say.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’ve never said that.”
Echo did the crow equivalent of a shrug. “You should.”
When Flair flapped to the window, Echo trailed after him. "Crows exit stage left. We're not off to do anything suspicious, dangerous, or forbidden."
I arched my brow. "How splendidly reassuring."
As he followed his brother out of the room, Echo cast a longing glance at me. "Be careful with the Principal. Remember, you promised not to leave us."
Bask played with my fingers, turning over my palm and tracing his gloved hand in circles over mine. "Willoughby has a crush on you."
I froze. "You mean that he loves me.”
Bask shook his head. “It’s not the same.”
I frowned. "Why's it any different to your obsessive love or how I crave all my Immortals?"
Bask stilled; I instantly missed the soft sensation of his finger. "Because you don't love him back."
He glanced at me carefully from underneath his eyelashes.
I opened my mouth to answer but then closed it with a snap.
What could I say? Willoughby’s magic called to my own, just as mine did to his. But he wasn't Robin or one of my Immortals.