A small creature, much shorter than the fae queen, was stumbling backward. Without thinking he reached out and caught her by the arm to keep her from hitting the floor. When he pulled her back to her feet, she refused to look at him and shook his hand off her arm with a bit more force than he liked. He had just run into her so he would play the apologetic fool that was required of him. It was Jessica’s party after all. There was something familiar about her, even if he couldn’t quite see her face.
“Tyler, what a coincidence. I didn’t know you planned to ruin my coronation.” Venom dripped from Jessica’s tongue, and he knew that he deserved it just this once.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I wasn’t paying attention. I have other things on my mind.” He really did, and he tried to move around her and get to the other room. Until she reached out and touched his arm, stalling his exit. She nodded to the other woman, who moved further into the ballroom. Her hair caught his eye, auburn in color. Just like the human’s had been. It was the perfect complement to the dark hues in his own short hair, although why that thought came to mind, he had no idea.
“I think you know exactly what I want to say to you.” Jessica looked at him as though he was dirt on her shoe. “Stay away from my sister. She’s on a mission, and I know I can’t trust Winter not to have said anything to you. What she has to do is far more important than flirt with a warrior, and a vampire at that.” She was staring up at him like he should know exactly what she was talking about, and he didn’t have time to argue her nonsense.
“Of course, Your Highness. As you command.” He nodded curtly and stepped around her completely ignoring the fact that he had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Why was the world going crazy? And why was he the only one who was sane?
As he slipped into the dining hall and then headed out to his rooms, he ran into another person. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he grunted as he swung his head around and head–butted Jackson. “Damn it, kid. Move your ass. What are you doing out here anyway?”
“Oh, sorry old man. I can’t find Anna. She disappeared after dinner with Mom and Winter, and I was hoping to steal her for some kissing–I mean dancing.” The young lover didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed at his slip of the tongue. They were really milking their newlywed status, but he couldn’t blame them with the prophecy hanging over their heads like a guillotine. “I’ll tell you what, though. The newlywed part better last forever, because I don’t know what I’d do if it stopped.”
“Wait, how come you still have your telepathy? Not even Winter has her power in this land unless Jessica allows it.”
“No magic controls my power, apparently.” He snorted. “Except for the time that the mother of all thought she was funny. All these people think I’m helpless here, but I’m not. Earlier there was a problem with Anna, and it took every bit of self–control for me not to go to her.” Jackson touched his nose. “It’s my secret. I don’t know how I have it though. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that all magic relies on emotion in some part or another so you can’t negate its presence anywhere. My connection to emotion is what allows me to poke around in your head.” Tyler had to give the kid credit, for only being physically born eight or nine years ago, he was definitely shining in his role not only as an adult but as an essential member of the magical community as well.
“Well, sorry kid but I have no idea where the women are. I’m pretty sure they didn’t come this way though because I literally ran into Jessica and her sister on my way out there.” He shrugged his shoulders, and just wanted to spare Jackson the problem of searching for them where they definitely weren’t. He wasn’t paying attention, but when he looked back at his friend’s face, he saw the most ridiculous smile.
“Wait, you didn’t know who her sister is?” Laughing, Jackson started to clutch his sides, trying to catch his breath. “Phew, this is going to be hilarious. I’m not telling you shit, either. Have fun with that one. I think you should probably find her for yourself, and get straight to the bottom of things. Maybe she could shed some light on your problems.” He continued to laugh, hard. Tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes. “Oh, gods. It’s just so funny.” He coughed, trying to shake the laughter that had Tyler bewildered. Was he drunk?
“Okay kid, let’s get you to bed. I don’t think your wife wants you to be wandering around drunk in the fae court. You’re going to end up in trouble, or in someone’s bed when they enchant your dumb ass. When that happens, we’ll both have to answer to Anna.” He grabbed Jackson by the arm and hefted him up.
“I’m not drunk, but I’ll tell you who’s going to be in trouble. You, if you don’t go handle your shit. I’m telling you, go find the queen.” He pulled his arm away from Tyler and righted himself, looking at the much older vampire with the look someone gives a misbehaving child.
“I actually have better things to do,” Tyler said with a sarcastic tone. “More important things to do. For Jonathon.”
Jackson looked at him and squinted both eyes. “The only thing Jonathon would ask you to do right now is to go find the queen.”
Screw it, he wasn’t about to help a drunk pup, especially when he was getting so much attitude. “I doubt that very much, but have fun finding your wife and the other hens.” He turned to leave.
Jackson snorted. “I’m telling my mom you called her a hen.”
That stopped Tyler in his tracks, and he spun around to face the other man. “Don’t you dare.” As he reached for Jackson, the child slipped through his hands and made his way back to the ballroom.
“I’m going to get a good seat when this all hits the fan. Just wait. You’re going to be telling me that I was right before the night is through.” His voice faded as he disappeared into the crowd.
“Now I know you’re drunk. Get out of here,” Tyler said more to himself than anything else. He looked away from the direction the younger man went and walked to the table the royals had sat at for dinner.
Taking the seat that would have been his during the meal, he ate a quick dinner in silence. Thankful for the quiet and the power of fae magic, he ate something that would never have satisfied him in the human realm. Rather than have a variety of supernatural beings feeding off random sources, Jessica had the brilliant idea to enchant food found in fae lands to fit the requirements of the different magical races. One of the things that Tyler actually found admirable about the new queen of the Malice Court was that she was constantly trying to better the lives of not just her people but the lives of all of the magical races.
Jonathon had said that he would meet him in the dining hall after he had been seen in the ballroom. He was impatient though and had only been waiting for twenty minutes when he decided to give up. They would meet up tomorrow, Jonathon wouldn’t mind. As he got up, he felt the familiar presence of the man he had called king for so long. “Took you long enough, old man.”
“Well excuse me,” Jonathon laughed. “But I had some tricky people to try and get information out of while you were in here stuffing your face.” As he spoke, Tyler pushed a roll into his mouth.
“You’re just jealous that I was allowed to skip the formal dinner and you weren’t.” He spoke around the roll he forced in his mouth.
“Actually I’m not, but I did get some information that might help you.” Jonathon motioned for him to pay attention and Tyler knew it was time to get to business.
“Well? Who do I have to talk to?” That was the only thing it could be. Especially if he was going to find a solution to their problems.
“Jessica’s little sister, Mykah.” There was a small smile on Jonathon’s face, and Tyler made sure to file it away as something to figure out later.
“What do you mean?” He couldn’t help but ask, especially since he was starting to get confused. “Jessica just told me to stay away from her sister. That her sister was on some sort of a mission.”
“Yeah, she’s on a mission alright. She asked for Winter’s library on magi
cal history as her gift of fealty so that Mykah can break her curse. Jessica believes that what she needs to break the curse is somewhere in the tomes that one of the races has on the creation of the different realms.” He paused, taking the seat that he had during the meal, no doubt. He took a drink from his goblet and licked his lips, taking his time. “Apparently, she also endangered the entire magical balance here in the fae realm. None of the fae will talk about it, and when I say none of them. I mean absolutely no one will tell me what happened. A few did mention the curse. All of the magical families were asked for their tomes on magical history, and most of them provided the texts. I figure if you play nice, maybe you can just use them while they are here.
I think it might be a good idea to possibly see about getting information on the Court while we can, with all the strangeness in the power around Sarah. With it draining her and leaving her half–dead in the hallways, it might be better if we at least searched for an answer.”
“By we, you mean me.” Tyler rolled his eyes. Jonathon was so used to giving orders that he would never be entirely out of the role of Blood King. It was part of who he was, and it was one of the things that Tyler loved about him, his ability to never leave his people when they could be in need. It was the marker of a true king, one that he had made sure to pass down to Zander when the time was right.
“Well, of course, I’ve got better things to do with my time. Like celebrate for the next month in the tradition of the fae. It’s going to be a blast.” Jonathon honestly did look forward to it, no doubt in Tyler’s mind.
“Jessica told me to stay away from her sister.” Petulant, but Tyler really didn’t want to be working with a spoiled fae princess, no matter how small and unobtrusive she looked. In fact, she didn’t even look fae.
“Well I can’t help you on that front, but I can tell you that you should say around for the unmasking. I’m sure you’d find it enlightening.” With a wink, he got up from the table and headed back into the ballroom.
Cursing Jonathon, Tyler put his head in his hands. When did things get so complicated? He wasn’t even kidding himself anymore. The mere fact that he had no idea who the woman was that he had killed Dante over was driving him crazy. He was going to find her if it was the last thing he did, but he hoped he could see her before she grew old and died.
She deserved a full life, and maybe he could give it to her. Not even in a romantic sense, but because she had a warrior’s spirit. She fought, and she held her own against a vampire. Winter should never have let her leave the Blood Court, or she should have sent her somewhere safe. He quietly slammed his fist onto the table, frustrated at himself more than anything but not wanting to draw any unwanted attention.
He should have stopped her from leaving, and now he was going to have to save her, and he had no idea from what. Would she even want to be helped if her death meant the life to all those children? No, his little angel would gladly give her life if it meant that she gave hundreds of others a chance at life. He could feel it in his soul, she was a giver. No doubt about it.
He replayed the vision in his head, tried to gather anything that would help him. She was in a field of rose bushes and no buildings as far as the eye could see. The bodies of the children looked human, so frail and beautiful. They didn’t appear to have been slaughtered, there had been no pools of blood, no dismembered body parts. They looked like they had just laid down and gone to sleep, never to wake up. It was peaceful, with the only sign of something wrong being his little angel crying. She had looked so morose clutching them, screaming in silence. Her wrists had sliced open on their own, blood pouring out of the wounds. It had pooled on the ground and began moving toward the children. A hundred other cuts appeared on her body, adding to the blood that was slowly moving toward the children. It took a long time to touch them all, but as it did the children began to rise. They sat up, yawned, and then started to play. He had taken his eyes off the red–haired angel, and in the time he did so he had missed her disappearance. She was gone.
He didn’t know if she had technically died in the vision, but she wasn’t there anymore. And there was no sign of her, the children weren’t looking for her. He had to keep it from happening. Would he let her sacrifice those children to make sure that she lived? Without a doubt, yes. He’d rather have her hate him and do it living than to lose her without ever really having her.
It would be easy to turn her into a vampire, but if he did that he’d have to abandon his place in court. She would cost him everything that he had lived for. Sarah would destroy him if he turned a human without consent or permission, and they would never allow it. Winter and Jonathon had supported Sarah’s wishes in that. Alex, Zander’s brother, had turned Sarah without her permission after she had given birth to their son. He was dead now, and Zander had Sarah, so it had worked out. There was still the fact that she had never wanted to be immortal and had been thrust into the life, and it prevented her from allowing anyone under her rule to do the same thing to someone else.
“What have I gotten myself into?” He was talking to himself, just needing to put words to his thoughts.
“No clue, but pull your head out of your ass.” Zander was glaring at him. “You have the chance to help my wife, and you’re not taking it. I would think you’d grab on with both hands and never let go. What happens if the magic that feeds the Blood Court decides that it isn’t going to stop next time it snacks on her power? What happens if she’s taken from me and not because of someone else but because of your inability to work with some spoiled fae princess? You know that I’d hunt you down to the ends of the realms, I’d kill you a thousand times over a thousand years if it meant that someone else would suffer as much as I would over losing her. So I’ll ask you one time, are you going to work with the fae princess?”
“Well shit, Zander. I don’t have much of a choice, do I? It isn’t just about you though. I have a stake in this as well. I need to save her, that girl. I need to make sure that she doesn’t die.” He didn’t like pouring his emotions out to anyone, let alone Zander.
“Jonathon told me,” his friend said. “But you need to learn some things for yourself. You need to work with the fae princess for a lot of reasons, but the most important reason is that she might answer the questions for you that you need the answers to.”
“So why aren’t you the one doing this?” He couldn’t help the petulance in his voice and didn’t bother trying to hide it. “It’s your wife who is on the line, it’s your kingdom. Why is everyone so convinced that I am the one who needs to find the answers to the problem at hand? Jessica forbade me from spending time with her sister. What does that mean for my ability to access the library?” Tyler was frustrated, and he was taking it out on his king. It wasn’t fair to Zander, but he was sure that Sarah had put him through worse when they fought over the past five years.
“Because you’re the one that the damn Court chose to go to with the vision. Because it happened to the woman you held in your arms. Because if I had been able to find the answer, I would have done so already. Because I’m not the one at the center of all of this, you are. It kills me, I mean it literally tears at what remains of my heart to know that I’m not the one that can save the love of my life. I know that you know what that feels like. Losing Aurora all those years ago almost destroyed you. You nearly cut off your hand to destroy the one reminder you had of her. Don’t tell me that you wouldn’t do everything in your power to make sure that no one went through that again. I’m asking you, not as your king but as your brother. Save my wife. Deal with the fae princess, get the magical history. Please.”
Zander’s voice broke, and Tyler looked at him, really looked at him. The vampire king had slumped into a chair, his hair in his hands while he was pulling at the roots, tears falling down his face. Tyler had never seen him cry, in over two thousand years. Zander wasn’t that man. He reached over and grabbed his friend’s shoulder, offering whatever support he could. After squeezing it to let his friend know that he
would do everything in his power to save his mate, he stood. Sighing, he almost spoke the words aloud. After shaking that nonsense out of his mind, he left his friend in silence.
Zander was right, after Aurora had left him and then died; Tyler had gone crazy. He had tried to cut out the star that would always guide him home. His home had been destroyed and her ashes spread across the Dead Sea. He had been turned into a vampire shortly after that and had abandoned his existence. She had died, and nothing he could do would bring her back. He would prevent Zander losing the love of his life, and he would stop the human from losing herself. He would allow her to live her life to the fullest, hopefully without turning her himself.
He walked to the door that hid the ballroom and spared a glance at Zander over his shoulder. The Blood King sat with his head in his hands, staring at the ground. Desolate and alone in his thoughts, Tyler swore to himself that he would do whatever it took to understand why their power source was determined to absorb their queen’s magical essence.
The ballroom was packed with all of the races, enjoying themselves. Dancing to both ancient and new routines, mates being held close and others dancing alone. Higher fae and lower fae races mingling. Shades flitting around from shadow to shadow, forbidden to devour souls on these grounds. Tyler searched for the queen and found her. More than a few inches taller than the women she was standing with, her yellow hair emphasized her royal status. She needed no crown to denote her claim, for no other fae could hold a candle to the magic in her aura. The fae always were stronger users of natural magic.
The other woman, her sister, was standing beside her. Auburn hair, shining in the candlelight that was accented by the short green dress she wore with black leggings. She had full hips, not like a fae at all. She wore a black lace mask, obscuring most of her face. Except for those eyes. Amber in color, they looked almost human. She looked human, standing next to the tall fae. She was shorter than her sister and was barely five feet tall. Damnit, no wonder she looked human. His blood started to boil as her eyes sought his out over the crowd. They were pleading, pitiful almost. If he hadn’t already been fooled by her once, he might have fallen for it.
Door in the Garden of Shadows Page 10
