Fated Crown by Eva Chase
Chapter One
Talia
Istop at the edge of the park in the shade of an oak, several feet from the busy city street. The sight of the cars whizzing by and the roar of their engines sets my nerves jangling. My chest tightens up, only loosening as I take a few slow, deep breaths.
This place is technically my real home. I was born into it and lived in it for the first twelve years of my life. But it’s been nearly a decade since I last set foot in the human world. My memories and Sylas’s collection of Hollywood comedies haven’t prepared me for the vivid reality of returning.
Does every part of the human world smell this bad? I’ve gotten used to the ever-fresh air of the fae world, warm and sweetly floral on the summer side and crisply cool on the winter side. Here, each breath brings a tang of burned gasoline and other chemical scents I can’t identify prickling into my lungs.
Beside me, Corwin rests his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He can read my uneasiness through our soul-twined bond—and I can pick up on his own distaste for certain elements of our current surroundings. His nose wrinkles as he inhales the same odors, and the rush of traffic makes his eyes skitter trying to follow it.
“There are other parts of your world that are much more pleasant than this,” he says. “Humans have left some wilderness relatively untouched, and even the smaller villages can be reasonably peaceful.”
The other member of our party, a broad-shouldered woman from Arch-Lord Uzziah’s coterie, snorts and raises her pointed chin toward the road. “You couldn’t give me enough treasure to convince me to live this far from the Heart and among these creatures, that’s for sure.”
Her gaze flicks to me, but she shows no obvious concern about the insulting way she just referred to people like me. She motions for us to follow her. “From my observations, he should be in that building across the way. Around this time we may catch them rambling around in the courtyard.”
“Okay.” I rub my arms, catching a tingle of the magic that’s wrapped around us. Before we emerged from the Mists into the human world, Corwin cast a spell around us to make us invisible to human eyes. A Golden Retriever we passed in the park sniffed in our direction and offered a few brisk barks, but the man holding his leash looked straight through us, so the illusion appears to be working on its intended targets.
Of course, I’m pretty sure one of those cars could still splatter me all over the road, invisible or not.
We walk to the nearest corner, where the streetlights gleam red and then green. The act of crossing on the walk signal feels so mundane and yet so foreign at the same time that my chest starts to clench up all over again. When one of the cars honks at the vehicle in front of it, I jump half a foot in the air and wobble on my warped foot.
Corwin grasps my elbow to steady me. He keeps his fingers curled loosely around my arm the rest of the way across. Apprehension is coiled in his stomach, much like the tension wound through me beneath my more visible jitters.
We haven’t even gotten to the reason for our visit yet. I’m not sure what I want to happen, only that no matter what does, it’s going to be hard.
Uzziah’s woman leads us across a grassy field lined with some kind of sports markings toward a two-story brick building that stretches the length of the block. Teenagers lounge on the front steps outside the double doors of the main entrance. We slip past them unseen and around to the other side of the building, where two wings jut out around a large cobblestone courtyard that holds several metal picnic-style tables. More teens are sitting around the tables or in clusters on the cobblestones, eating their lunches and chattering with each other.
“There he is,” Uzziah’s coterie woman says, pointing to the edge of the courtyard by the end of the wing opposite us. My stance tensing, I follow her gesture with my gaze.
The boy she pointed out is sitting at a table with his back to us, nothing showing but burnished brown hair that curls around his ears and a lean frame in a black long-sleeved tee and baggy jeans. I can’t tell anything for sure from that. My heart thumps harder as we circle the courtyard to consider him from a better angle.
With each detail of his face that comes into view—the angle of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the glint in his wide-set eyes—an ache swells around my heart. It is him, isn’t it? My little brother, Jamie, who’ll be seventeen now if he survived the attack by the monstrous wolf-shifting fae who attacked my family, which I’ve always believed he didn’t.
Then he turns his head, revealing the other side of his face, and my heart just about stops. Any remaining doubts flee.
He must have had reconstructive surgery to deal with the worst of the scarring, but it didn’t remove the effects of the attack completely. Pale pink marks across his left cheek and jaw, running down to his neck and probably across his chest as well, show where the wolf’s vicious fangs carved open his skin.
Oh, Jamie. My pulse lurches, propelling me toward him, but my legs lock at the same time.
He has no idea I’m alive. He definitely can’t have imagined I’ve spent the better part of the last decade among faerie beings he’d never have believed existed. I can’t just march up to him and launch a sudden family reunion. Even if a pang is ringing through me to wrap my arms around him, to tell him how sorry I am for… for everything.
For teasing him into chasing me into the woods so long ago. For not knowing he’d survived until just now. For leaving him alone all this time.
A burn of tears forms in my eyes. I blink hard, grasping for Corwin’s hand.
It wasn’t your fault, he says gently through our bond. You couldn’t have known what you were leading him toward, and you had no opportunity to find out what had become of him while you were caged all those years.
I know,I reply. But even after I got out, it never occurred to me to confirm what happened to him and my parents. I just assumed that I’d seen right, even though it was dark and I was terrified.
I rub my face, the ache inside me expanding even farther. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mom and Dad had survived too, if they’d had each other to get through the trauma and my disappearance? But this is the only direct blood relative the winter fae turned up with their extensive search, at least among those that interest them.
The fae sage indicated that my connection to their kind came from my mother. It seems my maternal grandparents passed on in the last nine years—losing their only child in such a horrible way can’t have helped. Jamie has been living with my aunt and uncle on my father’s side and our two young cousins here in this city, a few hundred miles distant from the town where we lived before.
It was far enough distant that we didn’t see them very often back then. At eight years old, recovering from a savage mauling, my brother had to move in with people who were only one step above strangers, even if they were family on paper. I don’t wish the fae that stole me away had taken him too, because what I went through was more than I’d wish on anyone, but he hasn’t had it easy by any means.
As if to illustrate that thought, a trio of guys saunters by the table where Jamie is eating alone. One of them does an exaggerated double-take at Jamie’s face and clutches at his chest in mock-horror. “Oh my God! It’s the creature from the Black Lagoon.”
The other two guys burst into laughter. Jamie’s shoulders tense, but he keeps his gaze fixed on his sandwich. My hands ball into fists at my sides.
The bullies aren’t done yet. The guy who made the first remark sits down on the table next to Jamie’s tray and swats at his container of fries, sending half of them skittering onto the cobblestones. “I don’t think the Swamp Thing should be getting food from our cafeteria. This isn’t a school for monsters.”
At the sneer in his voice and his cruel smile, I can’t hold myself back. I march over, fury flaring up through my throat onto my tongue. “The only monsters are the ones who did that to him—and you, as far as I can tell.”
But none of them react, because of course they can’t see or hear me.
Talia, Corwin says softly, coming up beside me. I turn to him, debating asking him to take the magic off me right now so I can give these jerks a piece of my mind for real, but Jamie is getting up.
He gives the guys a bored look, picking up the rest of his fries so they’re out of reach. “If they serve you, I guess anything goes.”
The first guy’s expression goes from amused to pissed off in an instant. He springs off the table. “What the hell did you say, McCarty?”
He steps forward as if to grab my brother, but just then a teacher ambles by. She gives the guys a questioning look. “Is everything all right here, boys?”
The main guy puts on an ingratiating smile. “Completely fine, Mrs. Green. Right, Jamie?”
Jamie shrugs and walks off before the teacher leaves.
With a heavy heart, I watch him head into the school. He not only got torn from our family and horribly wounded, but the scars the fae left on him are making him a target for the villains of the human world.
If he could know he’s not really alone—if he could have me to turn to again…
Corwin’s arms come around me in a careful embrace. A hint of discomfort travels into me—he isn’t totally at ease showing even this much affection in front of our unfriendly spectator from Uzziah’s flock—but he offers that affection all the same, because it matters more to him how I feel. I rest my arms over his and hug them to me, abruptly aware of the deeper inner turmoil he’s trying to suppress.
If I returned to the human world on even a semi-permanent basis, it’d mean leaving my soul-twined mate behind—and my other lovers too. Corwin doesn’t want to interfere with my decision, but the thought of having me so far away for any length of time wrenches at him.
I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know what I want to do. I owe so much to so many people… But how can I abandon my brother all over again when he’s been on his own for so many years already?
I managed to find a balance between my loyalties to the summer and winter fae. Is there some way I can bridge this gap as well, even though it’s so much wider?
Uzziah’s coterie woman must be thinking along similar lines, although with very different motivations. She clears her throat and turns away from the courtyard to face me. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” The magic they used to trace my genetic line will have already confirmed it, but I guess she wanted to hear it from my own mouth too.
“Excellent.” She rolls back her shoulders. “If he’s as useful as you are, this will solve all our problems and simplify the cure completely.”
I blink at her, dread trickling through my stomach. Corwin’s body tenses against me at the same time. The other winter arch-lords didn’t say anything about Jamie “solving problems” before we set off on our journey here. It was supposed to be just a chance for me to check that their story was true and see how Jamie is doing now. But I’m familiar enough with the fae way of thinking to guess what she’s getting at.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
A satisfied smile curves the woman’s lips. “Two cures for two realms. You can stick with the winter realm alongside your mate, and the Seelie can make use of your brother. We couldn’t have asked for an easier solution.”
