The WishKeeper (The Paragonia Chronicles) by Maximilian Timm

were hurtful - but instead locked on to Beren. Even she was surprised by the sudden outburst. Her by-the-book General was blatantly ignoring Paragonia law, much less lineage law.
    Shea was speechless. In front of all of the fairies she looked up to. All of the fairies she wished to emulate, even the ones who made fun of her on a daily basis. Now even her own father didn’t believe in her. She stared at her dad. Not with anger. Not with surprise, but confusion. It was the only thing of which she was ever sure. Hesitation was a part of her daily life since she could remember, but she never hesitated with the thought that her dad believed she could one day be the Keeper he always wanted her to be.
    Bursting towards the exit, Shea pushed the silenced crowd out of the way and hurried out, barely holding back tears. She hated knowing that Thane was following, but a slight glimmer of gratitude struck her unexpectedly. At least someone was on her side.
    Addressing the crowd, Beren didn’t have to raise his voice this time. “It’s done. My selections, gear up. We cross over at sunset.” While the rest of the Keepers started to file out, Avery stood motionless, deep in thought, and staring at her General.
     
    Thane hurried out of the F.I.A., pushing past the exiting Keepers, and tried to keep an eye on the retreating Shea. She was in a full sprint across the valley and though Thane knew he could easily catch up, he let her be. He knew his orders, but he also thought Shea would hate him even more if he followed.
    He took a deep breath, considering his options and turned to head home. Avery was standing, stoic, in front of him when he turned around and had his mind not been worried about his friend, he might have let out a little yelp. She glared at him, famously not saying a word, letting Thane say something first.
    “Um, so, hello Avery,” he said, after a few long moments of staring. It was all he could come up with other than, “you’re really weird and scaring the crap out of me.” She continued to stare and finally took a deep breath, accepting that she will need to carry this conversation.
    “Your handicapped friend…how is she with a wand?” she asked in a low, monotone voice.
    Thane was surprised to feel a wave of anger flow through him. How dare she call her handicapped? Oddly enough, this calmed Thane and erased any strangeness he felt about the sudden conversation.
    “You’d be surprised,” he returned, confident.
    Avery dug a hand into a pocket of her cloak and suddenly Thane’s confidence began to retreat. Who knows what oddities Avery kept within that thing. Instead of a wand, she removed a blank, rolled piece of parchment, unfurled it in front of him and stared. She wasn’t staring at him, but rather at nothing in particular. Suddenly calligraphic words appeared on the parchment, sprawling out into sentences. Finally ending with See Winston, The GateKeeper . Avery rolled the parchment up and handed it to him.
    Absentminded, Thane took the parchment, unable to avoid Avery’s dark eyes. He opened it and was about to read, but she spoke again; this time in a much more calming voice than he’d expected.
    “Retrieving True Love goes beyond our rules of WishKeeping.”
    He read the parchment and looked back at Avery. “Winston. You want us to cross over.”
    “I want you to do what you know is right,” she said and without another word, flew off, leaving Thane with a dozen unfinished thoughts.
     

 
     
    15
    Those Three Words
     
     
     
     
     
     
    A shaft of golden light beamed its way through Shea’s opened picture window. Rifling through her things, she stuffed items into a small pack. “He calls himself a Keeper? And a General? A leader doesn’t destroy the one thing that - oh forget it!” she yelled as she whipped a water bottle across her room. She looked up at the dangling models of flying machines hovering over her head. They swayed back and forth in the breeze. The strings that kept