I knew I was different from most girls around here. My Russian and Irish roots gave me pale skin, but extremely dark and sharp features. “Unique” and “stunning” were words I heard the most, along with “intimidating.” I had a lot of male attention and interest, but most guys stayed away, like an invisible line had been drawn around me. Either they were scared of me or didn’t want to cross the most formidable cadet at the school. Caden Markos was the son of the highest-ranking general at HDF, Istvan Markos, the leader of the humans.
Now Caden’s attention drifted down my body and back up. I didn’t move, afraid even a twitch would stop him from saying what I wanted to hear for so long. “Brex,” he uttered, his eyes dipping down to my mouth, close enough I could feel his heat colliding with my damp clothes.
I bit my bottom lip, my lungs hitching. His gaze stayed on my mouth, the feel of his breath tickling warmly over my skin. The need to push up on my toes and take what I had craved for so long throbbed through me. He watched me for another beat before he jerked his head, taking a step back.
“The guards change in two minutes. We better hurry.” He nodded toward the wall barricading the old parliament building and surrounding area, resembling a fortress. Stone loomed tall and thick around the military human section, securing the reign of man on this side of the river.
To the fae, our walled city was probably mere decoration, a barrier to keep out the very people we were supposed to be guarding, and one of the places the rich bought their way into. The military and the wealthy were condensed into this walled section of Pest, where the streets were spotless and laws still applied.
Guarded at all times, I had learned where I could get in and out without notice. I knew Caden was torn between the two parts of himself: the soldier who wanted to reveal weakness in their human defense so he could be the hero in his father’s eyes, and the boy who used to love to pretend to escape beyond the wall with me when we were young. The more Caden advanced through the ranks, the more that boy disappeared. He used rules and laws as excuses more and more.
“Yeah.” I nodded, my lungs deflating with disappointment. I could take any guy down in a fight, which was one of the reasons many found me intimidating, but Caden left me so twisted up and confused I wanted to cry.
“I meant it, Brex. This is the last time,” he shot back at me, anger tingeing his words. “It’s far too dangerous, not to mention illegal. I’ll be graduating from the academy soon, and you are not far behind. We need to be soldiers, not criminals.”
“We’re stealing from the fae. Thought you put that in the ‘saving humans’ category.”
“There are other ways. Legal ways.”
I snorted, not believing his wishful idealism of truth and justice. I was much more pessimistic.
For nineteen years, all my life, this country had been in turmoil and constant war. I never knew the old world. I only knew a world of walls, death, and fear.
The fae ruled the west side of the river, where they set themselves up in the castle, taking all the land on the Buda side. Humans ruled a speck of territory on the northeast side. Less than half of a district. As if a scar slashed through the land, most of the Pest side hemorrhaged with people, disease, murder, starvation, prostitution, drugs, poverty, and half-breeds. It was called “the Wild West of the East.”
The Savage Lands.
“Brex, come on.” Caden’s voice brought me back to the present. He turned for the hidden gate near a small park, which had turned into a cemetery after the last “confrontation” with the fae almost five years ago.
My boots sloshed as I ran across the road to the ancient iron gate hidden behind overgrown bushes and weeds. It was the least guarded place along the wall, the gate not even detectible from either side. I found it one afternoon years ago when Caden and I were playing hide-and-seek.
Slithering through the bars, I unlatched the rickety gate. It opened just enough for Caden to shove his body through. Barely. One more gym session and he wouldn’t fit.
The fog clung low to the vegetation as we weaved through the cemetery, the stars bright in the night sky. Caden cut through another fence, popping us out onto the street. A dull yellow light glowed from a streetlight down the boulevard, shadowing the crumbling pavement and chipped paint. Even within the walls of wealthy Lipótváros, which was now called Leopold, the English version, if you looked hard enough, you could see the effects of the dying city bleeding in. The plaster trying to cover up holes in buildings, shoddy paint trying to refresh the facades, the potholes growing with wear and tear. Only a dozen lamps around the walled city were lit at night, the council deciding the money used there could be better spent on more weapons or igniting every inch of HDF in a sea of glorious light, to show the enemy our hold was strong.
Growing up, my dad told me tales of what Budapest was like before the wall fell. After it was relieved of communism control, the country became prosperous with tourism, museums, theater, and art.
“Kicsim, you could freely walk the streets without fear.” Father tucked my stuffed dog, Sarkis, in next to me, a gift from my dad’s best friend, Uncle Andris. Andris told me it was a shepherd to watch over and keep me safe when they were gone. Which was often. I knew he wasn’t my real uncle, but it didn’t matter to me. He was my father’s right-hand man in battle. Close as brothers. They said that made us more than family.
“No walls, no laws saying you couldn’t walk around. You could go wherever you wanted.” Still in his uniform, his day far from over, Dad always took time to tuck me into bed, telling me stories. I always wanted to hear more, to picture this fairy-tale place he spoke of. “Then you could go to the Buda side and stroll the castle grounds. Hang out in cafes, bars, restaurants, and party until dawn if you wanted to. Families went on picnics and to markets without the need to carry a weapon. It was glorious. Can you imagine?”
“No.” I wiggled my head against my pillow, tucking Sarkis into my chest. “But I want to go on a picnic with you, Daddy. And you don’t have to work ever again.”
“Oh, Edesem.” Grief cut across his face. “I want that too. Let’s hope someday. Someday you will know a life without war and hate, but one with freedom and acceptance. Where both sides can work in harmony. I’m trying to do this. It’s why I work so much, so you have a chance at that. Where you can live without threat.”
It sounded like paradise. Something my mind couldn’t even fathom. None of it was left. Now culture, language, and traditions were mostly lost, replaced by fae customs and the new wave of Westerners who thought this would be utopia without a ruling monarchy, pushing their ideals and culture on this eastern part of the country, blending and changing it into a confused hodgepodge of cultures.
Fae had been living among us since the beginning of time. Once leaders of Earth, they had to go into hiding for centuries, living in a realm called the Otherworld until a bitter old fae queen changed that, shredding the veil between the worlds, meshing them together. As children, we were taught Queen Aneira was a pitiless queen of the Otherworld, no longer wanting the fae scurrying around beneath the humans. Hiding. She waged a war that dissolved the barrier between the realms. Almost twenty years ago, the day of my birth, the wall between the fae world and Earth fell. History books told us the good guys won. And maybe to the Unified Nations, they did. But from Hungary east to Ukraine, we had split off from the rule of a Druid queen and an Unseelie king, becoming our own leaders.