Neela

Neela

Liz popped a bottle of Fae Fizz to celebrate my Ascension, but she ended up drinking both glasses she poured. After one sip, I shoved my glass aside. I didn’t want to dull my new connection with nature.

It thrummed through the world around me, like a million cotton threads connecting me to the leaves and grass, and I loved the feel of the strings humming along my skin.

I even insisted we sit outside instead of at the kitchen counter. I made myself a cup of tea and joined Liz at a fancy white iron table beneath a sizeable flowering plum.

From here, we could see the lavender maze and the overgrown forest behind it. I could smell, taste, and touch the lavender flowers from here, each one an individual sensation of awareness. I reached out and sensed a lavender plant at the maze’s heart, making it grow across the moonway’s entrance. I had no intention of returning to the Lakehouse.

“You kicked butt.” Liz clinked her two glasses together and then sipped from one.

I grinned, leaning back against the wooden bench. “I really did.”

“And you got even with the royal pricks.”

I had paid them back and then some, but I wouldn’t call it even. We would never be even—not until I was the high-ranking queen and Ronan was dead from blood magic.

My heart squeezed at the thought of his death, and the flowering tree above us wilted.

Liz narrowed her eyes, taking in the drooping petals and withering plums. “What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously.

“I don’t want Ronan to die,” I admitted. “But he deserves it.”

Liz clinked her two glasses together and took another sip. “Why does he deserve it? I know he was a prick, but I thought you guys sorted that out.”

“It turns out he and Gabrelle sent the Floran Bracelet and Lured me to it so I would be forced to confront them.”

Liz clinked her two glasses together again, sloshing some pink frothy liquid onto the wrought iron table. “Sounds like you should be thanking them.”

“For plucking me out of my old life and hurtling me headlong into danger, then trying to kill me?”

Liz’s brows knitted together while she thought that through and came to a conclusion. “Yes,” she nodded emphatically. “Definitely, yes. If they hadn’t brought you here, you’d still be scooting around the mortal world without showering. Coming here sounds like an upgrade to me.”

I blew on my hot tea. Took a sip and it tasted tame, so I grabbed one of Liz’s glasses of bubbles and drank that instead.

“Good girl,” she said, nodding seriously at my choice of beverage.

“It gets worse,” I confessed. “It turns out he was affecting my mood all along. So when I thought I was falling in love with him, it wasn’t my own true emotions.”

I waited for Liz’s face to show the appropriate outrage, but she just shrugged. “Well, der. He’s House Mentium. And,” she leaned in and whispered behind the back of her hand like she was sharing a secret. “Apparently, he sucks at controlling his inner power.”

How could she take this so lightly? The manipulation of my entire life and all of my feelings were like nothing to her.

I switched back to tea, any festive mood gone. We sat in the garden as dusk fell, descending over us like a blanket but not dimming my connection to nature. In fact, as I relied less on my eyes in the deepening gloom, my awareness of the plants around us grew.

An unusual flapping noise sounded from around the corner, so faint I was surprised I could detect it. It got closer, rounded the corner of the house, flew right up to me, and landed in my outstretched hand. A spellbird.

A scrawled message from Ronan on the crumpled paper made my heart clench.

Leif’s den is under attack. Shadow Walkers. Come fast.

I jumped to my feet, tipping over the bench I’d been sitting on.

“What is it?”

I explained hurriedly, then tried to think how to get to Leif’s house, but I’d never been there. “Where does he live?”

“Come here.” Liz held my hands and closed her eyes while I wriggled in impatience. Even the blades of grass under my feet squirmed restlessly.

Flowing from Liz’s fingertips and directly into my brain, a mental map of the city formed in my mind, including the route to Leif’s den. This must be another perk of being fae.

My eyes widened as the map embedded into my memory. “Whoa.”

“Useful, hey?!”

I mapped out the fastest route to his house, then sprinted around the Rose Palace to a moonway near the front hedge that would take me close. Leif was my friend, and I needed to save him. There was no question of vengeance or payback, I just wanted to get to his side and do everything I could to help.

If it had been any of the other heirs, I might’ve thought twice. But not Leif.

Panic lent speed to my feet, and the world blurred beside me as I dashed along the moonway, then followed my senses to his pack’s den.

Chaos reigned. Wolves sprinted outside a black marble mansion, snarling and snapping at shadows, the hair on their backs rising like hackles. Teeth bared, yellow eyes wide and furious. The air was ripe with their musk and fear.

Shifters in fae form swung their blades, hacking and slashing at the shadows to no effect. Others hurled spells across the clearing, which smashed into the smooth black marble palace.

A chorus of howls, screams, and spellcasting filled the air, and the ground shook with the weight of charging wolves.

My adrenaline spiked as a huge brown wolf snapped at a sliver of pure darkness, but his fangs did not affect the creature of shadows. After snapping his jaws again and again, the wolf fell still and stared blankly while the darkness overtook him, completely coating the wolf’s fur, and the shifter just stood still and let it happen.

Fuck. Fangs were useless against Shadow Walkers, and from the look at the rest of the battle, blades were too.

Trees surrounded the property, so I reached out and sensed a robust young tree, which I commanded to grow and batter the Shadow Walker coating the young shifter’s fur. Perhaps it would be vulnerable to attack while it consumed its prey.

The night creature didn’t flinch as I struck it again and again with the branch, trying to scrape it away, defeat it, distract it, anything to stop the horror of it engulfing the paralyzed fae.

My attack had no effect. Cuts were appearing on the wolf’s body as the Shadow Walker fed. Finally, the Shadow Walker detached from the wolf, leaving a lifeless heap of bloodied fur sprawled on the ground.

Spells flew through the air, exploding into the ground and spewing grass and dirt skyward in a plume of soot and fire, pockmarking the side of the black stone mansion. Among the chaos and screams, I couldn’t tell if the spells affected the Shadow Walkers. I could barely see a thing among the darkness and flying debris, and all I could smell was fear and blood.

My heart squeezed when I saw Ronan, his ankle fully healed. He stood in a spotlight before the house, his voice booming all around and echoing off the marble building. “Get some lights out here, dammit. I don’t want to see a speck of darkness anywhere around this den.”

Fae rushed to follow his demands, some producing globes of light on the spot and others running off to fetch more help.

Soon the area was floodlit, and hopefully, the danger had passed. The stone mansion was black and forbidding, but it was bathed in a warm light that wouldn’t allow any more Shadow Walkers in or out.

The roar of battle ceased, and all that was left was a hazy silence. Fae stood in silence, their chests heaving as they tried to take in what had just occurred, watching the dust motes in the bright light from the globes. Everybody surveyed the destruction and loss of life, counting the fallen who would never rise again.

A section of the manor creaked and collapsed, having been hit by one too many spells.

Ronan stood in the path of the falling wall beneath the plummeting stone. He didn’t have time to move out of the way.

I acted on impulse. Nobody and nothing had the right to take Ronan away from me—he was mine to do with as I pleased, and I was his.

Adrenaline whipped through me, and my breathing slowed to a deadly calm. I lashed the sapling still under my power toward Ronan as the massive stone block plunged. He barely had time to glance up before the falling rock kissed his hair, but my tendril was faster, wrapping around his waist and yanking him to safety.

His eyes found mine in an instant, and I began breathing again, sucking in lungfuls of oxygen as I stared into those raven eyes.

The threads from nature, from the sapling still under my command, from the forest, clamored for my attention. But the connection I felt with Ronan was stronger.

He was with me instantly, crossing the space between us while I was locked in his gaze.

His voice hitched. “You are formidable.”

I pressed my finger to his lips like I always did when I shared a secret with him. “You did me a favor bringing me here.” That was a remix of Liz’s words, but it was true. “I’d rather be here battling wits with you than running away from Joey the Bull.”

He tugged me further into the light, pulled me close to his chest, and splayed his fingers on my lower back. “Really?”

“Definitely.”

He held me tight, and we breathed each other in. He was strawberries and dust and blood.

“Did I mention that you’re a gutter-born tomcat who doesn’t know shit about our realm?” he grinned.

I melted against his chest, pressing my cheek against his hard planes. “And you’re an entitled brat who wouldn’t recognize a good thing when he saw it.”

He whispered into my hair. “I recognize you, tomcat. And you’re the best thing.”

I wasn’t vulnerable anymore. I was strong, powerful, and protected by friends. No longer alone. Didn’t need to claw my way through every hour just to survive a day. So being fooled didn’t sound so scary, and I knew that whatever came my way, I could handle it.

I turned and nipped his nipple, then pushed away from him. “We need to find Leif. Have you seen him?”

Ronan placed his hands on my shoulders and looked down at me. He leaned down and pressed his lips against mine, hard, possessive, claiming.

Then he pulled away. “I think he’s inside. Let’s go get him.”

We turned to the darkened house and started walking, not knowing what carnage would lie within.