The Sweet Series Box Set: Books 1-4

by Bailey Ardisone

  “Long blonde hair, piercing green eyes. It doesn’t matter, Rydan. Did you not just hear what I said?” Mycah was exasperated, and I could see the tension he carried throughout his body.

  “So it was real...” Rydan whispered to himself, his gaze cutting back to the tree. He looked scared. “How does it work?” he asked, waving a hand toward the tree.

  Mycah hesitated. “You’re royalty. Anyone birthed of royalty can pass through. Everyone else must be ordained. You just have to will it.” He spoke the words tentatively—like he wanted to tell Rydan but wasn’t sure if he could trust him with the information.

  “I’m...what?” Rydan rolled his eyes and shook his head in dismissal. “Whatever.” He reached up and touched the trunk of the tree. Like pure, utter magic, his hand crossed the invisible threshold, disappearing into oblivion. He jerked his hand back like it was painful.

  “Rydan, what is the matter with you?! Are you not listening to a word I am saying?” Mycah yelled, his British accent thick.

  “Rydan?! What are you doing?” I finally found my words and chimed in with panic. No...he couldn’t leave me. My chest started caving in the moment his bright mercury eyes flickered to mine, full of guilt, before going right back to the tree. STOP!! I wanted to scream.

  But it was too late. He passed through.

  “RYDAN!”

  “RYDAN!!!” I screamed so loud my eyes instantly popped open, as my strangled voice cut through the darkest of nights. There was no moon. No moonlight to paint its soft glow over the expanse of the ‘Duck Room’—To play with Mycah’s deep blue eyes as he lay next to me, staring at me with pained concern. It was dark.

  Very dark.

  It matched my mood.

  Four times. This was my fourth time tonight that I’d relived the events that happened earlier that day through a never-ending nightmare. I couldn’t escape.

  There was no escape.

  I would find no solace in sleep from this.

  My best friend was gone, and the memory of his departure haunted me.

  How could he do it? How could he just leave me like that? Now after round five, I went to swipe away the cruel tear that stung my cheek as it fell. Only Mycah’s soft thumb got to it first. I looked up through my blurry vision and watched as he brought his hand to his lips and kissed the thumb stained with my salty tear.

  “Please don’t cry, love. My heart can’t take it,” he whispered so softly, so strained, I barely heard him.

  I closed my eyes. Sleep kept dragging me back under, but my brain couldn’t handle the memories, and an hour later I was back screaming Rydan’s name each time. But a part of me wanted to see him again, even if it was only a memory.

  So I would sleep.

  I begged for sleep and was rewarded right away. Because at least there he was still alive. He was still safe. I couldn’t even think about reality and what the truth might actually be. Mycah tried to warn him that he could be walking into a death trap.

  I may never see him again.

  And he just left.

  Just like that.

  Chapter One

  ~Nari~

  A week.

  An entire week had come and gone since Mycah left me here in Kennebunkport, Maine to go back home. The day before that, Rydan left to go back to that same place. Which was also his home.

  I was alone. All alone.

  A week full of fake smiles and robotic pleasantries. A week of forced kindness and feigning interest. Sure, one week may not sound long compared to the concept of millennia of time.

  But I swear I literally could hear the long hand scratching and crawling its way to the next minute slowly, painfully, and unbearably, as it made its way around the clock.

  Torture.

  Pure and utter torture.

  Pain.

  Could there ever be anything more painful than this? If it were possible, I’d never have ripped myself from my bed. I would be there right now, clutching for sanity and relief from the ache their absence had left me with.

  My soul had been mutilated—stripped apart to be left bare and wanting, needing. Needing its other parts. Needing to be whole again. I realized this wasn’t normal. When Mycah left briefly last time, in the effort to protect me from evil, the feeling was similar to this. But I never could have imagined it being a million times worse than it was. He was too far away. I couldn't sense him. I couldn't feel him. He was just too far away. Like he had vanished off the Earth completely. And maybe he had...

  I reached for my cell phone from my sweatshirt pocket at the risk of getting in trouble and let my thumb hover over the speed dial number I had set for Rydan.

  #8

  His favorite.

  I needed to hear his voice. Always, since the moment he walked through that traitorous tree I once called ours, every call went straight to voicemail. But that right there was the only thing that had carried me through this excruciating week. The three seconds I got of his voice he’d recorded for his voicemail greeting.

  I wouldn’t with Mycah. I couldn’t.

  It hurt too dang much to even think of the sound of his voice in my head. But that didn’t even matter—because he didn’t have a voicemail greeting. Apparently there was no cell reception in their homeland. Our home, I guessed...A strange place filled with mythical creatures—or so Mycah says, and I was just supposed to up and accept it. Yeah, right.

  An entire week and I still couldn’t comprehend any of this.

  Now, I was eighteen, and for the first time in eight years Rydan wasn’t here to tease me about being older than him. It wasn’t by much, but he still liked to call me Ms. Oldie-pants for the entire day.

  I couldn’t take it! I was going crazy being left behind like this. Not to mention the psychotic break I experienced from the conversation Mycah and I had right before he left me.

  “You healed me, Nariella. You did it. Not me. You.” He tucked my long, dark brown hair behind my ear, waiting for my reaction. I could hardly make out his scent from the strong smell of briny ocean water that enveloped us.

  “Huh?” was all I could muster. I think I heard my brain crack. Or maybe it was the sound of my world beginning to shatter...

  “You’re not human, love. Don’t you know that? You couldn’t possibly think someone with sparkling violet eyes like yours would be human.” He lightly chuckled as he searched my eyes for the truth. His English accent that painted his velvety voice was way too sexy, but the words did not escape me, and they made for a good distraction to how alluring he was.

  “What are you saying? Of course I’m human. My eyes...it’s just a strange anomaly. That’s all. I am human. I mean, sure I’ve always known I wasn’t normal but only in the sense of my craziness. I’m human, Mycah.” I pulled back from him and started to walk away in the opposite direction of where we stood on the beach along the Atlantic Ocean. I couldn’t take this. I wasn’t even sure I could handle him not being human. And Rydan...my god...Rydan....

  “Nariella. You’re a Healer. Do you have any idea what this means?” Mycah caught up to me with little effort. I tried to walk faster but it was no use...No pace I reached could be fast enough to out run Mycah. He was too powerful. His special abilities were insanely high off the crazy chart.

  I immediately dropped to my knees, sinking into the rough sand below. How? How was this even possible?

  “How?” I echoed my thoughts in a whisper.

  “Yo! Nari! Earth to Nari!” Zaylie’s high-pitched Australian accent combined with a knock on my head snapped me out of my daydreaming. Whether I was awake or asleep, I was assaulted by memories of the moments my world got flipped upside down like a burning pancake.

  “Oh, what? Sorry, I was...distracted.” I lightly shook my head and looked around. Empty. The classroom meant for our Literature class had already been cleared out.

  “Class ended five minutes ago. We’re going to be late for our next one. You okay?”

  “No. I’m not okay, Zaylie. I’m not okay.” I roughl
y grabbed my things and headed for the door. She followed.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve been acting so strange all week,” she grabbed me by the arm making me spin around to face her. “You can tell me. What’s going on, Nari?”

  I stared into her soft, golden-brown eyes and hesitated. It was tempting.

  Very tempting.

  I wanted to break down and spill every detail I kept bottled up inside of me since the day Mycah crashed into my life. But could I? Would I be breaking some kind of elf law or something? As much as I loved Zaylie, I didn’t exactly want to be carted off by the elf police and thrown into elf prison. Or hung by elf executioners.

  Okay, I really had no idea how any of it worked...and my brain could not get over the word ‘elf.’

  “Well?” she said. Sincerity, trust, and love were all injected into that one little word as she squeezed my arm. I looked around the hallway for nobody’s benefit but my own, because we were alone. Everyone else already sat in class waiting for the final bell that was about to ring any second.

  “Okay. Wanna ditch?” I whispered. I had no idea why I was whispering, but I’d never cut class before and felt a bit of sneakiness was in order. Yes, I was an eighteen year old who acted more like an eight year old. What could I say?

  “What?! Are you serious?” she matched my whisper.

  “As a heart attack,” I answered firmly.

  “Let’s do it,” she whispered with a grin. I grinned in return, which felt foreign and weird, like I hadn’t truly smiled in years, as we linked arms and started tip-toeing down the hallway toward the exit. “Why are we whispering?”

  Zaylie squeezed my hand gently to comfort me. I stared down at our clasped hands, and then moved my gaze out to the crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean. I fidgeted on the sharp, hard rock that we sat on.

  Could I do this? Could I tell her?

  I opened my mouth...and then quickly closed it again. I could feel heat creeping up my face. I was embarrassed. How did one go about telling one of their best friends that their other best friend and person they were in love with were...Night Elves, exactly? I couldn’t even think about telling her what Mycah claimed I was.

  “Umm...” I slowly exhaled.

  “...umm?” she repeated.

  “Yeah. Um.” I shot my eyes to hers for the briefest of seconds before looking back down at our hands again. Oh god. I couldn’t do this. She’d think I was crazy. Heck, she’d probably run away screaming. I knew that's what I felt like doing when Mycah was confessing the truth to me that day at the Weeping Willow before Rydan found us there. Oh yeah, and not to mention before Mycah was shot with an arrow by an evil hunter from their world. I mean...our world. What if by telling her I would put her in danger? I would just die if she got caught in the middle because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

  “Nari, is this about Mycah? Or Rydan? I haven’t seen those blokes in a while and you haven’t mentioned a single word about them. Are they okay?” she tried pulling the truth out of me.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s driving me crazy,” I finally said.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning,” she caressed my back slowly. “First, why don’t you try telling me what happened between you two. Do you love him?”

  “What? No, I don’t lov...love him,” I answered too quickly, suddenly feeling shy about actually saying my feelings out loud. I had never been in love before, so I’ve never had to confess those feelings out loud to anyone before either. I hadn’t even told Mycah how I felt about him yet. He left before I got the chance.

  “Ha! Please, girl. I see the way he looks at you. You’ve completely caught his fancy. And don’t pretend he hasn’t got yours. You're so obvious, ya know.” She laughed. My cheeks burned in response.

  “Ugh. Great. So the whole world knows?” I dropped my face into my hand and cringed. So. Embarrassing.

  “And Rydan?” she inquired.

  “I love Rydan, but like a brother. He’s my very best friend. And you’re right. I do...have feelings for Mycah. I don’t understand them. They're so strong, it seriously scares the heck out of me. Is it normal to feel so strongly about someone you barely know? And so soon? It’s like my soul feels less when he isn’t near me. Now...it is even worse. I feel completely empty with him so far away.”

  I decided I needed to grow up. I was eighteen now...I really needed to start acting like it. So I tried to explain these strange feelings to probably the only person in the world I’d actually want to, but part of me wondered if they had something to do with the whole elves thing. As much as I loved Zaylie and loved that I finally had a friend who was a girl to be able to share these deep parts of me with, was it possible that she’d even be able to understand?

  “What do you mean, with him so far away? Where is he?” she asked, her eyebrows pulled together.

  “He’s gone. Mycah and Rydan left. They left me.” I looked away and held my breath, trying desperately to hold back my tears. I didn’t want to cry. I was so over crying.

  “Mycah and Rydan did WHAT?!” Zaylie yelled, way too loudly, shooting straight up off the rock. I almost wanted to laugh at her reaction, but the overwhelming sadness from the situation was too much.

  “Yeah...” was all I could manage.

  “Tell me everything,” she said sternly as she claimed her side of the rock again.

  I looked over at the spot Mycah and I had stood just a week ago, discussing this very thing. I let the memory replay in my mind for the zillionth time.

  “How?” I echoed my thoughts in a whisper.

  “I don’t know the details. I was very young. But I do know you’re incredibly special, Nariella. And I don’t just mean to me. You have to be special in order to be born a Healer. They are so rare,” Mycah grew quiet, as if lost in thought.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why have you kept this from me until now if it's true?” I asked, not really sure I could endorse all the crazy just yet.

  “That is precisely why I didn’t tell you. If my uncle knew of your existence...if he found out you were a Healer...Nariella, I will do everything in my power to prevent that. Even if that meant keeping the truth about who you are...what you are...from you. I couldn’t have you trying to heal the whole world if you knew what you were capable of. I couldn’t risk your exposure. I only want to protect you, love. You don’t understand what he is capable of. He brutally murdered my father and then after trying to get to me, he killed my mentor and Guardian, Ender, who was more like a second father to me than anything. I would die if anything happened to you, too.” He stretched his fingers behind my ear and closed his eyes as he barely touched his forehead to mine. My stomach did a flip at the same time my heart skipped a beat.

  “I’m so deeply sorry you’ve lost people you love, Mycah.” I tried to keep my voice strong but the pain he showed in his eyes reached my heart and made it difficult to speak.

  When he didn’t respond, I sensed that I needed to change the subject. “So I’m a Night Elf too?” I bit out, trying to hold back my frustration at the unknown.

  “No. You’re not. You’re a Tavas’Elda. A Wood Elf,” he answered slowly; his accent made the words sound beautiful, despite their terrifying meaning. “My natural born enemy.” He pulled me closer to him, as if this new information would scare me. But it didn’t. It only confused me more.

  “What?” I asked, not hiding my confusion.

  “That danger you felt from me every time I was near...that was your natural instincts telling on me. I hated it. I couldn’t take you being afraid of me. It is an ancient rivalry that has run in our blood for so long; I knew it couldn’t be helped. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how you could be so close to Rydan. But it at least gave me hope that you could overcome it. I guess I’m lucky you didn’t understand it,” he chuckled toward the ground. Why did he have to look so sexy all the dang time?

  “I have to go. I have to get out of here.” This was too much. I felt like cru
mbling into a tiny pile of confusion. I shot up off the ground. I started to walk away, and then realized the one place I usually escaped to could no longer be my safe haven. The majestic Weeping Willow that Rydan and I spent so much time at was now off limits, according to Mycah. Apparently, as long as he stood on this side of it, there could always be an evil hunter going through it to come after him.

  “Nari. I’m the one who has to go. I have to go back, and it has to be now,” Mycah breathed out gruffly, pain evident in his voice. I spun around, shocked. There was no way he was leaving me too. Rydan was one thing, but I refused to be left behind while the two of them are off doing who knows what.

  “You’re joking, right?” I responded, knowing full well he wasn’t. My chest tightened.

  “I have to go after Rydan. I can’t let anything happen to him. He’s important, Nariella. He’s my brother. I’m responsible for him. I don’t know how far he’s gotten, or if he has been captured already—”

  “NO!” I covered my ears like a little kid. I couldn’t handle the thought of something bad happening to Rydan. I just couldn’t.

  Mycah wrapped me in his arms. His delicious woodsy scent washed over me. I tried not to cry. Please don’t cry...

  “I’m so sorry, love,” he whispered into my hair.

  “I’ll go with you. We can find him together,” I said hopeful, my voice full of cracks.

  “You can’t. You have to stay here. At least here, you’re safe. I cannot possibly let you anywhere near my uncle, lest you be discovered,” he responded fervently, strategically. He was born a king; I could sense the authority in him. And then I could feel him suck in a breath and hold it, waiting for my reaction. Or maybe he could feel the overwhelming emotions of disappointment and despair crashing down on me.

  “How can that be true? The Black Eagles...what if they come after me looking for the Sindora?” I reminded him of the human Austrian underground organization that had been hunting him for some strange but very important item that he wouldn’t tell me anything about.