Wandering Queen (Lost Fae Book 1) Page 5

  I had an unusual knack with animals, so despite my lack of any education—or a birth certificate, for that matter—Elly had pulled some strings and found me under-the-table work as a vet tech.

  When I saw her tonight anyway, I’d ask her about the Fae. At least I had something to research now. Then I’d figure out what to do with these mysterious strangers.

  I grabbed my oversized leather purse, checking to make sure I had my phone, wallet and then, most importantly of all, my knives. I sighed. What I didn’t have was breakfast or time to make it. Whatever. I could run by the coffee shop. I almost smiled to myself at the thought that no one could yell at me at work today, right? Because I was a princess.

  I rushed out into the hallway, locking my door behind me.

  The hall was empty. Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Gorgeous-Two was gone. I felt disappointed instead of relieved, as I should have.

  “No common sense,” I muttered, taking the stairs in a hurry. I preferred an interesting life over an easy one, and I had the scars and bruises to prove it. My curiosity about those two handsome assholes was proof too.

  I ran to the metro stop, caught the metro, and made it to my destination with minutes to spare. Coffee time.

  I was waiting in the line when I became keenly aware of a big body behind me. I caught the faint scent of some pleasant aftershave or cologne, something clean and bright that reminded me of pine and crisp snow on an icy winter day.

  I whirled, expecting I’d been found once again by the damned ‘Fae’.

  But the man behind me was unfamiliar. He looked younger, his blond hair ruffled. He was built too, though, all lean, chiseled muscle.

  When I made eye contact with him, his green eyes widened, as if he hadn’t expected the stranger at the coffee shop to eyeball him. Human then. I twisted back around, my damp hair swishing across my shoulders.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing I believed in a god to pray to for patience.

  Well, too bad. I’d just have to make do without any, and the rest of the world would have to make do with me.

  “Are you talking to me?” I asked in a voice that suggested that was a mistake.

  “Yes,” he said. “But I’d like a bit of privacy for what I have to say next.”

  I almost laughed, raking my fingers through my hair to push it back from my face. “How many more of you are there?”

  I wasn’t sure I could make it through any more.

  “Just the three of us,” he said, then pressed his palm to his chest, bowing forward slightly. “My name is Tiron.”

  “Your friend didn’t manage to introduce himself this morning.”

  “My friends are idiots.” His green eyes sparkled with mischief.

  I studied him for a second. “I like you a little bit better, but I’m still not going with you to some second location for privacy. Sorry.”

  “Oh, I don’t need you to do that.” His lips parted in an easy smile. “I’ll give us privacy right here.”

  I arched an eyebrow at him as some wayward combination of concern, curiosity and excitement rushed through my blood. Death wish. Maybe the asshole in the alley hadn’t been wrong about that.

  “Leave, please,” he said, glancing around the room at the people who filled it. His voice was warm, soothing. There was something magnetic about it. But just because he sounded nice didn’t mean—

  People pushed back their chairs, scraping the legs across the linoleum. The people ahead of me abruptly turned and ambled out of line, heading out the door. One of the baristas pulled her apron over her head and dropped it on a table next to someone’s steaming, abandoned coffee.

  For a second, horror washed over me. He’d spoken. They’d obeyed. The implications of that, of how humans could be abused and forced, rolled over me and left me sick, but I swallowed the surge of fear.

  “Oh come on!” I turned to face him, popping my hands onto my hips. “I needed them to get my coffee!”

  “Do you?” he asked. He headed behind the counter, turned to face me. “What does Your Majesty desire?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’ll get it myself.”

  “Not used to being served anymore, Majesty?”

  “You didn’t wash your hands,” I shot back. I served myself a scone and poured myself a cup of coffee. I’d leave the money behind to pay for both. “So could I do that too? What was that?”

  “A glamour. And yes, you can make humans do almost anything.”

  “That seems deeply immoral,” I pointed out. Then admitted, “Also useful. Does it work on vamps and shifters and whatnot?”

  “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 t
o 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.

  Azrael pushed him against the brick wall in a sudden flurry of motion. “Shut up.”

  Duncan’s lips quirked at the corners. Normally he’d have come off the wall swinging, but right now, he seemed pleased to have made Azrael lose some of his cool, proving his point. “How has it been, seeing her again? Are you still just as ready to drag her to kneel at Faer’s feet?”

  “Of course.” Azrael patted his brother’s shoulder before he stepped back, as if he were dusting him off. “What matters is restoring the autumn court. Protecting the Fae world. Let her face her sins…or at least, some of them.”

  “The sins she doesn’t remember?” I asked, my voice barbed.

  I had my own plans for the queen, but I had to admit, her punishment hardly seemed fair.

  “She still committed them,” Azrael said, his voice as relaxed as ever. “Let’s go bring our wayward royal home.”

  He broke off as Alisa stepped out of the clinic. Her hair was pulled up into a messy bun on top of her head, revealing the long line of her neck. She still wore scrub pants, but her long-sleeved t-shirt cuffs had been pushed halfway up her slender forearms.

  A truck turned the corner, moving slowly. As it came close to Alisa, something rang a subconscious alarm bell for me, and I started forward.

  The truck slowed. Alisa started down the sidewalk, heading for the metro stop. She turned suddenly, as if she felt the threat coming.

  One of the men leaned down and snatched her, picking her up with ease that no human should have.

  I broke into a run, chasing the truck. It picked up speed as soon as her feet had left the pavement, even though they were still wrestling with her. She kicked one man in the face, and he almost dropped her back over the side.

  Her purse fell on the pavement and exploded open, scattering makeup and a paperback and knives across the ground, and I jumped over the debris.

  One of the guys hit her across the head, and she fell to her knees in the back of the truck. Her wide eyes met mine, just for a second, full of fear.

  Then she fell forward, into the bed of the pickup.

  I launched myself into the air to catch the back of the truck, knowing it was an almost impossible feat.

  I almost made it. Landed hard on the pavement. Stumbled, caught myself, kept running, despite the sudden ache in my ankle.

  Then another car slammed its brakes to a stop just ahead me. Duncan glowered at me from the driver’s side. “You could be smarter.”

  “I could,” I admitted. I threw open the back door and jumped in, and Duncan sped off before I even managed to get the door shut.

  But he kept a distance from the truck, staying back so they wouldn’t realize we were following them. Azrael rubbed the back of his neck absently, and Duncan glanced over at him, one eyebrow cocked, as if he knew that Azrael was worried about her.

  “Faer doesn’t care if we bring her back in pieces,” Duncan said.

  “Would you shut up?” Azrael said. “I know you want to pretend you never loved her either, but your attempt at keeping your distance is exasperating. And it doesn’t actually fool anyone.”

  Duncan’s eyes narrowed, his hands tightening on the steering wheel, but he didn’t answer.

  I desperately wanted to know more about that, but from the way Duncan reacted, now wasn’t the time to press.

  “Let’s go rescue a princess.” Azrael’s tone brightened. “She’ll be thrilled to see us again. This couldn’t be more perfect. She should be much more compliant when she realizes how much she needs us.”

  I’d say they were probably both psychopaths, but well, they were Fae and they were royalty. That made them both psychopaths twice over.

  Chapter Eight

  Alisa

  I woke up slowly. My head ached, and so did my neck. When I shifted, trying to get comfortable, I couldn’t move far. My arms were behind me, my shoulders tense, and I couldn’t change position.

  Fuck.

  My head jerked up as I realized I was tied to a chair. My vision was blurry at first as I looked around. There were two men standing in the room with me, both with big shit-eating, evil grins. I was in what looked like a haunted house.

  Or what might soon become a haunted house.

  “Oh, there she i
s!” The man in front of me clapped his hands together in an expression of sociopathic joy.

  My neck still ached, and I moved my head back and forth, trying to work out the kinks enough to raise my eyes to his face. Right now I was stuck looking at the paunch that strained over the waistband of his jeans.

  I blinked at him. “Your ugly face is oddly familiar.”

  “You’re going to have an ugly face by the time we’re done with you,” he promised.

  “Where do I know you from?” It was so hard to remember who I’d pissed off most recently.

  “This might refresh your memory.” His friend said as he stepped too close to me, then pulled up his shirt to reveal a jagged scar across his blindingly white skin.

  I winced. “No, it really doesn’t.”

  I rarely left a bad guy alive behind me, and this was why. If you were going to fight, better finish it.

  The first guy stepped close to me, grabbing the back of my chair in one hand as he leaned down. His other hand landed on my thigh, and I gritted my teeth against the burning sensation of an unwanted touch.

  I didn’t remember anything from my life before, but I hated being crowded at the best of times. I always wondered if something had happened that made me that way.

  “A year ago, we were looking for breeders,” he said, his voice intimately close to my ear, and I would’ve leaned away if he wouldn’t have interpreted the movement as fear. “You interfered.”

  “You’re shifters,” I said. Not all shifters were bad—I’d worked with some before—but there were pockets of evil. Just like humans, only these assholes were furrier. Then understanding dawned. “Oh! You’re the pack that was stealing girls off the street and turning them against their will. The assholes with the roofies!”

  Yeah, I’d ruined their fun. I’d gone into the bar where they hunted, looking cute and harmless. They’d tried to roofie me, and I’d played their game. Until they got me out into the alleyway, where they discovered I was actually very, very awake.