Reckless Cruel Heirs

by Olivia Wildenstein

  No, I wasn’t okay, but I didn’t want to worry her. Not yet. Besides, I’d struck a bargain. If I didn’t keep quiet, I’d lose my leverage over Remo.

  “You wore the gloves.” My fiancé was watching Lydia, the faerie waitress, serve Sook wine with such attentiveness it strengthened my belief that something was going on between them.

  “Not for your sake,” I replied quietly.

  Lydia’s mouth stretched into a wide smile at something Sook said. Gejaiwe, how many men was she after? Her lips were so red and glittery it looked as though she’d dragged them over a hedge of crimson drosas.

  “Woods never do anything that doesn’t benefit themselves,” he muttered, glowering at Lydia and Sook.

  I shook my head, making my earrings dance and cast tinsels of light over the table. I steadied them but regretted lifting my hands when Remo’s scent leaped off the gloves and assaulted me. The desire to pluck them off and toss them back at him was strong, but I tamed the urge.

  Patience wasn’t one of my virtues, but I couldn’t afford to ruin my gajoï, so patient I would become. I simply hoped it wouldn’t take Iba too long to uncover what had become of his bastard brother.

  8

  The Leaf Portal

  When digestives and dessert were served, I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  “Did you eat Glade kelp again? That stuff gives me the runs every time,” Sook said between mouthfuls of coconut pudding and spice cake.

  Giya elbowed him, but I grinned. “You know me and my love for kelp.” I hated the stuff with a passion. It was slimy and bland, and according to Aylen, prodigious for weight loss. “I’ll be right back.”

  Several sets of eyes tracked my progress around the table, but it was Nima’s I felt most intensely.

  Please don’t follow me. Please don’t follow me.

  When she pressed away from the table, I beelined toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Has Neenee Cass commed you yet?”

  Nima frowned.

  “Didn’t she have a date with that old actor who won an Oscar?”

  “Old?” Iba pinched my waist. “He’s younger than yours truly.”

  “Ancient, then,” I shot back.

  He pinched me again, and I giggled. He smiled, and it shooed away some of the worry lines around his mouth and eyes.

  I squeezed Nima’s shoulder. “Why don’t you comm her up? I’m dying to know how it went.”

  She regarded me with that deep, dark stare of hers. The same she’d used on me when I was younger and she was trying to decipher if I’d had a good day in school. More often than not, my days weren’t good. Especially after Remo warned the Seelie students that a drop of my blood could turn them into a pile of ashes. Giya, ever the righteous fae, had tried to dismantle the rumor. When that hadn’t worked, she’d told Nima, who’d come to school with my father to demonstrate that Remo’s claim was false. An assembly had been called in the calimbor’s gymnasium. Surrounded by the entire student body, my parents had cut their hands and pressed them together. Although it had veined Iba’s arm a little gray, the Unseelie magic in Nima’s blood had eventually receded and his skin had turned nice and golden again.

  I crouched and whispered, “I promise I’m okay. Just period cramps.”

  “Do you need some medicine? I must have some in here.” She swiped through her Infinity.

  “Nima.”

  She kept swiping. Had she uploaded an entire pharmacy into her band? Probably. Even though she’d never become a human doctor, she had become a skilled fae healer.

  The words: 20 mg of Drosaniol, appeared on my Infinity.

  “Take it. It’ll help.”

  A long press on the medication’s name released it straight into my bloodstream. “I feel better already.”

  No medication worked that fast, so of course my comment made Nima tilt her head to the side. “You’ll tell me the truth later, right?”

  A faerie lie detector, that’s what my mother was. “Right.” I kissed her cheek, then returned to the dim space beneath the pavilion—again, guard-free.

  I considered dusting my face to hide my identity, but what if I brought out Karsyn’s wita instead of my own and asphyxiated myself with it? That wasn’t possible, was it? If I stayed low to the ground, no wandering fae or lucionaga would notice a figure cloaked in black snaking through the tall stalks of adamans. I’d be like a spy from one of the human movies my cousins and I had watched at the cineplex Iba had created sometime after his coronation. Apparently, no human pastimes had been allowed under my grandfather because they’d been deemed propaganda.

  I unhooked the heavy earrings, beamed them back to my bedroom using my Infinity, then threaded myself through the slats and rocketed, belly to the ground, around the slender stalks, the jagged purple petals tinkling overhead.

  Guards hovered high above the field, but most were conversing or scanning the humid air instead of looking downward. A hiss had my breath catching. I lurched backward and swore as a mikos darted its ridiculously long forked tongue in my direction.

  If I hadn’t been on a covert mission, I would’ve roasted the snake with my fire, but flames would attract attention. So I changed course and flew more carefully around the stalks, on the lookout for other reptiles. Neverrian snakes weren’t venomous, but diles were, and they loved nothing more than thick vegetation.

  Thankfully, I encountered neither. Still, my heart pounded, and kept pounding long after I’d crawled out of the field and bolted into the forest of calimbors where I became one with the shadows. Faeries were out and about—some flew, some walked. I gave them all a wide berth, reaching the Duciba without incident.

  Insects droned around the thick branches. I squinted to make out if any of them glowed. I really didn’t feel like answering to lucionaga about why I needed to visit the government facility in the middle of the night. Since sensitive files weren’t stored inside, the place was neither locked nor guarded. Which led me to believe there was no secret portal. Wouldn’t Gregor employ at least one person from Neverra’s vast army to protect it?

  I twisted the handle, and the heavy latch clicked. I dragged it out just enough to slip inside, then summoned up shallow flames that danced over the smooth surface of my borrowed glove. As quietly as the striped tigri that prowled the uninhabited jungle beyond the Glades, I jumped into the darkness, rising through the hull cautiously. When I reached the ceiling, I circled the golden crown, holding my fiery palm up to illuminate the painted leaves.

  Josh’s source had told him the paint rippled if you stared long enough at it. None of the leaves seemed to undulate. They were all perfectly flat and golden. I drifted down and conjured up a brighter flame, then leaned back until my body was parallel to the ceiling. I stared at the mural till my eyes watered. Josh’s informant was either a liar or crazy, perhaps both knowing the type of people the Daneelie frequented.

  For good measure, my gaze cycled around the crown of leaves one last time. I was about to draw up my Infinity to inform Josh that if a portal existed, it wasn’t here, when something shifted in my peripheral vision. Something golden. I blinked and focused on the spot, then rose up to inspect it more closely. The paint was static. Hesitantly, I touched it, but the surface was grainy and hard and stayed grainy and hard. My weary mind must have imagined the movement.

  I grazed the spot behind my ear and commed a message over to Josh, then started to fly back down when my Infinity beamed his answer.

  JOSH: Touch every leaf. And don’t forget the salt.

  ME: Feeling up the Duciba’s ceiling wasn’t part of the bargain, Locklear.

  JOSH: Wasn’t it? :)

  Out of nowhere, a pang so violent cramped my stomach that I muttered, “Bagwa,” before drifting back up. I suddenly hated Josh more than Remo but less than Karsyn. Karsyn’s homicidal tendency had won him top place on Amara’s Most Loathed Fae list.

  I purchased a packet of salt on my Infinity, which materialized in the beam of my band, then sliced it open,
grabbed a handful of grains, and ran my knuckles along the paint. Halfway around the circlet, something moved again in my periphery, something that glittered, not on the mural but lower. Had I loosened a fleck of paint?

  Keeping my gaze affixed to the space that had sparkled, I continued my slow loop. Suddenly my knuckles sank into something gelatinous, as though the ceiling’s consistency had morphed from wood to sea sponge. Before I could snatch my hand back, the leaf slurped it up.

  “Shit shit shit,” I whispered.

  My wrist went in and then my forearm. Releasing the packet of salt, I shot my legs up and pressed the soles of my boots into the ceiling, trying to fight against the suction, but the pressure almost dislocated my shoulder. My feet skidded off the ceiling and dangled uselessly beneath me. My stomach squeezed as tightly as my heart, and cold sweat beaded on my forehead.

  The dot of gold I’d mistaken for flaked paint transformed into a human body. Relief that I’d been unstealthy, and thus followed by a lucionaga in firefly form, vanished the moment I saw mussed red hair. Out of all the sentinels in the kingdom, the one to trail me had to be the one who wanted me gone.

  Today really wasn’t my day.

  Fate, you cruel lady, you saved me just to curse me.

  When the portal sucked in my shoulder, I shut my eyes and damned the day I’d struck up a bargain with a Locklear. If I’d known my ticket out of trouble was a trip into a supernatural jail, I would’ve owned up to my mistake instead of allowing Josh to take the blame.

  The gelatinous portal molded around the top of my head, then my face, neck, and chest. I swore that once I climbed back out of the dimension I was about to enter, I would never find myself indebted to anyone. Maybe I’d even abolish gajoïs altogether.

  After I used mine.

  Mine . . .

  I’d wanted to make Remo break up with me, but if for some reason I couldn’t find my way out of Gregor’s magical lockup, I’d make Remo tell my father where I was. The solution appeased me, but that lasted all of two seconds.

  The moment my head popped out the other side of the magical doorway, I knew I was screwed.

  Oh, so very screwed.

  9

  Faerie Jail

  Either I was dangling upside down, or Gregor landscaped the ceilings of his prison.

  I realized when the portal spit me out, and brutally so—Skies damn you, Wariff—that my first assumption had been the correct one.

  Even though I tried summoning my fire to break my fall, it didn’t answer me fast enough, and I tumbled out of the magical doorway head first. I squeezed my eyes shut and coiled my body into a tight ball, somersaulting as I fell.

  My lower back connected with the ground, which squelched like mud. Surprisingly, the impact didn’t shatter my spine. I grunted and little stars crackled at the edges of my vision. Slowly, I opened my lids and unrolled my limbs, sprawling out onto the sticky ground while I waited for my heart to peel itself off my lungs so they could fill with air again.

  Air.

  What if it was tainted with noxious gasses, or what if it wasn’t air at all, and I would suffocate? I cautiously sipped some in. After a few breaths, which didn’t kill me, I concluded it was safe to breathe.

  Brain ringing, I didn’t attempt to shift out of my starfish position. How far had I fallen? I stared at the mirrored disk floating over my head. Far far over my head. At least fifty feet up.

  How had I not passed out?

  I twitched my toes and fingers to make sure they were still connected to my spine. Everything wriggled. I was the luckiest unlucky person.

  Sure, I would’ve healed—eventually—but entering an unknown dimension as a paraplegic wouldn’t have been efficient. I twisted my neck to look around, which was a feat considering the damp ground sucked at my skull and back like a starved mouth.

  The sky was the color of cotton and the cacti circling the muddy yellow field were gigantic, bulbous things decked with fluted pink blooms and spiky needles that gleamed as though made of steel wool. I’d never seen a species as large, neither on Earth nor on Neverra.

  I was about to yell hello when I thought better of announcing my presence.

  The damp chill of the ground penetrated my suit and licked my skin, sending a shiver through me. I hadn’t felt cold since before my Year of Flight when the fire in my veins was still just smoke.

  I started to raise my gloved hand to test my fire when a grunt made my attention pitch upward. A body was hurtling straight for me. Adrenaline flooded me. Gritting my teeth, I snapped the right side of my body off the soggy ground and flung myself sideways, managing to roll onto my side just as the fleshy missile went splat where my leg and arm had lain, showering me with more brown glop.

  Even though I should’ve hopped to my feet and sprinted away from the portal’s second human ejection, I sat up and swiped two fingers over the clump slithering down my cheek, sniffing it tentatively. Priorities. It smelled mineral and green even though it was entirely brown—ochre actually. Now that I knew I wasn’t covered in dung, I checked out what unlucky soul Gregor had pitched through the portal.

  My pulse batted my ribs anew when I caught sight of the flaming tuft of hair atop the navy tunic-clad body. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumbled, until I realized Remo couldn’t possibly be here as Gregor’s prisoner.

  Which meant he’d come for me, and my outrage converted into relief.

  Unlike me, Remo had neither rolled himself into a ball, nor managed to land back-first. It probably shouldn’t have made me smile, but Skies, how I grinned at the sight of the lucionaga buried in mud to his ears. He twitched, and his palms crawled up to his shoulders, then flattened. He began to lift himself, the suctioning sound like a sloppy kiss. When he managed to pry himself up and prop himself onto his ass, I threw my head back and laughed. His face was yellow and caked with more mud than Shiloh and Aylen used on their customers when demonstrating the rejuvenating properties of fae sediments.

  Remo grumbled, rubbing his hands down the sides of his face, only managing to heap more wet earth onto it.

  Tears formed in the corners of my eyes. “I will never let you live this down, Farrow.” I laid my hand on my belly that was still vibrating with the dregs of my laughter.

  He glowered at me.

  One glance at his face, and my wild giggling resumed. I didn’t laugh often, but when I laughed, I laughed hard.

  He muttered a medley of unsavory Faeli curse words under his breath. “Where the hell are we, prinsisa?”

  That knocked the laughter from my lungs and the smile off my lips. “What do you mean? Didn’t you come to break me out of here?”

  “Break you out? No. I followed you in, because . . . because I’m obviously an idiot.”

  “What?”

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “That’s not why I said what, Remo. Although I agree that you’re an idiot, on many levels. I said what to you not knowing where we are.”

  Remo’s eyes seemed to shoot out the same lethal laser beams used in human warfare.

  “You really don’t know where we are?”

  “Why don’t you enlighten me, Trifecta?”

  “Wait, does that mean you didn’t come to get me out . . .?”

  “Get you out? It’s a portal. I’m sure the princess of Neverra can get herself out.”

  He was right. I could surely get myself out. Unless the portal was locked. I decided to keep worst-case scenarios at bay.

  “So, you really didn’t know about this place?” I asked, even though his severe exasperation showed through his facemask.

  “No, I really didn’t.” He swiped more muck off his face and flung it aside.

  A new shiver coursed up my body, this time not from the bite in the air, even though the air was really cold. “It’s a prison. Created by your grandfather. And mine.”

  His pupils shrank. “A prison?”

  I bit my lip but tasted moist earth, so I released it. I wanted to wipe my mouth on my slee
ve, but my black suit was as ochre as the faerie glaring at me.

  Remo’s gaze skated over the field we’d landed in, taking in the ring of green cacti and cloud-filled sky. When his eyes returned to me, they seemed somehow darker and sharper, less trusting . . . not that they’d ever seemed that trusting before. “How do you know about this place?”

  I flicked a clump of mud off my leg. “Joshua Locklear.”

  Remo’s skin color rose in the few spots he’d wiped clean.

  I sighed. “I owed him a favor, and he claimed it. Asked me to look into the rumor he’d caught of a supernatural prison. He thinks his sister might be in here.” I gestured around me.

  There was no wire fence, no magical barrier either, as well as no doom-colored structure that remotely resembled a prison, so I doubted anyone actually lived here.

  I hugged my arms. Why wasn’t my fire kicking in? “Are you cold?”

  “Cold?” Remo’s eyebrows dipped toward his nose. “No, I’m not cold. What I am is fucking pissed off. A prison! You fucking led me into a prison?”

  “Led you?” I asked indignantly. “You followed me. I didn’t sprinkle salt into your palm and hold it to a portal.” My tone held all the heat my body craved.

  I got to my feet, my legs heavy with mud. I needed to burn the gunk off and get the hell out of here. I raised my palms and conjured up my fire, then held my hands over my thighs, waiting for them to ignite and burn off the pounds of grime clinging to my suit’s carbon scales.

  Neither flame nor smoke appeared. I concentrated harder. After what felt like a full minute, my gloves were still flame-free. I looked at Remo, who’d also gotten to his feet. “Do you have fire?”

  He flipped his palms over. “Of course I have fire.” He turned much less vehement when he too failed to produce flames. “What the hell?”

  My heart picked up speed, going almost as fast as the magnetic subways that crisscrossed every large city on Earth.