Gently cradling her face with both hands, I kiss her again, my black hair falling to form a curtain around our faces. Instantly, she responds, kissing me back, grabbing my hips and pulling me closer.
More, my dark self urges, rising up from the black pit of my soul. Fear rushes through my veins as I shove it down deep. With every touch, every kiss, it gets stronger.
It’s a good thing Syl and I are taking it slow.
I won’t fall to the darkness within as my father did.
Reluctantly, I pull away, my heart aching when she gives a tiny cry of loss. “School tomorrow,” I say, harnessing the very last of my composure, and she lets me go.
I kiss her cheek and bid her goodnight. “See you in the morning, princess.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” she murmurs dreamily.
My entire body aching, I leave her room and head to my little alcove off the tiny living room. As I snuggle into my futon, I can’t help but think of me and Syl as dual queens, ruling Faerie. Together.
Maybe tonight I won’t have nightmares after all.
Wrong.
Tonight, is so much worse.
In our twilit throne room, my father places the heavy adamant crown on my head. He puts the icy blade into my hand, the cold sending shivers over my skin. Power thrums through me, the power of Dark Faerie.
Only one thing remains for me to become queen.
Father turns me—“My daughter, my instrument of vengeance”—and I see Syl standing before me, a bright beacon. “Kill her, take your throne. Be the obedient daughter I know you can be.”
No! my heart cries out against it, but my body lurches forward, my arm raising the ice dagger high.
Terror shoots through me as I realize I’m not in control of my actions.
I look down, see my whole body lit up with glowing crimson circuits. They’re spliced into my arms, my legs, my torso and chest.
Horror grips me. These are Moribund—dark sorcery circuits that give the Fae they infect control over the killing magic in technology. The power rushes through me, intoxicating, but I know the downside all too well.
They’ll enslave me, force me to do terrible things.
In the past, I was infected by black Moribund, but those left my mind intact. These crimson ones? They’re taking me over completely—body, mind, soul.
Even now, I feel my thoughts twisting, turning toward hatred for Syl, for all fair Fae.
My father’s laughter rings in my ears. “Kill her, Rouen!”
I fight, but it’s no use. I’m slave to the circuits’ dark, killing magic. I’m slave to my father’s wishes.
The icy blade feels even more painfully real as I stab it through Syl’s chest. My heart shatters as I watch the light fade from her eyes. Viciously, I yank the blade out. Syl’s blood hits my face. I lick it off my lips, and the taste is pure heaven. I need more.
More! My dark self surges up, and I don’t have the strength to fight it.
The crimson circuits glow like tiny fireflies in my hand as I pull back to stab her again.
My father’s laughter rises, and his control over me makes me stab Syl again and again and again—
“No! Sylllllll!”
I sit bolt upright, instantly awake, my heart thrashing as nightmare images of me stabbing Syl writhe in my mind. Swallowing hard, I sit up, tears running down my face. I dash them away and rub my palm on the blankets, scrubbing away the feeling of the icy blade in my hand.
That was the worst one yet. How many days till Midsummer? I run a hand through sweat-damp hair and take a few deep breaths. Calm down, Roue. In just a few days, you and Syl will enact the Faerie plan. Everything will be all right.
But this time, Father was in my nightmare. Father and those weird crimson circuits. Panic jolts through me. They’re Moribund circuits, for sure.
Is my father dabbling with their dark power again?
I have to tell Syl about this.
But Dark Faerie’s got other plans for yours truly.
Suddenly, the Winter in my blood surges up, that pull toward Dark Faerie wrapping around my guts and yanking hard.
Gah! Nearly falling off my futon, I grit my fangs and fight the pull with every ounce of my willpower. Normally, it takes an act of will to get to Dark Faerie. You have to tap into the Winter in your blood, align it with the moon’s natural ley lines, and then you can snickle-step from the mortal realm into Dark Faerie.
I’ve never heard of someone being forced.
Yank! Of course, there’s a first time for everything.
And that’s Faerie for you. Always changing the rules.
Fury and fear blast through me. This is all wrong! Our plan’s not complete, I was supposed to go with Syl, and we don’t have the black-iron spikes.
Our time’s up, though, because UnderHollow pulls again. I fight, clawing and screaming like a bain sidhe.
And that’s when I feel it. Syl’s panic rockets down the bond, slamming into me, stealing my breath. I leap from the futon, the blankets catching my feet. Bam! I land hard on the floor, biting my tongue. Blood flows into my mouth.
“Roue!” Syl’s scream tears through my mind, my soul.
She’s being pulled in, too, but if the brightness blaring out of her room is any indication, she’s getting yanked to Fair Faerie.
Cold fear presses a finger to my heart. Faerie’s done playing with us.
Our opposing Faerie realms don’t want me and Syl to be together, so it’s tearing us apart.
“Syl! Hold on!” I spring to my feet, grabbing up my violin and bow. Instantly, violet lightning thrums through me, filling me with power. It’s on, Fair Faerie. You want a fight with the dark Fae princess, you got it!
But Dark Faerie’s got other ideas.
The moonlight slanting in through the window shimmers into dozens of glowing-blue, crisscrossing ley lines. Blast and bloody bones!
Yank! Yank! Yank!
Dark Faerie pulls harder on the Winter in my veins. The temperature in the room drops ten degrees, the air shivers, and snow swirls into the living room. Behind the wall of white, a convoluted dark shape rises, a massive grate of adamant tipped with icy wintersteel.
Chills ripple over me, and not from the cold.
The Gates of UnderHollow.
My blood is a beacon calling the Gates into the mortal realm, Dark Faerie forcing me to manifest.
Still, I hold on. For Syl. For me. For us. “Hang on! I’m coming!”
But I’m not. The Gates to UnderHollow slam open and suck me in.
Dread grips my heart.
The only place I’m going is straight to Dark Faerie.
The place that wants me and Syl to murder each other for our crowns.
3
SYL
In times of great stress,
The hearthstone may call the princess
Home
- Glamma’s Grimm
* * *
My stomach feels like it’s been set on a spin cycle, put on a roller coaster, and shot into space. In other words, barf city. I barely hold on to the late-night pizza Roue and I shared as Fair Faerie pulls and pulls on me.
One second, I was locked in my nightmare, Summer crown on my head, sunfire blade hot in my hand as I stabbed Roue, and the next—Fair Faerie’s dragging me in toward OverHill, the epicenter of Fair Faerie.
“Hang on, Syl! I’m coming!” Roue’s shout, her fear crashes into me, and I go wild, thrashing, fighting the pull of Fair Faerie on my Summer blood.
There’s no way I’ll take the Fair Faerie crown!
It means killing the girl I love.
We just need a little time to put our plan in motion. But our time’s up.
Dark Faerie and Fair Faerie are breaking us up. By force.
“No! Roue…Roue!” I scream my lungs out, but Fair Faerie hauls harder, its gravity sucking at me as the summery-bright Gates of OverHill—all blazing-gold latticework and sunfire-tipped prongs—flare into being in my bedroom. Panic slicks my skin with sweat. I
can’t even manifest on my own, let alone snickle-step, and now Fair Faerie is using those powers against me?
File that under Super Unfair.
In a burst of summery heat, the shining Gates slam open, blasting with hot breezes, all that sun and Summer dragging me toward it.
“Roue!” I’m in full freak-out mode now, clawing at my comforter, but the Gates yank me from my bed in the mortal realm, toward the sunlit Snickleways to OverHill.
Where I’m supposed to take my crown, marry a prince, start a war, and kill Roue. Freak-out mode ramps up into total-meltdown mode as my heart thrashes against my rib cage.
Suddenly, I miss summer school being my biggest problem.
Plus, everything else aside, Roue’s my prince. And Fair Faerie’s going to just have to get over it.
I’ll find another way to save my people.
Sunlight and sunfire flash over me. I’m losing my grip on the mortal world. “Roue!” I scream down the soul-bond, but OverHill yanks me away, all flashing sun and spinning brightness. My stomach plummets, then shoots up into my throat only to plummet again. I’m reliving all my pizza regrets when, finally, Fair Faerie lets me go. As jarring as Snickleways travel is, the landing’s smooth as silk.
One second, I’m going at warp speed, and the next, I’m completely still.
My eyes snap open, fear and dread and a million other emotions rushing over me. I’m lying on dewy grass under a perfect blue sky. Summer heat envelops me, the scent of wildflowers dizzying. All around me, dandelion seeds float in the air like in one of those fantasy movies. Balmy summer breezes prickle across my skin.
And a heavy weight lies in my palm.
Fear bolts through me, the nightmare flashing in my mind—me stabbing Roue with a blade of pure sunfire. The weight in my hand gets heavier.
Please don’t be a blade, please don’t be a blade…
I turn my head and glimpse a splotch of dark red. My heart nearly seizes up, but it’s just the Gryffindor comforter I tore off my bed. Whew!
Off the hook. For the moment.
I gulp in air, pressing my hand to my heart. Calm down, little camper. Calm down… When I sit up, a mass of red curls tumbles into my face. In a moment of wild humor, I think, That’s right, fair Fae, your princess has arrived. Bedhead and all. Smoothing back my messy curls, I get to my feet in a glade overflowing with wildflowers.
All drama aside, my realm is so beautiful it makes my heart ache.
Still, Roue got pulled to Dark Faerie, and I need to check in on her. “Roue?” I send, but there’s no answer. I try a few more times as I spin in a slow circle, the Fair Faerie realm stretching out in all directions around me.
Darn it! Still nothing. The soul-bond might not work between realms.
All right, Syl. Time to find some answers here.
Before me lies OverHill, the epicenter of Fair Faerie. It’s a perfect summer day, warm and bright, lit with stray breezes blowing through the white ash trees, setting the keylike leaves tinkling.
But the tones sound off, like a rusty wind chime.
It’s my first hint that something’s not right.
The second is the scar of snow and ice not five feet from where I was lying. It tears across the landscape, killing everything it touches. Dread coils inside my heart. Snow in the Summer Court? Impossible. It’s just an illusion, Syl, some kind of Glamoury.
But it’s not.
The path of Winter blights the flowers and grass, turning them to glare ice, dead and frozen. Patches of black dot the meadow around it, the effect spreading even as I watch.
An attack by the Winter Court?
My heartbeat rabbit-kicks my ribs, my mouth going dry as panic seeps in. No. No way. One, for an attack, it’s awfully random (I mean, a smart king would’ve targeted the castle not any old meadow); and two, Roue would have told me if her father had plans to attack Fair Faerie.
Assuming she knew.
My heart freaks, and I put a hand to my chest to calm it. But running alongside my normal heartbeat comes a quieter, more powerful throb deep within. Pulse…pulse…pull, pull, PULL! It’s like a small bird trapped in my chest.
The hearthstone!
It’s going crazy, too. As this realm’s princess, I feel the hearthstone like a second heartbeat in my chest. The closer I get, the stronger it should be. But as soon as it ramps up, the hearthstone’s beat stutters and fades. The power of OverHill flickers inside me, like a dying lightbulb.
Fear jolts through me. That shouldn’t happen.
Unlike in Dark Faerie, the Fair Faerie hearthstone is still connected to the king. His life-force and its are entwined. They should replenish each other.
Except, they’re not.
I’d been holding onto the wild hope that it was just a lie concocted by Aldebaran, the fair Fae prince who wanted to force-marry me to “save our realm.” But the sadness in the hearthstone’s fading beats leaves no question. Even now, it weighs me down, dragging at my soul with its sorrow.
The king really is dying.
That means all around me, what I’m seeing is a Glamoury.
Fear pounding in my chest, I turn in a slow circle, calling on my Fae-sight, my ability to see auras and pierce Fae magic.
Soon enough, I see the truth.
All around me, Fair Faerie is bleeding light. Everything that was once bright and pure is fading, the idyllic glade wilting, light and color seeping from every pore. The rings of Faerie trees stand skeletal, bled of color, and the wild ponies that cantered there now trudge through patches of Winter dotting the meadow, a blight of killing snow and frost. Across that field, the normally white and gold towers of Castle Caernarvon rise up in tilted slabs sapped to an unhealthy grey and yellow.
The king is dying. Which means…everything is dying.
The hearthstone’s sorrow shoots aching pangs through my heart.
I need to find answers.
Aldebaran’s words come back to me: “If there is not a new king and queen on the Gilded Throne by next Midsummer Night, our world will die.”
Midsummer is June 21st.
A little over a month away. Fifty-one days to be exact.
That doesn’t give me a ton of time, but I raise my chin defiantly. I don’t believe the only way to save my world is by marrying Prince Fancy McJerkface.
My Faerie plan might be out the window for now, but I’ll find another way.
No time like the present, Glamma would’ve said.
Time to find the king and see if I can help him. I’ve still got my healing white flame. Maybe that can at least buy us some time.
That means heading to the place I’m most likely to find him—the castle.
I break into a run toward the distant castle, a cluster of yellow and grey spikes jutting up to a fading blue sky. At the edge of the meadow, giant slabs of earth form a dangerous path to the castle gardens, like stepping stones across a lake. Only, there’s no lake, just sky.
And a long drop if you miss your jump.
Like all things in Faerie, the landscape here defies logic. Like Super Mario Bros. on steroids.
Time to windwarp.
So glad I learned this trick, even if I did have to kill a ginormous monster-dog to do it. Hey, he had it coming.
Exhaling, I call upon the Summer in my blood, and fwoosh! in a burst of rippling heat, I vanish and reappear atop the first platform. A waterfall pours off the edge, disappearing in roaring mist below. Thin sunlight refracts through the water, leaving broken rainbows everywhere.
Even dying, the beauty takes my breath away.
Desperation tears my heart in two.
Three more platforms to go. Fwoosh! Whoosh! Fwoosh! And I’m there.
At my approach, the summersteel Gates squeal open on rusted hinges, the latticework pitted with corrosion. Without their Glamoury, they’re a tarnished mess that brings me to tears.
Please let me find the king. Let me find answers!
Swiping at my eyes, I scan ahead. The Gates open to
a pathway leading to a bridge of cracked white marble with rusting golden rails. Then, it’s through a pale garden, to the castle.
Where I can find the hearthstone and get some answers.
Fwoosh! Full speed ahead.
I’m through the Gates, racing toward the castle. Doves dive through the darkening thunderheads, swooping around sagging buttresses and crumbling widow’s walks. Hedges of white and gold roses wilt beneath glittering ice.
It’s like when Rivendell was dying in The Lord of the Rings.
Only, this is real.
The hearthstone pulses weakly in my chest, and a sudden rumble vibrates through my bones. “Syl.” The voice is a deep baritone in my mind. Instantly, I sense the king’s power thrumming through his sending.
The king of Fair Faerie is calling to me!
“Syl.” Weirdly, though, his voice stirs up old memories the way silt kicks up at the bottom of a river: Dad teaching me softball, me and him playing catch, summers with him and Mom on the Outer Banks in North Carolina…
Nostalgia and loss well up inside me. “Dad?” I mean, I’m a princess, so it stands to reason my dad would be king, right?
Wrong.
According to Mom, sleeper-princess power gets passed through the matriarchal line. Meaning, since Mom was a sleeper-princess, so am I. Even so, I’ve kind of been harboring this childish dream of my dad being the king of Fair Faerie.
Now I can only hope it’s not true. To find my dad only to discover he’s dying?
Sorrow washes over me. I don’t even want to think about it.
I steel my nerves. Whatever’s happening, I’ll find the answers in the castle.
With the king. Who is definitely not my dad.
Determined, I follow the tiny fading tugs on my heart and race into the grey and yellow castle. I speed down crumbling gross-grey halls, around cracking pillars dotted with sad-looking white flowers. The summer heat hangs like a wet blanket, sweltering, smothering.
In seconds, I’m a sweaty mess, but finally, I can see a golden glint.
The hearthstone! It pulls weakly on me, and I head toward it.
It lies ahead along with the Aureate Throne, which sits on a dais atop a looooooong shattered staircase with dozens of landings. Near the Throne, two figures shine like golden beacons.
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