by Leia Stone
Leave it to Elle to be excited to get blood on her blade. She was a warrior through and through, no matter the circumstances of her birth. “They told you about the Sons of Darkness?”
She nodded, stepping closer to me. “The elders said to beware the black-winged ones. They’re the worst.”
I guess I’d rather know my enemy than not. “Where do you think they come from?” I whispered. “Are they Fae?”
“Found it!” Trissa cried, causing Elle and I to quiet as she walked out of the shed with an old rolling pin in her hands. She was covered in dust and cobwebs. To a normie, our word for humans, all evidence of her Fae nature was gone. No pointy ears, no wings. She looked human. It was part of the illusion that settled over us when we crossed into the realm. It happened naturally. I could still use my wings of course, because they were still there, but a normie wouldn’t see them.
I raised an eyebrow at the rolling pin. “Are we baking poison cookies for the Sons?”
She grinned. “No, but that’s a good idea. Oh, your mother would kill me for giving you this, but … I know you’ll need it.”
She handed me the rolling pin, and the second my fingers touched the smooth crystal inlayed into the wood, it started to … change. From wood, it turned to cold steel and then bulked out, popping and bending and creaking as it transformed into … a motorcycle.
“Wicked,” Elle breathed.
“No helmets needed, just fly if you’re about to crash,” Trissa declared.
Yeah, I was pretty sure that wasn’t how it worked, but whatever, this bike was badass. My mother would totally flip out and give me no less than six hundred rules on how to drive it safely. For my sixteenth birthday, she smuggled a laptop and American DVDs into Faerie for Elle and I. I’d seen The Terminator about a hundred times, and had always wanted to ride a motorcycle like Arnold.
I swung a leg over the bike. “What did my mom ride?” Clearly, she wasn’t flying around Earth, scaring normies, and seeking could take you hundreds of miles.
Triss looked uncomfortable. “A red pick-up truck. It was … we don’t have it anymore.”
Oh. I was going to have to sit down with her when I felt emotionally ready and find out exactly what happened that night to my mom. But that might not be for years, if I would ever be ready. For now, Faerie depended on me to find that crystal.
Trissa pointed to a button. “Kill switch.” Then she pointed to another thing. “Petcock.”
It took every ounce of maturity I possessed not to bust out laughing at “petcock,” but Elle did it for the both of us. Trissa shot her a glare and then pointed to something else. “Throttle.”
Then Trissa pushed something, flipped another thing, and twisted something else and the motorcycle roared to life.
“Got it?” she asked.
No. Hell fucking no. I nodded, because I was so far into this shit train … what did it matter?
“You start seeking. Take Elle, I’ll follow on this.” She pulled a little electric scooter out from behind her back and popped it open.
Elle jumped on the bike behind me and hooked her arms around my waist. This was no big deal, like seeking anything. I’d done it hundreds of time. Taking a deep breath, I remembered the bluish-purple color and texture of the crystal, the way it was cool to my touch and how the light bounced off of it. As I was imagining it, there was a small tug at my navel.
“Got it,” I declared. The thrill of seeking always excited me. Feeling that intuitive hunch and pull in the general direction was always a bit like solving a mystery.
Elle clung to me. “Don’t kill us!” she shouted.
I nodded and pulled on the throttle lightly. The bike lurched forward and both Elle and I screamed. I slammed on the brake and we jerked to a halt.
“Okay, you know what, let’s work up to the motorcycle.” Trissa set the electric scooter on its kickstand and I frowned. “You ride the scooter and Elle and I will follow you.”
My one shot to be a badass bicker chick and I blew it.
Get your shit together, Lily.
“Come on, Lily, we need to hurry. They’ll move the crystal,” Trissa urged me.
Right.
Walking over to the scooter, I jumped on and set off at a whopping ten miles an hour. I followed my instinct out onto the road, and then to the right at a fork when I felt a strong tug in that direction. It was hard to keep my mind clear when I kept thinking about my mom. Had her celebration of life started yet? Were the elders bathing her body in crystal water and wrapping her in white silk? It was hard to get the gruesome bloody image from my head of her in that bathtub.
I got so wrapped up in my thoughts, I barely felt the tug to the left at the next fork in the road. Craning the handlebars at the last minute, I drifted down the road scolding myself for losing the connection with the crystal.
“Focus, Lily,” I told the wind, thinking again of how the crystal had felt, the way the sunlight shone on its light purple and blue.
Like a kick to the gut, my connection was back again, and so strong it knocked the wind out of me. We were close.
Trusting my gifts and following that tug, I careened the scooter down a small side street. I would have missed it had I not been looking; it was marked by two huge trees. We were here. After turning in, I immediately steered into the thick bushes, hiding from view.
Trissa and Elle pulled in behind me and cut the motor, walking the bike to where I stood and stashing it in the foliage. I peered through a gap in the hedge and gazed upon a yellow dilapidated farmhouse. Something kicked in my belly, signaling the object I sought was here.
“It’s here,” I whispered.
Trissa consulted her watch. “Different place than last night. They’re moving it every twenty-four hours or so.”
Nerves prickled along my skin. My mom died going after this crystal … and now I needed it to save Faerie. No fucking pressure.
Breathe.
Trissa pulled out a small vial of purple juice. “This is pricklewart juice. One drink gives you about sixty seconds of invisibility. After that, you will be seen, but it should be enough to get you in the room with the crystal, then you can jump out the window, where I’ll be waiting.”
My face scrunched up. Pricklewarts were nasty. Worse than nasty, they were literal warts that grew at the base of troll trees in the dark forest. They smelled like a dying animal, so I’d obviously never tasted one. But invisibility would be a decent tradeoff for drinking something nasty…
Triss looked impatient, tapping her foot. “Lily, I’m sorry to rush you, but we are on borrowed time.” She popped the cap off the vial and shoved it in my hand. “If they move this crystal again, it could take you weeks to find. Earth is big, you’ve never had to seek something that’s another country away. I knew it was in this city, so it was easy for you, but next time it might not be. Next time might be too late for Faerie.”
Shit.
Elle’s eyes widened and she looked terrified. Good, I wasn’t the only one. With Trissa’s stark warning ringing through my head, I grabbed the juice and put it to my lips.
Trissa’s hand came out to stop me. “I’ll take the back of the house, Elle the front, and you will be alone inside. Can you handle that?”
Fuck no.
“Yes.”
She nodded, seeming pleased with my confidence, though I was really questioning my mother’s decision making right now.
“I trained you well. I’m not worried,” she finally said, almost like she herself needed to hear it. “Scream if you need help, but these things are best done as a one woman show.”
Damn. My mom was like a Fae thief-assassin. Sneaking into Sons of Darkness strongholds and retrieving the lost crystals of Faerie. It was kind of badass when I stopped to think about it. “And don’t get any ideas about drinking this stuff all the time. More than one dose in twenty-four hours acts as a poison.”
Oh fabulous. Thanks for almost leaving that out.
Without wasting another minute,
I pressed the cold glass vial to my lips and tipped it back in one shot. Foul smelling liquid poured down my throat and I gagged as the smell hit my nostrils, but the taste was surprisingly sweet and peppery.
“Good luck!” Elle whispered, reaching out to squeeze my hand quickly. I looked down at my body as it slowly…
Holy shit!
I’d disappeared.
“Go!” Trissa hissed.
Letting my wings burst from my back, I zipped across the large front yard of the farmhouse and right up to the front door. No one was manning the front, which told me they didn’t have a big enough group guarding the crystal to allow for outside security. Or at least I hoped that was the case. Zooming right up to the front door, I did one hard tap with my index finger. Maybe they would think it was a rock or something.
Fifty-two … fifty-one … fifty … I was counting in my head. Come on, you idiots. I tapped again because I could hear a muffled TV inside. Footsteps. “Was that a knock?” a deep voice called out.
“I didn’t hear anything,” another voice followed, this one less deep.
The door swung open and I braced myself for a hideous beast. But the guy that opened it was … normal looking, but for the fact that he looked like he had a small pair of brown horns on his forehead. It was one of them, one of the Sons of Darkness. Shaking it off, I tucked my wings flat down my back and slid right between him and the doorframe, slipping inside.
“No one there,” he called to two guys sitting on the couch. “I’m gonna have a smoke anyway. I’ll keep watch until we get orders on where to move the crystal.”
The crystal. I froze.
Thirty-five … thirty-four … thirty-three … holy shit he talked about moving the crystal. I glanced quickly at the guys sitting on the couch and saw that one of them was extremely pale and creepy looking, his eyes completely black. The other was another horned head like the dude outside smoking. Okay, three guys total so far. Not bad considering there were three of us. I could do this. I had lost count and knew I probably had only seconds to find the crystal before the pricklewart juice wore off.
Tiptoeing down the hall, I called up a picture of the crystal in my mind. There. A strong tug at my navel pulled me deeper down the hallway and then to a closed door. As my fingers turned the knob, they started to reappear. If someone was in this room, I was screwed. I’d have to fight them.
Pulling my obsidian blades from my thigh holster, I stepped into the room and breathed a sigh of relief that I was alone. Closing the door behind me, but not latching it for fear of making noise, I spun back to the center of the room.
When my eyes landed on the blue glowing crystal that lay in the middle of a bed, relief spread throughout my limbs.
I did it.
There was a window in the room that led to the outside. I’d have to crawl over a desk, but I could definitely get out through here.
Wasting no time, I crossed the room and kneeled on the bed, ready to pick up the crystal.
“Who the fuck are you?” a deep male voice came from behind me and I froze.
Spinning, I held up my blade ready to slice, when my gaze landed on a guy with huge black wings. I nearly stumbled off the bed. I’d expected the wings to be feathered, like a crow’s, but they weren’t. They were … Fae wings, like mine in shape, but inky black where mine were pink. Were the Sons of Darkness … Fae?
No way.
The elders used the word Dark Fae, but they’d made them sound like hideous creatures, not this… this guy was… like me, only his wings were black.
His hair was sandy blond and tousled like he didn’t care to comb it, but still managed to look put together. My gaze fell to his ears, which were short like a human’s. I was a whopping five-foot four inches tall and this dude towered over me at least a foot higher. He was stacked with muscle that pulled at the edges of his t-shirt, and his arms screamed “I can squeeze your head off your body with my bare hands.” But his eyes, his insanely blue eyes were threaded with molten copper. They had me stepping closer to inspect them, letting my guard down as I did.
The thought that he was Fae shook me, but I was still ready to fight my way out of this room, crystal in hand, when a blue light pulsed from his chest. Alarm registered on his face, and then that same blue light pulsed from me, an identical rhythm to his.
No. No. no. no. no…
Confusion crossed his face as a warm unconditional love trickled down my veins and a sob lodged in my throat.
My fucking soulmate was a Son of Darkness.
I couldn’t really describe what I was feeling. My heart burst open and euphoria pumped through me, but I was trying to push it down. I felt … completely and utterly in love with this person before me, like he could do no wrong. I would accept him for whatever he was, and he would do the same for me. We were created for each other, and I suddenly felt like the last twenty years of my life had been so lonely without him. The entire room glowed blue with our combined magic. Boom-boom, boom-boom … the magic pulsed with my heartbeat. His brows were drawn down in confusion, but then softened into intrigue.
He finally found his words. “What is this? Magic?”
He didn’t know. The tears that had been building up in my eyes spilled over and I found myself wondering if he was feeling the same thing as me. How the hell could this dark creature be my soulmate? It wasn’t right. He was my newly sworn enemy.
He seemed to have just noticed the crystal in my hand, and every possibly soft feature I’d seen in his face vanished. “Seeker,” he hissed, and stepped forward, ripping the crystal out of my grip.
Our blue light cut off completely the moment our fingers touched. It was like it had done its job of bringing us together and now it was gone—except he didn’t touch me like he should have. His touch was cold and threatening.
“Liam?” a voice called down the hallway. Footsteps could be heard.
My eyes widened in panic and … Liam, AKA my clearly evil soulmate, grabbed me under the arm and dragged me across the room. He shoved me into the closet, closing the door nearly all the way as he stepped out into the room to meet whoever had said his name.
I froze, unmoving, as one of the horned guys walked in. I saw him through the one-inch gap in the door. When he scanned the room, passing the closet in which I hid, my body went rigid. “What was that blue light?” the dude asked and my heart beat so loudly in my chest I thought I was going to throw up.
He’d shoved me in a closet when he could have killed me … that was sort of … not evil? It wasn’t exactly soulmate love, like in Faerie, but he hadn’t killed me … so I’d have to take it.
“Nothing. I was just checking on the crystal,” Liam said smoothly, clutching the blue crystal in his hand with ease.
The guy looked suspiciously at Liam. “I saw a fucking blue light down the hallway.”
The tall winged creature stepped closer to the horned dude and started down at him, “Who’s in charge here?” he asked.
The horned guy gulped, lowering his gaze. “You.”
Liam nodded. “That’s right. There was no blue light. Stop smoking pot and wait for me to give you orders. Understand?”
The guy glared at Liam but nodded. “Yes, sir.” Then he stalked out of the room, slamming the door.
Whoa … my soulmate was kind of a dick and it was kind of hot. Oh my God, what was wrong with me? Why was I even referring to him as my soulmate? Clearly that was a mistake. Some … fake blue light trick thing? I was grasping at straws.
When the horned dude left, Liam wrenched the closet door open. His face was all hardened, not a trace of the wonder or curiosity I’d seen before. Reaching out, he took both of my upper arms into his hands and pulled me inches from his face.
“I don’t know what that blue light was, but I know what you are, and if you touch this crystal again, I’ll kill you.”
I should have been terrified, and I was half wondering where he’d put the crystal, but honestly I couldn’t get over how yummy he smelled, how
my wings seemed to perk and snap erect when he was touching me. How even though he held my arms in a death grip, his touch was … pleasant.
Fuck. What was happening to me?
He dragged me forward, my tiptoes skimming along the carpet as he released one of my arms to free up a hand and wrench the window open.
“Wait, you don’t understand,” I pleaded.
He picked me up like I weighed ten pounds and tucked me into his chest. My stomach dropped out at the close physical contact and I saw a flicker of desire in his face … or maybe I imagined it.
“Don’t ever come back.” With that, he chucked me out the window and it took everything in me not to scream. My wings snapped out, fluttering, and lifted me up just before I hit the ground, causing my feet to skim the tall grass.
I raced back to my scooter, trying to think of what the hell I would tell Trissa and Mara. No way could I tell them that a Son of Darkness was my soulmate.
My first mission was a huge fucking fail.
Mara questioned me the second we all walked in the blue door. “What happened? Did you get the crystal?” Bashur barked in excitement that we’d all made it back. I was out of breath, hands shaking and soaked from the rain.
After telling Elle and Triss briefly of my fail, we’d run off for fear of being seen.
I shook my head. “I was caught. A black-winged Son. He almost killed me.” I mean, he said he was going to kill me, but he’d never pulled a blade or weapon.
Triss frowned. “Are you hurt?” Her eyes roamed over my body and then stopped at my blade, which was clean of blood. I had no bruises or injuries, no sign of struggle. She’d trained me in hand-to-hand combat; she knew that a fight for my life would show some injury. I rocked on my heels nervously.
“I’ll go back tomorrow night. I won’t give up,” I told them.
“Let’s go back now,” Trissa pressed. “How many were there inside? I can kill them.”
“Five … I think.” I was trying to remember; I hadn’t exactly seen all of them. There could have been more in other rooms sleeping or something. Going back would surely be a bad idea. Liam wouldn’t hesitate to try to kill me, and I wasn’t completely sure I could hurt him, even if it was to save my life.