So my family had forced me out, forced me to run and hide when I’d been only fifteen. Only Connor had come with me. Before we’d left, the Court had used a spell to remove our wings and the points from our ears. They’d thought we’d be able to hide better without them. But not having wings had been hellish. It was yet another reason to hate the king.
“He’s come for me. I met him tonight.”
Connor’s jaw tightened. “It’s time.”
I nodded, my chest going hollow. “We need to run.”
For all that I missed my Fae homeland, this place had become home, too. I had a job I loved here. Being a mercenary for the Order of the Magica honed my skills and gave me purpose. Potions & Pastilles had become home for my brother and me. We had friends here.
No longer.
We needed to run again.
“I’ll meet you back here in five,” Connor said.
I nodded, my throat tight.
Quickly, he pulled me into his arms, hugging me hard. I gripped him hard and sucked in a breath, then pulled away. “Let’s go.”
We split up, each heading to our individual apartments on the floors above the shop. I stepped into mine, which was on the second floor.
I wouldn’t miss this plain, boring space. It didn’t have the color or space that I longed for—the kind that I’d left behind on the windswept hills of Dartmoor—so I’d never even tried.
I hadn’t wanted to become attached to this place.
I had, all the same. I’d amassed a collection of instruments that soothed me—all of which I was terrible at playing, though I had a particular fondness for the trumpet. The instruments were a Fae penchant. The trumpet was…not. It was ridiculous and human, but I still liked it.
I left mine where it lay, though, and charged toward my bedroom. This was where I’d stashed my bug-out bag years ago, and it was the only thing I would take with me. There wasn’t much in it—clothes, weapons, money, transport charms. As I reached up into the closet, my gaze caught on the mirror over the dresser.
On the surface, I looked like any other girl in her twenties. Nice. Pretty. Normal.
But there was a hardness to me that people didn’t see. That I didn’t let them see. The normal was a shell that I’d built over the determined killer I’d become.
But it was starting to creep in, right at the edges of my eyes. The look of an animal who would chew off its own leg before it allowed itself to be caught.
And I would. I’d sever a limb before I’d let him take me.
Five minutes later, I met Connor back in Potions & Pastilles. The warm, cozy space had become my home more than my apartment had. My brother was a potions expert, which made owning a magical bar and coffee shop a logical extension. I occasionally helped out, but in truth, I spent most of my time hunting monsters for the Order of the Magica, the supernatural government that oversaw magic users.
Connor’s jaw was tight—no doubt at the idea of leaving P & P, his baby, behind—but when he spotted me, he smiled.
“You don’t have to fake it, bro,” I said. “This sucks.”
He nodded sharply. “Worth it, though. Let’s get out of here.”
I joined him, and we stepped out onto the sidewalk. He turned to lock the door behind him—just in case we could ever come back—and I turned to look down the street toward where my friends lived.
Fate decided to stab me in the heart with a dagger right then, because Cass stepped out of her shop. Her red hair glinted under the light of the street lamps as she shut the door to Ancient Magic behind her. She and her two best friends owned a shop that specialized in old magic.
Her gaze caught on me and she grinned. “Off somewhere?”
My brain stutter-stopped.
I needed to tell her something, but what?
Connor and I had lied all our lives about what we really were—not because we’d wanted to, but because we’d taken a magical vow of silence about our origins that couldn’t be broken. He’d said he was a hearth witch, and I’d said I was a fire mage.
Neither was true.
Neither was what I said next, even though it was hard to force the words out of my throat. “Got a job for the Order that Connor is going to help me with.”
“Cool.” Cass sounded like she believed me. Of course she did. We were friends. I had a bit of Fae ability to read a person’s soul, and she had a good one. It had allowed me to trust her from the first moment. Probably the only reason we’d become friends.
Cass smiled. “I’ve got somewhere important I need to be, but if you need help, I’ll be back by tomorrow night.”
“Thanks, but I think we’ve got it.”
She nodded. “See you later.”
She waved and headed off down the street. My heart twisted at the sight of her going. It might be the last time I ever saw her.
I turned back to Connor, who was anointing the door with a potion that he’d drawn from a bag he stashed in the ether. It was an expensive spell that allowed him to store objects in the ephemeral ether that surrounded every living thing, but it was useful.
When he was done, he turned to me. “That should do it. All magical signatures scrubbed. He won’t be able to sense that we were here.”
My lips tightened as I nodded, and we headed into the alley to get our car. We could use our precious transport charm to get out of there, but we only had one. Better to save it for an emergency.
The old truck was Connor’s, and I climbed in as he got behind the wheel. Quickly, I typed a message into my phone to tell my boss at the Order that I was going on vacation. She’d think it was a load of crap since I never took a vacation, but it didn’t matter.
“Where to?” Connor asked.
We had a few bail-out places planned, but I hadn’t decided on which.
“The desert.” I stared out the windshield, eyes blind with the memory of the man who hunted me. Since he was king of the Court of Ice—once known as the Court of the Sea—we needed to stay the hell away from water. He’d have an advantage there.
Connor peeled out of the alley, turning right. We passed by Potions & Pastilles, which no longer glowed with golden light but tugged at my heart all the same. Ancient Magic wasn't empty as I’d hoped—two women moved within, both dark-haired. Del and Nix, Cass’s best friends and business partners.
I touched the glass, as if I could reach out to them, then scowled at myself.
I was acting like I was in a damned movie, for fate’s sake. I shook my head and turned back to the windshield.
“We’ll be back,” Connor said.
“Do we want to be back?” I asked. “Because this might be it. It all might be starting. And then…”
“We’ll have to make a decision.” His voice was grim.
I nodded. “We’ll have to make a decision.”
If my fated mate was hunting me, a chain of events was about to start, one that could end with war or tragedy. At the end of it, if my Court survived, Connor and I would have to choose—did we go back to Dartmoor, a starkly beautiful windswept place that called to my soul, or did we return to Magic’s Bend, where we’d created a life full of friends?
I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned my head against the window. I wasn’t going to worry about that now. I couldn’t.