Raging Rival Hearts

by Olivia Wildenstein

  Magena, Gwenelda had whispered as a girl with short black hair sat up, stirring rose petals as she stretched thin arms over her head.

  Without uttering a single word, Kajika had stared and stared at Ishtu’s sister. I watched him watch her. When his dark eyes gleamed with tears that never fell, something disconcerting had stirred deep within me.

  His eyes had cut straight to me, and I’d blushed, but I hadn’t turned away or fled. I’d stayed rooted to the edge of the rowan circle until the other hunters awakened with more fresh corpses Cruz and two lucionaga had flown in from mortuaries. I watched Menawa come back to life and embrace Gwenelda, adoration crackling between them, then cinch his brother in a bone-crushing hug.

  Only after they’d all risen did I leave. I’d gone to walk on the beach, which was where Cruz had found me hours later.

  He’d been the only one to come looking for me.

  “If faerie petals kept the hunters alive, then maybe they could keep you alive, Lily.” My brother’s voice broke me out of my reverie.

  I stared at him in horror. Had he just suggested interring me?

  “It would only be until we figured out a way to get you home.”

  I shook my head so vehemently that my ponytail whipped my cheeks.

  Ace’s Adam’s apple worked in his unshaven throat. He reached out and plucked one of my hands, squeezing it between his own. “Your skin is ice-cold.”

  I snatched it away then pointed to the gray sky.

  His blue eyes narrowed. “You can lie to many people, but not to me. Never to me.”

  Not a lie.

  He snorted.

  Is Cat still sleeping?

  The assistant had sent me a message while I was at Astra’s that my ride out of Rowan was sitting on the airstrip, waiting for me. Even though the pilots were at my beck and call and would wait for me, however long it took, I needed to leave before my plan was unearthed like the Gottwas’s caskets.

  I started toward the house when Ace called me back. “What are your plans for today?”

  I froze. Was this a test? Had the assistant or one of the pilots betrayed me? Making sure my face was blank, I turned toward him. Sleep. I didn’t sleep last night.

  I didn’t wait around to see if he believed me. Once I reached my destination, I would leave him a letter. Oh, skies, the next few days would be so difficult. I gulped but the lump stuck to my throat.

  Inside the house, Derek was having coffee with Milly, who was already dressed in her purple scrubs.

  “Hey, sweetie, how did you sleep?” Derek asked.

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Want some coffee?” Milly asked me.

  I shook my head but grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge before climbing the stairs toward Cat’s bedroom. I knocked.

  “Come in.”

  I let myself into the still-dark room. Cat was in bed with the covers up to her chin. When she saw me, she stretched her arms and smiled slowly. “Where did you spend the night?”

  I frowned.

  She turned onto her side. “I know you didn’t sleep here. Ace went to check on you, and you weren’t in bed.”

  I signed that I was with Remo, which made her already slanted eyes slant some more.

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought you would’ve been with—”

  I shook my head before she could utter Kajika’s name because footsteps resounded on the stairs.

  My brother burst into the bedroom. “Cat, we need to get going, so get dressed.”

  A frown gusted over Cat’s face. “Where is it that we’re going?”

  “To Holly’s farm.”

  Cat sat up. “Holly’s farm? Why?”

  “’Cause there’s a fucking new hunter in town.”

  “What?” She flung the covers off her legs and stood. “Who made a new hunter?”

  Ace’s gaze slanted toward me. “Kajika.”

  My heart banged, and I felt its echo against each one of my ribs.

  Cat furrowed her brow. “Kajika made a new hunter? When?”

  “Remember that guy who Kajika went Hannibal Lecter on? Well apparently he wasn’t Daneelie; he was just married to one.”

  Cat’s lips formed a perfect O while mine parted to release a relieved breath. Not because a new hunter had risen—that was terrible news considering the human he’d been—but because Kajika hadn’t done it on purpose. Ace had no reason to hold it against him.

  “Gwen just stopped by to tell me all about the new recruit. Today just keeps getting better and better.” He glanced at me as he said this, which of course made my cheeks tingle with guilt.

  He doesn’t know what I have planned, I reassured myself.

  “He’s here in Rowan?” Cat yanked clothes off hangers, then vanished into the bathroom to get dressed.

  Ace’s gaze finally unfastened from mine. “Yes,” he answered loud enough for her to hear through the door, which opened, letting out a sweet lavender stream that trailed Cat as she blurred around the room, grabbing phone, keys, and a couple of folded twenties.

  Cat’s hazy form sharpened as she finally stopped moving to stuff everything in the pocket of her skinny gray jeans. “Are others with him?”

  “Charlotte, her eldest son, and the guy’s wife came along for the ride too.”

  What’s going to happen to the man? I signed.

  “What do you mean, what’s going to happen to him?” Ace asked.

  Will they kill him?

  “Kill him? Why, Lily, hunters aren’t murderers…right?” Sarcasm dripped from Ace’s tone. Anger didn’t bring out the best in people, but in my brother, it brought out the absolute worst.

  I didn’t want to remember him like this. Cat must’ve been really preoccupied by Ace’s news because she didn’t comment on his surly remark.

  She tugged open her window. “Lily, are you coming with us?”

  “Lily’s going to take a nap.”

  “Why don’t you take a nap later?” she asked me.

  “Because her night was too exhausting.”

  It hit me then that my brother truly didn’t believe I’d been with Faith and Remo.

  Making sure Derek wasn’t out and about in the graveyard, he grabbed Cat, hoisting her into his arms. She hooked her arms around his neck. Before taking flight, he tossed out, “Have a nice nap, sis. Oh, and I stationed a guard by the house, so don’t try anything stupid.” And then he leaped out the window and took to the mottled gray sky.

  Crap. Now I had a lucionaga to get rid of?

  After they shot through the clouds, I returned to my bedroom. I’d been about to unplug my charger and roll it up when I remembered I’d need to get rid of my phone to stay untraceable. Besides the cash I kept in a hatbox in the closet, nothing was coming with me.

  I called a cab, then hesitated to send Kajika one last message, but instead I powered off my phone and stashed it inside a fur-lined boot. I wouldn’t be needing it where I was going. I looked up at the light fixture illuminating my closet and an idea came to me. Not a great one, but it would have to do.

  I went out into the graveyard and squinted around the white landscape for the black-clad guard, but saw none. Maybe he’d followed Ace. Maybe—

  A firefly buzzed by the porch railing.

  I gestured to the luminescent creature, and it grew into a large, black-clothed, golden-eyed man.

  “What is it, Princess?” he asked in Faeli.

  I tipped my head to the house.

  Reluctantly, he followed me inside.

  I pointed to my walk-in closet. I flicked the light switch insistently to make him understand the lightbulb was shot. Even though his dark blond eyebrows knit together, he didn’t suspect me of foul play. He stepped inside the closet and reached up. I whipped my hands, and ribbons of wita braided between the doorframe into a net from which not even a firefly could emerge.

  I’m sorry, I mouthed and shut the door.

  The guard banged and banged against
the walls of the closet, and then he began to yell. Considering Derek wasn’t home, I wasn’t too worried about anyone rescuing him before I could escape. I passed my palms over my face next, using more of my dust, and then left the house.

  The taxi was just rolling into the driveway when I stepped out. Without looking back, I climbed into the backseat and showed him the paper on which I’d written the address to the private airstrip.

  The driver kept darting glances at me in his rear-view mirror as he drove. Finally, he asked the question that must’ve been burning on his lips since he’d pulled up to the graveyard.

  “You friends with that celebrity…Lily Wood? I heard she was shacking up with the Prices.”

  I shook my head and drummed my nails against the armrest. Dust could change my appearance, but it couldn’t mask my muteness.

  “Buried a loved one then?”

  I nodded.

  For a while, he was silent. And then, “That Derek Price. He’s such a good guy. Good coroner too, or so I’ve been told. Touch wood, I’ve never lost no one yet.” When I didn’t answer, he went on, “Many people are starting to arrive for the wedding. I heard they were going to have drones and circus entertainers and fireworks. You invited?”

  I shook my head, then closed my eyes and pretended to sleep so he would stop firing questions at me. Even though I’d camouflaged my true face, I didn’t want him to remember driving a mute girl. I wanted him to remember a grieved, gray-haired widow who’d visited her late husband’s corpse in a graveyard, or to forget me altogether.

  I wanted everyone to forget me.

  Skies, how did terminally ill people endure this limbo? I almost regretted not staking myself with one of Kajika’s rowan wood arrows. Not that he would’ve willingly imbued it with his blood, but surely another hunter would’ve done me the honor. I thought of the new hunter then—his name came back to me…Pete. I was sure he would’ve taken great pleasure in wetting an arrow with his poisonous blood.

  Enough, I scolded myself, as the cab came to a stop in front of a gleaming silver jet ribboned with a navy W.

  The pilot, who’d been standing by the plane’s stairs, strode to my door and pulled it open. I didn’t drop the disguise of severe updo and wrinkled skin. From his grooved brow, I guessed he’d been expecting the real me, or my brother.

  “No luggage?” he asked, after he’d popped open the trunk of the cab and found it empty.

  I shook my head and ascended the stairs of the jet, then took a seat. The air hostess tried to offer me coffee and finger sandwiches as we took off, but I closed my eyes and again pretended to sleep. When the tires lifted from the ground, I spread my fingers wide and concentrated on the dust I’d left behind, until it trickled back into my palm. I balled my fingers. The guard would now be free. It was a matter of seconds until he went to tell my brother that I’d escaped.

  By the time they figured out I’d taken a plane—if they did—I’d be long gone. I thought of my destination, of how I would lose myself there, how easy it would be.

  Las Vegas.

  The city of anonymity and sin with desert temperatures.

  Memories of the strip flashed through my mind. I’d been fifty-one—ten human years—when a portal was created to link Neverra to the Flamingo Casino (one of the first hotels on the strip). Faeries loved gambling, which had contributed to the astronomical growth of Sin City.

  To that day, Vegas was a favorite Neverrian destination, which meant I would have to live cloaked. Perhaps I should’ve headed to the Caribbean—few faeries went there—but I didn’t want to die alone in silence on a beach. I wanted a loud, lively ending to my life, a place where nothing ever closed, a city that didn’t sleep, because I had no plans on wasting any more precious time sleeping.

  27

  Many Faces

  Fire pulsing behind my eardrums, matching the frenetic loudness surrounding me, I crossed the teeming lobby of the hotel toward the bank of elevators.

  The concierge escorted me himself to the rooftop suite I’d paid for with Faith’s credit card. After taking in my sprawling living room, private swimming pool, wrap-around terrace, and four gigantic bedrooms decorated in every shade of beige imaginable, I handed the man a hundred dollars and closed the door behind him.

  I was no mastermind, and yet I’d made it. Being a person who flew—more like walked now—under the radar had finally served its purpose.

  Keeping two wads of cash, I laid out the rest in a drawer and cloaked the stacks in dust so that they resembled a row of socks. Until I died, my dust would adhere to the green bills. After that, it would be open season. I hoped that whoever found the cash would use it to noble ends.

  I grabbed my keycard, then changed my appearance to a redhead with streaks of liquid liner along her green eyes and bright red lipstick on her mouth. I checked my appearance in the elevator mirror, added a beauty mark above my lip, and then strode out into the shopping maze that took up the first and second floors of the hotel.

  I spent several hours and thousands of dollars creating my wardrobe. Of course, I could’ve made outfits out of dust, but there was always the risk it would fade in places or altogether. At least that was what happened before the regulation on our dust had been lifted by Negongwa. The habit of using it parsimoniously clung to me like wita on skin.

  That night, I selected a tight, black sequined dress so unlike the loose pastel silks I favored. I kept the appearance of the redhead I’d adopted earlier, but darkened my eyes some more and added black diamond earrings that grazed my bare shoulders. Since I couldn’t change my body shape or height with dust, I slid on a lacey push-up bra and platform heels that made me almost as tall as Cat.

  The sudden thought of her pricked my chest like a thorn. How I wished she were there, getting ready alongside me. I itched to text her, but remembered I’d abandoned my phone.

  I left my suite and descended to the casino floor. I took a seat at a poker table, next to a man who’d sweated through his pink button-down and a woman with purple pockets of exhaustion underneath her eyes. I handed the dealer a stack of hundreds, which he converted into chips without raising a brow. I was a high-roller tonight, which sent a tiny thrill through me. Never had Lily Wood acted so rashly.

  The dealer slid me two cards face-down—queen of diamonds and eight of hearts. Pink-shirt checked, but the woman bid, and I followed, tossing my chips into the pot. Pink-shirt folded. The dealer aligned three cards on the table and flipped them over. I now had a pair of queens. Better than nothing, but not great either. The woman pushed a stack of chips toward the pot. I matched her stack, then, for the heck of it, added an extra chip.

  She raised her eyes to mine, scrutinizing my expression. I crossed my arms and leaned back in wait. Finally, she matched my bet. The fourth card was dealt and turned. Another queen. Okay, now I had a solid hand. I sat up a little straighter and unwound my arms. Another round of betting thickened the pot, and then the last turn card was flipped.

  An eight.

  I had a full house.

  I thought of what the woman could have that could best a full house. A royal flush? A straight flush? Four of a kind?

  She pushed a stack of chips into the middle. Twice the amount she’d bet earlier. I matched her bet, because what did I have to lose besides money I would have no use for beyond the grave?

  We showed our hands. She had one eight and the pair of queens on the table. Two pairs. I smirked as the dealer pushed the mountain of chips toward me. I arranged them in neat stacks. I won the next thirteen hands, bluffing my way to success six of those times. I hadn’t played poker in ages but hadn’t lost my touch.

  Pink-shirt’s armpits turned more transparent as sweat poured from his pores. He didn’t win once and finally left, but was replaced by a new player.

  This man’s hair was combed back and looked so rigid he’d probably used an entire bottle of gel. “The floor manager mentioned this table has one hell of a lucky player. I like lucky players.” His bright
blue gaze brushed over my face and then lower.

  Sleazeball.

  He extracted a stack of chips from his fine wool jacket. Had he just come from a fancy dinner or did he dress up to gamble? Or maybe he worked here?

  What had I been thinking? Winning attracted attention. I needed to leave, but leaving instantly was conspicuous. No, I would lose the next two hands and then leave. As the dealer slid us our cards, the newcomer shifted in his seat. He was so close that I could smell his aftershave.

  “Huh,” he said.

  I glanced at my cards, then up at him.

  He cocked his head to the side. “Small world.”

  I frowned, not understanding what he was insinuating. It wasn’t like we’d met before. At least he wouldn’t have met me in this form.

  He sniffed the air, then leaned toward me and whispered, “Nice perfume. Eau de wita?”

  28

  The Storm

  I sucked in a breath. Dust had a particular odor, but only hunters and faeries could detect it. Which meant he was one of us. What crap luck…

  I slid toward the edge of my chair, even though what I really wanted to do was haul ass out of the casino and barricade myself in my suite.

  As the dealer arranged the flop, the fae asked softly in Faeli, “Do we know each other?”

  I studied my chips, selecting the amount I wanted to bet. As I tossed them into the pot, I shook my head. From the corner of my eye, I saw him squint at my face. He could look as hard as he wanted, he wouldn’t see through my dust. I was good at disguises.

  “Cat got your tongue?” the fae tried again.

  I glared at him, hoping he would just stop and leave me alone, then focused on my cards, reassuring myself he couldn’t tell who I was. When he asked why I was hiding my true face, I folded and stood. Shooting my opponents a cordial albeit stiff nod, I scooped up my chips, tipped the dealer, then strode away.

  The fae didn’t follow me…at least not right away. After a minute, he got up and crossed the casino floor after me, eyes gleaming in the felted darkness. Keeping my pace steady, I walked into the ladies’ room. I debated whether to change my appearance. In the end, I didn’t. He’d smell my dust and just follow my new persona.