CHAPTER ONE
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there lived a young fae princess. The child was raised in opulence. From birth, she was a fearsome member of her parents’ court; a power to be reckoned with, wearing glittering gowns, shoes encrusted with diamonds and rubies, and a smile that sparked intrigue and fear in the bellies of her people.
When the King and Queen bothered with her at all, it was only on the rarest of occasions that they dared utter to her the word no.
She grew more beautiful with every passing year. While most knew her for her striking appearance, even more came to know her for her cruelty. For she was envious of what others had that she did not possess.
The princess had every material thing her heart had ever desired, but there were things, she learned, that could not be bought with emeralds and gold. Things much more precious. Things like love.
When she asked her mother about the emotion, which seemed to stir the depths of human and fae alike, she was scolded for placing too much value on such a fleeting and frivolous emotion. Love, her mother explained, made one weak, and weakness in their world was death.
Her friends, if one could call them such, boasted and lamented of their adventures and amorous escapades. They fell in and out of love like it was as simple as inhaling and exhaling, but their hearts were what she was curious about. They broke, mended, and broke again into slivers so small, she thought nothing would be able to cure the ache left behind… only for the girl to fall in love again.
Love wasn’t permanent like humans pretended. It was fluid. An ebb and flow. She’d seen the pain it caused, and despite the pleasures and the highs that came with the feeling, the lows were what caused fae to crumble. She wanted no part of anything that could exert so much control over her life, over her heart.
She chose instead to focus on other interests and put the confounding concept of love behind her, completely unaware that one truly has little control over love. It cannot be tucked away, shut off, or blocked so easily.
While away from the castle, concocting a trick on an unsuspecting human girl, the girl’s brother came to defend his sister against the plans of the fae princess. As he stood and bravely faced her, chest heaving, finger pointed boldly at her chest and a storm raging in his eyes, in an instant, everything within her shifted.
He was curious about her as well, for he’d never spoken to a faery before. The two became friends and he slowly began to trust her. He showed her how to be kind instead of cruel, and how a man should behave with a female. For the first time in her life, she was loved and respected, comfortable and secure.
But as with most things in life, the happiness was short-lived.
Her parents had her followed one night and learned of her affections. They refused to accept the human boy and threatened to cast her out of their home, to leave her penniless, and to kill the young man.
She ran to find him, to protect the boy she loved from the wrath of her father and the harshness of her mother. After all, she would gladly accept such a fate, a life of struggle and hardship, a life without fine things and palaces, a life of hunger and strife... for him.
But the hearts of humans were more fickle than she realized. And all hearts lie—to themselves and to others.
She found him behind his barn, kissing another girl. A human girl.
It felt as though he had plunged his fist into her chest and removed her heart, shattering bone and tearing sinew and arteries and all the things that kept her alive.
He never loved her at all. He didn’t even know what love was. But she did, and she never wanted to feel it again.
As she walked home to beg her parents’ forgiveness, she healed her broken, bloodied heart and turned it to stone. No male – human or fae – would ever break her again. And she would waste no more of her infinite existence on such a silly thing as love.
Her brutality from that day forward would become the stuff of nightmares…
ARABELLA
They say it’s quietest in the moments before the most destructive storms hit, but what they don’t tell you is that the worst storms happen within homes.
Father’s mood went from irritated to furious when he discovered his last bottle of liquor was as empty as his pockets. He cursed, searching through and rattling the glass bottles that littered his room in every shape and color of the rainbow.
Oryn had barely slept after our fight last night, his eyes still red and bleary. His face was mottling, turning an angry red hue that he and Father shared. My brother gently pushed his cup of boiled water across the table.
If he hadn’t knocked our basket of food into the water last night, we’d be eating eggs right now and his mood might not be so sour…
The legs of his chair scraping loudly across the floor were the only warning Father got before my brother exploded. The muscles in my back tightened uncomfortably as the two shouted.
Oryn ducked as he entered Father’s room, taking the fight directly to him, but Father was stronger than he expected. The wily man shoved Oryn out of the bedroom, slamming the door closed behind him and quickly locking the door.
The impact of the door caused our only mirror, the one thing we had left of our mother, to shatter from the impact when it fell off the wall and hit the floor. One reflective shard slid beneath the door, as if it were a sharp fingernail pointing at the ones who broke her.
It pointed at Oryn.
It pointed at me.
It reflected the pathetic life we were living, and in the same moment challenged me to find another. To take the shard and carve a new one out of the earth and air. I couldn’t stay there another moment.
I scooted my chair out, ready to stand. Ready to run. Through the slats between the uneven, knotted planks that separated us, Father’s shape emerged. His boots crunched over the glass he wouldn’t bother picking up.
He charged Oryn, so angry his jowls were trembling, and his hands went straight for Oryn’s pockets. He patted along Oryn’s side and stuck his fingers into the pocket at his waist. “You have coin. I knew it. Stealing from your own family!” he raged.
It didn’t matter that he was larger than Father. Father wasn’t afraid of Oryn. Father was foolish.
I watched from my seat as the reflections changed in the shard.
Oryn shoved Father away from him. “I earned this coin,” Oryn fumed. “If you want to have things, you should get out and sweat for them.”
Father closed his fist and raised his arm, but he never saw Oryn’s fist coming. With one punch, the once-strong giant fell like a tree. His head cracked the floor beneath him, or it sounded that way. I stood and finally looked at our father. Oryn looked, too.
Father’s pants were stained with a variety of substances; grease, sweat, mud, and food from our meal three days ago among them, and his shirt was torn at the seam on his shoulder. He’d shrunken in the last few years. Physically and mentally.