The words rang in Ayla’s mind. Why had she come back here? Why had she returned to this haunted place?
Everything was all muddled in her mind. She had been so certain of her reasoning when she left her brother’s home and in just a few hours here, everything was murky. No matter how many times the air faeries tried to convince her, she didn’t want to be a queen. That wasn’t her place in her life.
She’d come here so she could tell them she’d come. The king wasn’t as bad as they thought, and they should give him a chance. That was the point of her visit.
Wasn’t it?
Ayla couldn’t waste time thinking like this. “I need to know if there’s anything in the castle that would reveal my history to the king. Can you tell me if there is?”
Miku tilted her head to the side. “Why wouldn’t you want him to know who you are?”
“I don’t want him to get upset.”
Another ghost peeled away from the others and approached Miku. This one had dragonfly wings on its back, spread wide and beating. But his face wasn’t right at all. The space between his forehead and chin was far too long, his eyes not quite circular but still too big. Even as a ghost, he made her skin crawl with his strangeness.
Perhaps the ghost knew he made her uncomfortable. He looked away from Ayla faster than the others, then leaned down and pressed thin fingers to Miku’s head.
Her eyes rolled back in her skull for a few moments before she nodded. “He says there are books in the great library that speak of the Princess Ayla. He does not know how many.”
“Are there any paintings?”
Miku sighed. “There are no paintings in the glass palace. What you see before you is how the air faeries decorate.”
The glass sculptures were transparent. The features were more difficult to make out than paintings. Although the books were still a problem. Yet, they were a problem she could fix.
She let out a long, relieved breath. “All right then, that’s good news. Thank you, everyone, for your help.”
The ghosts melted away behind Miku, once again invisible from Ayla’s sight. The only one who remained was Miku with her dark hair and angry eyes.
Ayla sat where she was, staring back at this ghost who seemed to have something to say and yet, wasn’t saying it.
“Can I help you?” Ayla finally asked. Perhaps her tone was a little acidic, but she wasn’t here to be stared at. And she could still feel the eyes of the others even though they were invisible again.
“You were meant to be queen.” Miku’s gaze narrowed even further. “I was there when you were born. Your mother was so excited to have a girl because she knew you would rule with kindness and love rather than an iron fist. She never wanted a man to rule this kingdom.”
“And yet, my father was the king.”
“No. Your mother was the queen and your father supported her. That was all. Your mother was the one who made this kingdom as great as it once was.” She stood, shook her skirts as though she had dirtied them on the floor. “You weren’t here growing up, and for that, I’m very sorry. But there is so much more to the Air Court than what you know.”
The Air Court was matriarchal? The faeries she’d met from this court had never told her that.
Perhaps faeries could lie once they died. Such a thing would make a lot more sense than her mother having been the true ruler of the Air Court.
“I don’t want to walk in her footsteps,” Ayla replied. Her breath fogged in the frigid air.
“How would you know?” Miku asked. Her form melted into nothing, but her voice remained. “You don’t know who she was.”
9
Storm was close to discovering the truth. He could sense it. The wind kept pushing him down the long columns of bookshelves until it finally stopped him. Only one leather-bound book remained on the shelf. White leather and pressed gold edges could only belong to one tome.
The History of Air.
So few faeries were mentioned in this book. All of them were royalty, and none of the accounts were all that interesting.
He lifted the novel from the shelf and thumbed it open. Apparently, he wasn’t fast enough for the wind because it rifled through the pages and landed on a single one.
The previous king and queen. The ones whom he was always compared to and personally found decidedly lacking. Storm bared his teeth. “Why do you want me to read about these two? They’re dead.”
He’d watched them die. He hadn’t killed them himself, but he had wanted to be the one who wielded the weapon. If given the opportunity... Well, he didn’t know if he would have taken it. But he’d killed other faeries before. Many times.
How different was it to kill a king?
The wind fluttered the pages of the book dramatically.
“All right, all right,” he grumbled.
Storm slid his finger down the page, reading as he went. It was the same information as he’d seen countless times before. The king and queen were well known throughout the entire kingdom. They were loved. The Air Court prospered under their kind and knowing hands. Blah, blah, blah.
Then he saw it.
The words made his blood run cold and his breath frost before his lips. “What?” Storm muttered. He blinked a few times as though that would help clear his vision, but no.
The king and queen welcomed a child into their family. Princess Ayla of the Air Court will forever be known as the “Hope of the People”.
Ayla. Isn’t that the name she used? The name burned in his mind and made his heart race.
She was the rightful heir to the throne. The blood child no one had ever spoken of again.
The elemental within him rushed to the forefront, growling in his mind, “She lied to us. She’s here to take the throne, to kill us, to destroy everything we’ve worked for. Kill her! Kill her now, Storm!”
He didn’t want to harm her, but he couldn’t control the anger whirling inside his chest. The History of Air slipped from his numb fingers and dropped to the floor with a loud bang. He glanced down at his hands.
Black veins spread from underneath his fingertips and wiggled up his arms. The madness had set in, worse than it had in a very long time.
His body moved on its own. Feet strode from the hidden library and legs ran through his perfumery.
“Where is she?” he snarled.
The wind raced ahead of him, searching through all the corners of the castle before returning with her location. The ballroom full of glass figures.
Of course. She wanted to see dear ol’ mom and dad before she finally killed him and took what was his. She’d left the Court of Air a very long time ago, and if she thought bloodlines meant she could take what he’d earned...
He saw red. Only red glowing through the halls of the glass palace that led him directly to her. He’d wrap his hands around her pretty little throat and squeeze until she turned a lovely shade of lavender. Just like the strands of her hair that shifted colors in the sunlight. He would spread his madness deep into her soul until she was nothing more than a puppet for him to order about. Storm would destroy everything she was.
Some small part of his soul warned he would regret harming her.
He found her in the ballroom, just as the wind said he would. She stood before the glass sculpture of her parents and stared up at them with worry in her gaze. He could feel her anxiety from where he stood.
He stopped in his tracks the first moment his eyes found her. Damn the woman for her fragile beauty. The wind ruffled her hair and danced around her form, even though she clearly didn’t feel it. The princess still wore those foolish human clothes. She should be in the garments of the faerie court. She’d look so much more beautiful, like she belonged here.
The red haze of madness took over again. He stalked toward her like an animal on the hunt. His heart thudded in his chest. He opened and closed his hands, desperate to squeeze the life from her body so she couldn’t steal anything from him.
But when he finally reached her, h
is hands didn’t reach for her throat. She turned with a gasp, and he kept his hands to himself. Storm backed her behind the sculptures where she thudded hard into the glass wall.
He slammed both hands on either side of her head. The thud echoed throughout the entire palace. It was the great groan of ice and the bubble of air rumbling through the depths. His power surged through his fingertips and sank through the palace until it glowed white with his rage.
His breath turned the air icy between them, but it was her gasps that fogged and warmed his anger.
She stared up at him with wide eyes. This princess who would steal his throne.
“You should never have come back here,” he snarled.
“Back?” Her throat worked on a swallow. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”
This time he could taste the lie in the air. Usually, it made his entire tongue feel as though it were coated in slime to hear someone utter an untruth. But hers tasted delicious, like cherry wine. “Tell me who you are.”
“My name is Ayla,” she whispered. “I already told you. I came here from another court to speak with you.”
The flavor bursting on his tongue was nearly too much. He could drink an entire bottle of her lies and grow drunk on the taste.
But he would drown.
“Kill her now, Storm. You have her in your arms, this is the time.” The elemental screamed with rage in his mind. It wanted the only threat to their throne gone, so they would always rule together.
Storm lifted his hand. He reached for her throat and the elemental crowed with joy inside his head. But it wasn’t her neck he wrapped his hand around. Instead, he caught a single strand of her hair.
The black madness wriggling underneath his skin turned white when it touched her. The strand grew icy underneath his touch but remained pristine as freshly fallen snow.
She blew out a lengthy breath and watched with him as another chunk of her hair turned white. “So you did turn my hair white,” she whispered.
He hummed and took another strand in his hand.
He could touch her. How was she the only person who could withstand the darkness inside him? And how did she take the darkness and turn it into something so beautiful? So clean.
“Your Majesty?” she asked. This time her voice sounded more breathless than before. “What are you doing?”
Faerie realms, he didn’t know. He’d come here to kill her and now all he could focus on was how her hair felt like silk between his fingers. He rubbed another strand, watching the white magic travel all the way to her scalp.
Her hair looked beautiful like this. As though she were a faerie royal after all.
The anger riding his soul melted into something else. Something he hadn’t felt since the air elemental took over his body.
Desire.
She was the most magnificent woman he’d ever seen. And there was something else in her that made him want her attention. As though her gaze was more powerful than any touch or whispered endearment from another.
The thought was insanity. He’d been with hundreds of women and they’d all been the same. A passing interest, someone to entertain him for a few hours until he could find someone new.
But this woman? She haunted his very steps like some kind of mythical creature. Even now, he could smell the lilac on her breath and wanted to bathe in her scent.
He wrapped the strand of hair around his wrist. Once, twice, three times until he could tilt her head back, exposing her throat. He tugged, not hard, just enough to force her to reveal the long, graceful column.
Storm leaned down and dragged his nose up to the beat of her heart. The warmth of her skin against his, even the slightest of touches, was divine. She’d given him god-like powers in that moment, the ability to be a man. Not a monster.
“What are you doing?” she asked again, her voice warbling with emotion.
He felt it too. The strange connection between them he could only assume was from the throne itself. The Air Court wanted them. Both of them, no matter how hard he tried to distract himself with his rightful claim or her bloodline.
The wind wanted them together. It pushed him toward her and tugged her into his arms.
“You are the princess of the Air Court, liar,” he whispered against her throat. “And you are somehow immune to the madness within me.”
She shivered. “I’m just Ayla.”
This time, he didn’t taste a lie. There was no veil between them with the foreign dignitary nonsense. Her truths tasted like sparkling water, bubbling down his throat with honesty for the first time.
His fingers shook as he reached forward and put his hand gently at the curve of her waist. He paused, holding his breath and waiting for her breath to gurgle in her lungs. For the moment when she’d quake with seizures and he’d have to wait, watching, for when she came back to herself. But not herself.
She did nothing except breathe. He could feel her ribs expanding with every inhalation. They both waited long heartbeats to see what would happen.
Her heat sank through his palm and reached into his soul. Storm leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the glass wall and staring down at his hand. The darkness disappeared from his fingertips. It drifted away as her heat spread.
Who was this woman? How did she still the madness in his soul and prevent it from spreading?
“You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered again. “Everything I touch shatters like glass on stone.”
Her ribs expanded with a shuddering breath. “I’m not broken yet.”
“Not yet.”
Perhaps his words frightened her. What woman wouldn’t have been frightened when the man touching her promised to hurt her? Either way, Ayla slid out from underneath his hand and backed away from him down the ballroom. “I think I should go.”
“You can’t go yet,” he muttered. “You’re the rightful heir to this throne and I cannot let you return to the human realm without rectifying that.”
Her eyes widened. “I can’t do anything about my bloodline.”
“No,” he replied. “But I might be able to.”
She turned and fled the ballroom, racing down the halls back to the room he’d given her. Or wherever she thought she might be safe.
“Don’t let her leave,” he ordered the wind. It squeezed his shoulders before racing after her. At least that one knew how to follow orders.
Sighing, Storm pushed himself away from the wall and stood alone in the ballroom. What had he done? He was a leader, a king, and that meant not scaring women into hysterics just because he entered a room.
Once, long ago, he’d been a nobleman worthy of their attentions. The women had loved him and his charming words. He’d known just the thing to say for them to fall into his arms and beg for his kisses. Now, the only thing he knew how to do was infect them with madness.
His gaze caught on the glass sculpture of the king. Though the man spun his beautiful wife in a lively dance, the king’s eyes were always watching. This time, his expression was one of severe disappointment.
What did the past king see when he looked at Storm?
He spread his arms wide. “What do you want from me, fallen king? She’s your daughter, and that means she has no place here.”
The glass sculpture’s expression tightened, if possible. As if the spirit of the king was deep within the clear glass, staring back at him with hatred and disgust.
“I cannot allow her to stay here. She’ll ruin everything I’ve worked so hard to build.”
The sculpture seemed to say, “You’ve built nothing. All you’ve done is destroy.”
Storm didn’t disagree with the spirit of the king. Though his heart had been in the right place, he wasn’t strong enough to continue the work of his predecessors. He had only ruined the beauty of this palace.
Just as he would ruin the princess.
10
Ayla bolted down the halls. Away from the strange man who made her feel things she shouldn’t feel. What did he wan
t from her?
His touch had been so gentle, even though the rage in his eyes had seared her to the bone. He hated her. The only thing she could think when he first came barreling through the ballroom was that he wanted to kill her, rip her limbs from her body and then toss her back to the human realm.
Everything she’d worried about when she said goodbye to her brother had come screaming to the front of her mind.
The king was mad. He was a monster. The entire Air Court feared him for good reason. She was about to find out why they wanted her to take the throne.
And yet, he didn’t kill her.
Storm had paused before he ever struck her. All he’d done was tangle a strand of her hair around his finger. He’d said things that made little sense, but proved he knew who she was.
Who her parents were.
The glass figures still haunted her. They chased her down the hall and called her back to the ballroom where they would tell her a story. Who she was. Why she was here.
Ayla skidded around a corner smudged with lipstick.
She already knew who she was. She was Ayla, aunt to wonderful twin boys who needed her. She had a human brother who’d taken care of her as a child, respected her wishes and wanted her to be happy. In return, she’d become his servant and ever doting sister. That was who she was.
But the ghosts of her past whispered she was a slave.
Panting now, she skidded to a halt and searched for the next lipstick mark. But it was nowhere to be found.
“I know I left markers here,” she said, her voice carrying through the hall. “Why are you hiding them?”
A door opened to her right. The shadows inside beckoned. Something wanted her to dive into the darkness so it could reveal... what? Some hidden secret?
“Stop,” she whispered. “I don’t want to know any more.”
She lied.
Another door opened down the hall. This one slammed hard against the wall and the resounding crack made her worry it had shattered the glass. What would happen if one of the walls weakened? Would the entire palace crumble?
Wind shoved between her shoulder blades, so forcefully she slid toward the door that had opened.
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