by Leia Stone
Liam clasped her hand, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Dad was wrong. They’re not all like that.” With his other hand, he reached out and grasped mine.
My heart quickened at his display of affection, and his mother looked at our intertwined fingers with understanding.
“I went there once…before the fall.” She smiled. “I was so young, and it was so beautiful…” She looked off at the corner of the room, as if trapped in a memory.
Of course the Winter King would try to take her there.
“That was the first time I got sick,” she said, running her fingers through her short hair.
Liam looked at me with such heartbreak I had to actively control my breathing so as not to sob. “Mom, we got something from Faerie today. It’s going to heal you.”
She pulled her hand away from Liam and clutched it to her chest. “Magic? I can’t have magic.”
He swallowed hard. “This is different.” His voice cracked. “It’s just one drop of healing water. One drop.”
She reached out with a thin, bony hand and cupped his face. “It was also just one stone, one drop of blood, one hair of a unicorn. Baby, just let me go.”
“No!” Liam jumped up, causing both his mother and me to start. I was still stuck on the words unicorn hair, wondering where the hell he’d gotten that. “I can’t, and I won’t. Please just try this one thing.”
I suddenly felt like I was intruding on a special moment and wondered if I should slip out of the room. But then it occurred to me that Liam had asked me in here because he needed me. He needed strength. His eldest brother was fourteen—he’d been the adult taking care of everyone for years, and for the first time, he had someone with whom he could share the responsibility. Maybe that’s why he’d invited me in. Maybe he needed me…
Stepping forward, I slipped my hand in his. “One drop, and if it doesn’t work, no more magic?” I suggested.
Liam’s eyes glowed molten-lava red for a split second, and I knew then that one day, when this woman did die, it would break him.
“I would agree to that.” Hannah nodded, looking at Liam. The High Priestess of the healing pool had said we needed her consent, and to me, Hannah’s words were enough.
Liam squeezed my hand and reached into his pocket, pulling out a little eyedropper. “I put some of the water in here,” he told me.
I watched as he tenderly took his mother’s hand and had her extend it palm up. He placed one drop in the center and looked up at her with such tenderness that he practically glowed. But even more obvious was the way she looked at him. I could see in her eyes that she wanted to be better—but most of all, she wanted Liam to be okay.
“Feel anything?” he asked nervously after the drop of water sank into her palm.
She shrugged. “Just ready for sleep.”
Liam nodded. “Okay, Mom. Love you. Sleep well.”
“You too, baby. It was nice to meet you, Lily. Take care of him—he’s always too busy taking care of everyone else.”
“Mom.” He blushed, but I nodded.
“I will.”
Liam and I left the room, and he led me to his bedroom. Laughter and conversation trickled down the hall from the kitchen, and I recognized Elle’s voice. It sounded like she was arguing with Cam. No surprise there.
“I was thinking we could stay the night here. I’ll check on my mom in the morning, and then you can meet the guys. Help me convince them to fight a war with us.” From his eyes and the sluggish way he walked, I could tell Liam was tired.
“No pressure.” I shoved down the anxiety that threatened to take hold of me.
Opening the door, he led me into the same room where I’d woken up after Cam had knocked Elle and me out. When he turned to face me, he looked serious. “Lily, can I see your mother’s journal?”
Apprehension ran up the length of my spine. “I’m going to do the blood thing, I just haven’t found a good time,” I assured him.
Liam shook his head. “I’ll do it. There’s a certain price you pay when you use blood magic, and I’d rather you stay pure.” He trailed his finger along my cheek, and I frowned.
“What kind of price?”
He sighed. “Let’s just put it this way. Right now, you’re a beautiful, bright light. If you do this, a small part of yourself goes dark, and it’s harder to come back to the light.”
Oh, gods.
That didn’t sound good. I had been about to hand him the journal, but now I snatched it back. “I don’t want that for you.”
Liam smiled sadly. “I’m well acquainted with darkness. I can handle it.”
He pulled the journal from my hands and then plucked out his knife, piercing the tip of his finger. Peeling back the cover, he squeezed the wound and placed a drop of blood on the first page.
“Reveal your true self, illusions be gone,” he muttered, and a black puff of smoke wafted from the page.
Holy crap. My heart raced as I watched the thick smoke curl into the air. Liam moved his head to the side to avoid it, and I gasped as letters started to appear.
My mother’s unique script filled the pages rapidly, and a sob lodged itself in my throat. Liam gently set the book in my hands and turned to leave.
“Don’t go,” I croaked. “Stay with me?”
He nodded, his eyes glowing in the dimly lit room. We sat down together on the bed, and I read the first page aloud:
Dearest Lily, if you are reading this, go to the end.
Frowning, I riffled through the pages until I noticed one was dog-eared at the back. The handwriting here was sloppier than before, looking rushed. Liam looked over my shoulder, and we scanned the page together.
Lily, I hope you find this journal. I showed Bashur where I hid it so that if I die and you take over for me, he will bring it to you.
My heart pounded in my ears. The writing was dated just three weeks before she’d died.
Oh, Lil, I made so many mistakes. I thought by keeping this life from you that I was preserving your innocence, keeping you safe. Now I see that I have made it that much harder for you. I want to tell you now…but I don’t know how.
Anxiety ratcheted up in my nervous system so quickly that I felt nauseous.
How do I even write these words? Lily, my life, my dearest treasure…you are not my daughter by blood.
I yelped and tossed the book across the room. It hit the wall and slid down, crashing to the floor. Tears spilled from my eyes, and before I knew what was happening, Liam pulled me into his arms and wrapped me tightly in his embrace.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, rubbing my back as I sobbed into his neck.
My entire world fractured in that moment. Why would she have written those words? How could they be true? There was more in the journal, of course, but I was too shocked by that one sentence to go any further.
“It will be okay.” Liam’s voice was soothing in my ear. Feeling his strong arms wrapped around me, his warmth and scent, was the only thing keeping me sane right now.
My mother wasn’t my mother?
Nothing about that was okay, but I was so damned glad I’d asked him to stay with me. I didn’t trust myself alone right now. He held me for what seemed like forever until I was able to rein my frazzled mind into focus.
Pulling back, I wiped my eyes. “Thanks.”
He nodded, seemingly unsure of what to say. Without another word, he stood and walked over to the book. Picking it up, he opened it to the end and looked at me. “Do you want me to read it to you?”
I gulped. Maybe that would be easier than reading it myself, because I wasn’t sure I had the courage for that. Giving him a nod, I steeled myself for his words.
“Not my daughter by blood,” he continued where I’d left off. “Lily, I had no idea. My memories…were tampered with.” He frowned, clutching the book tightly. “I always thought you were mine, but it wasn’t until I found Indra giving the queen sleeping medicine that I started to suspect something was wrong.”
Oka
y, I could handle that. I already knew about the sleeping medicine, but what was this memory stuff?
“I started to have weird flashbacks or memories I hadn’t recalled before,” Liam continued. “Memories of Indra and me, or of my sister and me.”
He looked at me, and I nodded for him to go on.
“My sister and I were very close, so why didn’t I remember her at your birth? Why didn’t I remember your birth at all? I decided to go to the healing pool beyond the protection dome.”
My eyes widened. It seemed I truly was living my mother’s life, and we were on the same path.
“When that water cleansed me, the spell Indra had placed over me was broken, and all my memories returned.” Liam glanced up, seemingly checking if I was okay, then looked back at the book. “I remembered my sister, the queen, giving birth to you and pleading with me to take you on as my own.”
Liam looked up at me, and tears flooded my vision, making him go blurry. “Keep going,” I croaked.
“My sweet Lily…you will always be my daughter, but by birth, you are the princess of the Spring Court, and Indra knows this.”
Chills ran the length of my arms, and my hands shook. “No,” I said aloud.
Liam closed the book, keeping his thumb in the spot to save the page, and looked down at me. “Lily, I can’t open the protection dome over Spring. The protection your—the queen placed there. It’s not a Seeker thing. It’s a Spring Court royal thing.”
I shook my head more vigorously. “No. I can’t be.”
He put the book down again and met my gaze. “You have sunlight magic. Magic only given to royals of the Spring Court.”
I stared at my hands in shock. “It’s…how do you know?”
Liam sighed. “My father told me about the royal court magic in case I ever had to come up against another royal.”
Royal. That word in association with me was crazy. Had Liam suspected this the whole time?
“Is there more?” I couldn’t handle this right now. It felt like my whole life was a lie.
He nodded, opening the book, and handed it to me.
I’m sorry I never told you about the queen while you were growing up. I’d planned to when I told you about your Seeker magic. I didn’t want to scare a little child with tales of a sleeping queen and a dying tree and a world on the verge of its end. Please forgive me, love.
I wiped a tear that escaped my eye and read the last paragraph.
The next page holds a spell to see someone’s memories. Use it on the queen or Indra or whomever you wish and see for yourself. Faerie is wrapped in lies, and you must work out for yourself who to trust. Mara and Trissa are free of this corruption, but knowing Indra’s magic with memories, I didn’t want to tell them for fear she would read their memories and harm them. If I am gone, it means you are all alone in this, and you must finish what I started.
Kill Indra. Wake the queen. Save Faerie.
You were my favorite thing about life.
All my love,
Mom
I hadn’t been sure I had any more tears to cry, but I did. They fell in large drops on the page, and I turned it to see the spell she spoke of.
Hair Memory Spell
Procure a piece of hair from the person whose memories you want to explore.
Mix the hair with two ground seeds from a flowerberry and three drops of puckerberry juice.
Say the words, “Memories, memories, reveal yourselves to me.”
Rub the paste over your eyelids.
To end the spell, wash off the paste.
That was it. There were no more pages after that. Setting the book down, I lay on Liam’s bed and looked up at the ceiling.
Kill Indra. Wake the queen. Save Faerie. Those words looped around and around in my brain.
Liam crossed the room and lay next to me, and we were quiet for a long time.
“Daughter of light,” I muttered.
“Huh?”
“When my mom was dying, she’d called me the last daughter of light.”
Liam nodded. “My father said the ancient titles for the Spring Court royalty were Daughter of Light or Son of Light.”
I frowned. “And the name for Winter royalty?”
“Son of Darkness. It’s where he got the idea to name his…people.”
My hand slipped into his. There was an unspoken understanding between us. Both of our lives were fucked up right now, but we had each other.
The next morning, I awoke with my hand still clasped in Liam’s. We’d fallen asleep together while staring at the ceiling; we hadn’t even had dinner. He felt me stirring and looked over at me, bleary-eyed.
“You okay?” His voice held concern, and for a moment, I forgot that I was some secret Spring princess, or that my mom wasn’t my real mom. He looked so damn gorgeous, with messy blond hair and sleepy eyes.
I nodded. “Go check on your mom.”
His eyes widened, and he bolted off the bed. “I forgot. I’ll be back. You can shower in there,” he offered, and pointed to an adjoining bathroom.
I nodded as he slipped out of the room, and I sent up a prayer that his mom was better, or at the very least not worse.
Stepping into his bathroom, I took a quick shower, trying and failing not to be a weirdo and smell all of his yummy man soaps. I changed into jean shorts and a T-shirt, then slipped my boots on.
Today, we would hopefully get the approval of Liam’s army and wage war on the Winter King, returning to Faerie what was rightfully hers.
But first, I needed to tell my bestie something.
Opening the door, I saw her sitting on the couch next to Cam, eating a bowl of cereal. He must have said something annoying because she chucked a piece of cereal at his face, and he opened his mouth, catching it.
“Elle?”
She looked over at me, and I called her into the room. I wasn’t sure what to say about the journal and its contents, so I just sat her down and handed it to her open to the back.
“Whoa,” she said as she read. “Holy shit, Lil.” She continued. “Oh, my gods…” She clutched her chest. “What the hell?” she finished. When she looked up at me, there were tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “Not really, but I will be.”
Standing, she pulled me into a tight hug. “Indra’s a dirty bitch,” she growled, and I burst into laughter as we pulled away.
“You’re not wrong there.”
Elle picked up one of my palms, looking at it. “The light magic. You’re…” She dropped my hand and took a step back. “You’re fucking royalty! Can I even touch you?”
I reached out and socked her in the arm. “Stop it. Don’t you dare treat me differently. I’ll lose my mind.”
She grinned. “You should make me the head of your royal guard. Like, I can get a badge made and everything.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can we focus, here?”
“Sorry,” she muttered, and tapped the spell on the page. “Okay, so you need to get one of the queen’s hairs. You need to see these memories for yourself.”
“And how will I do that? The second I step into the Elders’ home, Indra is always all over me.”
Elle paced the room. “We get the crystals today, and then, when you place them at the tree, you ask to see your auntmom.”
I rolled my eyes. “Auntmom?”
She shrugged. “What are we calling her?”
I had no fucking clue, and I didn’t have a therapist on speed dial, so I needed to not think about this too deeply. “Queen Dahlia?”
“Right,” Elle continued. “You ask to see the queen and take one of her hairs. That way, we can see what really happened.”
As much as I dreaded that, I really did need to know what had happened when I was born. I nodded. “Okay. And what do we do about Indra?”
Elle whistled low through her teeth. Again, she looked at the journal. “Kill her. Bitch needs to die.”
I rubbed my temples. “It’s not that easy.”
<
br /> Elle looked disappointed, but I didn’t want to just cut Indra’s head off right away. “Fine,” she said. “But I think we should be very wary that she doesn’t mind control us or whatever that crap is, and after we wake the queen, we show her your mom’s journal. Then she can deal with it.”
Yeah, good idea. Make it someone else’s problem.
“Okay,” I said. “Crystals first. Everything else later.”
“Yes, my liege.” She bowed, and I reached behind me and chucked a pillow at her face.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll tell Cam how badly you want him.”
The color drained from her face. “What? I don’t—” She was doing a horrible job at faking it.
I rolled my eyes. “Elle, please. The sexual tension is thick.”
She shrugged. “He’s hot. Whatever.”
“And funny.” A grin pulled at my lips. I was glad to be focusing on someone else’s problems.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she scoffed.
“Look.” I grabbed her hand. “This is the new Faerie. All of us together. No one being excluded because they aren’t pure-blooded or from a certain court. It’s time to drop those biases and just let yourself have whatever feelings you’re going to have.”
Elle swallowed hard. “When did you get so mature?”
I wrapped my arm around her, squeezing her tightly. “Must be the royal blood,” I said with a wink.
We laughed, but it was cut off by a knock at the door.
“Er, come in?” It wasn’t really my room, so I wasn’t sure what else to say.
Liam appeared, wearing a goofy grin. “She’s better.”
I squealed and gave a whoop before running into his arms. That was the best news I’d had in a long time, and I knew how much it would mean to this family.
“And the guys are showing up, so it’s showtime.”
I pulled away and nodded. Time to convince seventy halflings who’d been taught to hate me that they should follow me into a deadly battle, and then into a new world.
No big deal.
After Liam showered and we both scarfed down breakfast, he told his little brothers to stay inside, and we made our way to his barn.
