Once Upon a Wish by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680130973
Publisher: Fiddlehead Press

Chapter 2

Cress shut her bedroom door and launched herself onto her four-poster bed. She pulled her laptop closer and opened it. Her parents might believe her only hope lay with the Mages’ Guild, but she refused to leave her future in the hands of a bunch of entitled fae who would probably get her arrested before they’d help her. Her future belonged to her, and she needed to take charge of it.

Her fingers paused over the laptop keys. She bit her lip. What she was about to do was stupid. A huge risk. But apparently this was her last night alive, so what did she have to lose?

It took only a single search for Cress to find what she was looking for: the Godmother’s symbol. Though she’d seen it before, she needed a reminder. Cress clicked on the first video result, then watched as someone—either human or shifter, based on his non-pointed ears—painted the symbol onto a stop sign with a can of spray paint. She paused the video and peered closer. She watched it a second time. Then a third.

Then she climbed off her bed and hurried to the vanity. Her fingers searched through the items scattered across the top until they landed on a tube of lipstick the same shade of blue as her hair. That would work. She pulled the lid off and positioned the tip against the vanity mirror. After a final glance over her shoulder at the frozen image on the laptop screen, Cress drew the symbol onto the glass surface.

She drew her hand back and stared at it, slowly releasing the breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. The summoning required no words. Cress simply had to wait and hope the Godmother had—

A throat cleared somewhere behind her. Cress spun around. There, leaning elegantly against her bedroom window, was a woman. Cress blinked, taking in the Godmother with one sweep of her gaze. From her short, perfectly styled white hair down to the points of her impossibly high heels, she was the last thing Cress had expected.

“Well, what is it?” the Godmother asked. She shifted her purse from one flawless alabaster hand to the other and checked her watch. “I’m due at an art auction in precisely eight and a half minutes. You’re lucky I decided to deal with you myself instead of sending someone in my place.”

“I—oh.” Cress swallowed past the dryness in her throat and lifted her chin. “My parents made a wish before I was born that affects me. They refused to pay the price, and you decided I should die when I turn sixteen. That’s tomorrow.”

The Godmother made a get-to-the-point motion with her hand. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know, Cressida.”

Cress blinked at the Godmother’s use of her name. “Um, right. Well, I don’t want to die. I’d like to … negotiate with you.”

“I don’t negotiate.”

“But I’m not the one who made the wish and then couldn’t pay the price. Why should I be the one to die?”

“Life isn’t fair, Cress.

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