2. Taryn

TWO

TARYN

Today is my birthday, June 21st. I think. Thereabouts, anyway.

When I was young, it was my favorite day. My birthday was also Summer Solstice, our court’s biggest and most sacred holiday. The spectacular parties my parents threw for me at the palace were every Fireling’s dream. Until the day it turned into a nightmare. The day everything went up in flames…and I was the one who set it all on fire.

That was, by far, the worst birthday I’ve ever had. But last year takes a close second. That was the night I was abducted. And as I’m still here—wherever here is—this one isn’t shaping up to be any better.

The first time I woke up in this white room I went ballistic. I screamed, shouted threats, pounded on the windowless steel door. But I learned quickly I have precious little strength to do much of anything in this prison of a bedroom. The inside of the walls are lined with iron, and there must be a fuck ton of it, because even with the drywall as a barrier, it’s enough to keep me weak. The most magic I can conjure is a flame the size of a birthday candle. And no amount of praying to Brigid, the Fire Fae’s deity, has helped my situation.

I stop sketching in the pad I’ve propped on my knees and hold my fist up. Taking a deep breath, I uncurl my fingers and focus, drawing all the magic in my blood to the center of my palm. My hand trembles with the effort, but finally a tiny purple flame flickers to life, hovering in the air.

The corners of my mouth lift. It’s a mere drop in the ocean of my power outside these walls, but even this small presence is soothing.

“Happy 601st birthday, Taryn,” I whisper into the silence. But before I can blow out my “candle,” it sputters and disappears, my powers too weak to keep it going. My face falls along with my spirits, and I feel the telltale prickling behind my eyes.

No! I will not give in to despair. He. Will. Not. Break. Me.

I know they keep watch with the cameras placed in the corners. I’ll be damned if I give them the satisfaction of seeing even a single tear. Blinking away the moisture, I gather my armor around me and don my implacable expression once again; my ever-present mask.

As the only daughter of Aine, the One True Queen of Faerie, and King Garyth of the Summer Court, I learned at a very young age to hide my true feelings, the true me . I thought of it as my mask, something I wore to protect myself and show the world what I wanted them to see.

After I left Faerie, keeping my mask on was necessary for survival, but originally I did it to appease my mother, who demanded I be the perfect princess and heir at all times. I wore the gowns, minded my manners, and spoke both diplomatically and demurely when sitting at court. But it was all an act to keep her off my back and allow me the small measure of freedom I was given to play in the Emerald Forest with Devlyn.

Dev was the only one who knew the real me. He loved and accepted me for who I was, not for who I was born to be.

In the end, it cost him his life.

It was a cruel lesson to learn, but that was the last time I ever fully removed my mask for anyone. Even Dmitri, my pseudo-brother whom I’ve been inseparable with for almost five centuries, gets a masked version of me. It doesn’t conceal much, but it’s enough to protect me from ever feeling like I did the day of my 122nd birthday.

Gods, I miss you, Dmitri.

My heart clenches as it always does when I think of him and what he must be going through since my disappearance. I can only imagine the blood he’s spilt in trying to get me back. Is Los Angeles still standing or has he razed it to the ground in his search?

To the human world, he’s known as Dmitri “ D’yavol ” Romanov, the dangerous mafiya pakhan who gets his nickname for preferring to deal in favors just like his namesake. And if you owe him a debt, you’d better fucking pay it. Because when you make a deal with The Devil, the only termination clause you get is your life .

To the world of others , he’s a former bogatyr —an ancient group of deadly Russian warriors—and Lord of the largest and most powerful vampire clan on the West Coast.

But to me, he’s just a tatted-up Ruski marshmallow. Whenever I teased him about being a softie at his core, he’d scowl and blame me for the soft spot ever appearing. It’s why he started calling me moy sever —my north—because I’m his moral compass.

Dmitri has only three weaknesses in this world: silver, prolonged exposure to extreme amounts of sunlight, and me. Mine are iron, my true identity, and, for the last 400-plus years, him.

Now it’s just this godsforsaken room. I have no idea where I am—I haven’t seen anything outside these four walls since I was taken—but if he hasn’t found me by now, I doubt he ever will. As sad as I am to think I’ll never see him again, I don’t want his life to be consumed with a futile mission to find me, either.

I sigh softly and return my focus to the drawing in my lap. As I watch my pencil create the familiar lines like it’s on autopilot, I think back to the last conversation I had with Dmitri. I’d just won my latest fight in the UFCO against the alpha of the Hernandez werewolf pack. He was beaming with pride as though it was my first win and not one of thousands.

“There she is, moy sestra , the champion.”

I answered with a wry smile. “It wasn’t a championship fight, or the wolf would owe us one hell of a debt already. Which we need if you want to run shipments through his territory starting next quarter.”

“All part of my plan,” he said, picking off a non-existent piece of lint from the sleeve of his designer suit. “You damaged his pride. After he is done licking his wounds, he will return to earn back his respect. Then we insist on a Debt Fight.”

“Or,” I countered, literally playing the Devil’s advocate, “the loss will embolden someone in his pack to challenge him for the position of alpha, and if he loses, we’re back to square one.”

My brother shrugged, perpetually unruffled, as always. “Then you will challenge the new alpha. He will be forced to accept or risk appearing weak to the pack. You will of course win, so either way we get what we want.”

I rolled my eyes. “One of these days, your over-inflated confidence in me is going to backfire when I lose to someone important.”

“Not possible. When you fight for a cause, sestra , it is with your whole being,” he said, the polar caps in his blue eyes melting and his voice softening. “You fight as though someone’s life depends on it—not your own, but his .” I swallowed thickly and turned my head to look out the limo’s window, but Dmitri guided my gaze back to his with a finger on my chin. “Spilling your blood for the sake of our empire. It is your way of atoning for the past. But it was never yours to atone for, moy sever , and it pains me to see you still so burdened after all these years. You must let it go.”

I gave him a sad smile. “Like you’ve let go of your past?”

His demeanor changed in an instant. He dropped his hand, the muscles in his jaw flexing in agitation, and the ice chips reforming in his eyes. “That is different, you know this. I actually did the things that stain my soul, if it is even possible for a vampir to possess one. But you are not at fault for what happened to Devlyn.”

Switching to Russian, I touched my fingertips to his stubbled cheek. “Regret and guilt don’t come with rules, moya brat . You have your pain, and I have mine. But our bond is stronger than all the hurt, and we’ll always have each other. Right?”

The corners of his mouth curved up slightly as he lifted my hand to press a brotherly kiss on the top of my fingers. “ Da , we will always have each other, moy sever .”

Hours after that conversation, my declaration was no longer true. I was taken from him, from my home and my adopted clan. Because despite all my painstaking precautions to hide my fae features beneath a vampire glamour for almost five hundred years, Edevane somehow discovered my true identity.

The how is something I’ve never figured out. There are two cities in this realm I never dared to visit—Phoenix and Vegas. Neither are all that dangerous for tourists, but the last place I want to be is anywhere near the Celestial Courts, which Aine banished to the desert lands of the human world. If anyone has a reason to hate my mother and use me for revenge, it’s the Edevane royals of the Day Court and Verran royals of the Night Court.

In the end, though, I don’t have anyone but myself to blame for my capture. I’d grown complacent, comfortable in my protective station as tsarina of the Romanov clan. If I’d been more aware, more vigilant, I would’ve realized the gray dust on the white roses delivered to me wasn’t decorative paint, and I wouldn’t have left the safety of our building.

I’ve replayed that night in my mind thousands of times, analyzing every detail, wishing I could go back and change something—anything—that didn’t end with me getting into that limo.

“Yury? Yury, I think something’s wrong. I…” Reaching above my head, I turned on the dome light and studied my hands closely. The gray powder from the petals of the white roses must have transferred onto my fingertips. I brought them up to my nose and immediately yanked them away from the musty metallic odor. “Iron powder. Oh gods. Yury, stop the car!”

The vehicle pulled over right as my shaking hands managed to get my phone out of my clutch. I needed to call Dmitri. But the slight jarring from the sudden stop caused me to fumble the cell to the floor. Before I could reach for it, a man entered the limo and slid smoothly onto the seat opposite me.

Instinctively, I summoned my fire magic…but nothing happened. It felt like trying to tap water from a dry well.

“I’m afraid the iron will have already suppressed your powers,” the man said as he retrieved my cell phone and slipped it into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket. “So, no magic, and by now you’ll be too weak to do much of anything, much less fight.”

Panic spread like ice in my veins. “Who the fuck are you? What do you want?”

Leaning forward, a slow grin spread across his face like the Big Bad Wolf eyeing up a weak little girl holding a picnic basket, complete with fangs. And that’s when I recognized him. He was no man . He was fae . Even worse, he was the godsdamned Light King.

Malevolence glinted in his bright green eyes. “Let’s just say instead of blowing out your candles tonight, Princess, you’re going to make all of my wishes come true.”

He opened the console and pulled out an oxygen mask that he placed over his mouth and nose just as a cloud of gas expelled from the air vents. “You motherfu…”

That was my last memory before waking up in this iron prison. I have no idea what his plans are, but I assume it has something to do with revenge against my mother or possibly bargaining his way back into Faerie. All I can do is guess or theorize because no one here speaks to me. I haven’t seen Edevane since the night he abducted me, and any supplies or food they give me is shoved through the slot in the door.

Every couple of weeks, they pump sleeping gas into my room through the vents. I know that I’m always out for a few days because of the position of the moon and stars through the lone skylight in the two-story ceiling.

When I wake up, however many days later, I always do a full body check. If they did anything to harm me physically, I’d still have the wounds since I can’t heal as fast with all the iron surrounding me. But I never have any signs of violation—of any kind, thank the gods—except feeling even weaker than normal.

After putting the final touches on my sketch, I study the pair of eyes staring back at me from the page. They’re not the narrowed, piercing arctic blues of my brother’s. These are almond shaped with a warm golden color, like jars of honey backlit by the sun, and framed with thick, black lashes that should make them look feminine, and yet I’m confident they belong to a male.

I don’t know whose they are. I don’t know what the rest of his face looks like. All I know is that I started seeing his eyes in my dreams a few months ago, shortly after I was returned to my room without my necklace. My Armas. It’s the only thing I took with me the night I left Faerie and never looked back. It might be a painful reminder of who I am, but it was my most prized possession.

I stare back at the two-dimensional gaze, the conflicting feelings it stirs up only serving to frustrate the hell out of me. If I come across him someday and learn he’s the one who stole my Armas, I’ll make it so he never sees out of his gorgeous fucking eyes again.

Ripping the page out of the sketch book, I tear a piece of duct tape off the roll and use it to secure the drawing to the wall by the door with all the others. “Damn it,” I say, wincing. Being this close to the iron feels like acupuncture needles are piercing every nerve in my body. I quickly back up, breathing in relief when the pain finally ebbs. Then I study the myriads of pages taped to the walls of my prison.

In the beginning, I drew different landscapes of the places I’ve been in this realm, and even some I remember from Faerie. Those fill up three of the walls as high as I can reach on my toes since my wings are too weak for me to fly—I’ve tried.

But the fourth wall is all him . The eyes of the stranger in my dreams. I’ve drawn them in a dozen different ways—photo realism, impressionism, conceptual, abstract, watercolors, cartoonish, anime, and more. All of them, though, are very clearly the same pair of eyes. The way they always seem to look right through me, like they can see past the mask, is unnerving. And at the same time, if I’m being completely honest with myself, just the slightest bit comforting.

“Who are you?” I whisper to the wall. The vents in the room hiss in response, but it’s not the one I want. “ Fuck .”

I pull the bottom of my shirt up to my face, trying to avoid breathing in the gas for as long as possible, but it’s no use. I cough as it invades my lungs, and I wonder if I should try to make it to the bed or just lay down on the floor here to avoid getting a concussion when I collapse.

Before I can do either, I’m shocked to hear someone unlocking the door. They’ve never come in this soon after the gas starts. Maybe I finally have a chance to get out of here! I don’t have my strength, but if I have the element of surprise…

Grabbing one of my fountain pens, I stumble to the door and flatten myself against the wall. I summon my tiny, pathetic flame in the palm of my hand, then hold it under the metal tip of the pen. The door swings open for a male dressed in dark clothing, wearing a balaclava that covers the lower half of his face. I summon every ounce of adrenaline-fueled strength I have and drive the scorched tip of my pen to the strip of exposed skin on his neck.

But I’m too slow, or maybe he’s too fast. He catches me by the wrist just as the hot metal singes his skin and nothing else. I failed.

I’ve breathed in too much of the gas to do anything more. My knees give out, and he catches me against his firm body. My head becomes too heavy and tips back on my shoulders, forcing me to look up…into almond shaped eyes the color of sunlit honey.

“It’s you,” I whisper, just as the world goes dark.