“I do not know.” He carried a glass jar full of chocolate chip cookies in the crook of his arm, already nibbling on one, as he headed past me into the café area. He pushed a chair back from a table with his foot. “Talk with me?”
“Fine,” I said. No point in denying my curiosity any longer. I sat across from him, studying him. He was as ridiculously handsome as the other two, but in a different way. His lips were soft and pink, with a pronounced bow and a rounded lower lip, as sensual as the rest of his face was sharp.
He studied me right back, his green eyes seeming to take in far too much. Finally, he waved his hand, encompassing the empty coffee shop. “You can’t deny the Fae world is real now.”
It wasn’t a question.
There was the possibility these males were running some kind of game, but the simplest answer was that they were indeed what they said they were.
“You’re Fae,” I agreed—at least for now. “Why are you here?”
“You’re Fae as well.” He lifted a cup to his lips, taking a sip, before I realized he didn’t have his own mug. He set my cup back in front of me, flashing me an innocent look as I frowned at him.
“Maybe,” I said guardedly. I didn’t remember anything from my life before, so it was hard to argue I wasn’t. I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup, guarding it from him. “Why did you come looking for me now?”
“You’re our queen,” he said simply. “The heir to the throne. Your father is dead.”
Something dark twisted through my gut at his words. Not a sense of loss, exactly. As if my body felt something, even if my brain couldn’t understand.
“Did I like him?” I asked, to buy myself time.
“Not particularly, from what I’ve heard.”
“And would I like being queen?”
“I suppose you would.” Tiron tilted his head, studying me. “You were rich and powerful and loved in our world. Who’d turn that down?”
Loved. I’d been ready to snort at the idea of being rich and powerful—as if there wouldn’t be strings attached to all that—and then my heart caught on the word loved.
As if there wouldn’t be strings attached to that, too.
“I’m curious,” I admitted, and Tiron’s eyes sharpened. “But I don’t remember anything about my life before.”
“I think someone stole your memories,” he said.
“Who?”
He shook his head. “We don’t know.”
“Can I get them back?” I asked. Eagerness broke into my voice, despite my best intentions.
“Maybe. In the Fae world.”
I frowned at him, not caring for that answer. They wanted me to go with them a whole lot, and that aroused my suspicion. “Why not in this world? So I can make an informed decision on whether I want to stick with my life here or return to the old one?”
He almost laughed. “Do you call this a life?”
What a beautiful, condescending bastard.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
I stood from the table, and his lips pressed shut.
Then he tried again, his voice more kind. “There isn’t enough magic in this world to break that kind of enchantment. Whoever cursed you to lose your memories, your identity—that was powerful magic.”
I laughed out loud, rubbing my arms absently. “Great. So I have powerful enemies with big magic and I’m supposed to walk back into that clueless? I don’t think so.”
“Alisa. Please. Your brother Faer needs you to come home. He can’t rule without you.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“You’re twins,” he said simply. “The throne is yours as much as his.”
I had no memory of a brother, no sense of a twin, and even though I’d never thought to miss one before, suddenly that felt like an ache. I’d shared a womb with someone that I didn’t even know existed?
My chest tightened. Did my twin miss me?
“I keep hearing an awful lot about what everyone wants from me,” I said. “But I want my memories back. I’m not walking into the Fae world with no idea how anything works, or who I am, or who you all are. No, thanks.”
“Alisa—”
“You can say my name like that all you want. Figure out how to bring my memories back, and I’ll consider going with you.”
He stared at me, his eyes wide. I still kind of liked him, despite myself. He was sexy as hell, charming in an odd, quirky way. Something about the way he looked at me drew my touch.
I ruffled his hair with my hand as I went past. Then the bells rang at the café door as I went out.
For a second, the street felt too quiet, as if he’d ordered everyone else to go home, and the sense of something eerie settled over me.
Then a car zoomed by, and a dog barked down the street.
Everything was normal here on Earth.
Well, as normal as Earth ever was.
Chapter Seven
Tiron
“Stunning successes, all around,” Azrael said, shaking his head.
As the sun melted into dusk, the three of us lingered outside the veterinary clinic where Alisa worked.
Duncan shrugged, not particularly alarmed by the failure of diplomacy. He never was. “So we execute our fallback plan.”
I shook my head at Duncan, and he frowned at me. “What?”
“You just try so hard to be scary,” I said, clapping his shoulder with my hand.
“I am scary,” he pointed out. “You used to be scared of me.”
“I wouldn’t say scared.” The badass warrior had knocked me on my ass when I first came to the autumn court, because I’d mistaken him for his brother. He’d knocked me on my ass quite a few times since then, for that matter. But he had a good heart underneath all that grouch.
“I would,” he disagreed.
Azrael ignored our banter, seemingly lost in thought.
“She seems…different,” he mused.
“Good. Almost anything would be an improvement over the old Alisa,” Duncan said.
I hadn’t known Alisa. But from what I’d been told of her, her Majesty’s current occupation had been a surprise. Most surprisingly of all was what we’d seen, watching her. We’d used magic to cloak ourselves and follow her through the clinic.
She seemed to charm everyone who came into the clinic, whether on two feet or four. She had an easy way with animals that took away their fear. She leaned into doggie kisses, gently coaxed cats out from carriers. When she helped an old woman with an even older cat, who was dying of cancer, there’d been tears in her eyes after she saw them out to spend a few last days together.
“She hardly seems like the villain I’ve heard so much about,” I said.
“She has a way of getting men to let their guard down.” Duncan glanced at Azrael pointedly.
“My guard is up,” Azrael promised. “I haven’t forgotten what she did.”
“You’ve forgiven her a lot in the past,” Duncan grumbled. “More than you should have. If you didn’t have a tender heart toward her—”
I grinned. No one thought Azrael had a tender heart, except for Duncan, apparently.