Free Reflection Pond by Kacey Vanderkarr

binding spell. It’ll only take a moment and then we’ll get you set up somewhere you can sleep. You must be exhausted.”
    On cue, Callie yawned. When she finished, Hazel clutched a glittering knife and had a welling pool of blood cupped in her opposite hand.
    “What are you going to do with that?” Callie yelled, skittering away from Hazel.
    “It’s for your protection,” Hazel reminded. “It’ll prevent anyone from taking you outside the city. It’ll only hurt for a moment. Give me your hand.”
    Callie’s fingers trembled and she couldn’t bring herself to lift them.
    “Callie,” Hazel said softly, “trust me.”
    Callie blinked, her mind growing foggy.
    “Trust me.”
    The knife burned across Callie’s flesh and she drew a sharp breath. Hazel’s lips moved with silent words as she pressed their palms together, mingling their blood. Heat fused their hands, hotter and hotter until Callie was certain they’d catch fire.
    And then it was over. Hazel curled Callie’s hand into a fist. “You’ll be happy here, you’ll see.”
    Dread exploded in Callie’s stomach. She pressed her bleeding hand there.
    What had she done?

     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Callie felt the hulking monstrosity of the palace watching her as she stepped into the late-morning sun. She squinted at the windows nestled between the stones, but the second floor balcony restricted her view. The sun warmed her shoulders and face and she stayed for a moment, drinking it in, letting it chase away the chill.
    She was trapped.
    Hazel had wrapped a strip of cloth around the cut, but Callie’s hand throbbed beneath it. She couldn’t even begin to make sense of it. If what Hazel said was true, then Callie was stuck under the pond. And worse, she had some kind of freak power.
    Then there was the prophetess.
    Cold…dead.
    She shook her head to dislodge the image.
    In the distance, cottages guarded the hills, smoke rising from their chimneys. All the tiny houses looked the same, round, tan stucco walls, thatch roofs. Sapphire lived in one—but Callie wasn’t sure which, and didn’t know if she wanted company anyway. To her left, not quite as far as the cottages, was the stone she’d come through into the city. A river ran to her right, and dense woods surrounded the entire city like the walls of a safe haven.
    Questions slithered through Callie’s head—a pit of restless snakes, but one remained at the forefront.
    Fae.
    Faerie.
    That’s what Rowan had told her. If he hadn’t healed her, she could’ve convinced herself this was all an elaborate hoax, maybe a reality television show complete with costumes and computer graphics.
    Callie had felt the magic on and in her skin.
    Without conscious decision, she started up the path, lost in thought.
    She tried to remember everything she’d learned about faeries. It wasn’t much, aside from children’s movies. They were magical, fickle…mischievous. And if Hollywood had it right, about six inches tall…with wings.
    Believing she had any part of this world was ridiculous. Callie felt a little crazy just for buying into it, as though the cameramen would jump out from the trees at any moment and point at her.
    But if it were true—if she’d done that horrible thing Hazel had accused her of, then she couldn’t go home. She was safer here. Everyone else was safer, too. Callie lifted her hands in front of her face. Had she done that to Elm? Sure, she’d been scared, but it wasn’t as though she ran around hemorrhaging brains.
    The giant rock rose up to her left and she steered towards it, certain it was where they’d emerged from the caves. It stood over fifteen feet high, its surface riddled with crags and sharp points.
    But there wasn’t a door, an entranceway, or even an archway to guide her, just solid stone. Callie pressed her hands against a smooth spot to stretch the kinks in her back and fell through to the other side.
    The warm humidity of the caves settled over her shoulders and she