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“Do you really believe that this time, we’ll get our happy ending?”
When he brought his gaze up to meet mine, his dark smile widened. “I hope so, my love. Finally, after all the years…I hope so.”
Long ago, there was a vampire named Geoffrey. Only his name wasn’t Geoffrey at the time. But he had a yen for power, and he was determined to take over the Vampire Nation. His reasoning went thus: Turn the Dark Fae, and the result—the Vampiric Fae—would be under his control, with both their own powers and those of the vampires. And it would make him stronger and more powerful and he could throw down the Crimson Queen and take the throne for himself.>She swept into the room and accepted a chair. “Regina contacted me. She warned me of what’s going on with Geoffrey and Leo, and the Blood Oracle. You must all be cautious until they are caught and Crawl is back under lock and key. Nothing can go amiss. You must undergo the initiation and coronation without delay.”
As she sat there, it almost felt like she was one of us. Regal though she might be, the aura of her rule was fading. It made me want to cry.
“We’ll watch out. I promise. I’m also asking the guards to keep an eye on the Veil House during the day to protect Peyton and the others. Regina promised guards at night.”
“It heartens me to know you are taking this seriously. Myst must be destroyed. The balance must return. And you, Cicely, must finally visit the Court over which you will be ruling. It’s time to see your new home.”
The Barrow here would become Rhiannon’s new home. When she married Chatter—Grieve’s best friend and now soon-to-be King of Summer—they would live here, in the warmth of eternal summer. My own home was destined to be colder, caught in the grips of the eternal winter.
I sucked in a deep breath. The thought of living in perpetual snow and ice frightened me. “I wish…” But I stopped. There was no turning back, no walking away. Wishing for something that wasn’t meant to be wouldn’t make it happen.
“Yes, my child?” The Queen’s gaze rested on me, glorious and yet like fading flowers.
“I can’t wait to see my new home.” I forced a smile to my face. She knew how I felt, but I wouldn’t let her, or my father, down. I picked up the cell phone. “But I will admit, this is one thing I’m going to miss.”
“Once you take the throne, you must relinquish some of the trappings that keep you tied to the mortal world. The changes in lifestyle will take some getting used to, but there are wonders, Cicely. There are wonders you haven’t even dreamed of yet.”
With that, she smiled, rose, and passed to the door. “Your father will escort you to your new home tomorrow at noon. Be here, ready to go. Your cousin may attend. And so may your friends.” And, the hem of her dress whispering against the floor, she left the room.
I suppose this is the time for introductions.
My name is Cicely Waters. I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m one of the magic-born. Or at least, I always thought I was. I never knew my father, but had assumed he was the same lineage as Krystal, my mother. But a few weeks ago, I discovered that I’m also half Cambyra Fae—the Shifting Ones—and it threw my whole worldview into a tailspin.
So yes, I was born a witch, and I can control the wind. Or I’m learning to, at any rate. Until I was six years old, Krystal and I lived at the Veil House with aunt Heather and cousin Rhiannon.
When we were around five, Rhia and I met Grieve and Chatter out in the woods, and they secretly taught us how to increase our magic. They watched out for us, and we felt safe with them. Rhiannon and I made a pact never to tell anyone about them because my mother hated the fact that she was born to the magic and didn’t want me meddling in it either. And so they remained our secret, and everything was fine, or so we thought. That was a wonderful summer—as good as it could get, in my opinion. Heather acted as mother to both of us, while Krystal boozed her powers into oblivion.
Then, a few weeks after I turned six, my world crumbled. Fed up with her life, Krystal dragged me kicking and screaming down the front steps and away from everything I’d ever known. I spent the next twenty years on the road—eighteen of them with her. We moved from town to town, scamming, stealing, and doing whatever we needed to survive. Krystal sold herself into the booze and drugs so deep that, by the end, there was no reaching her. She drowned herself in a haze, to get away from the clamor of voices and visions in her head. Even at six years old, I realized that the only way we’d survive was if I took over, and so I bucked up, stepped in, and—with Ulean’s help—got us through.
Ulean warned me when the cops were on our tracks. She kept me from getting raped half a dozen times by telling me to get the fuck out of wherever I was. And she guarded me in the only ways she could.
Along the way, I also had help from the odd person here or there—they just seemed to fall into my life. The most important one was Uncle Brody, an old black yummanii man who, for the first few months when we were staying in Portland, Oregon, took me under his wing and taught me as many street smarts as he could. Maybe he could tell that Krystal was going batshit crazy. Maybe he just had a premonition that I needed his help. Whatever the case, he taught me the rules of the road. He also taught me to gamble so I could make money from penny-ante street games. And he taught me how to fight dirty.
“Cicely, girl, you have to learn how to hurt people,” he told me once, when I flinched at learning how to jab someone in the nuts. “Because there are plenty of people out there just waiting to hurt you. And trust me, if you give them an opening, they’ll take it. So don’t let them in.”
I paid attention; I learned to fight. And I used my wits and prescience to steer clear of potential situations.
And then, I’d also had my wolf…
When I was fourteen, Krystal met a man named Dane. I liked him and secretly hoped that he’d marry her and take us away from the streets. I think he would have, too, if my mother hadn’t been so skittish about committing herself to anyone or anything. But at any rate, he took care of us for a few months, until Krystal stormed out in a tantrum, and Dane got his brains blown out.
Dane was a tattooist and he inked all of my tattoos. First, came the faerie on my left breast, a little feral girl peeking out from a patch of belladonna. Second, the blackwork owls that encircled each of my upper arms. A pair on each side, over a moon with a dagger sticking through it. Matched sets, they heralded a part of my lineage I wouldn’t know about until I returned to New Forest. And third…third was my wolf.
My beloved wolf stared out from just above my navel, a vine of green leaves, silver roses, and purple skulls sprawling behind him, starting down on my left thigh, crossing my abdomen in a diagonal line, ending under my right ribs. From the beginning, I knew my wolf was a guardian. What I didn’t realize when I got the tattoo was that my wolf was a direct link to Grieve, who was a wolf shape-shifter.
The Cambyra Fae shift. All of us, half-breed or full-blood. Some of us shift into the form of an animal, but others—like Chatter—can turn into Elementals. Hence: the Shifting Fae. I’m part Uwilahsidhe, of the Owl Shifters.
My father, Wrath, is King of the Court of Rivers and Rushes—and I’ve known about him only for the past couple weeks. I’m the daughter of a king.
Wrath is Lainule’s husband, and we recently discovered that Lainule’s brother was Rhiannon’s father. It seems our very existence was planned out from the beginning. Rhiannon and I were born for this moment, born to be Queens, born to fulfill a destiny that wasn’t even clear at the time of our conception.
Add to that a past-life connection with Myst and with Grieve, and I feel pulled in so many directions sometimes it feels like I am coming apart at the seams. Myst is a monster, and I hate the fact that I was her daughter so many thousands of years ago. But she nurtures a grudge against me that was born back in the distant past and is determined to make me pay. She wants revenge for what I did to her then, and what I’m doing to her now.
Caught between worlds, caught between powers, I’m transforming so fast that sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t even recognize myself. Oh, yes, I’m still five four, 140 pounds of muscle, and I still have long, straight, shiny black hair and emerald eyes…but on the inside, I’m changing. And I’m not sure what I’m becoming.
