by N. M. Howell
Jax shrugged. “I’m paid for my work at the academy. I would be happy to volunteer. But, there’s that whole tangle—teachers’ unions, accreditation, I’m forced to take a salary. I’m more than happy to spend it on someone special.”
Someone special… Oh, if only he knew just how special she was. She returned his smile. “I get the same feeling about the Shadow Fae. Your culture is so beyond what I know.” She had to admit, despite her reservations, the attention did still feel really, really good.
“You’ll get the hang of it, once you understand that magic is our gold.” Jax smiled. “We mine for it, work for it, suffer for it every night.”
“Like a religion,” Raina offered.
“More than that. Much, much more than that.”
Talk turned to happier topics: foibles of students and instructors at the academy, a recent Fae exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, an upcoming concert at Madison Square Garden featuring human music played on Fae instruments. The ten courses of the meal took nearly three hours, and by the end, Raina felt giddy in the presence of Jax. She couldn’t help it. It had been a good date.
From the deep dimple on either side of his broadening smile, she could see that Jax felt the same.
When they finished, he walked her home. “Chinatown?”
Raina shrugged. “It’s all I could find. All I could afford, too. This city is nuts.”
They stopped in the alley by the back door.
“We do what we must, I suppose. You know that we have student housing.”
Raina made a face. “I don’t think I’m ready to immerse myself in that much Fae culture yet.”
“I can’t say that I blame you. Ever since we’ve openly campaigned for human interaction, my people seemed to have taken a sinister turn, a superior stance in the world. It makes us no better than the Bright Fae in that regard.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Did you hate them, the Bright Fae?”
“All my people did. And they hated us back. So many wars, so much violence. Even as we struggled to put this enmity in the past, someone took it upon themselves to attack the Brights. It was cowardly, without honor, without sanction. Neither side had any grievances at the time.”
Raina decided to push it. “Who do you think attacked the Bright Fae?”
“I only know two things. First, the terrorists and their motives will one day come to be known.”
She waited. Jax didn’t speak. “Okay, what’s the second thing?”
“The second thing is I’m growing tired of talking politics and I would like to kiss you.”
Before Raina could reply, his lips brushed hers. She felt something like a coiled spring let go inside her as she eagerly stepped into his arms. The tingling touch of his probing tongue set off her own response. Raina gripped Jax tightly, her pulse surging, her head singing.
Breathlessly, the kiss broke.
“Whoa.” Was all she could think of to say.
“Whoa indeed.” Jax smiled. “I have to agree with what you shouted at the lake.”
Raina was confused. “What was that?”
“That you were special. Unique. I fully concur.”
They kissed again, Raina running a hand through his hair, the other on the small of his back. Lost in the embrace, the oddness of her sleepwalking comments lost importance. Just as she felt like she would evaporate into steam, Jax pulled away.
“I could do this all night, but I have an early day tomorrow.”
She hung on his shoulders, looking up at him. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Nevertheless. Perhaps I could drop in on you in the afternoon.”
Tentatively setting a date, they parted, Raina watching him stride down the alley. She didn’t know what to make of Jax, other than the fact that he was beautiful and delicious and potentially very dangerous.
19
Raina jumped at a noise—the squeal of hinges behind her. Derek opened the back stairs door.
“Enjoying your consorting with the enemy, I see.” His words were clipped, and although he smiled slightly, the expression didn’t touch his eyes.
“I need to get to a phone—”
Derek held up his cell. “I already texted Trini. You were gone nearly four hours. What did the two of you get up to?”
They walked down the hall toward the elevator. “It was a ten-course meal. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”
“Where were you, Eleven Madison Park?”
“How did you know?”
Derek shook his head and pushed the call button. “I don’t know how that guy got a reservation.”
“It was pretty awesome.”
Derek frowned. “Yeah, great. Hopefully it gave Trini enough time to find something out.”
Raina hugged herself as the doors of the coffin-sized elevator closed. He pushed the button for the fifth floor. “Speaking of finding things out, I have something for you, if you have a second.”
“Sure.” The elevator didn’t go to the top floor anyway.
He walked her to his bachelor pad, cringing at the mess inside. “I clean up on the weekend.”
“I bet.”
Bearing a wounded expression, he walked her into the kitchen. On the tiny table sat the bound tome from the Confraternity’s underground library. “Here, there are some things to check out.”
“Derek, you can’t have this here. What if your father sees it?”
“He can’t read any Fae. I’ll tell him it’s a cookbook.” He handed the book to her. “I took classes in Fae glyphs, but it’s still really slow going for me.”
Raina didn’t take the book. “You took a class at the academy?”
“No, it was a continuing education class at SVU. Anyway, I think I read Fae at a second grade level. But from what I did understand, I think you need to take a look.” He pressed it into her hands.
Resigned, she took it. “Okay. I’ll read it.” She didn’t bother correcting him that there were at least half a dozen Fae languages, not including the various forms of glyphs and scriptures both Light and Dark practice.
“Let me know if it says what I think it says.” Derek walked her out.
“Which is?”
“Oh, you’ll know. Where are you going?”
Raina started for the back steps. “The elevator doesn’t go to the seventh floor.”
His brows lowered. “Sure it does. It’s working fine.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
Too tired to bother with the stairs, Raina headed into the elevator. Sure enough, it rose to the top when she pressed the button. Weird. In her apartment, she dragged down the Murphy bed to sit, the book beside her. It took a few minutes to work up the courage to flip the latches. She thought of her few days back in New York, her budding relationship with a Dark Fae of all people, her enrollment in an institution of evil. What had she gotten herself into? Or had she gotten into it by herself?
She opened the book and gasped.
Glyphs glowed as her eyes crossed them, a title over a hand-painted image of a couple. It read: The History of the Last Lord Fae.
Except that the woman in the painting, dressed in a flowing gown of lilac with a gold, laced bodice, platinum hair in the most elaborate up-do Raina had ever seen, was her mother. Standing next to her was a dark man in silver and wooden armor, leaning on a huge sword with his right arm, the left around her mom.
Raina didn’t recognize the tall man. Or was that exactly true? Something about his eyes, even in the faded watercolor. Could they be? The high brows, the swoop of his cheekbones, the purple of his irises looked almost exactly like her own.
Gods beyond.
It took a few heartbeats for her to be able to turn the heavy page. She read:
Ere the Uprising of the Pureblood Factions, in the time before the animal called Man fused the four elements into Iron, the Lord Fae commanded Law and Rule of the Fairey Peoples. In legend only do the names reside, Sovereigns both fair and cruel, clev
er and mad, identities lost to the retelling. In these Final Times, the Lord Kr’veşk and Lady Manrieälle have faded, spelled into forced ostracism. Powerful though they were, the wyverns and nithdrakes fly from the darkness even now, the Shield and Lance of Oreálle are raised, and War is in the Wind and in the Hearts of All.
Raina paused. Manrieälle wasn’t that far off from Mariea. She turned back a page. She couldn’t get a fix on the time from the clothing. It seemed Medieval, but Fae and human fashions didn’t jibe. The painting could have been two hundred or two thousand years ago.
Pureblood Factions—did that mean Light and Dark Fae? Raina had never heard a whisper of any kind of unity. As far as she knew, Light and Dark had always been at odds. And the war, did that mean the Blood Days, or something even earlier? More nagging was the image of the man. It couldn’t be her father. Oliver Raeyelle was her father. Raina was certain of it.
Or was she? She realized her muscles had grown tense, her hands cramping. Relaxing, breathing, she tried to take it all in.
Compelled, she read on, even though she already had enough craziness swirling around in her thoughts. Didn’t she have enough going on as it was? Lord Fae, anonymous legends, save for the final two who failed the Fae. They were not elected, not determined by lineage, rather, for possessing the traits of both Light and Dark. It was not unusual, the book said, that the offspring of Lord Fae were ordinary Light or Dark Fae. Though exceptionally rare, it is possible for a Lord Fae to be born of a union between Light and Dark Fae with no pretense to Lord Fae attributes. A Lord Fae is born because the Fae need one. Though, it hasn’t been seen since ancient pasts…”
Sometime, late in the night, Raina finally fell asleep. While she didn’t transport back to Central Park, her slumber was troubled by nightmares of wyverns and nithedrakes, and unseen figures with impossible, conflicting characteristics.
Sunlight woke her Saturday morning. Raina lay next to the open tome. Sighing, she closed the cover and latched it tight. She didn’t think she could handle any more revelations right now. Not when she needed to go to work.
The take out kitchen offered dim sum on the weekends, and while there was no room in the grocery store for a formal tea, plenty of customers wanted an order to go. Lee shouted at his employees, sour-faced and constantly moving around. Raina was pretty sure that meant the man was happy.
Dim sum service ended at one, but regular customers as well as tourists still mobbed the shop. She was shocked to see a tall, dark countenance among the crowding humans.
“Jax, what are you doing here?”
He shoved his way through the throng and gave her the up-and-down. “Cute apron.”
“Girl’s gotta make a living.”
Jax shrugged and dimpled up. “I suppose.”
“Are you here to purchase something before my boss comes over to chew us both a new one?”
He tilted his head. “Just a question. I was hoping you had a good enough time last night that you’d like to give it another go.”
Raina’s pulse increased. “I had a great time. Yes, awesome. When?”
“How about now?”
Derek wandered over, tying apron strings behind him. Upon seeing Jax, his back stiffened.
“This guy giving you trouble?”
Raina noted Jax assuming a tense posture. “Oh, Jax, this is my friend Derek. Derek, Jax.”
“Hey.” Derek ignored the Dark Fae. “I’m here to relieve you. Same thing tomorrow. Except maybe busier.”
“Thanks—”
“I know you from somewhere,” Jax said, his visage a black scowl.
Derek gave him hard eyes. “You know Trini? I’m her brother-in-law.”
“Interesting. I’d heard Trini married a successful human merchant. But…” With pursed lips and raised brows, Jax pointedly looked around Kowloon Grocery before gracing Derek with distain.
“I don’t know how many buildings and businesses you own in Manhattan, but I think we’re doing just fine.”
Jax dismissed him. “Materialism. The measure of human success. I suppose. And where is your brother? As far as I’ve seen, Trini is alone nearly all the time.”
“Danny travels for business. My father is getting too old for overseas trips. Like it’s any of your business.”
And Raina thought Trini was the jealous type? She decided she’d better wave off the steaming cloud of testosterone building around them. “Okay, Derek. I’ll see you later on.”
“You bet you will,” Derek said.
“Maybe,” Jax lifted his haughty brows again and extended his elbow to Raina. “Maybe not.”
Raina noted that Derek was smiling and texting like mad as she and Jax headed out.
They wandered to Grand, heading east, with no apparent destination. Before the East River, Jax made a left, and they wandered into the Lower East Side.
“I was born here,” he said.
Raina wondered at the proclamation. “I thought you were from out of town.”
He shook his head. “I’m a native New Yorker. When my parents died, while I felt fully autonomous, Dark Fae Services decided to put me in a home. I had no other family, but my parents were close with Flora’s family. I was sent upstate to live until I reached the legal age.”
“I’m confused. Weren’t you living with Flora and her brother here?”
Jax muttered ascent. “After the portal fell, many Shadow Fae moved here. Mostly out of involvement with the museum and academy construction. But they’re country people, and only half-Fae. This city can be a daunting place for the uninitiated. They needed someone local. Since they took me in, I sort of returned the favor.”
They walked on, Raina digesting this. Jax paused outside a block of tenements. “They used to call this the Fae-Borhood. Shadow Fae bargained for a few buildings to call their own. No one likes to bargain more than a Shadow Fae. It became the place where humans came for enchantments and curses. Once in a while, if a human-Fae bargain got out of hand—as they usually do—immigrant mobs would show up threatening to burn the place down.
“Those were good times.” Jax chuckled at the face Raina made.
Although Raina chose to live in New York from a young age, she had never heard of a Dark Fae neighborhood. “Were your parents born here?”
“No, they emigrated from the Kingdom of Schwarzwald back in the day. Bargained their way over, as my father told it. They bypassed the Ellis Island experience apparently, and just set up shop with other Dark Fae. They had connections with human families. Fairy Godfathers, they used to be called. Some were locked in by some magic bargain, some just early Moth-Boys, before that became a thing.”
Raina wondered how long ago that was, but given the secrecy the Fae kept about their ages, she didn’t ask. They wandered up Columbia Street arm in arm. Her feet felt light as she marveled at the touch and movement of his lean muscles.
Jax related a few memories, mostly boyhood pranks. Raina noted he didn’t talk about his parents. Heading along Houston, Jax stopped and gave her a grave look.
“I have a serious question for you.”
Raina’s heart skipped. “What’s that?”
“Do you like hot dogs?”
Both of them cracked up, and Jax led the way to Katz’ Deli where they ordered from the superlatively cranky staff. The packed delicatessen made Kowloon Grocery seem deserted by comparison.
“It’s the one element of human cuisine I neither question nor understand,” Jax said as they walked north, chatting and eating. Raina didn’t say much about her own past, only partially pretending to be embarrassed by her parents’ situation. She let Jax believe their issues were financial, not that they were trapped in another dimension through the fault of the Dark Fae.
Jax seemed happy enough to talk about his own past as they walked Second Ave past the East Village and Gramercy Park. At East 22nd Street, Jax turned them left. The narrow street was one-way, the traffic a little quieter. Under leafless trees and buildings that ran right up to the sidewal
k, they moved west, talking, or walking in comfortable silence. He stopped where Broadway made a diagonal intersection, looking up at the Flatiron Building.
“It’s amazing how this city, how this human construction, seems so very permanent,” he mused.
As he squeezed her hand, Raina could only think about how things were hardly permanent. In one night, a portal that had stood for centuries crumbled under the hands of the Dark Fae. Hands just like the one she was holding
20
As evening fell, they found themselves in Central Park. Jax walked her to a favorite place, the Wagner Cove Pavilion, a few hundred yards west of the Academy on the lake.
“Funny, I thought I wanted to be away from the place.” He gazed through the trees surrounding Cherry Hill Fountain at the roof of the museum and academy.
Raina didn’t think it was particularly funny. She definitely wanted to be away from the school. “It’s always nice in the park. Even if it is mostly artificial, it feel… wild, I guess.”
A horse-drawn carriage clopped by on West Drive, passing Strawberry Fields. While the dusk was blustery, the day had been dry. They sat together in the little pavilion, Raina snuggling into Jax’ warmth, the two of them facing away from the academy.
“It’s getting a little chilly,” Jax said. He removed his light jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Raina breathed in the heady smell of him, his cologne, soap, shampoo and the essence that was simply Jax.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“You don’t talk much about yourself, Rainara.”
Raina hardly knew who she was anymore. She pushed away the confusing thoughts of the previous day out of her head during this meandering date with Jax. His one statement threatened to bring it all back in a rush.
“There isn’t much to say.”
Jax’ hand touched her face. “I doubt that very much.”
He guided her into a kiss.
When their lips merged, the moment lingered into a strange and wonderful eternity. The lap of the water, cries of birds, distant rumble of traffic, heat of contact, the increasing pressure of their embrace all merged. Raina felt she were sinking and floating at once. The touch of his tongue felt electric. She filled herself with his touch, his scent, his beauty. It felt like the kiss lasted for hours, and only microseconds.
