Another hand grabbed his bicep.
He couldn’t take this anymore. They would drag him down into the depths of madness with them. He’d done nothing wrong.
Storm had taken the throne no one else wanted. He’d tried to lead them, but all they wanted was their stupid dead king and queen who hadn’t been all that good. They wanted him to feel guilty? Never.
With a snarl, he twisted and wrapped his hand around a ghost’s throat. Another banshee, female this time. Her inky hair floated around her head as though she were underwater. Her eyes bulged in shock, and her mouth opened wide.
“I didn’t want any of this,” he snarled. “Stop haunting my steps.”
Except, she didn’t disappear from his hands. She remained solid and perfectly formed as any air faerie was.
Storm realized his mistake too late. He wasn’t wearing his gloves. He’d thought he was alone in the palace today, but one of the last remaining maids had returned. Perhaps for payment. Perhaps to ask for a favor. Whatever her purpose, it didn’t matter now.
Black veins spread from wherever he touched her. Like oil, they sank through her skin and wriggled into place. Spreading over her face, and deep into the unseen places hidden by her clothing.
Soon, it would reach her heart. Soon, she would be nothing more than a mad creature just like him. A slathering beast enslaved to dead creatures and base instincts.
He should kill her. Death was the only cure.
She’d want him to end her suffering. He’d lived like this for a very long time. He knew just how much she would want to die.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He released his chokehold on her neck, even though it was far too late.
She dropped to the floor, clutching her throat and staring up at him with wide eyes, asking for help. She needed him to do something, anything, that might stop her from becoming a monster.
He stared back at her and sighed. Maybe she had a family somewhere down in the human realm. Maybe she had come up here wanting to know if the king could help her people. He’d never know.
This was why he didn’t allow people into the glass palace anymore. Storm couldn’t touch them, but air faeries always wanted to touch, pet, and pat. They couldn’t keep their damn hands to themselves!
Crouching, he balanced on his heels and rested his wrists on his knees. He kept vigil as she writhed to the side. The faerie collapsed onto her stomach with a thump, then vomited black sludge.
The darkness spread across the glass. Pooling like blood, but it wasn’t her blood. This was dark magic, an infectious blackness caught from his touch. This darkness would sink into her mind, overwhelming her body and changing everything inside her.
Had he been infected like this? He didn’t think so. The entire experience didn’t appear to be one easily forgotten.
She squirmed, her hair soaking up the black vomit until he couldn’t tell where her hair began and the gorge ended.
Her body seized. Back arching up and her hands scrabbling at the floor, she fought the madness valiantly before she failed. The banshee fell limp.
Storm waited the long heartbeats for her to awaken. She wouldn’t remember her name, where she came from, or even who she was. Just that she longed for blood and pain.
Her eyes snapped open. No color or white remained. Instead, all they showed was malice spreading from deep inside her soul. She heaved in a great breath, then rolled onto her feet with surprising speed.
Crouched before him, she spread her fingers wide, the appendages now tipped with wicked claws. She opened her mouth and hissed. He could hear the whisper of a banshee scream beginning deep in her throat.
Storm lifted a single finger and tsked. “Now, now, behave or I won’t let you stay in the palace.”
The mad creatures always understood him. His threat was enough to send her sprinting from the room. Likely to hide in the deep bowels of the castle where he’d never find her again. But some unwary traveler might.
As if people traveled to the castle any more.
Storm stood, straightened his jacket, and marched from the room. The last thing he needed to worry about was an errant banshee wandering the halls. Let her join the ghosts haunting his steps.
Everyone wanted to kill him, anyway. Why not add another person to the army? Maybe things would be better if he wasn’t here.
3
Ayla set her keys on the hook by the door and let the boys run free. They raced away from her screaming, “Mama! Mama! We went to the park today!”
They always did the same thing every day. The twins had to tell their mother everything they accomplished. To them, every single day was a fresh opportunity. It didn’t matter if they had the same routine. Their mom would dote on their every word.
Shaking her head, she leaned down and picked their coats up off the floor. One red. One blue. Color coding was the easiest and only way to tell the twins apart.
“Busy day?”
She turned toward the warm voice, her heart squeezing with so much love it hurt.
Henry leaned against the door to the kitchen. He wore an apron that said “Kiss the cook”, already smeared with ketchup and mustard. His brown hair puffed around his head, ever unruly and untamable. If anyone looked at the two of them, they wouldn’t believe for a second they were related. His tanned skin, dark hair, and chocolate eyes were ever so different from his ghostly pale sister with her white blonde shock of hair.
She finished taking off her shoes and shrugged. “We went to the park for a few hours. They love the swing set.”
Unsaid words pressed against her tongue. Another faerie approached me today, she wanted to tell him. He frightened me.
But she couldn’t tell him anything. Not with Henry’s wife, Laura, right in the other room. Laura didn’t know Ayla was a faerie, and she’d think the two of them were crazy if they said anything.
Most humans were like that, though. Ayla considered herself lucky that Henry was more open than most.
“What’s wrong?” He frowned and pulled a spatula from his pocket to point at her. “I know that expression.”
“Nothing,” she replied. Although, he would know she was lying. He always knew.
She shouldn’t be able to lie. Faeries couldn’t. Her tongue was supposed to catch on itself and tie into a knot if she even attempted to utter an untruth. But Ayla had lived with humans her entire life, and she’d picked up on a few tricks.
“Ayla,” Henry grumped. “Why don’t you come out back and help me grill these hamburgers?”
He’d read right through her veiled attempts to smooth everything over. How did he do that?
Sighing, she hung her head and followed him through the brightly colored kitchen with rainbow cabinets and a thousand plants hanging from every corner. The sliding glass doors leading into the backyard were her favorite, though. Earlier this year they had covered the glass with rainbow contact paper. Now, everything in the room was rainbows from the sunlight as well.
They strode out into the backyard. A small above ground pool swallowed the small fenced area. Her tiny house was hidden in the back corner. They’d shoved a grill against the fence because Henry loved to feel manly while cooking meat. He always overcooked it, but no one told him.
He took her all the way to the grill, opened the lid, and then stared her down with that disapproving dad look he’d perfected. “Now tell me what happened. Did someone try to take the boys?”
He was ever afraid the faeries would take his sons. Ayla had explained it many times. Faeries didn’t take boys as old as the twins, but maybe she’d laid it on a little too thick when they were babies. She’d set wards around their cribs at night. Maybe she’d scared him a little too much.
“No! Nothing like that.” How could she tell him? Best to just come out with it. “Another faerie stopped me. It wanted me to go home and take the throne.”
Henry heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, that again. Well, that’s fine. You had me worried, Ayla!”
He turned bac
k to the grill and flipped one of the charcoaled burgers. Somehow, the same old Henry always made her feel better. It was like watching sand move in a vase. Slowly, confidently, and with no worries in the world. It meant she didn’t have to fret.
His burger flipping slowed, then stopped. “Sis? Why do you still have that look on your face?”
She didn’t want to scare him. He already knew too much about the faerie realms, and she hadn’t told him everything she’d learned from the faeries who would tell her tidbits of information.
But he deserved to know this. Anyone who asked should know.
“He claimed there’s an elemental inside the king. It doesn’t just want to destroy the Air Court, but the entire realm.” She bit her lip. “That includes the human one.”
Henry stared into her eyes for a few moments. He wasn’t even breathing. Then he turned off the grill and closed the lid. “Let’s have a seat in your living room.”
Uh oh. She knew that tone. It was the same one he used on the kids when they were misbehaving. She was about to get a lecture and a half, but she couldn’t imagine why.
Ayla had done everything right. She’d told the faerie off. Taking the throne wasn’t an option. She had things to do here with her own family. The boys needed her. Henry needed her, especially since Laura was still dealing with on and off depression. Ayla was the backbone of this family.
Without her, they’d all fall to pieces. She’d structured her entire life around keeping them all safe and sound. Henry couldn’t tell her they didn’t need her anymore.
She’d fly apart at the seams.
Henry opened the door to her tiny home, waiting for her to go through first. Ayla did, but she wasn’t about to let him preach at her without getting a few words in. “Before you start, Henry, I did the right thing. You didn’t see how that faerie was looking at the boys. If I hadn’t told him off-”
“Ayla,” Henry interrupted her with a groan. “I’m not arguing with you! Would you just sit down please?”
She sat, but she wasn’t happy about it. Ayla crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at her brother. And he was her brother, no matter what the faeries said.
Blood wasn’t thicker than love.
Henry sat down on the chair across from her sofa. This was a tiny home, though, so his legs were on either side of hers. He leaned forward, reached for her hands, and held them in his own.
Long heartbeats passed where he stared down at her fingers in his. She knew what he saw. His hands were broad, large, stained by the sun and calloused by his job on the construction team. Hers were so small they looked like a child’s in his grasp. Her fingers were long compared to any human’s, and the nail beds glimmered with iridescence.
She wasn’t human. No one could pretend she was if they looked close enough. Thankfully, few people looked.
Finally, Henry looked up. “Do you believe the king is as bad as this faerie claimed?”
This again. Ayla rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, Henry. I’ve never met the man. But does everyone like their leader? No. We don’t like the president, that doesn’t mean the entire country feels the same. These people could just be looking for someone to overthrow an otherwise suitable king.”
“But the elemental...” Henry paused, eyeing her for some kind of reaction. “That changes things, doesn’t it?”
Maybe? She didn’t know. The faerie could still embellish for shock factor, but she doubted that was the case. Faeries couldn’t lie.
And that led her to believe yes, it was bad. The situation was dire and the Air Court was desperately seeking someone to take the power away from this Mad King. Why did she have to be that person?
She sighed. “I think they’re telling the truth.”
“So this king could bring about an apocalypse?”
“I don’t know,” Ayla replied with a shrug. “I don’t know many faeries who could do that, but theoretically... it’s possible.”
“Then don’t you think you should do something about it? If our family is in danger, then maybe you should consider at least popping up there and seeing what’s going on for yourself?” The worry in Henry’s gaze was troubling. “If you get there and nothing is going on, then you don’t have to worry.”
But it wasn’t Ayla who was worried. If the King of Air wanted to tear down the world, he could try. She wouldn’t let anything touch her family.
Henry didn’t trust any of that, though. His foremost thought was always to make sure his family was safe and well taken care of. Once those boys came into the world, nothing else mattered more than them.
She squeezed his fingers. “I thought we had promised I’d never go up there?”
“I think this is a little different from the other times, don’t you think?”
It was. This was the first time she’d believed a faerie once they tracked her down. Ayla didn’t know if that was troubling because they’d finally gotten through to her, or if it was troubling because now she wondered if all the others were just as honest.
“I guess you’re right,” she finally said, giving in to the puppy dog eyes. “It won’t be a quick trip, though. Are you sure you can handle the boys without me?”
“They have a mother, you know.”
“Yes, but Laura is...” She didn’t finish the thought. He knew his wife wasn’t doing well, not that she’d ever been well to begin with.
Henry nodded. “I can manage the boys on my own. You know you have to go.”
“I promised I’d never go back to that place after all the things they’ve done,” she whispered. “It feels wrong to go back now. I don’t want to help them. I just want to help you.”
He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “And that’s okay. But I think it’s smart to make sure he’s not going to... you know. End the world.”
“Thank you for believing me.” Ayla released his hands and stood. “I should start packing.”
“I imagine you want to get going sooner rather than later. Considering the entire world is in your hands.” Henry stood, although there was some shadow in his eyes that made her think he wasn’t quite done yet. “I never thought I’d have a sister who would have to save the world. You know?”
“I don’t have to,” she said with a laugh. “I’m just checking to see if he’s not a good king. Then I have to figure out what to do about that. I’m not a superhero!”
He burst into laughter with her. Whatever tension was left in the room dissipated with the sound of their mirth.
Ayla reached for him and pulled him into her arms. A quick squeeze was all she could give him, however, or she’d start crying. “This whole situation is ridiculous. I’ll be back in a few days with new stories to tell about how faeries think the world is ending just because their king doesn’t let them have honey for breakfast anymore.”
“Then I look forward to seeing you in a few days. The boys will miss you.” He opened the door to leave her tiny home, but paused. He stared out into the yard and asked, “And if you aren’t home in a few days?”
She didn’t have an answer. Not being returning in a few days wasn’t an option. That would mean the world could end, and that she was doing everything she could to stop it. But she was just a changeling child who’d been left on her own for far too long. She didn’t even know the extent of her magic.
Ayla blew out a lengthy breath. “Then I guess you pray.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I can do that.”
Henry left her home, closing the door with a soft click. Then she was alone with her tumultuous thoughts.
Could the world end because a mad faerie wanted to play a dangerous game? Yes. Absolutely. Everything she’d heard and read suggested faeries had that kind of power. But did this king? That was the question she had to answer.
Ayla turned around and tried to still the thundering rhythm of her heart. “Right,” she said. “Time to pack.”
Her words fell on empty air. Packing usually was an exciting adventure. It meant
she would experience something she’d never done before. This time, it felt as though she were picking up the pieces of her life and shoving them into a puzzle she didn’t want to exist.
Damn it. Why did it have to be the Court of Air?
4
There. Everything was packed and she couldn’t waste any more time dawdling. She’d stuffed the essentials into her backpack. Toothbrush, toothpaste, and her shampoo.
Clothing was a little harder. If she had to meet a king, she supposed she should bring something fancy. But Ayla didn’t own fancy. The best she could do was the white blouse she currently wore and the cleanest mom jeans in her closet. And even those had a rip in the right knee. If he was a normal faerie who needed pomp and circumstance... well. He’d hate her. She threw in a pair of pajamas just for good measure.
She stood in the middle of the living room and realized she didn’t want to leave. Saying goodbye was too hard. She could just stay here, start warding the property, and if she had enough layers of wards, even the faerie king wouldn’t be able to break through them.
Besides, he wouldn’t attack her. She had the bloodline of the previous king and queen. Royalty. She’d be left to her own devices because even a mad king would know she could protect herself.
She was just wasting time.
Ayla sighed, left her tiny home, and set the backpack next to the house. She couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to the boys. She just couldn’t.
Walking into the house was a surreal experience. The boys were sitting on the plaid couch with Laura, all three staring at the tv with almost dead expressions. She had a vision of what they’d look like if the king had his way with the world. Sitting exactly like that, except their lungs weren’t moving and flies played on their eyes.
The living room had seen better days. Plastic toys were strewn about the circular woven rug. The plant to the right of the tv was dead, and the spider plant on the opposite side had too many sprouts dripping off it. The cartoons on the tv were just as blank eyed as her family.
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