Fallen Queen (Lost Fae Book 2)

by May Dawson

  “What would you call us?” She frowned slightly, and I leaned forward to kiss the crease between her brows.

  I’d hurt her with my doubt. Somehow, I’d managed to disturb the unstoppable, irrepressible princess of summer who was never offended by anyone’s insults. I wanted to take away that sting.

  “Lovers seems too simple,” I said, “but whatever you call it, I’ll always be here. For you.”

  Her lips parted. Then she leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss me, her hands gliding up under my shirt to my shoulders. I slid my arm across her back and held her closely to me, kissing her slowly and deeply. She smiled against my lips, and then that smile dropped away as she kissed me more frantically, grinding her hips forward against mine.

  The two of us tore each other’s clothes off there at the edge of the frozen water. It must have been the fury of our motion, but the ice groaned beneath us again, then I felt it buck beneath our feet as it splintered and cracked.

  But Alisa just laughed as the ice broke apart between us. I plunged into the water—and she dove in after me.

  Even with our ability to heat ourselves, the water was cold—shockingly so—but not cold enough to hurt us. The two of us took deep breaths, then swam under the ice, which seemed to glow above us eerily.

  Being under the ice always gave me a moment of panic, despite how comfortable I was in the water. I glanced over at Alisa’s face, her lavender hair waving around her pretty face. She stuck her tongue out at me under the water, and I exhaled little bubbles of air to keep from laughing. She was fearless. She was also probably a danger to herself and others, but I loved her spirit anyway.

  Then she shot forward ahead of me, swimming easily, and I caught up with her in a few quick strides. The two of us surfaced in the clear water, and she drew a long, deep breath, as if she’d almost pushed too far.

  “I always forget about your sea blood,” she managed, pushing her wet hair back from her face. “I wish I was so comfortable in the water.”

  She leaned back in the water and floated. I floated with her.

  “You know Herrick wants to marry me off,” she said. “Just once. That’s the really boring part of it all. One Alisa, one groom.”

  She spoke so lightly, as if the thought of her marrying someone else didn’t tear at her the way it did me, but I could barely breathe.

  She was already going on, “This academy misadventure is supposed to be my last hurrah. Then I disappear under the sea.”

  “Are you going to let him?” My voice came out dark.

  She turned to look at me. “What do you think?”

  I think you should marry Azrael and me. That would solve the problem of her losing the throne. But I didn’t dare say it. Besides, it would seem so political—I didn’t want her to think Az or I valued her for what she could do for the autumn court. “I think you’ll do what you want, as always.”

  “Oh yes, the spoiled princess of summer.”

  “I think maybe you’ve oversold that reputation a bit.”

  “Do you?” She straightened and began to tread water. She trailed her fingers through the cold lake over and over, until ripples danced under her touch, as she heated the water around us. Steam trailed toward the sky.

  She wanted something from me, and I didn’t know what it was or how to give it to her. The females who crowded me at court had given me no clues as to how to deal with this one.

  An ugly tangle of words pressed at the base of my throat, but all of them felt like the wrong ones. Maybe I should ask what she wanted to hear, but that seemed callous.

  I didn’t want to lose the fragile thing between us, and even more than that, I didn’t want to ever lose her.

  She treaded water, watching my face, and when she leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine, I thought she must have understood what I was thinking.

  It was only later when I realized I saw in her face what I wanted to see. No matter how fearless or reckless or wild, sometimes a female needs to hear that someone loves her. Everyone needs that.

  And I failed her that day, even as my hands were on her body and her lips were on mine.

  But in the moment, I didn’t realize; her kisses were full of heat, her hands urgent. The two of us bobbed in the water, wrapping our slicked bodies together; we both laughed at the effort it took to line up my parts and hers in the water, and when Alisa’s lilting laugh filled the air, the whole world felt like it was right to me.

  Her thighs wrapped tight around my waist. I tread water for us both as her arm wrapped my shoulders and she lifted up and down on my cock, her shining breasts in my face.

  The two of us were hungry for each other, and we increasingly understood just how to please each other, and soon the two of us were lying on the ice, holding each other.

  The starry sky spread above us and the pleasure of being naked in the snow and warm anyway felt like magic and hope. I looked over at her, wanting to share the feeling, but she was studying the stars too. I laid my head back down on the ice, thinking that she saw the same stars that I did, the same way. I thought I didn’t need to say anything.

  I was wrong, of course.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Alisa

  Present day

  I was looking for another book that might uncover some secrets when I saw my own handwriting in golden script on a cover.

  I stared at it for a second, then glanced at Raile. He tossed the book he was reading onto the table and tilted back onto the legs of his chair, rubbing his eyes. “We’ve got so many ideas that might work. Challenging Faer to trial-by-combat for the throne, and hoping the Shadow Man doesn’t show up first. Politely explaining to the Shadow Man that you have an equal claim on the throne. Unbinding him from his vow.”

  He finished, “So many ideas that might work, but all of them probably won’t.”

  “Don’t be so jaded.” I drew the book out and balanced it on my arm, trying to look casual as I opened it. “You know, you never tell me anything about your life.”

  “It’s very boring except for the parts with you in it.”

  “Is it?”

  “For you, I’d imagine.”

  “Give me some credit, Raile. I’d love to hear your stories. You’ve been awfully stand-off-ish for a guy who seems to think we’re all-but-soul-mates.”

  “You are my enemy, Princess. Beautiful an enemy as you are.”

  “Yet you want me as a wife?” I was half-engaged in the banter while I flipped the pages. My handwriting was curling and elaborate—in the mortal world, people always commented on how pretty my cursive was and yet how hard to read, a gift of the Fae language—and it filled the pages in a tangled, lovely scrawl.

  “Well, I relish being bored about as much as you do. Perhaps we’re on the wrong track.”

  “Don’t give up on knowledge just because we’ve spent one day in the library,” I said, as I read one of my diary entries.

  Faer is exasperated with me lately because I enjoy what are supposed to be his lessons. Father lets me participate with the idea that it will shame Faer into better swordsmanship, but I don’t think Faer can be shamed into anything—he’s as stubborn as I am and intent that we are going to rule with peace, not war.

  I agree with him, but isn’t it easier to maintain peace with a bit of a threat encouraging good behavior on all sides? It does no harm to peace to know how to fight… just in case peace should fail, as much as we’d all prefer it.

  Anyway, I enjoy the practice, and Faer teases me for being so bloodthirsty, but I am what I am. I like a bit of a fight.

  Father came out and scolded Faer for losing to me—a girl, how embarrassing—and no matter how much Father tells me how proud he is of me, if he really were, he wouldn’t be ashamed of Faer for losing, would he?

  Deep down, he must think its my nature that I should be second place to Faer. I called him out on it, and Father tried to talk his way through. He can talk his way out of almost anything—but Faer and I are HIS children after all,
and there’s two of us, so we are pretty much unbeatable.

  Faer told him, “We’ll rule together anyway, so Alisa can manage the wars part and I’ll focus on the things that matter—economics and agriculture and technology and diplomacy.”

  “Thanks, brother,” I said.

  He winked at me. “We all have our strengths. Some of us more than others.”

  “You two can’t rule together,” Father warned.

  “I think when we are king and queen, we’ll get to make the rules.” Faer said.

  “It’s unnatural,” Father said. “A committee can’t rule. You would be too slow to make decisions.”

  “We’re not a committee,” I said.

  “We’re twins,” Faer finished the thought.

  Father finally grew exasperated with us both and walked off. At least that left us alone to continue working on our fencing.

  I wonder sometimes if he’ll try to ruin everything.

  I can’t imagine ruling without my brother at my side.

  “I think we should go on a journey.” Raile’s words broke into my troubled thoughts.

  Had I really written all this about my brother?

  What had happened between Faer and me?

  “We’re supposed to be meeting your court tonight,” I called, half paying attention, as I rubbed my fingertips across the date on top of the page. I’d written this long before I ran off to the academy.

  Had I truly run off? Was that why I’d kept so many secrets from Azrael?

  “You don’t really want to meet my court, do you?”

  “I went to all of Faer’s terrible balls. I think I can spare you one night of being miserable in a crowd.” Raile had been pretty helpful, after all. Whatever his true reasons.

  “You are an absolute light, Alisa.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “What did you find?” he asked, his voice near, and I looked up to find him close to me. I hadn’t noticed him getting up from his seat.

  Now he was so close to me that I breathed in the clean scent of his body and felt the commanding way he seemed to dominate a room.

  I turned the cover over and held it up to him to read, hoping all the while that my old spell would hold and he would see something different.

  I didn’t want to share my diary with Raile, just as he didn’t want to share his diary with me. I was even afraid of what I might find in these pages, not that anything could stop me from delving into the truth.

  “Rituals of the Sea,” he read out loud. “Well, spoiler alert, Alisa; summer magic doesn’t work down here, and the Shadow Man is woven from summer magic. I’m not sure any Sea court rituals would ever have been created to deal with the Shadow Man or his minions.”

  “If he’s woven out of Faer’s magic, I’m just as powerful as Faer,” I said. I thought of how he’d barely managed to break the spell I’d cast on my own face. “I don’t understand it. I stole my own memories; I should be able to give them back to myself.”

  Raile nodded, no surprise flickering across his face, and I stopped and frowned. “You knew.”

  He shrugged one shoulder.

  “The note I took into the mortal world—it wasn’t written in my handwriting.” I tucked my diary under my arm and stormed across the room to the table. I shuffled his papers, where he’d jotted notes as we wrote.

  I couldn’t picture the note quite clearly in my head, but as I stared down at his notes, I was pretty sure it had been written in Raile’s loose and artistic hand.

  “You were there?” I asked. “Did you do it to me? Or did you help me?”

  I still clutched some of the notes in my hand as I turned to him in confusion.

  He bit his lip as he stared at me, and for the first time, I saw something uncertain and boyish and abashed in that face that might be hundreds of years old. “Both,” he admitted. “You needed help. I thought being banished to the mortal world might be some fitting punishment for your mischief.”

  I let out a shaky laugh. “Then you must know how to undo the spell—”

  “Whenever you worked a spell with someone else, you slipped in your own little safeguards and traps and tricks,” he said, his voice suddenly full of venom. “Look at your diary. I thought we were friends, I thought you trusted me enough to hide your words here, but then you hid it from me.”

  “You did try to read it,” I reminded him blandly.

  “After you forced me to commit myself to a hobgoblin!”

  I shrugged. “Shouldn’t have tried to marry me.”

  Raile raked his hand through his hair, as if my cool answers only infuriated him more. “So no, Alisa, I don’t know how to undo your spell. I don’t know how to make it so I can even talk about some of the things we did together because of our vows. And I could never find you in the mortal world to make sure you were safe!”

  His chest heaved with emotion. His eyes glittered with passion, and then he turned away as if he couldn’t stand for me to see his face. I took a step forward, then hesitated. What had that stutter step forward even meant? I wasn’t exactly going to go comfort him. If I gave into the impulse to grab his arm and swing him around, it should be to punch him, not hug him.

  But when he turned around himself, his face was cold again, and he tucked his hands behind his back. Those were his own shields, though; that was what I saw them as now.

  “You looked for me in the mortal world?” I asked slowly.

  The sea king almost looked…embarrassed. He glanced away. “I didn’t have any intention of speaking to you and breaking the illusion.”

  “You just wanted to make sure I was safe.” The thought was touching—he seemed so genuinely upset he hadn’t been able to look after me in the mortal world—and I had to reach for the cruel things he’d said before. “Because you don’t let anything get hurt that belongs to you.”

  His lips twisted. “Correct.”

  But the word seemed wrenched from his chest.

  “The old Alisa was a real pain in the ass, wasn’t she?” I asked. She was making it so hard for me to untangle the threads of my past.

  “Quite,” he said, “but I loved her anyway.”

  I stared at him, wondering if that meant that he loved me too, now. I wasn’t as sharp and wicked as the old Alisa; maybe I wasn’t as fun, either.

  These males of mine were all quite mad after all, loving a rather impossible female.

  “There has to be a way to undo all my old magic,” I said. “If I made the spell, surely I can break it. I don’t want to be weaker now than I used to be.”

  I felt exasperated by myself, as if I were somehow causing the same block.

  “You aren’t,” he said, but I shook my head.

  “I wish that were true. I failed in the Cursed Caves—I faced my old self, and I wasn’t strong enough to defeat her.”

  “Then let’s try again,” he said suddenly. “The old Alisa had quite a bit of practice with her magic and her daring. You don’t remember any of that. But you’ve been learning, haven’t you?”

  I stared at him. “First of all, you’re a far better cheerleader than I would have expected. Second, the Cursed Caves are pretty far inland, and inland doesn’t seem like a great place for us right now. Once we pop up from the waves, the Shadow Man will start tracking me down again, right?”

  He was smiling at me as if he knew something I didn’t, which always made me feel a bit cross.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Whatever is above is below too,” he promised me. “The Sea court mirrors the world above. My kingdom is four times the size of yours.”

  “I like that you don’t do the humble-brag. You go straight for the brag-brag. Not enough people are bold enough to do that these days.”

  He pulled a face. “You can visit the Cursed Coral Caves.”

  Hope leapt in my chest. Then he added, “We can head there tomorrow. It takes about two days—we’ll have to travel by seahorse. Your swimming is an embarrassment.”

  That statement
was so ridiculous, I wasn’t even sure what to do with it.

  “Oh,” I said. I didn’t want to leave Duncan alone in the dungeon that long. What if Faer grew bored and decided to torture or kill him to punish Az and me? “How far away are we from the shore itself? If we did go overland?”

  He frowned as if he knew what I was plotting, and I was surprised when he answered, “It’s about a two hour swim east.”

  I shuddered at the thought of being alone in the ocean, and let him see the edge of fear I felt when I thought about the idea. My fear was real; I didn’t have to fake it.

  He took a step forward impulsively. “Nothing can hurt you when we’re together, Alisa. Not in the sea.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t doubt that. You’re certainly powerful….down here.”

  The words were meant to flatter him and weaken his suspicions—although they were true, too, they just weren’t things I would normally confess out loud—but he just stared at me.

  “I wish you could see me as more than the sea king,” he said, “but as the friends we used to be.”

  “That sounds dangerous for us both,” I said lightly.

  “I think it’s far more dangerous for us that we don’t, Alisa,” he warned.

  For a second, he seemed so serious as he stared into my eyes. Then he said suddenly, “Well, we’ll head toward the cursed caves tomorrow then—if you’re ready. If you’re sure you really want your memories back.”

  “I do,” I said quickly. I needed my memories back to protect my kingdom—and my males.

  No matter how much I felt a certain sense of dread when I thought about becoming once again the girl I’d left behind in this Fae world when I stepped through that portal.

  “There’s a place I used to go when I needed wisdom,” he said suddenly.

  “You probably should have spent more time there,” I deadpanned, and his lips flickered up just faintly at the corners.

  “Despite the fact you are a wretched, terrible girl, I’m going to take you there,” he said, holding out his hand. “Perhaps it’ll unearth some of the secrets buried deep in that dreadful brain of yours.”