Chapter Ten
Rouen
Be careful what you wish for
Be careful what you hunt
You might just lose your heart
Lose your everything
- “Everything,” Euphoria
Two of them, hands outstretched. Which one is the sleeper-princess?
Through the blinding blare of white, I strain to see—her eyes like burning embers, her hair fanning white flame. Her face rises in my mind, beautiful, serene, terrible.
I must hate her. But I don’t.
Instead, I feel drawn to her, the Winter in my blood longing for the Summer in hers.
The world whites out before I can discern which one she is.
The explosion of white flames rocks me, rips up my violet lightning, and tears into my body.
The sleeper-princess is Awakening, and I am blinded by her radiance.
Next to me, Agravaine howls. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him writhe in agony, the white flames eating across his body, making the circuits in his left arm glow fiery and molten as they burn. He falls to the ground on his knees, flesh burning with purifying fire.
The Moribund. She’s destroying the Moribund.
Could she do that for the hearthstone? Could she do that for me?
I step forward. Agravaine is beating back the flames, screaming Commands at me, but I can’t hear him over the roar of the fire.
Oh, the poetic justice of that! If I wasn’t in terror for my own skin, I’d laugh. Check that. I’d point and laugh.
Before I can move, a wave of power explodes outward.
It blasts me back. My bow snaps, and I barely protect the violin with my body.
I slam back so hard into the viaduct that it shakes.
My vision grays out, my last act reaching for her, for the sleeper-princess…and then darkness.
Chapter Eleven
Syl
Once Awakened, a sleeper-princess
Can be put to slumber again
Only by strongest Grimmacle and
A sacrifice most severe
- Glamma’s Grimm
I figure in the Zombie Apocalypse it’d be bad to wake up in the hospital, but maybe this time, it’s a good thing. Because I have seen better days, for sure.
I wake up, groggy and sweaty, my mind whizzing around in a nightmare loop of shattering glass and twisted, scorched steel, the screech of metal sparking against metal, the stench of burning iron and ozone, and… Was someone there, someone I should remember?
Agony shoots up my leg, graying out my thoughts.
Ugh…I feel like ten miles of rough road, as Glamma would say. And when I reach down to touch my leg, my fingers brush something cold, metallic. I taste the metal in my mouth. My pain ramps up into the stratosphere. “Ahhhh!” I writhe and jerk, and beneath me, a gurney creaks and squeals as someone puts a hand on me, murmuring soothing words that make zero sense.
Wait, gurney? What the heck?
I turn my head, glimpsing blood and a long shard of iron. The squeak, squeak, squeak of my gurney’s wheels nags and tugs at my brain, but I can’t remember.
I’m hurt, obvs, but how? What happened?
Overhead, sickly fluorescents whirl and spin, and the mediciney smell of hospital turns my stomach. I struggle to speak, my words coming out thick. “Wh-where?”
“Just lie back, miss,” an authoritative voice says. My blurry vision catches a uniform jacket, the EMT patch blaring up at me in red and white.
File this under Super Not Good. “What happened?” I manage to croak out. My tongue feels like the entirety of New York Comic Con scuffed over it in furry feet.
And why can’t I remember? My memory’s fuzzy after going to the 9:30 Club with Fiann and the girls, my brief (but awesome and butterfly-inducing) meeting with Euphoria, then getting back on the train.
Did something happen on the train? Some kind of accident?
Other figures crowd around, following my gurney down the hall. I’ve got a whole entourage of nurses and doctors, it seems. I guess it’s not every day a girl sprouts a giant iron shard in her leg.
Ha, ha, ha, blurgggg…
We come to a stop, and I hear a sharp ding. Elevator.
“Syl!” A figure pushes through the crowd to loom over me, and a memory rises, sharp as knives—a dark figure looming over me, rain pattering down on dark leather and dark hair, sapphire-blue eyes—
I bolt upright. “No! Leave me alone!”
“Syl, shhh…” A strong but soft voice soothes me, and callused hands gently grip my shoulder. I’ve seen those hands knead bread dough, sew the holes in my jeans, dig in our garden—I’d know those hands anywhere.
“Glamma?”
Her crinkled face appears above me. Okay, can I just say that I love my Glamma’s face? She’s worn and wrinkled, sure, but those are lines from a lady who’s lived well and laughed a lot. Her grey-green eyes are like mine, stormy like a summer rain in the morning. A reassuring smile rounds her mouth. “There’s my girl,” she says, smoothing my red curls from my face. “Don’t you worry your sweet head about anything now.”
“Glamma, what’s happening?”
“You had an accident, Syl. A train crash.”
The screech of metal, the smell of ozone. Was there some kind of lightning strike? “A…” My mind blanks, then flashes immediately to—“Gina, Charlotte, Jane, Belinda?” I say their names in a rush, hoping, wishing, praying…
Glamma’s look tells me more than I want to know.
“Oh, crap.” Tears choke me. Normally, Glamma doesn’t go in for “rough talk,” but she lets it go.
“Fiann?”
And just as I say that, another gurney wheels by, Fiann on it, covered in a white blanket. She looks tiny, but her eyes are open, green and starey as ocean glass. She turns her head and looks at me. “You’re special, Syl, special, special…” A laugh bubbles up out of her, and the EMTs look nervously at each other the way you might if you were escorting say, the Joker, into ICU.
No telling when he might go all “pop goes the weasel” on you.
“I’m going to be special, too. You wait and seeeeee…” Her voice carries down the hall as they wheel her away.
Shivers run down my spine. Oooookay. That was officially weird.
Glamma’s looking at Fiann like a hawk, but she snaps her attention back to me. “Your mom’s on her way.”
Somehow, that totally mundane, ordinary thing is not what I’m expecting from her, but the pain’s lighting up my leg like a bonfire, so I don’t argue.
“Okay.” I lean back as they load me onto the elevator.
“Wait!” a voice cries, and I recognize Mom right away. She comes hurrying down the hallway, her eyes and nose red. She’s like me—when she’s been crying, she wears it all day.
“Darn that Irish complexion,” I say as she hurries up. It’s an old joke and super-bad timing, but she gives me a watery smile.
“Hey, bug, how are you?”
“Swell. But the swelling’s going down.” I move, and my whole body hurts. “Urgggg…I hope…”
She takes my hand and kisses it. “You’ll be okay.” Mom gives Glamma a look, and if Glamma is anything like a hawk, my mom is like the eagle that rules the roost. Also, we’ve stalled at the elevator for some reason, all of us gathered around.
I can’t shake the weird feeling that once I go through those doors, I’ll be forever changed.
Fiann’s voice haunts back at me. “Special, special, special…”
Shut up already. I want to stuff the crappy hospital pillow over my head, but any movement feels like it’ll totally make me hurl.
“We need to take her into surgery now,” the nurse tells Glamma. “We need to take the iron out of her leg.”
Glamma’s face goes all tight, and she shares another one of Those Looks™ with Mom, and the two of them nod. Glamma’s smile doesn’t make her eyes sparkle like usual. “You’re taking it out?” I see her doing some mental calculatio
ns behind her I’m just a harmless old lady appearance.
I never buy it, but most everyone else does.
The nurse nods like a bobblehead. “We have to remove it right away, before it”—she lowers her voice but I totally hear—“nicks an artery.”
“But the iron…” Mom trails off at Glamma’s stink-eye.
“All right, then.” Glamma’s still doing mental algebra. “It’ll be fine, Georgie.”
I’m in so much pain I can’t even tease Mom about Glamma calling her “Georgie.” Okay, I must be dying.
“Glamma, what is it?” I put my hand on her arm, but the pain’s making me all muzzy-headed and woozy.
“Don’t you worry none.” Glamma puts her hand on my head. A sudden warmth like summer blooms through me, and my body relaxes. It takes away my pain in a wash of heat. “Let Glamma take care of it.”
I let my head fall back to the pillow. I do as she says. I let the darkness take me.
I let Glamma take care of it. And me.
But when I wake, a poofy-huge bandage covering my leg, she’s gone.
She’s gone, and I don’t really know why.
Mom says Glamma had a massive heart attack while I was in surgery, but I know my mom. She’s a terrible liar. I can’t bring myself to call her on it, though, because Glamma—Glamma who taught me Irish and how to make lamb stew, who showed me how to finger-lock any boy who touched me without my permission—is gone.
Through my grief and sorrow and pain, I resolve myself to finding out what happened. Getting my memories back. I don’t know why, but I know that, somehow, Glamma sacrificed herself for me.
I’ll make sure that 1) I find out why, and 2) I live my life to the fullest and make sure her sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
I can’t shake the sneaking suspicion it has something to do with Euphoria and her mysterious “after.” Maybe one day I’ll find her and ask her.
Until then, she’ll haunt my dreams.
Weirdly, I hope I haunt hers, too.
The End
Read on for a sample of Book 2, OUROBOROS…
Book 2 of The Circuit Fae
Chapter One
Syl
Light is always drawn
To darkness
So it is with the Fae
- Glamma’s Grimm
Whoever said love is a battlefield never tried to date a dark Fae. Seriously, with all the nighttime battles Euphoria and I have fought this summer, chasing down and destroying black-magic Moribund all over the city…
It’s been more like a war.
E and I haven’t had one second to ourselves all summer.
But I swear, tonight’s going to be different.
We’re not just grabbing a couple of dogs and fries at City Dogs in between battles.
Nope. Tonight’s a legit date night. No battles to fight. No responsibilities to worry about. And no Moribund trying to infest the city with its black-magic circuitry.
I hope.
With E’s hand on my lower back, I step onto the rooftop restaurant, twenty stories above the streets of Richmond, and look out over a gorgeous orange and purple summer sunset, the city lights winking on one by one, like magic. “Oh…Rouen, it’s perfect.”
Rouen Rivoche, aka glam goth-rock star Euphoria, cracks the teeniest of smiles, and that makes everything worthwhile—all the fighting, all the chasing down rogue Moribund…
My strong, stoic Winter girl. Sometimes, she gets lost in that broody mind of hers, and I have to shine a little light on her.
It comes with the territory.
If the Faerie realm were heaven, the dark Fae’d be the rebel angels—all sinister swooping wings, vengeance, and power chords. Except the dark Fae have way less remorse and pretty much command everything Winter, right down to blizzards, lightning storms, and thundersnow.
They’re your basic nightmare.
Only, Euphoria’s my dream.
“You like it?” E’s smile widens when she looks at me, and some of the darkness in her blue eyes vanishes, leaving a tiny ribbon of joy and light.
Yeah. I did that. Me. Syl Skye, sleeper-princess of the fair Fae.
“I love it!” Okay, full disclosure: I’m about to have a meltdown of happy because 1) it’s about time we got a night to ourselves, and 2) I have something super important to ask her.
“Good.” She gives me that smexy smirk that turns my insides to warm gooeyness.
It’s okay to crush on your own girlfriend, right? Because yeah, totally guilty, even if I do have to admit, me and E are a bit…out of the ordinary.
Usually, just one dark Fae would spell death for a fair Fae, especially a sleeper-princess like yours truly.
But my girl is no ordinary dark Fae. She’s the princess of the Winter Court just like I’m the princess of the Summer Court.
Winter, Summer…I know what you’re thinking. We should be at each other’s throats.
“Thank you.” I go on tiptoes to kiss her lightly. I’m super-careful, all things considered. My power’s been a little…out of control lately.
“You’re most welcome, princess.”
Okay, truthfully, it’s been trying to kill her.
Ever since summer started, my white flame’s been chomping at the bit to burn Euphoria down to her bones. The more I use my power, the worse it gets. Just another rad example of that fair Fae/dark Fae been-at-war-for-a-million-years drama.
We’re mortal enemies. So of course, we’re dating.
When I break the rules, I go for broke.
“What a gorgeous view.” Euphoria calls my attention back to the sunset and city lights, the James River a grey-green serpent glittering in the fading light, the muggy smell of summer on the warm breeze.
“Yeah,” I say, but now I’m looking at her. She’s the most gorgeous view ever. “Beautiful.”
She catches me looking and blushes. Okay, can I just say that my girl is stunning, even when she blushes? Me, not so much. My curly red hair and ruddy Irish complexion pretty much guarantees that, when I blush, I turn into Rudolph the Red-Nosed Geek.
Like now.
My cheeks on fire, I look down at my Docs, but Euphoria puts a hand under my chin, tilts my face up.
“Don’t hide,” she says gently, meeting my gaze. Her eyes are that dark blue of a deep winter ocean, and suddenly, all the butterflies in my stomach are doing the cha-cha.
That’s how the hostess finds us, all starry-eyed and staring meaningfully at each other like two total dorks. “Right this way,” she says, and we break off, giggling all breathless, and follow her to our table.
E pulls out my chair for me, and I sink into it. “I am so looking forward to some barbecue ribs. And more importantly…” I lean across the table to whisper, “No Moribund!”
Euphoria nods, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. “Definitely.”
Thanks to the fallout from the Winter Formal last December—when my BFF-turned-psycho Fiann, along with Euphoria’s “associate” Agravaine, tried to take over the city by infecting everyone with black-magic circuitry—we’ve been hunting down these super-dangerous caches of rogue Moribund that jerkface Agravaine hid all over the city.
Every single night, it’s something. If it’s not Moribund, it’s Circuit fiends. It’s enough to drive a girl batty.
So yeah, rooftop view, dinner, some quiet “us” time…
“I’m so ready for this.” I blow out a sigh of relief and smooth down my cute minidress as the waitress brings us waters and menus. She takes our drink order—a cherry Coke for me and water for Euphoria.
Soda makes her all giddy. Go figure.
Speaking of giddy… I go over my plan in my head. Once we’ve eaten and had dessert—because, oh yeah, dessert is sooooo happening—I’m going to ask E what I’ve been wanting to all summer.
I touch the ring I’ve hidden beneath my neckline on a silver chain.
I can barely think of it without squeeing. To distract myself, I pop open the menu. “What are you ge
tting?”
“Hmm…” E’s super-serious as she looks over the options. She pushes a few strands of jet-black hair from her face, but they fall back anyway.
Her casual beauty makes my heart leap.
And yeah, I totally get why I should stay away from her. I may be new to Faedom, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that her Winter Court and my Summer Court hate each other.
And if either of our people wake up from their self-imposed sleepy-time in Faerie, missing out on date night’ll be the least of our problems.
I finger the ring again. It was Glamma’s way back when, and it’s been in my family for years and years.
I want tonight to be perfect, the perfect moment when I give it to Euphoria.
“Syl?”
Crap. I’m spacing out. I snap out of it. “Sorry! I was just…thinking.”
“About the Ouroboros?”
Ugh…the Ouroboros is a total mood killer.
I smile gently at her. “Look…don’t get me wrong. Destroying evil-dark Circuit Fae magic is always on my Top Ten list of fave things to do and all, but tonight is the last night of summer.”
Tomorrow, I go back to school as a junior at Richmond Elite High. Euphoria, too.
And I swear, if I have to spend tonight killing Moribund—
Ouroboros, I correct myself. When they’re a zillion times more deadly and just one teeny circuit can evolve and destroy/devour an entire city, they’re called Ouroboros.
Euphoria glances at me over her menu, and her shoulders sag. “Sorry. I shouldn’t mention it. We want to relax and have a good time.”
I can’t help but giggle at her super-serious tone. My Winter girl tackles having fun the same way she tackles fighting Ouroboros—with all the grim graveness of a dark Fae. “It’s okay.” I reach across the table and touch her hand.
Her bronze skin is soft and cool, and I want to tangle our fingers together, hold her hand, but…touching for more than a few seconds at a time is a serious no-no. Already, I feel my white flame firing from slow burn to bonfire.
“Is it okay?” she asks, arching an eyebrow at me.
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