by K. M. Shea
“Night Court!” he said.
I took a few pictures for him, then passed the cellphone back.
“Thank you!” He beamed at me.
“Of course! I hope this earns you some points with her.” I waved, and—feeling kind of awkward—edged my way down the hallway.
“It will,” he assured me. “Thanks again!” He bowed to me, then looked down at his phone—probably going through the pictures I’d taken.
Feeling oddly shy, I hurried down the hallway at double the speed.
Indigo had to jog to keep up. “You know, you’re the only fae monarch I know of who frequently gets stopped to take pictures.”
“I’m also the only fae monarch who goes out into society with the rest of the world,” I said.
“Give yourself some credit—it’s more than that,” Indigo scoffed. “You’re practically a local celebrity given how frequently you’re trending on social media.”
“It feels weird,” I said. “Like I’m an imposter or something.”
“There is no other Night Court Queen besides you,” Indigo reminded me. “You were selected by the night mares themselves.”
“Yeah, I know. It still feels weird that someone would want to have a picture of me.”
“Who cares? What’s most important is that your popularity among the humans has King Fell of the Autumn Court grinding his teeth with his competitive streak,” Indigo said as we stopped to pick up our coats.
“Now that is something to celebrate,” I said.
“Exactly!” Indigo pulled her winter hat on. She glanced at me, and I smiled for her benefit.
Really, that raw feeling hadn’t quite gone away from my chest, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
I loved Rigel, and he’d left me.
There was no way around it.
I need to focus on the things that matter. Like Indigo, and that I’m lucky she’s my friend. I set my shoulders as I wrapped a scarf around my neck, determined to forget my uncaring consort.
Chapter Two
Rigel
The scent of smoke wafted around me as I threw another paper on the fire.
The paper—imbedded with magic—glowed blue before the flames ate it, turning it to ash.
It was over.
After a nearly two-month long investigation I was cleaning house. All I had left to do was to destroy the paper artifacts I hadn’t used—a reasonably large loss considering I was essentially burning one-of-a-kind tools used by fae to control wild magic. But it was necessary.
In an effort to cover my tracks I had exclusively used these books and scrolls to wield magic instead of my usual arsenal of bladed weapons. Destroying them would keep anyone from tracing them back to me—something I couldn’t allow.
I tossed another paper on the fire, a muscle twitching in my cheek. I didn’t even spare the bodies of the creatures surrounding me a second glance.
There were two giant spiders whose legs still twitched as they died, but most of the monsters were made of a shadow-y magic, and they disintegrated, fading away as I burned the artifacts I had used to defeat them.
One of the spiders righted itself and took a scuttling step toward me.
I held up a scroll. “Liber.”
The scroll glowed, channeling wild magic into a form I could use. Forming the rune I wanted with my mind, I tossed magic at the spider.
Flames engulfed the arachnid, burning white hot and killing it instantly. I watched dispassionately as the flames turned the spider to ash and burned for several more moments before I cut the magic off and the spell flickered out and died.
I tossed the scroll on the fire, confident that the fiend who’d sent the monsters—both the spiders and shadow monsters, which were now mere piles of ash—would never know I’d uncovered their secret.
But it doesn’t matter if I can’t tell anyone!
When I’d left Leila and the Night Court, it was with the intention of uncovering who was responsible for all the assassination attempts on her life.
I’d been hired to try to kill her—before I knew she’d been bound as queen, making me unable to harm her due to the magic of the Court.
I suspected the person who had hired me was still trying to kill her, but the attacks on her life had been so erratic since she’d become queen back in May, it occurred to me that it was likely more than one being was targeting her. When I’d set out two months go, it was with the intention of figuring out who—besides my original employer—was behind it all.
And I failed. Or rather, my success became my failure.
I gritted my teeth and dumped the last two artifacts I’d used during this venture—two priceless scrolls—on the fire. I waited until they burned to ashes before I kicked snow over the coals and stamped the flames out.
Assured the fire was destroyed, I adjusted the collar of my jacket and walked into the shadows.
It was snowing hard—soon my tracks would be covered, hiding the last traces of my presence. Leila’s enemy would never know I discovered their trail.
But I’d also be unable to tell Leila or any of her people who her shadowy enemy was.
It all came back to the contract I’d accepted back in May, when I’d been hired to try assassinating her.
I’d never before regretted anything in my life. It seemed like fate was going to punish me by pouring out a lifetime of misery in this one instance.
When I took on the contract I entered into a standard clause designed to protect my employer and myself—a geas.
The geas kept me from revealing who my employer was, as well as the finer details of the contract—it worked in the reverse as well in that my employer couldn’t reveal I’d done a job for them.
I hadn’t questioned the use of a strong geas before. Which was how Leila’s enemy had neatly pinned me.
In uncovering that they were actually working with the unknown second party that was more successfully trying to harm Leila, the geas meant I couldn’t talk about them or their associates.
I knew exactly who was attempting to harm her, and even how they’d done it, but the geas rendered me unable to tell anyone, and the terms of my contract—even though canceled—meant I couldn’t kill them myself. Though I’d tried. Multiple times.
That was another standard clause I deeply regretted, though it had also made sense at the time. When I was an assassin, my contractors were always concerned I’d turn on them.
I could feel the pressure of the geas, making it difficult to think about the fiend in my own thoughts.
I growled under my breath. The desire to pull out a dagger or sword and smite something was overwhelming, but I didn’t want to flash any extra magic in the area now that I had destroyed all possible evidence.
Sloppy work begets mistakes.
It rankled me to know I’d accomplished my mission—I’d discovered the information I wanted and successfully hidden my presence so Leila’s enemies were ignorant that I knew it all.
But I couldn’t even tell Chase, Leila’s director of security, or point him in the right direction. I couldn’t even write or sketch out anything related to the issue.
I’ve learned my lesson, I grimly thought. I don’t intend to take on any more jobs as an assassin since I became Leila’s consort—there are too many possible political ramifications. But if I ever agree to enter a geas again, I am going to ensure much more loosely interpreted rules.
I waded uncaringly through a snowdrift, making my way to my car—which was covered in a blanket of snow.
The one bright spot in this mess of my failure, was that it was over. Unable to swipe anything that could prove their identities—Leila’s enemies didn’t have any notes or letters sitting around confessing their guilt—my best move now was to return home and see what I could accomplish.
Leila can read my expressions. I might be able to get her to correctly guess what I’ve done and who is responsible.
If she wasn’t spitting mad, that was.
I’d disappeared for two month
s in the middle of the night. There was no way the Night Court Queen wasn’t going to shout at me.
For the first time since I’d left, I was tempted to crack a grin.
She was going to bluster for certain. I didn’t rightly know what to call our relationship. I knew I trusted her—more than I’d trusted anyone else before—and I knew she had to trust me as well based on her willingness to sleep in front of me despite our…explosive first meeting.
I snagged my daggers from my bracers and spun them across my palm, just to give myself something to do.
As little as I’d wanted to admit it, I was looking forward to seeing her, looking forward to the banter, and the late nights when she’d tuck herself against me and sleep.
I’ll have to survive her wrath, first. But maybe she’ll guess what I was up to, and these two months won’t be for nothing.
I brushed snow off my car and glanced back at the clearing I’d left behind. Only the one spider body remained. The snow had covered the dark smear the other bodies had left behind.
Maybe it wasn’t entirely for nothing.
I turned my car on and let my shoulders relax.
It will work out. For now, it’s enough that I’m going home.
Chapter Three
Leila
I rubbed the back of my neck and stifled a yawn as I peered up at the crumbling castle that was slowly disintegrating even under the protection of the Night Realm.
It was dark—it was always dark here—but the full moon cast just enough light to make the place seem creepy.
I leaned my magical artifact—a tall staff topped with a huge, metal crescent moon with a glass prism jutting out of the base—against one of the stone patio bannisters that still stood.
“We’re going to have to do something about this place,” I said.
Skye, my steward, looked up from her tablet. “The Night Realm, or the castle?”
“Both,” I grimly said.
“Things have been going better, though.” Skye flicked to a different screen on her tablet, which cast a blue light on her heart shaped face. “The wards haven’t failed since before you synchronized with the staff. I believe it’s the first time in over a year that we haven’t lost land on a monthly basis.”
The Night Realm was a part of the bigger and broader fae realm—all the big Courts owned a slice of it. Unfortunately, the realm itself was toxic. That’s why we had to have wards, which kept the sludge that had invaded the rest of the realm out.
But the wards were ancient and unfortunately prone to occasionally failing under the toxic onslaught. Ideally, I was supposed to supplement the wards with my own power and hold the territory line, but I hadn’t been able to successfully pull that off since becoming queen. Instead, we lost territory.
That wasn’t exactly unexpected—we weren’t the only Court to lose land in our realm—but the last time I’d lost acres and acres of it instead of just a few feet, and that wasn’t good.
“Yeah.” I uncomfortably shrugged. “But there’s no guarantee the next time the wards fail I’ll be able to keep that record, though.”
“I imagine you’ll have an easier time of it now that you have your full royal artifact at your disposal,” Chase Washington, my director of security, said. His gold eyes almost seemed to glow in the dark—a dead giveaway that he was a werewolf.
I glanced at the glowing orbs of light that I’d created for us when we first stepped into the Night Realm. They floated in the air and dotted the stone patio we stood on, which was snuggled into the base of the busted down castle.
Across the patio I saw Lord Linus—he’d insisted on coming with us—prodding a crumbling statue with curiosity. I narrowed my eyes at his back, but stayed focused.
“It has been a lot easier to use magic,” I said. “And I’m hoping you’re right and it will make a difference, but I don’t want to count on it. Especially since none of the animals have changed—or put on weight.”
Sensing I was talking about them, two of my pets stepped out of the shadows—Muffin and Kevin.
Muffin was what the fae called a gloom. Roughly the size and shape of a cougar, she had patchy black fur that was swirled with gray and red. She was almost skeletal with her ribs showing, even though I’d doubled the stable’s budget, and they fed all my pets high quality feed with all the nutrition supplements my baffled human vet could think of.
Kevin looked just as skeletal, but as a shade he wore it differently. The shades were wolfish in shape, but they were huge—every last one that I had met was as tall as Indigo. Their fur was black, and it looked almost blurry and shadowy from a distance. It wasn’t until they were up close that you could see the mats in their fur—which felt damp and greasy when you stroked them.
“The glooms, shades, and even the night mares will improve.” Skye tucked a brown lock of her perfectly curled bob behind her ear—I had no idea how she got those perfect, frizz free curls in her hair day after day. “As the Court continues to flourish and improve, they will physically change.”
I crouched down and scratched Kevin’s ears for him and tickled Muffin under her chin. “Yeah, that’s what everyone told me, but it’s been over six months since I got stuck with this queen job, and they haven’t improved at all. Neither has the castle—which is what I was actually referring to when I meant we had to do something.”
Skye flicked her dark eyes at the castle. The low lights seemed to bring out the golden tone of her skin—which was a little unusual for a night fae as most of us had more bronze complexions, and was probably from her human blood. Like me, Skye was half human and half fae. “What do you wish to do to it?”
“Clean it up for starters so it doesn’t look like a disaster,” I snorted.
Most Courts had residences in their realm as well as in human lands. My entire Court lived in Magiford because the Night Realm was in shambles.
There was pretty much zero plant life. The grass was brown and crunched when you walked on it. Some trees were still making an effort to sprout a few leaves, but most of them were skeletal and empty. A bunch of dry shrubs and dead flower beds spattered what used to be a very impressive garden, all the fountains had dried up, and any wooden patio furniture was half decayed and falling to pieces.
The castle was even worse. Even though it was made of stone it was crumbling at an alarming rate, and this back end of the castle once had walls and walls of windows, but they’d all blown out and shattered on the ground, making the area glitter with jagged shards.
Skye turned her back to the building. “Like the animals, it will improve as the Court improves.”
I shook my head. “I was made queen in May. It’s now January, and I’ve made a ton of changes and it hasn’t changed at all. It’s either not going to improve for years, or I’m too weak to inspire the change.”
Skye narrowed her eyes at me. “You are not too weak. You are using the original king’s very own artifact. You won the Magiford Derby and the annual fall hunt with the other Courts. You—”
“I know,” I interrupted her, hopefully stopping her before she really got on a roll. “But the night mares haven’t put on any weight; the glooms still pant and look diseased; and the castle looks like a bomb went off inside it.” I wobbled for a moment when Kevin leaned into me. “Maybe it’s because I’m only half fae?”
Skye’s brown eyes were extra soft as she watched me.
“Nonsense. It couldn’t possibly be your fault, my precious daughter.” Lord Linus stood up and picked his way back across the patio. “You come from too great a lineage for that.”
I held in a groan as the fae lord made his way to us, crouching down next to Kevin and Muffin long enough to pet each of them. Muffin purred and Kevin whined happily, the traitors.
Even though he looked like he was maybe in his late thirties, Lord Linus was my biological father. Fae were a lot longer lived than humans, and they aged way more slowly too, which was why Lord Linus looked young. The biological part of his title was the imp
ortant bit, though, because he was not my dad. He left my mom when I was a toddler, and never bothered to show his face until I was crowned queen.
Unfortunately, our relationship was undeniable. I had the same inky black hair—which we both had pulled back in long ponytails at the moment—the same purple-blue eyes, and the same coppery complexion.
Technically, he was my official fae advisor, but I didn’t know what to make of the guy. He hinted that he had gambling debts, but I had Chase look into it, and although he was notorious for playing he didn’t actually owe anyone money. He frequently drank like a fish, but he’d never actually gotten in trouble. He walked the line of useless and helpful with his advice, but whenever I dealt with him I had to remember that he was always in it for himself—why else would he wait to show me his face until I was made queen?
“Actually,” I dryly said. “It’s probably because of my lineage that I think the problem is me.”
Lord Linus slapped a hand to his heart. “My daughter, your words wound me!”
“I’ve already told you not to call me that,” I snapped.
Chase cleared his throat, breaking the tense moment. “You said you’d like to clean up the castle—can you define what you mean by ‘clean up?’” He stood military straight, his shoulders precisely pulled back, and his uniform a perfect fit with crisply ironed lines.
“Let’s get all the broken glass out of here, clean up the trash—basically make it so someone could walk around without having to wonder if their tetanus shot is up to date,” I said.
Skye pulled a stylus from the pocket of her stylish suitcoat and scribbled on her notes app of her tablet. “Certainly,” she said. “Any other specific tasks? Would you like the gardeners to see to the gardens here?”
“They could try, but the gardens are too overgrown and half dead. I don’t know if they’ll get anything to ever grow without the sun,” I said.
Chase cocked his head. “You don’t expect the sun to rise again?”
“Based on what we see here? No,” I said.