For a second, I was weightless, as Isolde grabbed me and threw me to the ground, shoving me out of the way with her full weight. I landed in the dust hard, catching myself on my hands and knees. Something cracked, and I howled with pain. A fair price for the magic.

The tree groaned and snapped, and then a flaming branch bigger around than I was came crashing down, exactly onto the spot where Cassius Redbrook had been standing. I was the only one close enough to hear his short, whimpering sound of pain turn to a guttural moan before he went silent.

Everyone started moving and making noise then, totally ignoring me and Isolde—running for water to put out the fire, trying to clear the area around the tree, trying to free Cassius from the branch.

But it was too late. He was already dead.

I didn’t want to get up after that. I wanted to curl up as small as possible and lie on the ground until my bones turned to dust. The one thing that had kept me safe all these years, even after people found out my secret, was the fact that I was relatively harmless.

Now no one would ever look at me, or my family, the same.

But for some reason, Isolde wouldn’t let me wither away. She dragged me onto my feet and through the crowd, past the still-blazing tree down the dusty road to our home at the edge of town. Our father’s adjoining shop was open but empty as usual.

After that, as my mother splinted my sprained wrist, we had to explain what had happened. I had to watch their expressions tighten with fear. When Isolde and I went to bed that night and pretended to sleep, we had to listen to our parents’ hushed voices discussing packing up and leaving the only home we had ever known.

It was all my fault.

That was too much guilt for one fourteen-year-old to bear.

I had never been well-liked, even before everyone found out that I was a changeling. Honestly, I’m surprised it took them ten years to piece it together. My eyes were always too focused, too intense for a baby’s. I learned new words frighteningly quickly, outpacing my sister. My hands never stayed still, either fidgeting with my skirt or catching in my sister’s hair or windmilling through the air for something to feel. I cried and no one could understand why. I wandered off into fields of wildflowers higher than my toddler head.

But even with all the words I understood, I hadn’t been able to talk to anyone outside of my family until I was ten. No matter how hard I tried, the words stuck like someone had poured glue down my throat. It was like there was a code that everyone knew but me, and they all hated me for not being able to puzzle it out.

Or maybe they just hated me because somehow, deep down, they could always sense my faerie nature.