Darkly Fae: The Moraine Cycle Read online

  “I have a special treat for you,” she said. Turning away, she moved out of sight, before reappearing with something clutched in her hand. “What do you think?”

  She trailed her fist across the window sill, leaving a path of nuts and seeds along the painted wood.

  Cathair hesitated but a moment. He could not resist the temptation. Not of the food—he had no taste for bird fare—but of the chance to be closer. He flew from his perch and landed gently on the sill. She was but inches away.

  “Go on,” she said, an encouraging smile on her berry-colored lips. “Try them.”

  Cathair could not deny her request. He bent down, keeping his eyes on her, and grabbed a fat pecan with his beak. As he crushed the piece and swallowed, the flavor surprised him.

  From deep in his chest he felt a purr rumble, like a contented kitten.

  “You like that, huh?”

  Her grin made him purr even more.

  “Let me see if I have more pecans in the bag.”

  She moved to her desk, digging through a plastic bag of bird mix. Cathair could feel the magic of her pleasure as acutely as the magic of the fae veil. He turned his head to fluff the feathers beneath his wing and, as he turned back, caught the last rays of the setting sun as it disappeared, a vibrant flaming ball, into the western horizon.

  Dusk was a magical time on any evening, but for some reason tonight he felt the power wash around him more than usual. Felt it … transform him. He closed his eyes and smiled.

  Chapter 3

  Winnie screamed. She dropped the bag, sending hazelnuts and sunflower seeds scattering across the carpet.

  There, in her window, where seconds ago an owl had been happily munching on pecans, sat a boy.

  And not just any boy. The boy from her dreams.

  The fae prince.

  Everything she had imagined in her dreams and fantasies.

  He looked at her, golden eyes wide, and she felt the intensity of his gaze on every inch of her. Felt it like a touch. It burned her. As if the hot summer night weren’t sweltering enough.

  Winnie opened her mouth to say… something. Anything. But words fled.

  She must be going insane. Had finally cracked under the pressure. Or she was sleepwalking. Maybe she was sleepwalking. Insane sleepwalking. That could happen, right?

  “Right?” she echoed.

  “What?” he asked, then jolted as if startled by the sound of his own voice. He looked down at his body—now covered in black clothing instead of black and brown feathers. He stared at his hands, his bare feet.

  Winnie didn’t move. “You’re—”

  Before she could finish, he jerked back. Only he seemed to have forgotten he was perched in a second story window, because he lost his balance and went flailing out into the night.

  “No!”

  Winnie dashed across the room, wrapping her hands around his forearms at the exact moment he grabbed the frame on either side of the window, holding himself suspended between her room and a long fall to the yard below. The instant she felt his muscles flex beneath her palms, she knew she wasn’t dreaming. There was no way her imagination could invent that.

  For several long moments, they remained frozen. She couldn’t look away from his golden gaze, couldn’t bring herself to break free from the trance that held them hovering in a space between reality and fantasy.

  She mouthed, “How?”

  He stared at her, unblinking, for what felt like forever.

  “Just once,” he said, voice rough and honey sweet.

  Faster than she could blink, he pulled himself upright and crushed his mouth against hers.

  The world started spinning.

  Winnie closed her eyes, narrowing her focus to the firm pressure of his soft lips as they moved over hers. He was both hot and cold at once. Her cheeks burned while icy shivers tingled down her spine.

  She had been fantasizing about him for too long. About kissing him. About exactly this happening. And now the prince of her dreams was in her bedroom window, and he was kissing her.

  That had to explain why she leaned forward, seeking more of his lips. More of him.

  Her movement broke the spell. She felt him still and then pull away.

  When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her with golden eyes wide and glowing. She hadn’t noticed her hands moving from his arms to his chest.

  “This should not have happened,” he said in a voice as thick and rich as warm honey.

  Winnie couldn’t get her brain and mouth to connect. While her mind spun in circles—trying to reconcile how he could be here, in the flesh, in her waking hours—her mouth hung loose. Her lips throbbed. Her heart raced and she gasped, sucking in oxygen.

  He released his grip on the frame and fell into the night.

  Winnie leaned out the window just in time to see him land in the backyard with a heavy thump. His eyes widened as they stared at each other across the space between her window and the ground. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The boy she had thought only existed in her dreams, an elaborate figment of her imagination, had kissed her.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head, as if his senses were returning. Then, quick like a rabbit, he jumped to his feet and ran.

  “Wait,” she called out as he scrambled up the fence. “Wait!”

  But he didn’t. He flung himself over the top, onto the sidewalk beyond, and disappeared.

  Winnie stared at the spot where he’d gone over the fence for what felt like hours.

  Her breathing and heart rate gradually returned to normal as she processed everything that had just happened. Owl—boy—fae. Magic. Magic.

  “He’s real,” she whispered.

  He was real, and he had come to her window.

  Everything she had ever dreamed about him, written about him, flashed through her mind. Boring things like council meetings and royal dinners and baths—okay, the baths weren’t boring, not for her anyway. Thrilling things like horse races and fistfights and a crossbow assassination attempt two years ago. Sad things and happy things. Sweet things and sexy things. They were all there in her mind and down on paper.

  She thought she’d made them up.

  Could they all be real?

  Winnie ran to her desk and yanked open the drawer where her latest scribblings were stashed. She pulled out her most recent pages and scoured them for the part about the lovelorn prince.

  “There,” she exclaimed.

  The dark prince with silver in his hair has an aching heart. He loves a girl who can never be his. Though he knows the impossibility of their love, he cannot stop yearning for her, dreaming of her, going to her. He wishes he could change who he is so they could be together.

  Winnie almost cried as she read her words.

  All those years, all those pages. She thought she’d been making the stories up. Even though she shared them with Mel, they were really just for her. They were hers.

  But maybe they weren’t. Maybe they came from somewhere else, somewhere ... magical. Maybe she was just a scribe, writing down the tales as they were told.

  Maybe the tales weren’t as fictional as she thought.

  Her obsession with the dark prince with silver in his hair had seemed like a borderline-unhealthy escape from reality. Since he first appeared in her dreams, Winnie had been fascinated, but lately his increasing heartache had made Winnie’s heart ache in return. She woke up with tears in her eyes, wanting to go back into her dreams to comfort him. How silly she had thought herself, caring so much about a figment of her imagination.

  Now she knew he was no character.

  He was real. And his heart was aching … for her.

  Chapter 4

  Cathair had forgotten how far the fae sanctuary was from the human settlement when he had no magic to aid his travels. That was not all he had forgotten.

  “Midsummer’s eve,” he muttered to himself as he finally reached the forest that spread between town and mountain. “How stupid to have forgotten.”

>   He had been too consumed by thoughts of her, of getting to her window no matter the risk. If he had been thinking more clearly, he would have recalled the day. Midsummer’s eve—the one night in all the year when magic fails. When the earth and her powers sleep, restoring themselves. Much like the one day each month he must pass as an animal to restore his own powers, Gaia recalled all magics this night in order to restore hers.

  The one night when he was all but human, when he had no magic to remain in owl form or to hide his fae form from human eyes. From her eyes.

  Kissing her had been a mistake. What had he been thinking?

  “Stupid,” he said again. “Ow!”

  He needed to watch where he stepped. Without his fae magic, he might as well have been human. And a human walking barefoot through a forest was susceptible to the pains of broken twigs and sharp pinecones.

  He could relive the kiss later.

  It was halfway through the night by the time he reached the entrance to the sanctuary, the narrow pass that led down into the well-guarded valley.

  He had not taken two steps into the pass before a booming voice called out, “Halt! Who goes there?”

  Cathair half smiled.

  “Really, Peter?” he called back. “I thought you had outgrown such arcane language.”

  “Cathair,” Peter said as he jumped down from a boulder that served as a guard station, “thank great Morrigan. You had me worried. Did you forget what night this is?”

  Cathair feigned insult. “Certainly not.”

  “Oh really?” Peter lifted his brows. “Is that why you are walking barefoot through the woods without a drop of magic to protect you?”

  None other in the seer guard would dare speak to Cathair in such an impertinent manner. They all bowed and scraped to do his bidding. Peter had always treated him as a pal. An equal. Which was half the reason Cathair called the human friend.

  “Perhaps it slipped my mind.”

  “Uh-huh,” Peter said, turning and leading the way into the sanctuary.

  Cathair followed, relieved to have soft, moss-covered stone beneath his feet instead of jagged forest underbrush. The moist earthiness soothed his tender soles.

  “Have a fun night watching your girlfriend?” Peter asked.

  “She is not my—” Cathair caught himself. He should not say too much within earshot of other fae. He whispered, “Keep your tongue, friend, or I shall keep it for you.”

  Peter laughed. “Your secret is safe,” he promised, not cowed by Cathair’s threat. “Not many ventured out tonight. None from the Moraine.”

  The sanctuary was a neutral territory, a safe haven shared by all the unseelie fae, guarded by a small but loyal force of neutral seers. The seelie fae had their own secret sanctuary rumored to be in the forest far to the north, but dark fae from every unseelie clan passed their la ainmhi here, in this valley.

  Though they might be enemies beyond the boundaries, the sanctuary was a sacred place of truce and safety. Any clan that brought bloodshed to the sanctuary would be declaring war against all other unseelie clans. That was not a war any clan could survive.

  They emerged into the valley, a broad expanse of green grass, shaded glades, and a creek-fed lake. If he could not be with her, then Cathair would choose this place over any other. While human emotion fed his magic, nature fed his soul.

  “Why did you head back here?” Peter asked as they walked to a small cabin where the seer guard kept provisions. “Isn’t the veil closer?”

  Inside, the cabin was less than impressive. A single room that served basic functions. The front corner acted as a kitchen, with a pantry cupboard and a counter with a shallow sink. A bed and dresser filled the far wall. In between sat a small wooden table surrounded by four chairs.

  “The veil is closer,” Cathair agreed, crossing to the cupboard and taking out a jar of sweet meade. The difficult journey had left him parched. “But I could not risk having to explain to my mother why I was not in the sanctuary when the magic fell.”

  “She’s a tough one, your queen,” Peter agreed.

  Cathair threw back a long draught of the honey-flavored liquid. “If I had been thinking clearly, I would have remembered it was Midsummer’s Eve.”

  “Females have a way of muddying a man’s thoughts.”

  Cathair raised his jar as a toast and then tossed back the rest of the contents.

  He wished he knew why this human girl called to him so deeply. He had seen others, and none had affected him in this way. And he had no lack of fae girls—from humblest maid to highest princess—seeking his affections. His clan might be weak and dying, but a dark prince was a dark prince, and a rare thing at that.

  “At least I won’t have to lie to your mum this month,” Peter said. “Can tell her true enough that you visited the sanctuary.”

  Cathair rolled his eyes at his friend. “She knows when you lie.”

  Peter’s eyes twinkled as he replied, “Maybe she only knows the lies I allow her to see.”

  The cabin door flew open on a fierce wind that whipped through the small space, toppling one of the empty chairs and knocking Peter off balance. Cathair knew the source before she spoke a word.

  “Perhaps I only admit to seeing the ones I choose to expose.”

  Cathair could have laughed at the way Peter’s eyes widened as he spun and knelt on the floor. Head bowed, muttering to himself about getting caught red-tongued.

  “Rise fool,” Queen Eimear said. “I have greater concerns than your impertinence.”

  Something about the heaviness in his mother’s voice turned his blood to ice.

  “There is news,” the queen said, sweeping into the cabin with her diaphanous robes swirling around her in a translucent cloud of inky purple cloth.

  Ultan crept in behind her. Adviser to the crown for as long as Cathair could remember, Ultan embodied the model image of a dark fae. Long dark hair that fell in thick strings past his shoulders. Dark olive skin. Pale lavender eyes that glowed against his skin’s dark backdrop. His powers were great, and he used dark magic as others used simple spells. He stood second in power only to the queen herself.

  He made Cathair nervous.

  As Ultan followed the queen inside and closed the door behind them, Cathair felt every hair on the back of his neck stand at attention. It was not a sign of respect. It was caution. And perhaps a little fear.

  Cathair looked to Peter, wondering if his friend felt the same sense of growing dread. From the downcast gaze and slumped shoulders, Cathair had to assume the feeling was not in his imagination.

  Which possibly explained why Peter was doing his best to blend in with the rough wood wall of the cabin.

  The queen led Cathair to a chair at the small wooden table.

  “The Deachair have agreed to the alliance,” she declared, sweeping around the table to face him across the scarred wood surface.

  Cathair’s spine stiffened and he forced himself to relax.

  The Deachair, a gray clan like the Moraine—one that refused to kill for power—were scarcely better off. Uniting the two would make each stronger. Strong enough to hold off their rivals for a while longer.

  “It is about time,” Cathair replied. “Has the date been set?”

  The queen nodded.

  The dread spread from his stomach into the rest of his body. He had known this day would come, had been the one to push for the alliance in the first place. But that was before. Before the magic slept, before the woman in the window saw him as himself. Before he knew the taste of her lips.

  He shoved those selfish thoughts aside. He could not even consider putting his own desires before the safety and future of his clan. He had been born and bred to rule. He took his duty and responsibility seriously.

  “When?” he asked.

  “You are certain this is the course you wish to pursue?” Ultan did not meet Cathair’s gaze. “There are other options. Other alliances with clans stronger than the Deachair. The Murdach princess is of age an
d—“

  “The Murdach princess is a child,” Cathair spat. “And the Murdach abandoned the Trocaire.”

  “And they are stronger for it,” Ultan argued.

  Every muscle in his body clenched as Cathair snarled, “We will not ally with a clan that kills humans for power. No matter how strong such an alliance would make us.”

  Ultan leaned forward. “My prince, I beg you—“

  “No,” the queen said, “the prince is right. That is not a concession we are willing to make.”

  Cathair pushed to his feet. “When is my wedding?”

  Ultan bowed his head. “You are to be joined to the Deachair princess on the next new moon.”

  “Then it shall be done,” Cathair said.

  He felt all air leave his lungs, felt the burning sting of acid as he struggled to suck in oxygen. He had known this day would come, had known he was destined for such a political match. All that stood between him and marriage to the Deachair princess—between him and the alliance that would buy his people some much-needed time—were a pair of ceremonies. A signing ceremony later today. A wedding ceremony on the next full moon.

  He only hoped it would be enough to save his clan.

  Chapter 5

  Winnie couldn’t fall asleep for hours. Sleeping would mean dreaming, and for the first time since Gran died, she didn’t want to dream.

  Instead, she lay awake for most of the night, staring at the ceiling. There were seven cracks in the plaster and a water stain in the corner. She should tell Maureen to call a handyman.

  Finally, when she couldn’t fight the exhaustion any more, she drifted away.

  The dream began with a somber ceremony. Several high ranking fae were involved, including the prince, the council, and about a dozen other royal fae and their attendants. None of them looked particularly happy, though the prince kept a forced smile in place. It ended with the formal signing of a very long roll of parchment.