Chapter One
Leila
Here’s the thing about grief and betrayal: you think you’re over it, or at the very least that you’re managing it, and it will slam into you all over again.
I was sitting in my assigned seat at the massive table, attentively listening and fulfilling my role as the fae representative for the Regional Committee of Magic. This was the third meeting I’d taken part in—which was pretty unusual because it was barely mid-January, and I’d just gotten sworn in at the beginning of the month. But we’d had the first meeting of the year, which was basically just to wave our hands and pretend we had goals, and an emergency meeting, and now this was the first planned meeting I got to actively participate in.
We were on our last item of the meeting—approving a new recruit to the supernatural task force the committee had founded last year.
I was dutifully reading the recruit’s resume as I listened to her answer a question from Killian, when raw grief decided to show up for the fun.
Rigel’s gone. It’s been nearly two months; he’s not coming back. He really did try to kill me.
The thought ripped my heart in half, and tears stung my eyes—even though I was tired of crying. After all these weeks you’d think I’d be over it.
That he tried to kill me wasn’t shocking. Rigel was a fae assassin. The first time I ever saw him he tried to kill me. But I’d thought we’d become friends of a sort, and because of his neutral stance in the Night Court, I’d asked him to marry me, and he became my consort.
That was when I turned total idiot and fell in love with him, sometime between when he defended me from shadow monsters and stayed up with me when I couldn’t sleep at night.
It still wasn’t certain that he set up the trap between our rooms that had nearly killed me, but it was absolutely obvious that he’d disappeared from my life, leaving me with a broken heart.
The abrupt wave of grief swirled in my chest, and I felt physical pain from it as I stared unseeingly at the recruit’s resume.
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. I should be over this by now. I am over this. It’s not worth crying over—I don’t love him anymore.
But I did.
That was one of the unique things about being half fae half human. Fae couldn’t lie, but as a half blood I could—I could even lie to myself.
It’s fine. Everything is fine.
I scowled down at the resume as tears heated my eyes. Pretty soon they were going to slip free, and I’d ruin the makeup Indigo had applied on me this morning.
Not today!
I straightened my back and abruptly swiped the black handbag that leaned against the legs of my padded leather chair. I yanked a fistful of papers from its depths and slapped it down on the table.
I’d learned early on that work was an excellent distraction, particularly when I was stuck out in the open, like I was now in the committee meeting.
I blinked away the tears as I started reviewing the new budget numbers my accountants had sent me. I checked over the expenditures with a grimace. When I’d first been dumped—unwillingly—with the job of Night Queen, the Court had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Things were better now, but we were still trying to pay off the debts previous monarchs had made, and I was running out of things to sell.
Grief stabbed me through the heart, and the faint reminder that the fae I loved—my husband—had abandoned me was a bitter taste in my mouth. But I could feel the painful sensations start to fade.
They wouldn’t go away for good. They’d just lurk at the back of my heart and surface when I least expected and least wanted it.
In the meantime, I’d use the necessary monotony of reviewing numbers to beat it back.
I worked my way through three pages before Killian Drake called my name.
“Apparently hiring a recruit isn’t crucial enough for our lovely fae representative to pay attention. Queen Leila, are you working on private work, again?”
I looked up from my sheets and peered across the horseshoe shaped table, where Killian Drake—Eminence of the vampires—sat as the vampire representative on the Midwest Regional Committee of Magic.
His red eyes flashed, and with his dark hair he looked like the handsome and brooding vampire humans often depicted in their books and TV shows—except he was about a thousand times more lethal.
“I wouldn’t have to work on my own stuff if you stopped asking her questions and just approved her recruitment,” I blandly said.
Most people were afraid of Killian, but I walked a fine line with him since my parents lived next to his ginormous mansion, and I was good friends with his wife. Yeah, it’s a small world.
Killian smirked. “But Queen Leila, this recruit happens to be a vampire slayer! I think my detailed concern is understandable.”
I ruffled through my papers. “Yeah, except she says in her resume that she’s been trained as a vampire slayer, but not employed,” I said.
Killian raised his eyebrows. “A slayer is born a slayer—practicing or not—it’s an inherited bloodline.”
Here was the thing about supernaturals, we came in a lot of flavors.
The ones who really ran the show—AKA the ones who sat on the Regional Committees of Magic across the world—were the fae, vampires, wizards, and werewolves.
But in reality there were tons of different shifters—everything from dragons to werecats—and there were lots of different fae—from humanoid nobles like myself all the way down to pixies and trolls.
Wizards were another special case—they were humans with the ability to use magic. Most typically they could use elemental magic, and they swore fealty to a specific wizard House. But there were offshoots of wizards—like werewolf hunters and vampire slayers. Slayers and hunters came from specific family lines, and they inherited specific magic traits that your average wizards didn’t have. Traits that made them ideal killers for their specific targets.
Which was why Killian was putting on a show about this recruit.
I glanced at her, but she didn’t seem rattled.
She stood with an almost military-like precision, her shoulders straight and her hands clasped behind her back.
When Killian glanced at her, she spoke. “I am a slayer—and I come from a slayer family. But given the low demand for our particular set of skills, I have trained to handle all supernaturals.”
“And you applied for the police position because?” Killian asked.
“Because I want to protect,” she said. “I want to defend the humans and supernaturals who can’t fight for themselves.”
Killian narrowed his eyes. “That sounds very noble of you. How disgusting.”
The slayer in question—Jade, according to her resume—didn’t even blink at Killian’s comment.
Rigel would admire her stoicism.
Pain flooded my heart again. Contemplating how I could best ignore the shivering sensation in my chest, I glanced down at my accounting papers.
“If we could retain your attention, Queen Leila, I would feel ever so honored,” Killian drawled.
“Killian,” Hazel growled in warning from where she crouched behind Elite Bellus.
Since the wizard rep sat a few spaces down the table from me, Hazel, as his protegee, sat with him.