Stepping across a rut in the dirt path, I winced when a sharp stone pierced the sole of my foot. Grimacing, I hobbled my way over toward a boulder large enough to use as a stool.
I could fly, but then I’d not be able to use my wings as a cape to help ward off the chilly air. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t comfortable without my makeshift coat either. Sniffing back the annoying tears that’d been threatening for the past however many days I’d been trapped in here, I plopped down onto my hard seat and studied my foot.
Swiping at a bead of blood with my fingertip, I shook my head. At first there’d been rage. Rage at being trapped like a rabid animal.
I’d screamed.
I’d cried.
I’d run like a mad fairy headlong through door after door after door, sure that somewhere in this maze there’d be a way out. I’d been so persistent, I hadn’t stopped until the lethargy of utter exhaustion finally took me under its wings and dropped me, literally, where I’d stood.
I’d come to, in what had felt like hours later, to a world just as gloomy and dark and void as it was now. There was nothing but doors and dirt. No life at all.
After the rage had abated, I’d sunk into a depression. Sitting on my arse for what surely must have been days, doing nothing but staring vacantly at the never-ending path winding like a snake’s body before me in perpetuity.
Hunger clawed at my gut.
And thirst mocked me. My tongue was thick and swollen in my mouth, my throat parched and desperate for wetness each time I was forced to swallow.
But just as had happened to me many times before, I did not die. Though I lingered on in agony, I remained, doomed to an existence of nothingness.
Maybe they’d all grown tired of me. Of my antics. I’d never imagined this would be my fate. My end. Trapped in an enchanted mirror and destined to wander all the rest of my ever-long days.
Whatever had been done to me, one thing had been made clear to me lately. This mirror realm of magic had somehow dulled the madness within me.
I wasn’t sure how. Only that I didn’t sense the desperate psychosis of a fractured mind rising up in me. I could think. Reason, even.
I was free of the monster. But only in a small way. I still felt the beat of something dark inside of me, but it was neutralized somehow too. It was hard to explain it, but that was as close as I could get.
Tapping my fingers rhythmically on my jaw, I looked out at a world of nothing and pondered my existence.
Was this truly it?
How the Blue would end?
It seemed terribly anticlimactic, after all the lives I’d ruined and all the antipathy I’d fostered, that this should be how it would end for me. I could get up and keep walking, but what was the point? I’d been traveling this realm for days, weeks, months? And there truly was naught in it. Just the cold. The barrenness of life. And darkness.
So again, what was the point?
While I enjoyed the freedom of being able to think again, I knew I could not survive this existence much longer. But what could be done when one could not die?
“Not die...” I said, my words scratchy and thick. I’d lost my voice around day two or two million—I truly had no way of marking time in this place. With frantic fingers, I shoved my hands into the hidden pocket of my gown, yipping with pleasant surprise when my fingers caressed the green glass vial of infinite death.
Heart hammering wildly in my chest, I gently eased the potion out and stared at the rare spot of color in this otherwise grey place. In my confusion over being tossed inside the glass, I’d completely forgotten what I’d been doing in the first place when I’d been caught.
Smiling my first true smile in ages, I wet my lips. I knew it would hurt. A death curse was never fun, but I did not deserve an easy death. My end was close at hand, and yet a faint seedling of doubt began to stir in my heart.
I did not truly wish to die. I only wished to end my suffering.
And to an extent, it had ended the moment I’d been shoved in here.
My gaze flicked up as I realized I’d merely traded one hell for another.
“Hello.”
Every cell in my body froze at the unfamiliar call.
A voice.
A male voice.
The wind whistled.
I shook my head. “It’s the wind. Only the wind. No one is here. Don’t be silly, Galeta. Don’t be—”
“Hello? Is there anybody home?”
The voice was deep and lyrical, mellifluous to my ears, and every inch of me quaked.
I sat on my makeshift stool, staring on in wide-eyed panic as not only did I hear his voice sing upon the winds, but the entire landscape began to alter.
What was once barren began to swirl, transform.
The empty stretch of gray twisted into tall, roughly hewn shapes of buildings. Trees sprouted from nothingness. And, somewhere in the distance, I heard the gentle gurgling burble of a brook.
The colors were still dark, still muted.
But there was life in this realm now.
“Hello, Galeta, are you here, fae?”
With a yip, I did the only thing I knew to do. I spread my wings and flew up high. Transforming from the woman size I was, into the miniature one more typical of my kind. Easier to hide that way.
I was just sliding behind the thick wall of a twisted gray-stemmed leaf when I saw him.
Gripping tight to the leaf shielding me, I couldn’t seem to keep from staring at him in wonder.
This stranger who somehow knew my name.
He was tall. Broad of shoulder and trim of waist. But packed with muscle. The moment I saw his face, I knew why. He had sharp, angular features. A chiseled jaw lightly dusted with scruff. A powerful nose. Full lips for a male. And slanted, exotic eyes an unusual shade of green-blue that practically burned like fire in the night. His hair was longish, coming to his shoulders in wild disarray.
He was dragonborne. It was all in the eyes, in the predatory and unconsciously graceful movements of his body.
Dragonborne were as beautiful as they were deadly, and exceedingly rare in Kingdom.
In fact, I only knew of two. One a female hunter, and the other a male King in Wonderland. The King and Queen had had a child, a male, long ago. But I’d not given him much thought other than knowing a male heir had been born to the Heart clan.
Fairies noticed beauty, of course. We were the divine instruments that created it. But our hearts never hammered at the sight of it. Our pulses didn’t beat like a drum in our ears. And our fingers didn’t clench so tight, the knuckles turned a ghostly shade of white. I shook my head, commanding my hands to relax and to breathe.
The male’s thick brows lowered, and he stopped walking, turning in a slow circle. Dressed in finely stitched clothing connoting royalty, there could be no doubt that this male was none other than Syrith, heir to the throne of Wonderland. He even wore his mother’s colors of red, gold, black, and white.
I wet my lips, leaning forward on tiptoe. Why was he here? And how the blue blazes had he affected such a change in this deadened world? I certainly hadn’t caused this life to bloom. I’d only been trying with no success at it for days. Suddenly he appeared, and it all changed.
Why?
“I know you’re here, little fae. I see your life force beating as a golden thread in this dark realm. Show yourself.”
My eyes widened. Why was he following my golden thread? He couldn’t possibly be. Only those with the second sight could see the threads of life.
And yet, not a moment later, he looked up. At my tree. At the very spot where I hid.
I was in miniature, so he would not see me.
“There you are,” he growled, and good gods, my knees suddenly turned weak and wobbly.
Mortified by my strange reaction, I did the only thing I could do.
I fled.
~*~
Syrith
I’d just barely caught a glimpse of the little one, when suddenly she sailed off
her perch, flying like a demon out of hell as she raced for a doorway, zipping through it in a golden shower of sparks.
“Damn bloody bugs!” I snapped.
It’d taken me half the damn day to trace her thread, and now she was gone.
Wondering why I’d ever allowed myself to be talked into this, I shifted into a hummingbird. Not the most manly of creatures, but they were fast. And speed was essential.
Picking up the thread just as I had before, I gave chase. Speeding through one doorway after another after another.
When I’d first stepped foot in this dark realm, I hadn’t known what to expect. A forest, maybe? Thick with life and flowers. Instead, I’d found the landscape literally shifting around me. Twisting from nothing into images and pictures of towns, shoppes, glens, mountains, and massive bodies of water with no rhyme or reason for any of it.
Even now, the darkness was transforming all around us. The demonic little fairy zipped to and fro with no obvious route in mind other than to get away from me.
Glowering in bird form, which wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it would have been in my true form, I pumped my wings just a little bit faster. If I didn’t catch her, this chase could potentially go on forever.
Now, I wasn’t sure why I had to be with her, but those were the terms of this bloody mirror, and I aimed to do my part. The sooner I finished whatever it was that I’d been sent here to do, the sooner I could leave this abominable place.
Galeta was just about to zip through another doorway.
Pumping my wings so fast that they buzzed, I caught up to her. Shifting in mid-flight from bird to man, I snatched her out of the air, caging her in my fist.
“Let me out!” she squeaked in a broken voice filled with grit, vainly pounding at my fingers with her tiny fists.
Heart racing from the chase, and more annoyed than I’d have liked, I shook my fist just a little. Careful not to crush her wings but letting her know in no uncertain terms that I was vexed.
“Relax, she-devil, and I might just do that.”
“She-devil!” she shrilled in her teeny voice. “How dare you. How dare you, male. Release me at once!”
I’d already been lambasted once by her clone, and I’d be damned if I’d subject myself to another one of her tirades.
Fed up with this nonsense, I spoke in a gruff tone, allowing her to hear the dragonish burr—a heavy rumble of man and beast that was often enough to quell even the most prickly of opponents into silence.
“Run, and I’ll catch you. Hide, and I’ll always find you. Do you hear me, bug?” I lifted my fist so that it was even with my eyes, which stared through the fingers of my cage at her.
I wasn’t able to get a good glimpse of Galeta; she was mostly tangled up in her large wings and gown of spun ice crystals. But I caught flashes of that same spiraled robin’s egg–blue hair and glowing clear blue eyes that seemed struck from a pure vein of ice.
Shoving the hair out of her face with both her hands, she hissed at me. And I couldn’t explain it, but I felt the queerest need to chuckle at her. Already, she’d annoyed me, and yet... and yet I could hardly explain my curiosity about this fae. After my talk with the harpy, I had to admit to a slight niggling of inquisitiveness.
Slumping her shoulders, she hid her face behind her wings as she mumbled, “Why have you come here, Prince? And who sent you? The Gods? Did they say why?”
I lifted a brow. “You know me?”
For a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of her face. It was just a flash. Rounded cheeks. Smooth ivory skin. Perfectly shaped lips. The same as the face I’d seen in the games... and yet down here all her features seemed softer. Prettier, even.
“You’re obviously dragonborne. There aren’t many of you in these parts. I did the math. What do you want from me, Syrith?”
My heart thumped just then to hear my name spill off her tongue. Her voice was high-pitched but also musical, as it was with all fae.
The Blue—and now I could completely understand the moniker, as she was many different shades of it—collapsed onto my palm. Her weight was so slight as to be hardly noticeable.
I wasn’t much in the know when it came to fairies and their kind. Any creature born with magical abilities was not given a fairy godmother. As I was nearly all magic, I’d never personally encountered one before.
After my time spent with the clone, I hadn’t been sure what to expect from the fairy in the mirror. Maybe part demon spawn. With pointed fangs. Evil red eyes. And the face of a hag, with a black and twisted heart. I’d wondered if maybe they’d dampened the clone a little. But this face and that one were the same.
The creature before me might have a dark heart, but she was hardly a hag. Finding myself more curious than I should be, I made a decision.
“I will release you on one condition.”
“That I do not try to run?” she said with a husky chuckle. “Indeed. And should I try it, you’d strip me of my wings? Or maybe dip me in a vat of heated oil? Scrape the flesh off my meat? Perhaps cut off a finger or two—”
“Bloody hell, fairy, you’ve a twisted sense of humor.” I shook my head, appalled by her blasé attitude when it came to torture. Maybe she truly was all the wicked things I’d heard about. And yet this little woman didn’t vex me the way the clone had. There was something more real about her.
Different.
She laughed, and the sound reminded me of fluted bells. My flesh prickled.
I felt her shrug. “You cannot make threats to me I haven’t made a million times before in a million different ways. I’m immune to fear, dragonborne.”
That wasn’t entirely true. She hadn’t flown away because she’d wished for privacy. I’d smelled the fear encasing her. I’d frightened her somehow. But I was gentleman enough not to say it.
She sighed deeply, and in that note, I heard her humanity. This was a complicated fairy. I wasn’t sure how I knew this, but somehow I suspected she and I might have more in common than one might first imagine.
But which of the two was real? The horrible creature above? Or the sad little one in here with me now?
“Fine, Prince. I shall not attempt to escape you again. Only release me, and I’ll transform.”
“Into?” I asked.
Tiny hands pressed into my fingers as she tried to peel them away from her. “Into? You say that as though I have multiple forms. I only have two. Big and small. You wish to talk, then let me go.”
“And you will not try to escape again?” I shifted on my toes, because I did have multiple forms. But only one true one. I found myself wondering the most bizarre thing just then... What might she think if she saw it?
“My word means absolutely nothing, but if you must have it, then I shall give it. Aye, I shall not attempt escape again.”
I chuckled. I couldn’t seem to help myself. “And yet you just said your word means nothing. Goddess, you are a strange wee thing, aren’t you, fae?”
She laughed.
It didn’t last long. Only half a second, if that. But the sound of it rolled across my flesh like sun-warmed honey. Then her fingers were covering her mouth, and her breathing grew heavy, and I sensed a wave of embarrassment flow off of her.
Had she never laughed before?
She swallowed hard and then steadily said, “I will not flee, giant. I...I vow it.”
Frowning, because I wasn’t exactly sure what had just passed between us, I opened the cage of my hand slowly.
For a moment, she sat as she’d been. Her tiny doll legs poking out from beneath her crystallized gown. A rolling breeze feathered through the strands of her hair. Extending her broad, electric-blue wings, she caught the current and flew. Hovering with her back to me.
Every nerve in my body went on alert, waiting for her to run again.
But instead, she turned. Her chin was tipped toward her chest, causing her hair to shield her features like a curtain.
“Step back, boy,” she said softly.
I cocked my
head and growled, “I’m not a boy.”
“Considering I’m as old as Kingdom itself, everyone’s a child to me. Try not to take it personally, Syrith. I apologize for giving offense.”
I opened my mouth, to tell her I wasn’t sure what, but I wasn’t given the chance, because a second later, I was forced to shield my eyes from the impossibly bright glow of fairy magic. Encased by light, she looked like an angel bathed in beams of purest white.
Squinting, I took two giant steps back as the power of her magic transformed her from a living doll into a human-sized female.
When the light dimmed enough that I could finally look at her, all I could do was study her for changes.
Galeta wasn’t tall, coming only to chest height on me, but she was curvy in all the right places. Willowy, as most fairies were, she had nice-sized breasts, a slim waist, and long, lean legs. The ice-crystal gown glinted even in the gloom of night. The thick curls of robin’s egg–blue hair now hung long and curly down to her waist. On the crown of her head she wore a crown of sapphires. The tips of her ears pointed out from the thick wave of curls.
When I got my first good look at her face, I forgot to breathe.
Features that’d looked doll-like and passably pretty were now mature and enticing.
She had the elfin features of her kind, with the small, rounded face and button nose. But she also had full lips, high cheekbones, thin brows, and wide, crystal-blue eyes. And her wings...they were a thing of beauty. Large and veined in black and neon-blue that shimmered with threads of lavender in between.
I was right—there were slight differences between the clone and this one. That fairy I could not stand. But this one—this one was beginning to fascinate me.
My heart trembled violently in my chest. I grabbed at it without thought.
The tip of her bright-pink tongue poked out as she licked at her bottom lip nervously.
“Why are you here?” she asked, and this time her voice was not teeny and small but robust and sultry. My blood heated in my veins.
“I’m here for you, Galeta,” I said slowly, taking my time to enunciate each word.
The Fairy Queen Page 7
