Sunset

I don't remember who I was before they took me. I know the story only as they've told it to me. That I was once a human child who came from a small human town. That I was an unwanted orphan, with horrible relations of non-blood who used me as a slave. And that, in stealing me away, the faeries had done me a favor.

Also, that I was never missed.

I have trouble believing the last claim. But I will get to that later.

No one but unique humans, children or adults truly connected to imagination, have the ability to cross into this world. Yet of those unique beings, it's only the desired ones—talented and romantic—who are snared like prey. The rest of them stumble through the portals by accident. It doesn't happen often, but it's not unheard of.

I am one of the desired. They say it happened when I was ten years old. The faeries wanted my words, my love of games, art, and song. I was an attractive child to them, one whose heart bore the skill of make-believe. And so they called to me. They'd been trying for a while, but it was difficult. I was rarely alone. I was always with a girl. A girl who had the luster to cross over but whom they didn't want.

Eventually, they got me. As the tale goes, I was in the woods searching for someone. I tripped over a rock and twisted my ankle when their enchanted music curled its finger and beckoned me. It was a duo melody of fiddle and flute, and I limped toward it willingly, forgetting the person whom I'd been pursuing.

I realized soon after what had happened, once I'd stepped over a split ash tree and passed into a dimension capped with purple sky and puzzling folk. I'd been taken by a group of faeries. Supposedly, I'd cried. I put up a fight. I howled that I wanted to go home.

And though it was an ethereal group restraining me—beautiful females called nymphs—there was one leader in particular who had orchestrated my abduction. That leader also happened to be the only male in the pack. He soothed me with a gift: any treat I wanted.

"What would you like?" my captor asked.

"Raisin bread," I'd whimpered.

Suddenly, the warm roll was in my hand. When I had eaten and calmed down, my captor's next question was about my name.

"I'm Peeta Mellark."

"You don't go by Sunset?"

I shook my head. "That's what my friend calls me. But it's not my name."

Names are sacred to faeries. They had approved of the name Peeta and wanted to keep it for me. But in order to do so, they had to leave another name behind in the human world. They chose Sunset. So that's apparently what my hometown remembers, or remembered, me being called.

As with all abductions, my disappearance was made to look like a death. My captors left behind a bloodied sweater, providing my former realm with closure. And me with an official new home.

Helpless and forlorn, I let them distract me with the pleasures of this world. Playgrounds. Animals. Endless supplies of paint and brushes. As time went by, my memory of the past faded, my history dissolved until it mirrored a dream. I became one of them. I became a fae.

But I felt missed nonetheless. Someone missed me. The girl. The one who'd been my friend.

She was the singular detail that encompassed my mind, ceased to abandon me, relentlessly bruising my soul. I had no inkling of how we met, or how we lived, or how we spent our time. But she pined for me. I was sure of it. The rope of mourning knotted around my ankle, connecting her existence to mine. I felt her grief and adoration. I hoped that someday she'd follow the invisible rope, stumble across an enchanted portal, and find me.

She never did, but she is the main reason I don't doubt that I was ever human. To this day, I have visions of sable-colored braided hair, but a thousand drawings have failed to conjure the rest of her.

I remember the name Moonlight. I think I used to call her that, the way she called me Sunset.

This is not something that happens to faeries. It's unheard of for us to recall anything from our pasts. I've often thought my mind was playing tricks on me, but my intuition has won out. The only explanation is that our bond is unusually strong, it transcends worlds, too special to fade completely. It's a highly idealistic notion, but I don't care. I see no reason to be cynical.

It's the emotions that ambush me most of all. The hints of kinship, flashes of giddiness and play, undercurrents of devotion that leave me ragged and aching in the middle of the night.

I must have loved her a lot.

Over the years, this knowledge has turned my heart into a well. The more I yearn to recall her, the more her mystery consumes me, the more caged I feel in this forest. As it is, I've never truly embraced who I am. Not with this fragile lifeline tethered to me. I'm split between this dimension and the solitary haunts of a girl who has refused to let me go.

Secretly, my wish is to return. It's been so long. I'm seventeen now. Yet I believe she still waits for me in her world, as I have waited for her in mine.

But my wish is complicated. Once a person enters this woodland, they cannot go back. Their fate is to become a magical being. To live here. And well, most are happy once they forget who they used to be.

We live for a very, very long time but aren't immortal. Nor can we breed. That's why we need to steal fanciful humans and turn them into one of us: to maintain our existence, while in turn, we maintain the pulse of imagination for both realms. We need one another in that sense. It's a life cycle. No ending. No real beginning. Thus, the Faerie Court is not in favor of condensing their collection of imports, no matter if the poor beings just stumble here on their own or are lured by us.

However, there is one exception to these rules. There is one way that a fae or faerie might have a chance of returning to their birth home. It requires a task that I've spent my life avoiding out of guilt...until yesterday.

I had sensed the opportunity close by, revealing itself unexpectedly. Once faced with it, I gave in to the temptation. I did what was required, and rather swiftly I might add, without giving myself time to second guess my actions.

Since then, I've been waiting on the Faerie Court's decision whether to grant me permission to leave. To go back to the place I was born. To learn who I really am. To see where I really come from. To find my true self. To find her.

And since then, I've also been the caretaker for a new human. The situation presented itself when I'd ventured into the wild to quell my anxiety over the Court deliberating my case. Hob Forest, with its black-hooked trees and blue buds, is the nook where every human enters our dimension. As a guardian of the woods, I live within its borders.

I had settled in my favorite glen, not far from my cottage, and was resting on my back, staring at the sky when I heard her.

I trailed the grating sounds of feminine fury, peeked over a hedge, and found its origin. She had her back to me and was attacking a bush that I should have recognized as nightlock territory—I blame my preoccupation with her temper for the oversight. Since she was alone, I assumed she wasn't a "desired" soul but rather one of the less common drifters who'd accidentally crossed through a portal.

New humans usually arrive bewildered and irate, unaware that our woodland paths lead to oblivion until the humans stop rationalizing and start believing otherwise. But her outrage was particularly intense. I tilted my head, curious. The possibility of seeing her face intrigued me, but the intrigue did not last. For the first time, I was in no mood to tame a human wanderer, reassure them, and show them around. Her evident fit told me she would be difficult to appease anyway. Not even the chance to discover her features was worth my receding patience.

I'd turned away, shaking my head, deciding to let another forest guardian come upon her and perform the welcome.

Then I heard growling. And I knew exactly where it came from. And to whom those growls were directed.

I made it just in time. That stubborn dog!

I smelled the poison on her lips, the melancholy and courage on her skin. I felt her heartbeat against mine as I carried her to my house. I undressed her. I fed her the nightlock antidote. I gazed upon her for hours. I touched her hair.

She mumbled, "Stay with me."

No one has ever needed me like that, except for the girl of my dreams. The one I think I called Moonlight. So I pretended both females were one and the same. It was easy to do right up until the moment the human awoke and sought my dagger.

Sitting across from her now, I'm disturbed. Our question-and-answer session seems familiar, somehow wrapped in an intimacy I can't fathom. Based on her unsteady gaze, it appears I'm not the only one who draws this conclusion. The girl twists a dark lock around her finger. My eyes are attentive to the movement.

I lean forward. "I feel like this has happened before. This exchange between us."

The girl twitches, then glances down and mumbles, "I guess."

"You guess," I repeat, inspiring her to look at me again.

"Yeah," she says, her brows knocking together. "I guess. You have a problem with guessing?"

"I'm a fae. I have no problem with that. As I said before, questions are amazing things. As are answers, many of which you've required of me this evening. Are you denying me the same right?"

"Do whatever you want."

"That's a bold gesture to offer me."

We pause. Did I really say that to her? I would call it payback for her secretly wicked appraisal of my backside earlier, as it nearly caused me to swallow my tongue. However, she hadn't been intentionally provoking me with her thoughts.

It's not her fault that I can read minds.

When we become enchanted beings, each of us develops a power. Access to privacy is mine.

As sarcastic and vocal as she is, she's not accustomed to bluntness and doesn't like the detour we've taken. Although from where I sit, this discussion had no direction to begin with.

In response to my naughty comment, she sinks under the covers and haphazardly wrestles into her clothes. Her lack of grace disturbs the blankets, feet and elbows kicking at them. It's a funny sight. I chuckle to myself and imagine her human legs and hips tunneling into her human jeans. Clearly, she's not interested in my recommendation that she sleep off the rest of the nightlock's lingering effects. Stubbornness must be a significant part of her personality.

Which also must be why she's determined not to address the familiarity of our conversation. I've hit a nerve. And it's somehow related to her past, but I can't read in what way. Those details about her are shadowed from me, which means she has a strong will.

When she pops back up, she's flushed. She blows the bangs off her forehead. I admire the plump inflation of her lower lip when she does it.

I grin. "Feel better?"

"Think you're a wise-guy, huh?"

"I've been called such."

"You can't tease me into liking you."

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't. Not with riddles and I-think-we've-done-this-before and everywhere-and-nowhere mellarky. How am I supposed to take you seriously or trust you?"

"When you asked me where we were and I said, 'everywhere and nowhere,' I hadn't been teasing. Although I've always enjoyed the art of teasing, and with you it's even more fun, my answer was the absolute truth. You and I are everywhere and nowhere." I jab a finger between us. "And we're together."

They're barely visible, but a flicker of intrigue and even a dash of levity thaw her features. Then they're gone, replaced by frustration. "You're weird."

"I'm honest."

"You always say exactly what you think?"

"I see no reason to be indirect. Plenty of my kind does that merely for the sake of being mysterious. You do realize you're changing the subject, right? About the odd cognizance of our exchange? I know it's not just me."

She crosses her arms. "It doesn't matter if the conversation felt familiar. It doesn't mean anything."

"If that's the case, why are you so annoyed?"

"I can't deal with this crap right now, okay? I can't! Drop it! It's not important!"

I'm not stunned by this earsplitting downpour. She's just been ripped from her world. Yet I notice her fingers shaking in turmoil and realize she's upset on more distinct level.

Beyond rescuing her, I haven't been very accommodating. Earlier, she'd crawled over me to grab my knife, but it was for self-defensive purposes. She's scared and confused, and I haven't bothered to ask her about her own life or how she's feeling. I've forgotten myself in her presence. I've been neglecting my duties because she has tipped me off balance.

She flinches when I rise. She wiggles backward on the bed when I sit beside her. She gapes when I cup her face.

But she doesn't retreat.

My fair skin eclipses the spheres of her olive cheeks. My voice simmers. "I know you're frightened in this strange place, but I will do my best to ease that if you allow it. We can be friends. All you need to do is look closer. Take a second look."

The girl registers my words. She turns them over in her mind. Her face is rosy and fits nicely in my hands.

She holds the blanket closer to her chest while the straps of her intimate attire loop over her shoulders like a hint. I won't lie. I peeked while I undressed her. It was hard not to. The shapes of her breasts are lovely and had caused me to gulp numerous times.

I hear her reaction to me.

His touch feels impossibly good. I like it.

It's as glorious as his ass.

My lips slant into a coy grin. I shouldn't enjoy probing her thoughts this much. It's unfair.

The fire warms us. The purple light from the sky floats through the windows and merges with the orange cast on the walls. This would be a lovely moment to freeze and live in. The moment when strangers become something more.

She straightens, pulls away, and offers me her hand. "I'm Katniss."

My palm clasps hers. "My name is Peeta."

She doesn't waste time. "Okay. I need your help. I'm on a mission. I grew up near the woods and can take on animals, but not without a weapon and not when they're as big as that dog-wolf. I don't know this place, but you do."

"That dog-wolf, as you put, wasn't as fearsome as you think."

"I wish we could do an instant-replay so you could see how things were from my point-of-view."

"Indeed? I would like that. I'm curious about the impression I made and what you saw in me."

"Honestly, by the time you came along, I wasn't seeing much. My brain was floating blimp-like toward the pearly gates. But…now that you mentioned it, my hearing wasn't as bad as my vision. When you got done wrestling with it, that hound did make this mopey, gurgled whine. More pathetic than predatory. Kind of like a Wookie."

I squint. "A what?"

"Not important."

"That's a relief. I understood only half of what you said."

She grumbles, mostly at herself. "The other half was pointless, too."

"I wouldn't say that. You spoke. If anything, I enjoy hearing your beautiful voice."

She scowls, yet a blush tinges her throat. I wonder if there's a boy back home that she misses.

"I'm charmed by how terribly you take compliments," I say. "Most fae girls suck them up through a straw."

"I'm no fae girl. We need to refocus."

"We? I'm perfectly content."

"Like I said, I need your help. I'll give you whatever favor you want. I know you people like that."

"Yes, but I'm not a greedy fae."

Remembering what I did yesterday, I'm not sure that's true. Guilt nestles in my chest, but I push it aside.

"I don't require a favor, Katniss. I'm a guardian of the forest. I'm here to assist you. Besides, you couldn't give me what I want most anyway."

My forwardness mystifies her, so I explain, "The only thing I want to be is free of this place." And then I joke wryly, "You can't give me that, can you?"

"Free of what place? Your home? Are you under fae house arrest or something?"

I snicker at her choice of words. "I'm free to go wherever I want, except to the human realm where I was born."

"You're from my world?"

"We're all originally from your world."

Her eyes widen and spark with life as she considers this fact. She's thinking about something having to do with her past, but once again, I cannot read specifically what it is. It reaffirms my suspicion that her history is blurred from me. But it's not merely because she has a strong will. I sense that her wounds are too deep and self-absorbed for me to penetrate.

Katniss shakes off whatever she'd been debating, the gleam in those silver eyes dulling. I have an intense urge to console her but don't know how.

She refocuses. "I heard about faerie abductions, but I thought most of you were born here."

I shrug. "I don't remember that time, except..." I hold back the rest, noting how easy it would have been to mention Moonlight to her. But that part of my soul is not for consumption. "Anyway, I'm now one of them, but I long to go back."

"So you're stuck in this place?" she asks. "That doesn't make sense. I met one of you in my town, like, two seconds before I got here."

"And that lucky one would be...?"

"Our chat didn't go as far as names, but he had a cocksure attitude and stupidly green eyes. Like construction paper."

"That would be Finnick," I sigh.

"Well, that asshole was—sorry, is he a friend of yours?"

In the past, I would have said yes. These days, the answer to that is more complicated.

"He has access to both realms," I say. "Only six faeries have that power. He's among them."

"What makes him so special?"

I deliberately stay quiet. Katniss doesn't probe. She shuffles closer, and I'm pleased that she's grown more relaxed with me, and that she brings her scent—apples and burned wood—with her.

"Listen," she says. "I know you brought me back from the dead, and I'm grateful, but I can't spare another second resting. I can't go back home until you help me."

She doesn't yet know that going home isn't an option for her anymore. I lower my head and keep my body language neutral.

"I mean, that faerie who can cross over? He's not a complete asshole. He's more like two-thirds asshole, one-third water. He did show me the way through the painting—"

My head snaps up. "Painting?"

"Yeah, the portal. Or one of them. He said you have many."

This is true, but only one of the portals is a painting. The one I fabricated. The fireplace hisses, warning me to tread with caution. I grasp what's happening. And it's about to destroy me and this little scene between us that I'd hoped to freeze.

"You said you met Finnick before coming here? And that he showed you the way through the paining?" I ask carefully.

"Actually, he pushed me. But let me start at the beginning. So I was in this art exhibit with my little sister, Prim."

My heart stops.

Prim. Primrose. The blond human that arrived yesterday.

"And while we were there, she and I had..." Katniss's voice hitches, and then the downpour begins anew, a mad rush to reach the finish line. "We had a fight. And then she disappeared and I met Finnick and he said that she'd been taken and that I had to go through the portal if I wanted her back and then the dog chased me off the trail and now I have no clue where to begin. Please, help me."

My heartbeat picks up again, but it's etched in despair. This girl, Katniss, is the sister of Primrose. She wants her back. She's asking for my help.

I'd assumed Katniss was just another straggler from the human world. When the truth is, Finnick has brought her here on purpose, to challenge me, to challenge my way home. We used to be friends, he knows I can read minds, and he's learned to shadow his thoughts from me. It's the only reason I didn't forsee this turn of events. Damn him!

"Please, Peeta." She grips my hand, mistaking my silence for indecision. "Please help me. I need you. I have to find her...I...I can't lose her, too."

Too? Has she lost others before?

Her feeble words and liquid eyes shatter me. I have to resist. I've made a grave mistake befriending her. If she's the sister, and Finnick has done what I suspect he's done, that means the Faerie Court knows she's here.

Yes, they do. Because now I hear the horse hooves approaching outside. The animals are galloping across the woods, their weight stomping into the earth and shaking the cottage. Katniss gasps. I vault off the bed, stride to the window, and rip aside the curtain just as the Court's minions break through the undergrowth and plow toward my house.

Goddammit Finnick! Why? Why would he do this? Katniss is innocent. If he wanted to challenge me, he could have left her out of it. Is he this brutal?

Katniss bounds out of the covers, barefoot and pretty. And my adversary.

"Who is that?" she asks, meeting me at the sill and noting my frenzied expression. "What the hell—"

I grab her arm, fixing to hide her, but think better of it. It would be pointless to stash her away, much less attempt to escape and dispatch her somewhere far. They would easily retrieve her.

"It's too late," I growl to myself.

"Too late for what?"

"To conceal you. They're here."

"Who?"

"Be polite. The Faerie Court doesn't take kindly to insolence."

"Like royalty?" Her expression is hopeful. "If they rule this place, they've got to know who has Prim. Or...are they dangerous? Do you think they have her?"

"Oh, they have her. But they're not the ones who took her in the first place."

She steps back, recoils from me, narrowing her eyes. Her expression testifies that she's putting the pieces together. That I know what's happened to Prim. I know and don't want to tell her.

"Katniss, listen—"

She waves me off. "I know that Finnick mentioned Prim's captor has to reveal themselves on their own, as some kind of faerie rule. But can't you make an exception and just tell me? Please."

I resist the urge to smash something. There is no such rule. Finnick was simply playing with Katniss. He could have told her who the captor was, but he wanted her to find out the truth from me. Being a guardian of the forest, he knew I would likely cross paths with her. He wanted me to have to tell her face-to-face.

"Peeta, answer me. Who took my sister?" When I don't respond, she sucks in a deep breath, presumably to steel herself. "Who?" she demands.

I glare out the window again, then face her fully, my expression pinning her to the floor. "I did."


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