A vein in her temple pulsed. She could feel every beat of her heart through it, and as her jaw clenched in pent up frustration, she felt her throat begin to thump as well. Everywhere the beat was strong enough, she felt her tired muscle beat and scream.

“I did, you tiny winged freaks,” she screamed. The smiles on the faces of the creatures around her widened as if her reaction to the joke was an even better punchline for them all, and it fueled her temper. “And now that I have dug my fingernails down to stubs and cracked my knee and twisted my ankle and can’t see straight, you are telling me you would have helped me all along?”

Addison took a deep breath, eyes moving rapidly between the two larger fay who had drifted down towards her. Her chest heaved as her lungs filled with air, and her words roared out of her raw throat. “You ordered me here!”

There was a chorus of chittering laughter in the tree as each of her arms was wrapped up by a pale winged fairy. Her muscles twitched, and her frustration at every inch of the world caused her to fight against those holding her.

She felt eyes on her, and she could hear the laughter coming down. Her feet left the ground, and with no intention, her legs began kicking. Her living elevator did not let go, but the others began to drift away and quiet down.

The air around her went quiet, but her mind didn’t. It seemed as if years of biting her tongue as much as she could caught up, and her thoughts raged inside her ears. It went on until her head began to swim, forcing the thoughts to quiet before it made her puke.

“Addison.” A whisper moved across her cheeks and landed in her ears warm and soft.

She opened her eyes not a moment later, face to face with the Queen. The fairies holding her arms pushed her forward, letting go of her without any notice.

Her legs gave way, and her knees slapped the bumpy wood of the tree, and when she looked up again, she saw a wide, amused, smile on the noble fairy's face.

It made Addison angrier.

“Addi,” the warble came again, mixed with the fluttering of wings back the way they had entered.

The pair was being left alone; an important meeting after all. Perhaps it hadn’t all been useless tests — maybe, just maybe, there was something in all the realms that had some sort of plan. Addison’s heart leaped back and forth between her throat and her stomach, unsure where to store the surge of emotions. She was having difficulty letting them go; there was a build-up her bile from all the times she had bit her tongue.

Not perfectly, she admitted. The snark escaped her, but she also knew how to stay alive when surrounded by beguiling supernatural freaks. A deep breath filled her chest, and she met the queen's gaze.

“We have been at work since you last left us, and we need to talk.” The slender, almost woman looking queen turned and walked into the home.

As Addison stood, and let herself look around at the goal of the long days work, she couldn't help but wonder if it was bigger on the inside than it had seemed. Once she passed the threshold of the wooden arch, the door swung closed behind her of its own accord. Just inside this entrance was a very large room.

She had no issue comparing it to the rooms of the palace that sat in the middle of the forest village, yet it sat in a hut on top of a tree, regardless of how large the tree may be. It was not…

Shaking her head, she focused on trying to keep up with her newest escort. They walked out of the entryway and through several doors before they reached a perfectly round room, that for some reason, Addison guessed was the middle of the thing. There was a large pane of glass on the ceiling, also round and showing mostly tree branches - a smothering of white clouds as well.

“It has been many years between us, Addy.”

The words buzzed into her ears, sounding strange as always. There was never a real concreteness to her conversations with the fay leader, her strangest parent and her favorite guardian. Matilda held the most in common, and even now she wished that the one that was her kind was, well, kinder.

She shook her head to snap her thoughts back to reality. “My whole life.” Her feet were rooted in place as she watched the queen moved around the room. It seemed for a moment that she was pacing before she finally settled into a highbacked chair inside the inner circle of the room.

One long arm gestured towards a similar piece of furniture a few feet away from it.

Blinking, Addison couldn’t make her mind bring the memory of those chairs when they first walked in the room, yet there they were.

Magic, I’m sure. Everywhere I look is magic and fairies and dust-

“Sit.”

Her thoughts vaporized as her feet became unrooted; they woke up and had a mind of their own, walking over to the chair, and she felt her body sit down. All the anger she had felt washed away and she melted into the softness of the chair, even as she tried to hang onto it. The fairies had proven that they had no more respect than the other realms did, but she couldn’t keep it, especially as her eyes locked with the queens.

“Your whole life. That's right.”

There was a silence in the room for a moment, like when you walked outside in the middle of the night, or snow has fallen and no one has bothered to destroy it yet. Calmness. Stillness.

“Your whole human life so far, and yet you don’t know my name,” the queen continued.

The statement felt… out of place, even fr this whole scene around them.

“As I said,” she went on, “I have been busy. I brought you here becuase I have finished preparing, I have made my desires a reality, and I want to extend you an invitation. I would like to make you a deal.”

The queen took a breath, and in that instant, Addison heard her voice shouting out.

“Yes.”

And with that one word, everything changed.