by May Dawson
I turn it over, but there’s no name.
There’s just a stamp. A simple little flower—the Night-blooming Flox—has been pressed into white wax to seal it closed.
My heart races despite myself as I open up his letter. The inside is more of the same quick, messy writing, and when I open it, a few newspaper clippings fall out. I unfold them; they’re a pair of stories from the national newspaper about the Fox’s dashing rescue of Vasilik nobility.
My dear Tera,
I hope you don’t mind that I’ve taken the liberty of writing you, or of including these little stories about my misadventures. I’ve read that people hate those who cloak their bragging, so I’ll be forthright: as you might expect, I am indeed hoping that these misadventures impress you. Although our acquaintance was brief, I find you intriguing.
I’d like to see you again, Tera, but I realize it’s a bit of a gamble on your part. For now, I must remain the Fox—masked, hidden—even from you, for the sake of all those damned helpless Vasiliks. For all you know, I’m absolutely monstrous behind the mask (I’ve actually been assured that I’ve grown into my nose—I’ll admit there was a time in my youth when that outcome seemed a bit uncertain—but you’ll have to take my word for it) so I hope my good deeds will help weight the scales in my favor.
I think you’ll understand why I don’t have a return address at the moment. But if you choose to respond, and if you leave the message at the entrance to those tunnels, it will find its way to me.
Hopefully—
Your Fox
His letter leaves me smiling like an idiot, so I suppose I just might write back.
~If you’d like to know what trouble that Fox—and Airren, Croft and Cax—and I will find next, click here now for Three Kinds of Lost.
Or, read on for an excerpt…
An excerpt from Three Kinds of Lost
Chapter One
Tera
I’m having dinner with Stelly and my men when the noisy chatter in the dining room suddenly dies. My heart speeds as I look for the door. Maybe it’s the True, again.
“I’m looking for Tera Donovan.” A man in a dark jacket with piping down the sleeves stands in the doorway of the dining hall.
Mycroft is on his feet faster than any mortal man should be able to move. “What do you want?”
“You don’t look like a Tera,” the man says mildly.
Airren raises his hand to stop Mycroft. “It’s one of the king’s messengers.”
“Actually, I work for the prince,” the messenger says brightly. His gaze locks onto my face, and he crosses the now-hushed room.
Mycroft crosses his arms, towering over me.
Everyone in the room is staring at me. Half of Rawl House is here, paused over their beef and gravy. I grip the edge of the wooden table tightly with one hand, as a tremble of anxiety races through my legs.
But I still push back my chair and stand straight and tall. I aim a pleasant, blank look toward the messenger. No one has to know how I feel on the inside. The only real right I have here in Avalon, after losing my citizenship for my father’s sins, is the right to keep my feelings to myself.
He holds a cream-colored envelope out to me.
When I take it from him, the paper is so smooth and rich that it feels like fabric. “Thank you.”
The pause in the room hangs. The blur of faces continue to gawk at me. Even the messenger hesitates.
Do they expect me to rip the fancy paper open right here and read whatever is inside? To announce it to the room?
“I’m going to assume this isn’t an invitation to my own hanging.” I smile brightly and toss the envelope on the table next to my plate. As I sit primly back in my seat, I drape my napkin back over my lap.
Cax stares at me across the table, green eyes wide. Concern is written across his handsome face, and I lower my eyes so I won’t see his expression. My heart’s already racing, and heat threatens to flush my neck and cheeks if I don’t distract myself.
I stab a piece of meat with my fork, put it into my mouth, and chew as if the room isn’t watching. The meat is gritty on my tongue and almost too thick to swallow, but I don’t choke. I lift my glass and take a long drink of ice-cold water. Too bad it isn’t something stronger. The academy used to serve wine with dinner, when the school first began. Some traditions should be keepers.
Airren leans close to the messenger, touching his shoulder. The two exchange a brief exchange in whispers. When Airren takes his seat beside me, his arm brushes mine, and I breathe in the scent of his cologne, of spice and citrus.
When the messenger weaves back between tables to the central aisle, Mycroft finally sits down. His eyes narrow at the messenger’s back, as if he’ll end the man should this envelope bring me trouble.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” I tell Mycroft.
His eyebrows rise over gold-flecked brown eyes. “Why would I ever do that?”
“It’s an expression.” I don’t bother to add that it was an expression dirt-side. They all know where my strange idioms came from. I can’t remember anymore what I’d heard here in Avalon and what belongs to Primus. These little tricks of language make it even harder to blend in. It was already hard enough since the face of the dark lord’s daughter has been plastered in the newspapers, announcing my return.
Slowly, the room shifts again as people look back to their own tables, and the conversational volume in the room rises again.
The conversations were probably about me. But still. At least now I can pretend that I’m not the focus point of so much anger and malignant curiosity.
“Look at you, cool as can be.” Airren sways in toward me. His shoulder brushing mine before probably hadn’t been an accident, but now it certainly isn’t. Comforted by his strength and solidity, I rest my head on his shoulder.
“I don’t feel particularly cool.” I pick up the envelope, tapping it against my chin absently.
“You have to open it!” Stelly’s blue eyes widen in exasperation. “The prince must want to meet you!”
“I’d assume so,” Airren says.
“I’m trying to blend,” I remind them. “Into this school, into this realm. I don’t really think the prince is helping.”
Stelly flutters her fingers dramatically. “Look at you. Tera Donovan, the girl with the dragon! The girl who took out the True! The girl who jumped from the top floor of Engineering just ahead of an explosion!”
“I didn’t take out the True,” I protest. “If I had, I wouldn’t still be cracking jokes about hanging.”
No matter how I try, I can’t help but think—too many times a day—about the death penalty that Avalon had reinstated after the Savage Night. I can accept that I’m misunderstood, and that some people will see me as my father’s daughter, as a potential villain. I can bear that as long as I have a few friends who know who I truly am. I just don’t want to be that misunderstood, and find myself on the wrong side of the Crown.
Thinking about it made my throat tighten, as if I can already feel the rough rope against my neck.
“Don’t be silly, they’d never hang you,” Stelly says lightly.
They did something far worse to my father, but hey. Let’s roll with optimism.
Stelly almost always does.
I push my plate away, glancing down the table to see if I’d lost my audience. No one seems to be watching me now except for my friends. “Well, I think I’m going to skip dessert tonight.”
Dessert is just vanilla pudding anyway. One expects an academy of magic to be glamorous, but there’s still math tests and even though one would expect they could whip up all kinds of desserts—chocolate fountains and towering cakes—there’s a surprising amount of bland vanilla pudding.
“I hope I’m invited too,” Stelly says.
“You’re really confident this isn’t a hanging, huh?” I ask.
“For the love of God.” Cax rubs one long-fingered hand across his face in exasperation, tousling his blond bangs in
the process. “Just open the envelope, Tera.”
I shake my head. I’m both desperately curious and full of dread, and I’d rather stall a minute or two more. “I’m taking this upstairs.”
A translucent silver bubble floats across the table and hovers in front of Mycroft.
Mycroft groans, but holds out his hand. The bubble settles into his palm and then pops, splattering me with magic that dries before I can lean close to Mycroft.
There’ a faint sparkle in the air between his outstretched hand and his ear. He raises his hand, holding me at a distance, as he leans away. Rude. You should let the-woman-that-you-maybe-love eavesdrop.
Whenever Croft kisses me, his touch is full of passion, full of need. But most of the time, he’s cool and distant. I want to slap him, when I don’t want to kiss him.
When his lips set grimly, I know we’ve been summoned, even before he says flatly, “Radner wants to see us.”
“Nothing good ever comes out of that office,” Cax mutters.
Things were already weird, but that officially chills the mood.
The last time she wanted to see us, she launched us on a collision course with the True and with Raila. After all that drama, my relationship with Cax still feels uncertain. And yet, every time he pushes his hair out of his green eyes in his distracted way, or he flashes me that quick, rakish grin, or he sees me and his eyes brighten as if my presence lights him up, I’m struck by a pleasant, affectionate nervousness that rises through my chest on gossamer wings.
After the Raila situation, I know that every one of these men is an asshole in their own way. I used to think Cax was innocent, but they’re all capable of being selfish and stupid and arrogant.
But they’re my assholes, nonetheless.
These four people at my table are the only people in Avalon who are on my side. They might hurt me because of their broken edges, and I might hurt them because of mine, but in the end, we’re a family. We can trust each other.
As if she’s a mind-reader, Stelly reaches out and squeezes my elbow. The guys are getting up from the table, distracted as they talk amongst themselves, and her deep blue eyes widen as she cocks her head. I’m okay, I nod back to her.
I haven’t had a family in a long time, and no matter how much anxiety flutters in my stomach right now, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with them. The two of us push back our chairs and stand, and the men wait, letting us pass ahead of them.
“Radner’s not that bad,” Airren’s voice is low and sexy behind my shoulder. He rests his hand possessively on my hip as we head for the doors, and I don’t mind one bit. “She’s all bark.”
“You mean she’s not going to throw me out of Avalon on my ass?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Even though she threatens it every time I’m face-to-face with her?”
“She’d never do that,” he says confidently.
“Because it would be wrong?”
“Nah, she’s old-school Intel, her sense of right-and-wrong can be fuzzy. But she likes me.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course. Who doesn’t?”
“And I like you.” Airren starts to say something else—maybe it’s a promise that everything is going to be all right—but then he gives up and squeezes me tighter.
His words remind me of Stelly’s recent promise that if worst came to worst, if I was banished again, this time someone would come to find me. My men and my best friend wouldn’t leave me alone again. I can imagine my return to Primus so vividly that it feels like a memory: going back to the boarding house that smelled of dry rot and bleach, back to my job kneeling in front of grocery shelves to stock cans for hours. Then Airren or Cax or Mycroft would come through the doors of the grocery store, looking big and mysterious and not-quite-of-this-world with their fine, fitted clothes over their muscular bodies. They’d sweep me off my feet—probably literally, knowing Mycroft—and carry me back to the world of magic.
It’s a nice thought, but I don’t much want to test it. Stelly still sees the world in an innocent way, where the good guys win and love triumphs in the end.
Spoiler alert: that’s not the world we live in.
To escape into Avalon with Tera, download Three Kinds of Lost from Amazon now…
A Note From May
Hello, and thank you for reading.
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You help indie authors like me so much when you leave a review. A review also helps me decide what to write next, so I can focus on bringing readers what they want most. Until someone brings me a TimeTurner (please?) I’m forced to prioritize all these stories bouncing around in my head. You can review here.
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~May
About the Author
May Dawson’s first crush was Indiana Jones, and it wasn’t just for Harrison Ford’s rugged good looks. She’s always been drawn to adventure, and she found it in Bali and the Antarctic, traveling widely before she settled down to raise two red-haired munchkins/hooligans. These days you can find her embracing a very different kind of adventure: love. Living it. Writing it.
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Also by May Dawson
The Lilith Series:
Wild Angels
Fierce Angels
Dirty Angels
Chosen Angels
Their Shifter Princess:
Their Shifter Princess
Their Shifter Princess 2: Pack War
Their Shifter Princess 3: Coven’s Revenge
Ashley Landon, Bad Medium
Dead Girls Club
The True and the Crown series:
One Kind of Wicked
Two Kinds of Damned
Three Kinds of Lost
Four Kinds of Cursed
Five Kinds of Love