by May Dawson
I decided to ignore him and faced myself in the mirror instead.
Long lavender hair, thick and bountiful, fell around my shoulders and cascaded down my back. My face was still like mine, but a gorgeous glow lit my perfect skin, my cheekbones were sharper, and my lips were plusher than ever before. I caught my lip with my lower teeth and worried it, watching the mirror reflect the action.
My reflection was beautiful, but even though I knew it was me, it felt like a stranger.
I ran my hands over my small breasts, my narrow waist, realizing my body was more slender than it had been before.
“You’re stronger than a mortal,” Azrael said, as if he realized I was studying my body in confusion. “You don’t need as much muscle.”
“Forget muscle,” I said, although that mattered to me too; I’d worked hard in the gym and the ring so I could stay alive fighting beasties. I grabbed my boobs through the excess material of my t-shirt and jiggled them—or rather, tried to. There wasn’t enough to go anywhere. “What happened to my tits?”
Azrael scrubbed his face with his hand, as if he were seeking strength internally. “Whoever altered your appearance added some extra… curves.”
I glanced at him over my shoulder, glaring at him. “I suppose you’d be an expert.”
He met my gaze. “I don’t want to answer that.”
“Good choice.” I stormed over to him just as the knock came on my door, two hard raps and then a quick one. Carter was early. Of course he was. “Change me back.”
“Are you sure that you don’t want your friends to see your real—” Azrael began, then shrugged his shoulders in surrender. He gripped my face lightly, and this time, I noticed a prickling across my skin.
Maybe I’d been too distracted by Azrael before to even notice the damned magic.
He stepped back, dropping his hands to his sides, but I glared at him anyway as I headed for the door.
Duncan was already on his way there, and I shoulder-checked him.
Then I promptly bounced off. The big Fae didn’t move.
“I’m making sure that’s the company you expected.” Duncan looked down at me with amusement as I stumbled across the carpet and caught myself.
“I’ve survived on my own for the past five years.”
“Somehow.”
I checked the peephole. Carter, Julian and Elly all waited for me in the hallway. My heart lurched seeing them. I hated the thought of leaving my friends behind.
I swung open the door and stepped back. Carter came in fast, his movements predatorial as if he were looking for a threat. Julian sauntered in behind him, magic sparking at his fingertips even though he looked relaxed.
Duncan snorted a laugh. It was a mean sound, and I turned to fix him with a glare.
He shrugged. “They’re cute. If I wanted to hurt you, Alisa, nothing would stop me.”
The tension in the room buzzed in the air. Oh, Duncan. My friends would take that as a threat. They were already moving…
Julian slammed a blast of magic into Duncan that knocked him into the wall. My framed pictures hit the floor and shattered, and the drywall cracked under the force of Duncan’s body. He was plastered to the wall for a fraction of a second, then propelled himself off, already swinging. Carter caught him around the waist and slammed him right back into the wall.
“Stop!” I shouted. Duncan had his hand around Carter’s throat and both of them were going for their blades, but Azrael growled too—this inhuman sound, tinged with danger—and both Duncan and Carter froze.
“We’re all friends here,” I said, knowing that was a damned overstatement, but whatever. “Let’s all take it easy.”
Elly surveyed the wreckage with her own amusement, shaking her head.
“Put him down,” I snapped at Carter and Duncan. “Hands to yourselves. Carter, he’s not going to hurt me.”
“He’s not going to get the chance if he tries,” Carter warned him, backing up.
Duncan grinned at that, a psychopathic joyful grin, and Azrael shot him a dark look.
“These are my friends Elly, Carter and Julian,” I told the Fae males. “This is Tiron—” I pointed to the tall rugged blond who filled the doorway, not looking remotely surprised at the mess Duncan had made, “and the giant twins are Azrael and Duncan. Duncan is the surly one.”
Duncan raised his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his powerful chest.
“I need you to look at these guys and tell me what’s wrong with them,” I told Elly.
Her gaze ping-ponged between Duncan, Azrael and Tiron. “Sweetheart, looking at them I don’t see anything wrong with them at all.”
I heaved a sigh, raking my fingers through my hair. I didn’t need to discuss how attractive they were; my body was already, always, keenly aware of how attractive they were.
“We’ll have to go deeper,” Elly said. She glanced at Julian. “You claim you met a Fae once, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “They move fast. Manipulate brilliantly. Hard to kill.”
“You’d think you’d recognize your crush in that description,” Duncan muttered. “It’s as if you never really got to know her.”
Azrael clipped him in the back of the head without even looking. That male was growing on me a bit.
Elly beckoned Duncan over with a finger. “You don’t look quite human.”
Duncan gave Azrael a must I look, and Azrael gave him a look right back. Maybe the Fae had their own languages, but looking at the two of them, I could believe the Fae could communicate solely in eyebrow.
Duncan rolled his eyes—apparently that gesture transferred across worlds—and crossed the room to Elly.
She studied him curiously, then reached up to brush his hair back, revealing the top of a pointed ear. Duncan grabbed her wrist. Julian, Carter and I all started for him automatically.
“Let the old woman touch your ears, Duncan,” Azrael snapped.
He sighed. “It’s rude.”
“Sorry.” She didn’t sound sorry. She retreated a step to look at Julian.
“They’re Fae,” Julian said, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s undeniable. That doesn’t mean they’re nice guys.”
“It doesn’t seem like such a great idea to go with the strange men into an even stranger world.” Carter agreed.
“You’re calling our world strange?” Tiron raised one hand to tick things off on his fingers. “You live in America. Land of reality television. Two party political systems. Your entire health care—”
“All right,” Azrael interrupted. He sat on the couch, crossed one leg over the other, and rested his arms on the seatback, looking as if he owned the place. “I’m sure you have questions for me. I’ll do my best to answer them.”
Carter and Elly reluctantly took their seats. Tiron and Duncan continued to lurk against the walls Maybe I should put them back to mopping.
Azrael winked at me, as if we were in on something together.
Julian jerked his jaw toward my refrigerator-box sized kitchen. I walked in front of him, then turned back, almost into his hard chest.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Can you try a spell?” he asked me.
“I’ve never been any good at magic. You know that.”
“Just try,” he said “Maybe it was blocked by the other enchantments, but if you’re really a Fae princess—you’ll be powerful when you get back into your own world. Fae nobility’s magic is tied to the courts. You’ll be able to do magic almost no one else can do.”
His words struck me deeply for some reason.
“I’m already powerful,” I reminded him. “I don’t need magic.”
If I admitted I had more power in the Fae world, it almost seemed as if I could be…better there. As if I belonged there instead of here.
But I didn’t believe that. I was just visiting the Fae world.
He smiled down at me fondly. “Yes, you already are.”
Then he added, “But I can’t wait to see wha
t Princess Alisa can do.”
The air between us felt charged. I cleared my throat. “Do you really think I should go?”
“No,” he said bluntly. “But I know you. I know how much you’ve wanted answers. And I don’t think there’s any way we could stop you from walking through that rip in the universe and hunting those answers down.”
“Are you joining us?” Elly called. “We’re only discussing your true identity in here.”
Julian pulled a face at Elly’s perpetual teasing, but held his arm out and bowed slightly to usher me ahead of him.
“That’s right, my loyal subject,” I teased him.
“Watch yourself, Princess,” he shot back.
I joined my friends and my new Fae-whatever-they-were in the living room. The guys and I all had a lot of questions, but the truth was, I already knew I was going.
If there was trouble waiting for me in the Fae world, well, I was used to finding trouble. And I was used to getting myself out of it.
Chapter Fifteen
Duncan
The next day, I drove the car we’d borrowed from some helpful mortal to the shifter’s compound. Alisa leaned over my shoulder from the backseat, staring at the speedometer.
“Do you always drive like an oversized slug managed to grow limbs just enough to reach the steering wheel, but not the accelerator pedal?” she asked. She was so close to me that the tips of her hair brushed my arm and made me feel on-edge.
“Do you always dress like a pirate?” I asked.
“Pirates don’t wear leather pants,” she said.
Azrael twisted in his seat to glance over her outfit yet again. “Princesses also don’t wear leather pants in our world.”
He said that as if I hadn’t caught him staring at her ass earlier.
Her eyebrows arched. “If I’m the princess, I guess princesses do.”
“You’re not the only one,” Tiron said. “Every court has their royalty in the Fae world.”
She frowned. “What court am I?”
I should remember she’d forgotten everything, but the reminder made my hands tense on the steering wheel. These were the most basic facts she should understand. She really was going to be a lamb to the slaughter in our world.
“Summer,” Azrael said, his gaze troubled.
“What does that mean?” she asked. “Is there a winter court?”
“Not anymore,” Tiron said shortly.
Azrael glanced at him, and I could almost feel Alisa zero in on that quick exchange.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she demanded.
I snorted, rescuing Azrael for once as her gaze flickered to me. “You don’t remember anything. There’s a whole lot of gaps to fill in.”
“Who do you think would’ve done this to me?” There was vulnerability threaded through her voice as she tucked her hair behind her ears. Finally, it stopped tickling my arm, and the intoxicating, honeysuckle scent she carried faded just a little.
“We’ll figure it out together,” Azrael promised, as if we weren’t going to drop her at Faer’s feet and get back to our lives as Fae knights, fighting whatever monsters came through the rips.
“For now, let’s go murder some werewolves.” Everything about this situation with Alisa made me uncomfortable, from her maddening presence to the way Azrael seemed to come unwound when he was near her. At least we had a mission to lose ourselves in before we completed Mission Spoiled Princess.
I dreaded what Azrael would be like when we left Alisa behind. Stoic, of course, he always was—but I could feel what he felt when he was miserable. Just remembering the last time he lost Alisa made me tense.
I parked our car on the side of the country road where the shifters lived. “Here we are,” I said with relief.
The four of us got out of the car. Alisa shrugged her sword harness on, her sword hanging across her narrow back, and drew her hair out from under the straps before gathering it up into a quick knot on top of her head.
She glanced around at all of us. “Weapons?”
I reached down and grabbed the hilt of my sword, which materialized at my hip the second I wished for it. I drew the long, bright blade. “Satisfied, Princess?”
“You could have shown off your magic when you were trying to convince me.” She waggled her fingers through the air.
“I always forget how ignorant you are now,” I said, just to watch her eyes narrow, her lips pressing together.
Alisa always hated to have any weakness exposed.
Azrael grabbed my shoulder as the two of us headed through the woods toward the shifters’ house, making sure we were out of Alisa’s ear shot before he demanded, “Why are you baiting her? Teasing her with…”
“The truth?” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Do you think she’ll be hurt even worse when she arrives back home to discover just how unwanted she is?”
“That’s not true.” Azrael shook his head. “Some people think she could take her rightful place as queen, replace Faer—”
I jerked my shoulder out of his grasp, whirling to face him. “Tell me you didn’t bring both me and the girl here under false pretenses. You are not going to give that brat the throne—”
“If I could give anyone the throne, I would take it myself,” Azrael muttered back, glancing toward where Tiron and Alisa wound through the woods together. “Keep your voice down.”
“You aren’t sold on following Faer’s orders, are you?” I demanded. “Might I remind you that the girl ruined you, ruined the autumn court—”
“You keep calling her the girl as if you didn’t love her too.”
I went on, ignoring him. “Now she’s our chance to get into Faer’s good graces and surprise him with our coup. Keep your friends close and your enemies...”
“He’s keeping us close, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Azrael said in that arrogant way of his.
“All the more reason you shouldn’t make it so painfully obvious you still love her.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” he scoffed.
Gods. He really did. He always insulted me when I struck too close to home. Anger clutched my heart. She’d hurt him before. What would she do to him now?
We had one chance to save the last of the autumn court. We couldn’t fail.
I outpaced him, sword in hand, eager for something to hurt and to kill.
Together, the four of us reached the house. Alisa bounced up the steps ahead of us and rang the doorbell.
She glanced over her shoulder at us with a smile arching her lips and touching her face with mischief. Her luminous eyes were heavily lashed, with a tendency to crinkle at the corners when she was genuinely delighted, whether she smiled or not.
“Ding-dong. Girl Scout cookies,” she said, as she turned back around. The three of us move to flank her, pressing against either side of the doorway so we would be unseen.
“What is she talking about?” I muttered to Tiron.
“Next time we’re Earthside, I’ll buy you some Thin Mints, and then you’ll know,” he said.
Someone yanked the door open.
Azrael grabbed whoever it was by the back of the neck, then threw him over the porch railing so that he tumbled to the ground. Azrael leapt onto the railing, his sword flashing in his hand.
Alisa was already rushing into the house. I cursed and followed her, Tiron on my heels.
Two shifters jumped off the couch and moved to attack us. They didn’t have time to shift, but their shouts would warn the others. I drove my blade into the first one, flung him off it onto the wall.
The second one lunged at Alisa. Tiron headed to intersect him, and I lashed out a hand and grabbed the pack of his neck, shoving him away. He turned to me with a wounded look written across his face, but I shook my head.
Alisa made short work of the shifter with a few bloody thrusts of her sword.
The girl was a nightmare, but she didn’t need saving. Watching Alisa fight was when I liked her best.
Together the three of u
s swept through the house. We moved from room to room, killing every shifter that attacked us. Alisa was sharp with a sword, just as she’d been once.
Azrael caught up to us, with blood splatters across his handsome face. A giant, vicious wolf leapt at the two of them, slamming them against the wall. Tiron and I rushed to help, but two more wolves bounded into the room and we turned to face them.
The wolf circled me, and I feinted to my right. The wolf dove toward my exposed left side, just as I’d planned. I drove my sword at its belly, but the wolf was too fast. His flashing jaws managed to wrap around my arm, and I let out a bark of pain. Then Tiron was there, slicing through the shifter’s throat, and the wolf fell.
Tiron and I spun to face Azrael and Alisa, just as the wolf dropped at their feet.
“You and I have always been quite the team when we work together.” Azrael smiled at her.
She stared back at him without smiling, but I sensed her pulse racing, and I doubted that rapid heartbeat was because of a little thing like a murderous wolf shifter.
“Gods,” I muttered. “You should’ve just let me die, Tiron. It would be better than listening to Azrael’s babble.”
I swept on, and the others followed me.
Then we found a pair of girls, drugged and tied up in an upstairs bedroom. The air stunk with the kind of sour scent of piss and vomit that sticks in the back of one’s mouth.
I lingered in the doorway, rage tightening my stomach. I shouldn’t care. They were just mortals. Their lives were short anyway.
The girls were unresponsive as Alisa knelt beside them, her slender fingers pressing against their throats as she checked their vital signs.
There were unshed tears in her luminous eyes as she looked up at me, blinking a bit too quickly. “We have to get them to a hospital.”
“Do what you must,” I said, cleaning the blood from my sword with a rag. She’d thrown her own sword to one side, careless like a human, when she fell to her knees to check on them.
She cursed at me. “Goddamn it, Duncan, help me…”
