Seeking the Fae (Daughter of Light Book 1)

by Leia Stone

  I could take off my boots and put my feet in the grass. No one would notice I was doing magic or anything, but I really wanted to see if this seeker stone was real.

  “If we can’t find it, I’ll try that,” I told her.

  Elle nodded.

  “It should be up here on the right. Shakespeare Garden,” I told Elle.

  Bashur was smelling everything and had stopped to pee three times already. It’s like he was saving it up and spraying it all over everything, but Elle held his leash while I referred to my photographic memory of the map.

  “Here!” I exclaimed and then gasped when I saw the intricate archway of Shakespeare’s Garden. An iron arch spread stood about ten feet tall with flower and petal detail work that any Fae would appreciate.

  Elle was inspecting the work as well, while Bashur took this time to pee on the corner of the arch.

  “Hey! Don’t do that.” I smacked his rump and he looked up at me and barked.

  “Wow, this is lovely.” Elle stepped into the park, pulling Bashur after her. You could almost forget that Faerie was dying and that I needed to look for the remaining five crystals. I could almost just … be a tourist. Almost.

  “Alright, I’m going to have a look around.” I winked at Elle. There was a couple sitting on a bench reading; huge red rose bushes flourished behind them. Another lady and her little girl were dancing around the garden in joy. This place was special; it almost had a Fae quality to it, and I wondered when it was built and by whom.

  As I walked the edge of the garden, passing little plaques with quotes from Shakespeare on them, I searched for the one Mara spoke of. It wasn’t until I got to the largest one, the one that announced Shakespeare Garden in huge lettering with a Romeo and Juliet quote above, that I could feel the power of magic pulling me.

  Gotcha.

  Stepping up closer to the plaque, I suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion. Knowing my mother had stood in this very spot not too long ago had an ache forming in my chest.

  “Help me, Mom,” I whispered, and rubbed my thumb over the necklace at my throat. That pull was so strong, the plaque was … shimmering bronze and I felt the irresistible urge to touch it. When I placed my hand flat onto the plaque, it glimmered a reflective shiny purple, sending a jolt of buzzing magic up my arm. The words that once stood there were replaced as an image of a map formed in its place.

  With a gasp, I removed my hand and stared at the purple glowing map. It took me a second to understand what I was looking at. The upper section was of Earth and all of the countries here, the lower section was … Faerie and my village. That lower portion was a tiny little map that showed the Tree of Life and an etched picture of seven crystals that rested on its base.

  “Whoa,” I breathed, leaning closer. I scanned the US map and my eyes stopped on Australia. There was a crystal symbol directly over the right side of the country. Damn, my Earth geography was shit. It was on the tip of my tongue.

  “Gold Coast,” Elle whispered behind me.

  I spun to see her looking wide-eyed at the map. “You see it?” I wasn’t sure if it was a seeker only thing. She nodded.

  “Why can’t I see all of the others here?” I asked her. Unless every single crystal was in Australia, but I doubted it. This map showed eight and I needed twelve.

  She shrugged, “Maybe you have to find them in order or something, or it can only show you one at a time on Earth.”

  Hmm.

  A woman suddenly walked up to look at the plaque and I instinctively reached out to cover it with my hand, which made the map disappear, and the plaque was normal once again.

  Whew. That was close.

  I backed away, giving the woman a sweet smile, and then looked at Elle. “I guess we’re going down under.”

  She nodded, jaw tightening as she gave me a warrior’s grin.

  Elle was really coming into her own in this situation, I wish I could say the same about myself.

  Just then, Bashur barked and jerked. The leash flew from Elle’s hands.

  “Bash!” I screamed and ran after the huge beast.

  “Puppy!” a girl said, reaching for a tiny chihuahua that wasn’t there. When her hand hit the top of bashers back, which was nearly as tall as her, she recoiled. Illusions were pesky things. They looked like one thing, and felt or smelled like another.

  “He’s not friendly,” I told the mom, and she yanked her daughter back, shooting me a glare. I dove and grasped onto Bashur’s collar just in time for him to start digging up a beautiful red tulip bed.

  “Bashur!” I scolded him, trying with all my might to yank him back and away from the pretty flowers he was currently murdering.

  When I finally got up to his face, I reached out for his muzzle and yanked him back.

  “What the—?” His nose was covered in dirt and he held a leather-bound book in his mouth.

  My stomach dropped when I saw the book. It jogged a dozen memories within me. When I was younger, my mother would write in a book like this all the time. Like a journal. Then one day she just stopped. I asked her why and she simply stated, “It’s complete.” I never really thought about it again until now. My fingers caressed the spiral on the spine. It was hers. I couldn’t help it; I had to open it, just to get a glimpse of her perfect scrolling handwriting. But when I split the spine, I frowned as I gazed upon blank pages. Flipping through them, all I saw was blank after blank.

  But this was hers … I knew it, and clearly Bashur had smelled it. It must be some magic illusion ink. I’d have to deal with it later.

  Her words came back to me now. In her final dying moments she’d asked me to find her journal and I’d barely given it any thought. Until now.

  “Good boy, Bashur! You’re getting a treat when we get home,” I told him, and he licked my hand, depositing a large string of drool on my palm.

  Yuck.

  Elle looked down at the book in my hands. “Is that?”

  She’d seen my mom working on it many times over the years.

  I just nodded. “Let’s head back.”

  With that, we headed back for the apartment and on our way to Australia. The journal pushed to the back of my mind as I focused on getting the next crystal.

  After stashing the journal in the bedside table in New York, I grabbed Bashur and Elle and we positioned ourselves in front of the front door. Checking my watch, I saw that it was just about one more minute until an hour had passed. When the clock ticked, I pulled the door open and Mara was leaning against the hallway of her home, inspecting her nails.

  “Hey, kids. Did you find it?”

  I grinned. “Yep, it’s in Gold Coast, Australia.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Gold Coast is lovely.”

  We stepped inside and I shut the door behind me as Bashur jumped up on Mara and licked her face. “Did he hold his pee and mark ten different things?” she asked.

  Elle and I grinned. “Yep.”

  Mara rubbed the space between his forehead, and I found myself enjoying our little crew. I could get use to this life. Hunting for crystals was dangerous no doubt, but life was more enjoyable with good friends. And I seemed to have found two of those.

  We went into Mara’s office and strapped into the chairs as she did her thing working the dials and knobs at her huge command center to take us to Australia.

  After a spin cycle and a jog down the hallway, we were standing at her back door.

  “You might have to do a lot of exploring to find where it is. I’ll set a timer for two hours and send Bashur if you haven’t checked in.” Mara tinkered with her watch and I nodded.

  Patting Bash on the head, I stepped out of a small beach condo and breathed in the salty fresh air. The ocean was by far my most favorite place on Earth. Just the vastness of it was so humbling. Faerie was such a small and restricted place since the Dark Times; I’d grown to love the fresh open sea.

  “How do you pay for all these places?” I asked in wonder. I knew that a beachfront home was no small p
urchase.

  Mara smiled. “When the Dark Times happened and the Fae fled to Earth with their halfling children, we sent out a small band of loyal Fae to live and earn money on the Earth world. We call them the guardians. They are fully devoted to the cause of finding and returning the crystals and restoring Faerie.” She gestured to the house. “They fund all of our endeavors.”

  Whoa. This life just kept unraveling with new shit I had no idea about.

  “One of them must be a millionaire,” Elle observed.

  “Billionaire.” Mara winked.

  Yeesh. So that’s how my mom paid for the fancy apartment in NYC.

  I synched my watch. “Alright, two hours.”

  She nodded. “Good luck!”

  With that, I transformed my motorcycle and hopped on, Elle behind me holding on to my shoulders. I sat there for a full minute, activating my seeker power by thinking of the object of my desire. Pulling up the mental image of the blueish crystal in my mind’s eye, I felt the tiniest tug to the right. Taking off on the bike, I followed the pull and kept my senses open. We sailed past palm trees and white sand beaches as the salty wind whipped around us.

  Reaching a fork in the road, I felt a tug to the left, but it was barely noticeable. Faint. I needed to concentrate. Turning left, I went on doing this for half an hour, sometimes stopping at a light for so long I got honked at and had to pull over before I lost the trail. This was a challenging hunt. Finally, when we’d been riding for what seemed like forever, we came upon a beach town called Cabarita Beach and my senses flared. The pulse hit me deep in the gut, yanking me to the left.

  “It’s here!” I shouted to Elle, who’d been patiently hanging on to me and not talking so that she wouldn’t disturb me.

  I felt her grip on my shoulders tighten in response as she readied herself. I had no idea what we’d be walking into, and that was the hardest thing. Would it be one lone Fae or an entire party of them like last time? Or worse, a trained army? The Sons of Darkness were much more organized than I thought they would be when I’d first learned about them.

  I had a vial of the pricklewart juice in my pocket, and since a few days had safely passed, I could use it to be temporarily invisible again. Careening the bike, I pulled us down a little side street and the knock in my gut was so strong I felt a little nauseous. Cutting the bike engine, I stopped. We were close. Elle popped off and then I did as well, packing up the bike until it was a rolling pin once more and stashing it into my messenger bag.

  “Okay, give me a minute,” I told my bestie, who stood erect, hands twitching over her weapons as she readied herself for anything. To any passerby she was a normal twenty-something chick in beachwear, but little did the humans know, she was armed to the teeth.

  “Is that a gun?” I gasped, eyeing the Glock at her hip. Fae were usually against electronics of all kinds and anything machine or manmade like guns was … not forbidden exactly … but frowned upon.

  Elle nodded. “Mara gave it to me, and I have no problem using it.” She tipped her chin high as if to say there would be no more discussion.

  Well, I guess you had to fight fire with fire, and we were way out of our league when it came to the Winter King.

  I chuckled a little. “You’ve become a little badass, Ellie poo. A far cry from the little Fae who was too scared to jump off Stoneman Cliff.”

  She scowled playfully. “Oh fuck you. Stoneman Cliff is high as hell and I was eight years old.”

  The memory brought back a smile to my face.

  “You have wings. What’s the worst that could have happened?”

  She just rolled her eyes and waved me off.

  I felt it then, a knock between my ribcage, urging me forward. “Okay, I’m gonna sneak up to those houses.” I pointed to one of the three homes I thought it might be. They were all mammoth two-stories that perched high on the cliff overlooking the water. “And I’ll give you a hand signal when I find the right one. Then I’m going in.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I’ll watch your back and keep an exit point clear.”

  I gave her a brief hug and then took off at a brisk walk down the street. It was a sunny and totally normal day out, but darkness loomed in my mind. Fear started to creep into the edges of my consciousness. This was dangerous. Like super fucking dangerous. Flashes of my mother’s body flickered in my head and I had to shake it to clear them.

  Walking past the first house, I got nothing. Passing next to the second, the urge was a little stronger but not a homerun. Slowing my pace, I crept up to the third house and got a pull so hard that I veered into the side yard almost out of control.

  The crystal was here … and so was a sickly energy I’d come to associate with the Sons … except for Liam. Pushing him from my mind, I held up my right fist, signaling to Elle this was the house.

  She nodded.

  I let my gaze run over the front porch, watching shadows pace inside behind the white sheer curtain. Fluttering my wings, I allowed them to take me just a few feet into the air. A guard paced the back porch, his long brown ponytail tied at the nape of his neck.

  Shit.

  There were no open windows from what I could see, so I was going to have to chance the backyard and the roaming guard that stood there. Wasting no time, I chugged the contents of the pricklewart juice, and grimaced as it made its way down my throat.

  Yuck. It seemed Mara had added some rose to this one to try to mask the smell, but it didn’t do much. The second my fingers disappeared from view, I knew the potion was working and I shot up into the air, coasting forward at a slow rate so that my wing flapping sound was minimal.

  The guard was big, a hulking mass of muscle stacked on his arms, as pelts of fur ran the length of his legs, where they ended at two hooved feet.

  Holy crystals.

  Was this one of the ones that could shift into an animal? I didn’t want to find out. He was on a cell phone chatting with someone.

  “I know, baby. I’ll be back in a few days. Just a quick work trip,” he purred as I landed on silent feet and padded across the porch.

  The back door was open, letting a cool breeze into the home.

  Score.

  Flattening my wings to my back, I slipped past the curtain and froze when a guard walked right over to me.

  “Marx! Get the fuck off the phone and do your job,” he barked, before turning and going to the kitchen. He just missed me by two inches.

  I exhaled the breath I’d been holding, and tiptoed further into the house, feeling the pull of my seeker power tug me closer to the front of the home. There was a guy in the kitchen with a small pair of brown horns on his forehead. I tiptoed past him, barely breathing as I passed an open office. My stomach dropped as I nearly screamed at the sight of the Winter King sitting behind a computer.

  “Where’s my tea!” he shouted, clacking something on the keyboard as the man in the kitchen mumbled a reply.

  My heart was in my throat as I padded past the room, wondering how the hell I was going to make it out of here. The Winter King was in Australia? How? Why? I’d assumed this was a new group and a new crystal, but now I was getting worried. Elle and I couldn’t go up against him again. We’d barely gotten away last time.

  My powers tugged me to a room just off the front door. Invisible yet tangible pulses of power knocked into my solar plexus one by one. My breath hitched as I began to feel my invisibility powers flicker.

  Oh gods.

  I placed one hand on the doorknob, grabbing my blade with my other. It was now or never. Twisting open the knob, I slipped into the room and closed the door without shutting it fully for fear of making noise.

  I took in the scene all at once, shocked when my gaze fell onto a familiar Dark Fae. Liam was tied and gagged on the floor. He looked beaten and bloody. Purple bruises dotted his face and jaw, and the carpet was splattered with his blood.

  Anger rose up inside of me so fast and hot I thought I might explode. In front of Liam was t
he same sickly green crystal from last night. The one I couldn’t touch. But the worst of the entire situation was the guard sitting in a folding chair and staring at the door I’d just come through. I was seconds from materializing and getting my ass handed to me, so I needed to think fast. My fingertips were already becoming visible.

  The Son of Darkness was one of those pale sickly ones. He stared at the door in confusion. It had just opened on its own. Lunging forward, I made the split-second decision to take out the guard. Using the butt of my knife, I intended to knock him in the temple and do this cleanly, but mid-air I materialized. Planting his feet on the ground, he kicked backward, falling out of range of my knife as splayed out onto the floor.

  Thinking quickly, I let my wings carry me up and over him, straddling him and pinning him to the ground. This guy almost killed Liam and he would surely kill me.

  Trissa’s words from my training came to me then: If it’s kill or be killed, you strike first.

  Covering his mouth with one hand, I brought my blade across his throat, slitting it clean open. Crimson blood gurgled onto the carpet as the halfling bled out.

  I looked down at my hands in horror. What had I done…? I was a murderer.

  Liam started to moan softly, and it snapped me out of my stupor. Guilt gnawed at me as I crawled off the guy, hands shaking. Stumbling over to Liam, I fell to my knees and pulled the rag out of his mouth.

  He gasped for breath and then winced, holding his side.

  “I killed him,” I whispered in shock, almost to myself.

  Liam nodded. “Good, because they were about to kill me. Untie me,” he groaned.

  My chest lit up blue then, the most inconvenient time in the world for it to signal to me that I’d found my soulmate.

  I get it. You don’t need to remind me, I scolded the blue light.

  As I cut his bindings, he stared at the blue swirling light arcing off my chest, and then at the mirrored light on his, but thankfully he didn’t say a word. I looked at the dark crystal.

  “Is this the only one they have here?” I whispered. Why would the freaking map in Shakespeare’s Garden lead me to a crystal I could not touch? I mean, obviously it wouldn’t know I couldn’t touch it … but something wasn’t right. It showed me all the crystals in Faerie and only this one here. Where the hell were the others?