1. Skylar

Chapter one

Skylar

B reaking up is hard to do. The humans were right about that one simple fact.

I’d skipped the ice cream binge and rom-com stage of grieving and gone directly to day drinking at a pay-by-day motel high up in the Dragonback Mountains. As if breaking up with my cheating ex weren’t enough, I’d also fled our realm.

When I’d stumbled upon this nameless borderlands town two nights ago, it seemed like the perfect place to drown my sorrows and nurse my broken heart. With only a knapsack of my favorite clothing and the wings on my back, I’d left behind everything and everyone I’d known in Emrallt Valley. The feeling of suffocating was as visceral as sinking in sorghum, and the only way to avoid the rising, unrelenting tide was to get out of there as fast as I could.

I loved too hard; it was what my best friend Monica always told me. I didn’t mean to fall in love with Prince Cedrych, the second-born son to our fae sovereign, and I should have known we’d never have a future together, but a fae boy can dream, can’t he?

Of course, his mother absolutely despised me. “A guildless, unremarkable bit of fae trash” were Queen Gwyneth’s exact words regarding my character, but Cedrych had always been quick to reassure me that my low station and checkered past didn’t bother him, that with time the queen would accept his unorthodox choice of romantic partner.

Spoiler: she didn’t.

Then Cedrych had gone and gotten himself betrothed to an elvish lord. Worse yet, he hadn’t told me of the engagement himself. I’d had to read about it in the Daily Scrolls and hear it announced from the ramparts of the Crystal Castle by the heralds of the royal family. I’d been so humiliated and disgraced. Queen Gwyneth had marked me as a gold-digging harlot from the start, and perhaps I was in the beginning, but foolishly, I’d invested my heart.

When I confronted Cedrych, the very last time we’d spoken, the slug first tried to convince me that his betrothal was in my best interest, then told me not to worry because until his fiancé came to collect him at the summer solstice, nothing needed to change.

Let’s just say, I got a bit hysterical.

Kitchenware was thrown, tears were shed, and the royal guard were forced to intervene. I’d always suspected I was a lark for Cedrych, a convenient plaything for him to visit when the carnal urge compelled him, but hearing the confirmation from his own callous lips forced me to take a hard look at my life and say, Goddess divine, I deserved more.

And so, as I lined my eyes with a shimmering emerald kohl, a color reserved for fae royalty and banned for common use in Emrallt Valley, I pretended the tears in my eyes were only the result of my makeup and reminded myself that I, Skylar Larkspur, was no stranger to heartbreak or adversity. I would simply have to remake myself once more. Just as the siren Gloria Gaynor had once belted out to audiences realmwide, I will survive.

But to do that, I’d need coin. Because, in addition to my dignity, I’d left behind anything of value I might have used to sell or trade, including the few fine trinkets and jewels Cedrych had given me. Perhaps it was my stubborn pride. I wanted him to visit the opulent rooms he’d rented for me only to find me vanished without a trace, to know those gifts held no value to me, sentimental or otherwise.

There was a bar nearby which would serve nicely as my hunting grounds. Drunk patrons made for easy marks. I wouldn’t take too much, just enough to pay the motel manager my nightly rate and keep up my stock of spirits I’d purchased from The Magic Shop down the street. Maybe I’d find some handsome shifter to spend a few moments of stolen passion with before the sun rose again on my subpar circumstance.

My cock hardened in my silk pants as I imagined the sweaty press of limbs, the heat of another body grinding against mine, clumsily fumbling to remove just enough clothing to get at what most needed relief, releasing all the toxicity inside of me in a flood of ecstasy.

Finding myself could wait. Tonight, I was getting lost in the arms of a stranger.