by May Dawson
I stopped in front of her apartment and debated whether to let myself in or knock. Letting myself in did promise a certain entertainment value.
But perhaps she really was a poor little lost lamb with no memories now.
The thought brought a wolfish grin to my face. Wouldn’t want to scare her.
I banged on her door. When no one answered, I banged on it some more, until I heard someone curse in the distance, the sound muffled by the door. The voice was soft and feminine, no matter how ugly the string of words that carried to me.
I felt her on the other side, as she hovered in front of the peephole. I stared at it, knowing she was looking through.
After all these years, she got to see me before I saw her.
Then the door was wrenched open.
Alisa stood there with a pink flush staining her cheeks. Her hair should have been lavender, but it was brown instead now and hung loose to her waist, slightly wild from bed, which gave her a wanton look. My gaze roamed down her ribbed tank top and sleep shorts. Her eyes narrowed in response, and her fingers twitched, tightening on the hilt of the sword she carried.
“I take it you know me too?” she demanded. “How the hell did you get in my building?”
I tilted my head to one side. Alisa truly didn’t remember that we all had the ability to glamor humans.
“May I come in?” I managed politely, even though I didn’t appreciate being spoken to in that rude tone. I’d found ways to manage Alisa’s bratty side when we were together, although she’d hardly appreciate that now, from a stranger.
“I already told your brother, I don’t need anything from you.” Her chin rose imperiously.
“How did you know he’s my brother?”
She studied me just as unapologetically as I’d eyed her, her gaze sweeping down my body, then lingering on my face. “I don’t see a lot of six-foot-four black-haired, blue-eyed gods wandering the streets of D.C. Safe to say you two are related.”
I couldn’t help the faint smile that touched my lips. Duncan and I looked different in some ways—for one thing, our scars were different. He wore his hair long enough to cover the points of his ears, and since my ears were blunt, my hair was short, styled to look like a human male who took very good care of himself—but we did look alike.
Alisa thought we looked like gods. That was sweet. Her cheeks flushed and her pulse fluttered in her throat. She wouldn’t be so unguarded with her attraction if she remembered me.
“He’s actually six-foot three,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “I bet he’d say the same about you.”
I nodded at the sword she carried. “Do you usually answer the door like that?”
“When someone knocks on my door, they usually either want rent money or revenge. So, yes.”
There was a sound down the hall, and she glanced that way, pressing her sword behind her back to conceal it.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“I want to bring you home.”
Her eyes widened as they returned to me. Got you. Satisfaction rippled through my body, and I rested my shoulder against the doorframe, studying her face.
“Where’s home?” she asked.
“The Fae world.”
Her face immediately turned guarded. “Okay. Sure. And who the hell are you to me?”
Let me put this in human terms for her. “I’m your ex-boyfriend.”
“Really?” She tilted her head to one side. “How come it took you so long to find me? Weren’t looking hard, were you?”
“Not really, no.” I’d searched the Fae world for her, thinking Herrick had her killed. Despite what she’d done to me, I’d wanted to make him pay for hurting her.
When I learned she was alive in the mortal world, I’d written her off. Run away, Alisa. You always do.
“How do you get to this—” Her lips arched mockingly. “Fae world?”
She didn’t believe me.
I demanded, “You slaughter supernatural beasties, and you don’t believe in the Fae world?”
“I don’t believe in anything I can’t see or touch,” she said.
“I’m right here. I’m a Fae,” I pointed out.
A strange impulse took me over. We were so close right now, and it had been so long since I felt her hands on my body. Just seeing her made my cock throb.
“You can see me.” I caught her free hand in mine.
She drew back automatically, then I felt her give, as if she were curious.
That’s right, Alisa. You always give in to me. A whisper from the past slipped through my memory, of my own voice, my lips against her throat. Autumn always conquers summer.
She’d been summer to me, no matter how cold she acted with the rest of the world.
I guided her slender hand to the hard planes of my chest. “You can feel me.”
No matter how cool she acted, her pulse raced even faster now. Not fear. Alisa felt little fear. Desire.
“Who was I?” she asked, giving into her curiosity. “In that world?”
“You are Fae royalty,” I told her.
She stared at me a second, her eyes widening, then she laughed out loud.
“Does this ever work with anyone?” she asked. “Whatever scam you’re running?”
“I assure you, there is no scam.” Besides the truth of what awaited her in the Fae world after she walked through that portal.
“There’s no Fae world,” she told me, shaking her head. Laughter bubbled on those beautiful lips of hers as she yanked away. “And I’m no princess.”
I jumped to block the door, but her reflexes were as supernaturally fast as mine. She slammed it in my face just a second before my toe caught the door, and instead, I banged my boot harmlessly into the wood.
No, you’re right. You’re no princess.
You’re a damned queen.
Chapter Five
Azrael
Seven years earlier
It was close to midnight when the first carriages full of new students for the academy began to roll in. Mist cloaked the mountains that surrounded the academy, and a piercing chill hung in the air. It was always cold here, but the thick wool of my coat—and a bit of magic—kept me warm, even though my breath hung in the air.
This miserable place was the winter court’s fault. It was only early fall in the rest of the world. This place, though, had been cursed.
And our instructors had seized upon that curse to engineer the most miserable school possible.
As the carriage doors opened, chattering first-year students clambered down. Their desire for warmth and rest was written baldly across their faces; they’d have to learn to hide those desires. This place was meant to break spoiled nobles of the need for comfort and safety.
Or perhaps it was just meant to break us, period.
“Glad to see you, little brother,” I called to Duncan, catching him in the mass. He turned to me, a look of resignation written across his face. He’d known I’d be his senior here. He’d complained pretty miserably about our training every break, but I wouldn’t let him fail here. Better for him to bleed and suffer at home.
“Brother,” he said stiffly as he crossed to me. His posture was perfectly erect, even though his lips were dark with cold.
I could tell there was something insolent on the tip of his tongue, but he managed to hold it back for once. We weren’t home any longer.
He reached into his thin jacket and drew out a letter, stamped with our father’s seal. “Something for you.”
“Thank you.” I pocketed it to read later. “Bad news; I wasn’t able to get you as my junior.”
Duncan couldn’t hold back his cynical huff. “I’ll take my chances.”
I hadn’t actually tried. I wasn’t always kind—he was my younger brother—but it didn’t seem fair to take him as my junior like I’d threatened.
Every upperclassman at the school had a new student for a roommate, someone to mentor—and to haze. Our students came fro
m wealthy families where they’d been spoiled; the chance to wash someone else’s laundry and run their errands was good for them.
And it was fantastic for us as upperclassmen.
There was shouting ahead, and Duncan’s head snapped in that direction. The hazing was beginning in earnest.
“You’ve got this,” I promised him, clapping his shoulder. “No matter what I said this summer, you’re the toughest male I know. They’re going to try to break you, but you’re just going to keep your head down and keep fighting until it’s all over.”
His lips tugged ruefully at the corners, but he didn’t answer. He was always reserved, unexpectedly so for a middle child.
He took off running in the direction of the yelling. I remembered that early hazing well.
“Have fun!” I called after him, knowing that here was the only place my brother couldn’t hurl a few carefully-selected curse words at me. I grinned.
I went back to my room, expecting that my roommate wouldn’t show up until after dawn, bedraggled and shivering and ready to begin a day of fetching-and-carrying.
I hadn’t particularly enjoyed being broken of my own spoiled attitude when I arrived at the academy, but it was hard for me to argue that it wasn’t effective.
I walked into my room, which was lit only by the moonlight that shone off the snowy mountains and reflected into the room. I slung my coat over the back of the chair, kicked my boots off, and began to yank my shirt over my head.
“Well, hello.”
The voice—amused, soft—stopped me dead. I dropped my shirt to the ground and trampled on it as I whirled and drew my sword from where it hung above my desk.
“Easy there, tough guy.” The boy on the bed was a slight figure. His lavender hair was short, but wild and ruffled around a heart-shaped face. He grinned at me as if there was something amusing about how I’d come close to decapitating him.
I dropped my hand to my side, but hung onto the sword. He’d only spoken four words, but something about his tone was so irksome that I wasn’t taking decapitation off the table quite yet.
“What are you doing?”
“I thought I was sleeping.” He yawned. “Until you started your striptease.”
I took a step forward, my jaw clenching. “You’re lost. You’re supposed to be outside with the other first year students.”
“Am I?” He glanced out the window, just in time to see the dark snake of freshman cadets twisting up the mountain path. He frowned. “Are they wet? They’re going to catch a chill.”
“You should be with them,” I warned. “Get up. Get going.”
“I’m where I’m supposed to be,” he promised. He extended his hand for me to shake, although he hadn’t bothered to stand; he sat cross-legged on the bed now. “Faer of the summer court.”
I stared at him, refusing to shake his hand. “Being a prince doesn’t get you out of anything around here.”
“As well it should not,” he said. “I’m glad to hear it. Instructor Tomas told me to report to the barracks. And you are?”
“Why would he do that?” I demanded, irritation in my voice.
He shrugged. “Your name?”
I’d never met anyone who annoyed me so much in so little time.
I grabbed his collar and yanked him off the bed. He was barefoot, his toes dangling off the polished wooden floorboards, and so light and bird-boned that he must be a winged fairy. I was half-tempted to fling him out of the window to see how quick he was with those wings; it would be the fastest way for him to join the other freshmen.
Instead, I set him on the cold wooden floor. He gaped at me slightly, his lips parted as if no one had ever adjusted this brat’s attitude in all his life.
“Get your socks and boots on. You’re joining the others, and I don’t want you too frostbitten to do my laundry in the morning.”
He laughed at that. Then he must have seen something in my face. Suddenly, he sat on the end of the bed, hastily dragging on thick wool socks—two pairs, I noticed—then his boots. His uniform didn’t quite seem to fit, and I frowned as I hastily dressed myself. Perhaps the princeling had annoyed his own servants so badly that they had wanted to embarrass him once he was out of reach.
“This is a misunderstanding,” he said, and since his boots were more-or-less on and he was just trying to tie them, I seized the back of his neck and dragged him down the hall with me like an unruly kitten.
I shoved him through the door to the courtyard, hard enough that he landed on his knees in the snow.
“I’ve heard about you, Faer,” I told him as I followed him out. “You care little about anything but your own pleasure. You’re no warrior, and you’re not fit to rule.”
Anger tightened my chest. I was keenly aware of my own flaws, but I would die to protect my people if I had to. My mother, before she passed, had taken me everywhere with her across the autumn court, teaching me to be a worthy king someday.
“I can’t do anything about that,” I said. “That’s up to you. But you will follow the goddamn rules here, and we’ll see what good that will do you.”
He got to his feet, clapping his hands off on his trousers. “You don’t know me, Autumn.”
It was disrespectful to call Fae by the name of their court, and I shoved him again. He landed on his ass in the snow, glaring up at me. It was that look of pure defiance on his face that caused me to drop on top of him, my thighs on either side of his, my hand catching his throat. I pressed down. Maybe the snow could cool that willful temper of his. The stories of how lazy he was in his training were infamous through the courts, and he was paying for his incompetence now. And would pay, for many months to come.
“Why are you too proud to join your peers?” I demanded. I caught a handful of snow and slapped it across his cheek, the motion dismissive and stinging, and he flushed with anger. “Shouldn’t a prince be willing to lead by example?”
“This is stupid,” he snarled back. “I’m happy to train and fight, but they’re just being tortured.”
“Some of them are your own nobles of the autumn court.” I slapped him across the other cheek with another handful of snow. His cheeks were bright red now in that pale face. “What do you think they’ll make of how you’ve abandoned them?”
“I haven’t abandoned them,” he said, trying to throw me, and my lips parted to laugh at him. He was such a child.
Then he somehow bucked and knocked me sideways. His leg trapped mine, and the two of us jostled for control across the snow.
“Enough.” Professor Vail’s voice was darker than the night itself. “Before someone sees the princes of our courts wrestling like children.”
The two of us separated and scrambled apart. He was breathing hard, and the look he gave me suggested that if I slept in our room again, I might find myself knifed in my sleep.
Vail and I stared at each other.
“Teach him,” he said, then turned and walked back into the house.
I looked at the boy across from me, slight and red-cheeked and still furious.
“Let’s go meet your peers,” I said, my voice deadly calm.
He was still breathing hard and his fury showed on his face. But he nodded once, curtly.
“I’ll run with you,” I said, leading the way. He followed, his feet crunching across the snow.
Someone would have to make sure the prince made it to his intended destination. I wasn’t afraid to be a part of the group winding up and down the mountain, breaking through the icy river and stumbling up the wind-torn peak, then down again. I’d survived it before. I didn’t mind paying the price for my position.
Noblesse oblige, after all.
I’d make sure this boy learned the meaning of the words—or that he quit.
Chapter Six
Alisa
What a fucking day, already. I’d gotten just a few hours of sleep between last night’s escapades and this morning’s rude awakening. Fae? Really? I’d have to ask around. Maybe the two men wer
e Fae; I didn’t know everything about the supernatural world yet, by a long shot.
And they were beautiful to an extent that felt unreal. Just thinking about their easy confidence, those tall, powerful bodies, those magnetic eyes and dark hair… my thighs tightened, my core throbbing with sudden longing. Yeah, there was something weird about those guys.
But I was definitely no princess.
The ‘Fae’ hammered on my front door.
“Go away!” I shouted. I had to figure out what they wanted, but on my own timeline. They were obviously trying to manipulate me, and I didn’t want to play their game, whatever it was.
I expected more hammering.
Instead, the hall went quiet. I rolled my eyes, hardly comforted. It was probably a trap.
I’d spent that first year trying everything I could to get my memories back. I’d been to tarot readers and witches and a hypnotherapist. Nothing brought the past back to me.
But I could be sure of one thing: I wasn’t a princess.
Besides, someone would’ve come looking for a missing princess. It wouldn’t have taken them five years.
I padded through my threadbare little apartment to the bathroom, rested my sword against the bathroom cabinet, and turned the water on in the shower. The hot water pipes groaned and screamed until the water began to ping against the tile floor, but other than that, the apartment was silent. My neighbors weren’t stirring yet.
I kept expecting Prince Charming to somehow magic his way inside my apartment, but I was mercifully alone as I quickly washed my hair. I leaned out of the shower to grab my toothbrush, then brushed my teeth as I stood under the hot spray. My apartment might have been a little the worse for wear, but I loved how compact and efficient it was.
I’d have to use a hot shower and hotter coffee to substitute for sense and sleep last night. I needed to be in good shape for work. I hustled out of the bathroom still toweling off, finger-tousled my waves to make sure they air-dried halfway decently, and then quickly dressed in scrub pants, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and the scrub top over it.
The Hunters had not only helped me find a mission, but they’d helped me find a day job, because slaying vamps didn’t pay anyone’s rent. Killing was just a hobby of mine.