After what felt like days, we dragged our asses out of bed—the floor, for Grayson—and once we’d gorged ourselves on a huge breakfast the White Queen put on in our honor, we set out on foot for the portal.
We left the castle through the grand front entrance, stepping out into a majestic courtyard teeming with activity. There was no hedge maze out here blocking the view, just an open grassy area that overlooked the rest of the kingdom. Plenty of those large manicured bushes were everywhere, shaped like hearts and animals. The smell of blooming flowers filled the gently moving air. I smiled at who I saw waiting for us in the center of all that magical activity—Madden. He watched us with his cool gray eyes, his smile brighter than the enormous sun blazing over our heads in the clear blue sky.
“I could’ve gone the rest of my life without seeing that guy again,” Grayson mumbled, mostly to himself, but I heard him loud and clear.
“Oh, be nice,” I said, slapping his arm as I grinned up at him.
He blew some smoke out of his nose, but his blue eyes were gleaming good naturedly when he met my gaze. “You supernaturals always stick together.”
“It’s not our fault we’re more loyal than shifters,” I shot back.
He snorted a laugh, but he didn’t reply to that.
We came to a stop in front of Madden, who was dressed in another dark velvet suit. This time his tuxedo shirt was black instead of white, and a matching black bow tie hung loose at his neck. He had a new hat too, this one a natty purple top hat to match his suit. But he still hadn’t put any shoes on.
“You saved us all,” Madden said, speaking directly to me and ignoring Grayson completely. Without the obstacle of the Dark Queen’s magic, I could get a clear, unobstructed reading of the faery’s energy for the first time. He was quite powerful and as ancient as I’d earlier believed. He was controlling how much I could see, but he let me know how long he’d been traveling, and that he’d come to this realm many decades earlier only to be trapped by the initial closing of the portal. He and Trystan were brothers, I saw, and Blossom was an orphan tagalong from their home world, which they hadn’t set foot in for hundreds of years.
“We both did,” I said with a grin, nodding toward Grayson.
He reached to take my hands, the cool peppermint smell of him casting Grayson’s hotter, spicier scent from my nostrils. His power spoke to mine. It was as clean and pure as the scent of him, and it told me so many things, as I was sure my own scent was telling him. This was what Grayson would never be able to understand—this sweet, open exchange of energy, how supernaturals could speak to one another and know each other so deeply in just a few short seconds. I’d gotten an inkling of this in the clearing, but now that my own magic was free, I could see so much more.
“I know you,” Madden said, which was a common farewell among supernaturals, at least those who had willingly exchanged their energy.
“And I know you,” I replied.
Grayson made a low noise next to me. Not quite a growl, but close. He was holding onto his patience by a string. Madden seemed to possess a special ability to irk the shit out of him. And he clearly reveled in flexing that ability.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again in some other realm,” Madden whispered, the words meant only for my ears—the sound not leaving his lips at all, but finding their way to me anyway. He squeezed my hand and smiled, showing off his white teeth.
I slid my hands out of his, smiling too. “I hope to see you again,” I replied. “But hopefully not under such brutal circumstances.”
He shrugged, his playful grin turning impish. “Hopefully.” He looked over at Grayson for the first time since we stepped out into the courtyard. He nodded once. “Shifter.”
“Faery,” Grayson answered, not missing a beat.
Madden tipped his purple top hat, looking ready to attend some kind of supernatural prom. “Until we meet again,” he said, and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek, his minty smell making my eyes water. He didn’t wait for me to respond, just crossed the courtyard to rejoin the raucous party already in progress. I caught sight of Trystan, clad in what appeared to be a flowered nightgown that covered his round body completely and hiding his feet. Even Blossom was awake, though she looked exhausted, her eyes half closed as she beamed at no one in particular. They all lifted their glasses to me and I waved, smiling to see them all well. The White Queen was among them, drinking too. She raised a hand to us, bidding us farewell.
“This place is so different now,” I said to Grayson, my eyes drifting around the courtyard. Some of the supernaturals we’d freed from the dungeon were out here as well, celebrating with the forest faeries and the Queen. All of them used their magic to do trivial things, just rejoicing in having that inner harmony restored once more. As soon as they were finished here, they could all return to wherever they called home. I felt a great swelling of pride in that. I had helped them get back what was rightfully theirs, set this kingdom to rights, and received a precious clue as to my parents’ whereabouts. I still didn’t know where the hell they were, but I knew they’d left here together.
“It’s how it should be,” Grayson said. “You don’t have to possess magic to feel how right the air feels now. I can’t believe I ever thought things were normal before.” He frowned, his pretty eyes searching my face.
“The Dark Queen tricked you,” I said with a shrug. “She tricked a lot of people, including the White Queen. But at least these supernaturals are free to use their magic again.”
“What are you going to do now?” he asked.
I took his big hand, liking the heat in his skin, the fire I pictured roiling in his belly. “I have more worlds to discover. I need to find out what happened to my parents.” I considered the deep ache in my bones and muscles. I’d slept a long while, but didn’t feel as rested as I’d like. I needed a little time to recuperate before jumping into the next adventure. A plan wouldn’t hurt either. “Maybe I should regroup first. I’ve been away from home for far too long.”
Grayson’s eyes widened at that, and I saw the excitement shining in them. “I’d love to see this world of yours, if you’ll have me. I’ve never been to Earth.”
I pulled my eyebrows together just a touch. “Don’t you want to go back to your own world?”
The openness of his expression slammed shut, his eyes went dark, all the excitement draining from them so quickly that I almost stepped away from him. “I can’t do that.”
I had to battle against the urge to press him on it, but something in the troubled way he looked at me gave me pause. I decided to let it go. For now.
“You don’t need my permission to come to Earth,” I said, grinning up at him as his face softened back into a smile. “I’m not the queen of the realm.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and tugged me closer. He pressed his smiling lips onto mine and crushed me into a tight, muscly embrace, all that heat moving over my body. His tongue was hot too when it slid into my mouth. He tasted the way he smelled, spicy and sweet. I kissed him back, the heat rising into my cheeks, my senses firing at the passion in his touch.
He reluctantly pulled away from me, both of us breathing heavily. He raked me with a sizzling look in his cerulean eyes, drawing a grin from me. I couldn’t pull my gaze from his, even as the supernatural creatures in the courtyard let loose a cheer at the sight of us holding onto one another. He smiled again too, smoke shooting out of his nose, and I went in for another kiss, relishing the smoky sweet taste of him on my tongue. I could get used to this.
EPILOGUE
~
I SAT CROSS LEGGED ON the couch in my living room, searching through the pages of the Terra Magicarum. I’d been combing it for clues for days, seeing each world through a completely new lens after the cryptic conversation with the White Queen in the throne room. The answer to finding my parents was in this guidebook—I was more certain of that now, than I’d ever been before—I just needed to figure out how to find traces of those phantom footsteps
.
I straightened up at the sound of the key in the lock and turned in time to see Grayson step into the apartment balancing two coffees in one hand. He had a small brown bag in his teeth that was no doubt full of pastries. He handed me one of the coffees before coming around the couch to sit next to me.
“Thanks,” I said, and took a sip. It was still nice and hot, though that was likely his doing. He could boil a glass of ice water if he wanted to just by holding it.
“I brought you a chocolate croissant too,” he said, pulling one out of the bag and taking a bite. Earth had apparently been the first realm he’d visited that had chocolate. The man could not get enough.
“I think I found some of those footsteps the White Queen was talking about.” I pointed to the current page entitled The Hallowed Forest. The artist’s rendering showed a thick, nearly impenetrable forest just before nightfall, the colors rich but dark, and, in the center, a pair of glowing eyes. But on the opposite page, there was a rough etching of a sliver arrow that ended in a point of radiant, golden flame. I had no idea what it meant, but it reminded me of the broken black heart scrawled on the page opposite the colorful picture of Wonderland. At first, I’d thought my mother or father had drawn that heart, but since we’d left the realm of the White Queen, the heart had mended itself on the page and turned red, healing the same way the world itself had done at the return of its magic. Something else was leaving these imprints on the guidebook. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my parents had purposely left me this book as a way to follow their footsteps. That meant they were running from something that they didn’t want to bring home to me. But what?
Grayson was quickly demolishing his chocolate croissant. There was no way of telling how many he’d eaten during the short walk from the corner coffee shop back to my apartment. He’d been tickled pink to find that little hole in the wall and insisted on going down there every day to buy coffee and a chocolatey treat.
“The Hallowed Forest?” he asked, scrunching his golden eyebrows, his blue eyes pinned to the book in my lap. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
I scanned the description, reading it for the third time. There were no handwritten notes in the margins for this world, but a sentence had been underlined in black pen. I read it aloud.
“The heart of darkness hides behind a beautiful mask.”
Grayson frowned at me, his eyes getting shadowy the way they did whenever something troubled him. His smoky scent increased, like the room was about to catch fire. He had a smear of chocolate on the corner of his mouth that I wiped away with my thumb, smiling a little at what a mess he was.
“What makes you say that?” he asked.
I pointed to the book. “It’s written in here. Someone felt the need to underline it.”
Grayson took another lengthy look at the picture of the realm and I did the same. The longer I stared at the drawing of the deep green forest, the more ominous it looked, like the trees were hiding something dangerous in there. But I knew I’d go no matter how disturbed I was by the picture. My gut told me this was the right path…and not just my gut. Since I’d returned from Wonderland, I could feel dark stirrings at my core, a stubborn residue of that corrupted power that had so infected me, both from the mirror and the evil Queen’s amulet. It wasn’t as powerful as before, but it was there, urging me to use it. I hadn’t told Grayson about any of this, not wanting to worry him. But it was getting stronger by the day and I didn’t know how to stop it. That power stirred harder at the sight of the Hallowed Forest. It wanted me to go there and that was exactly what I planned to do.
Grayson finally spoke after several tense, drawn out seconds.
“Can’t we pick a realm to visit that doesn’t look packed full of angry beasts with glowing eyes that want to kill us the minute we step through the portal?”
I smiled into my cup of coffee. “You just described the world I visited before Wonderland. Nothing could be worse than that.”
He didn’t look convinced. “I’d like to visit a nice safe world where we could soak up the sun on a beach or something, wouldn’t you?”
I had to laugh at the weary expression on his handsome face. “What would be the fun in that?”
The End.
~
Are you ready for the next installment in the Worlds of Magic series? Look for Voodoo Magic on your preferred eBook marketplace!
THANKS FOR READING!
~
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR reading Broken Magic. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving an honest review at your point of sale outlet. Your feedback is invaluable to me, as it helps me grow as an author. It also helps me figure out what to write next, based on what my readers are most interested in! If you’d like to leave a review, please visit your favorite online retailer and post your feedback!
I look forward to connecting with you!
Catherine Vale
http://www.CatherineVale.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
~
NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY Bestselling Canadian author Catherine Vale loves to write urban fantasy tales of magic and mayhem, and paranormal romance, where guys sprout fur, and gals aren’t afraid to bite.
Girls with curves, and guys with growl. What more could you want?
When she isn’t lost in one of her fictional worlds of magic and shifters, you can find her watching thrillers, spending time with her friends and family, and dancing to 80′s rock.
If you love reading about kick-ass heroines, powerful heroes and their magical adventures, check out Catherine’s website for a full listing of books: http://www.CatherineVale.com
You can follow her on twitter @ValeRomance or on Facebook at facebook.com/CatherineValeBooks
Other Books by Catherine Vale
Shades of Dragon
Broken Moon
Kiss of Fire
Darkest Days
Wild Things
Run Fur Love
Bearly Magic
Dark Side of the Moon
Murder by Magic
Shifting Magic Series:
Magic Fire, Magic Burn, Magic Blaze
Broken Magic
Have you read any of Catherine’s books? Please consider leaving an honest review at your point of sale outlet.
Broken Magic Page 15