xiii

I spoke, “Now is not the time, Adelia.”

Adelia yanked me by my chain as she forced me to kneel down to McKenzie's level. She whispered harshly, “Now.”

I blurted, “I am the reason your parents are dead.”

This got McKenzie's attention immediately as I felt her eyes bore into my skin and I couldn't bring myself to look at her. This whole time I'd been in this realm, it felt natural like everything fell into place and I hadn't even pieced it together until recently. I'd gotten so close to McKenzie in the last couple of days, I didn't want to ruin it but in a sense I guess I already did.

To further explain myself, the white streak in my hair wasn't a genetic mutation of my parents’ genes, it was a mark of the damned. Any child conceived from an undergrounder with a darkened soul and a person from a different fraction were damned from birth.

As legend had it, the Dark Enchantress Genevieve Dulongviair curses the child to t