Sight.
The world’s different now.
It isn’t dark—darkness still has edges, shadows, a hint of stars.
This is absence.
A void.
Nothing.
Standing sucks. My balance reels. My skin buzzes like static under my bones. My ears work overtime, desperate to verify what my eyes can’t. I could be upside down, walking on the sky, and I’d never know.
Then come the phantoms—flickers of color, ripples of imagined light. My brain is dreaming with its eyes open, inventing shapes to plug the nothing.
A hand brushes my shoulder—Lenora’s—and the touch screams. Frankie’s sweat hits my nose like sandpaper. Jenny’s magic pops like soap bubbles wrapped in needles.
It’s all too much—too loud, too sharp, too everything.
I feel like a caffeine addict forced to quit cold turkey… except my drug was sight.
“How the hell is there an active volcano?” Rhea’s voice—right side.
I turn automatically, then freeze. I don’t know if she’s actually there. “Catalina has control of MIRA.”
“How can you know that?” Lenora—left. Her fingers find mine, a quiet squeeze carrying more worry than words.
“The leprechaun told me…” My voice thins to smoke. Spoken aloud, the memory sounds deranged.
A touch brushes my belly. I jerk violently. “Who—?”
“Sorry,” Jenny whispers, hand peeling back fast.
My heart spikes. “No—please.” The plea tumbles out trembling. “You startled me. I’m just… scared. Don’t go.”
Her hand returns—soft, cautious. Then another joins. Then another. Six hands in all, settling around me like a constellation.
They don’t pull. They don’t claim. They anchor. They remind me what’s real. My pulse steadies. My breath syncs to theirs.
Jenny’s fingers trace the charms at my navel—the leprechaun, the emerald, the tiny perfume vial. “Not a scratch,” she murmurs. “Not even melted metal.”
Her tone is wonder, not want. Relief—fragile as blown glass.
“Tell us,” she whispers.
I inhale. “Remember the leprechaun we fought a while back?”
Silence answers me.
“Somebody say something…”
“Shite,” Lenora mutters. “Forgot you can’t see us nod.”
“How do you miss the holes in my face?”
“Lizzy,” Rhea says gently, “you have eyes… but—”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Lenora cups my cheeks, turning my face toward her voice. “You have eyes, love, but no pupils. Your irises are sealed—smooth. Not blind. Just… closed.”
“How?” My voice cracks. “The leprechaun took my eyes as collateral—”
Six voices explode:
“What?!”
“He WHAT?!”
“Collateral for WHAT?!”
“We killed that fae rodent!”
“How—?!”
The noise slams into me. I clap my hands over my ears and scream—and silence drops over us like a curtain. Only fire crackles. The mountain rumbles far away.
Lenora’s whisper slips through the hush. “Sorry, darling. Let me have a closer look, okay?”
I nod.
Warm palms cradle my face. Her thumbs sweep my cheeks. A hum rises—magic—static rolling across bone. Not painful. Not gentle. Insistent.
She studies long enough that I start shaking.
Finally she exhales. “The ale rebuilt everything it could… a little too well.” Her thumb traces my cheekbone. “Your eyes healed perfect, Bluebell. Too perfect. The irises fused shut—like storm shutters.”
The hum shifts as she maps my skull. “And the optic nerves… they’re cut. Not frayed or burned. Cut. Clean as surgery. Absolute fae work.”
Jenny swallows hard. “Then she—she can’t ever—?”
Lenora presses a kiss to my forehead. “Not unless we unpick the spell. The leprechaun didn’t take her eyes. He locked the doors and swallowed the key.”
Rhea murmurs, “So… the lantern works, but no wick.”
“Exactly.” Lenora squeezes my hands. “You’re not blind, sweetheart. You’re disconnected. Somewhere in there, the light’s still waiting.”
I swallow. “I know how to get it back…”
Solenne whoops. “Fantastic! Do it!”
“We… we have to pay the mortgage.”
A beat of stunned silence.
Tess: “Mortgage? Like… a loan mortgage?”
“Yes.” I sigh—half despair, half resigned dread. “The leprechaun—Inanna’s accountant, apparently—took my eyes as collateral. Until we complete the terms.”
I tell them everything—the vision, the bargain, the contract, Kenny-Rogers-fae-accountant. All of it.
Frankie claps once—sharp, delighted. “Quests,” she announces. “Save the world, get Lizzy her sight back. When do we leave?”
“Sit down, you lunk,” Rhea snaps, then softens. “Before you break your arse.”
Laughter ripples around the fire.
Tess snaps her fingers. “Inanna’s giving us a roadmap. Fix MIRA. Break Catalina’s control. Save the colonists. Earn a major act of service—”
“Or find a rainbow pot of gold,” Jenny says.
I laugh weakly. “Pretty sure that one’s a joke.”
“Nope.” Pop-pop-pop—magic sparks. “He said it counts.”
“Are you trying to conjure a pot of gold?”
“…No. Maybe. If I add a jig—”
“Oi!” Solenne yelps. “Watch it, twinkle-toes!”
“Oops! Sorry, Big Red!”
“Come ’ere, you menace!”
Feet scramble. Sand sprays. Giggles explode.
“Told you not to call me that!”
“But it fiiiits!”
“Gotcha!”
More laughter—bright, breathless.
I tilt toward Lenora. “Is Solenne… spanking Jenny?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone stopping her?”
“No.”
“But—”
“They both like it.”
I gape. “…Seriously?”
A breathy squeal confirms everything.
Lenora chuckles and pulls me close. Her scent is hickory smoke and something warm-sweet beneath it. “Remember those Jolly Ranchers?”
“Yes…”
“The armor you made for Solenne—the red jumpsuit.”
“It’s still fused to her skin?”
“Better than that,” Lenora purrs. “It is her skin. Thick, fireproof, cinnamon-scented candy skin. She climbed out of the lava with you on her shoulders smelling like the world’s biggest cinnamon drop. Poor Jenny melted faster than the mountain.”
A surprised laugh bubbles out of me. “So Jenny riled her on purpose.”
“Oh yes.” Lenora smirks. “I’m almost jealous I didn’t think of it first.”
I pout. “And where does that leave me?”
She whispers against my ear, “Still my cherry pie.” Her lips trail down my throat, soft and grounding.
Time blurs. Minutes, maybe an hour. Warmth from the fire seeps straight into my bones. Their hands, their voices, their teasing—it all keeps me tethered. For the first time since waking blind, I’m not drowning.
Eventually the meeting shifts. Conversation grows quieter, steadier. Plans form. Rhea and Tess volunteer to scout.
My pulse spikes.
“I’m a scout.” The words burst out sharp. “A hunter. Let me go.”
“You’re blind,” Rhea says, not unkindly.
“I’m still the best for the job.” The edge in my voice hurts even me, but the air around me tightens—doubt, worry, fear.
Frankie’s hand finds my knee, anchoring me. “A scout has to see, love.”
I sag. They’re right—by their logic. But scouting is more than sight. It’s listening. Scent. Terrain. Pattern.
Still—if they don’t trust me, I’m grounded.
Boots crunch. Rhea and Tess’s steps recede down the trail, ascending into wild stone and whispering shrubs.
And something inside me twists.
Every crunch of gravel. Every brush of leaves. Every shift of wind.
They all stab through me like missing beats in a song only I can hear.
A discordant hymn vibrating in my bones.
I feel it in every nerve:
They shouldn’t be out there alone.
I should be with them.
