Skye
Fallon closes her bedroom door with a soft click and glides across the room to shut the curtains. She moves with the practiced grace of the princess she is–Maeve’s heir who will one day be Queen of Eastonia–and she looks like it, walks, and talks like it as well.
But I know Fallon better than most. She’s an enigma–soft and stoic on the outside, but on the inside?
She’s the most animated, opinionated woman I’ve ever known.
“You cannot tell that bitch Naomi I’m telling you this.”
“Your sister Naomi?” I arch a brow, chuckling, and she rolls her eyes to the gilded ceiling.
“We’ve been on the outs recently.”
“Over what?” I sink onto the edge of her rather regal bed. I’ve always liked Fallon. She’s six years younger than me but an old soul at heart, and for a while, it was just the three of us–her, Kieran, and me. We also grew up in Moonrise together, and that gave us a rather close bond. She was incredibly angry when I announced I’d be staying in Lunaria for the foreseeable future.
“You’ve missed so much, Skye.” She pinches the bridge of her nose and faces me, her lavender gown fluttering around her ankles. She’s like something out of a children's book. Beautiful, with thick, golden brown hair and delicate features against a backdrop of almost golden skin. She looks rather like the fae that occasionally visit Moonrise–striking and ethereal–and Naomi is the same, but darker, with dark brown hair and porcelain skin inherited from Maeve and Ella.
Fallon looks like her father, Soren.
“She keeps taking my things without asking.” Fallon rests on her vanity stool, her posture still impeccable. “And… she’s taking Mom and Dad’s side.”
“On this asinine proposal? I have to agree, Fallon. Just because you’re a princess, it doesn’t mean you still have to play the marriage game. You’re a Firestone, too, for Goddess’ sake. You’ll rule Eastonia one day, and whoever you marry won’t even hold a title.”
“This is the first time in over two decades that an emissary from KiloKilo has reached out to anyone in the Allied Kingdoms.”
I shift my weight, crossing my legs. “Essentially demanding you marry one of their princes, or else they wage war? That is insanity!”
“They won’t.” She rises again, pacing, tapping her freshly manicured nails on her arm. It’s a warm, early winter day. Sunlight bakes the room, casting her in a halo of golden light. “They would be the insane ones. Your grandfather’s army in Crescent Falls is already enough to cover that threat, let alone my mother’s forces in Eastonia. The Alpha Kings of Celestoria and Lunaria would involve themselves like they always do. Hell, I’m sure Pantharas would heed a call to aid if asked nicely.”
I’m speechless. “What exactly has happened since this summer?” It is always like this when I return to Moonrise, to my family and the drama that constantly seems to ensnare us. It’s quiet in Lunaria. My whole life there is just my research. Ice. Textbooks. Alex.
I take a breath, reining myself back in after his memory attempts to sear me from the inside out. Fallon, however, notices my slight cringe and glides closer. “What exactly have you been up to in Lunaria? I’ve heard rumors.”
“Oh? Of what?” Surely she can’t know about Alex. I haven’t told a soul.
“Well, Aunt Misty said she caught a male scent on your clothes the day Maddy and Isaac died.”
I lick my lips, narrowing my eyes at my cousin–several times removed, I believe, but still. “That was her concern?”
She flashes a very rehearsed princess smile. “Well, it definitely took the pressure off my shoulders when it came to my engagement for a moment, and may have hidden the fact that you gave Isaac what he asked for in the end when no one else would.”
The temperature in the room drops by thirty degrees at least. I don’t ask how she knows. I don’t have to. Fallon has always had an uncanny ability to manipulate answers out of everyone. It’s not a magic trick or a stretch of her highly trained powers, either. It’s her. Fallon has been, and will always be, able to get away with anything.
And right now, she’s doing her best to back me into a corner so I’ll tell her the truth before she starts picking apart my facial expressions and body language.
The good thing about Fallon, however, is that she can actually keep a secret.
“Do you want the truth, or will that ruin the game you’re playing with the family right now?”
“I’m not playing games. The decision of whether or not I accept a proposal from KiloKilo’s royal family is my choice and mine alone. No one in our family or any royal administration has set foot in that kingdom since my aunt Brie washed up there decades ago. We don’t know if they’re a real threat or not, but if they are, we’re going in blind, and I don’t like that.” She crosses her arms under her chest and lifts a brow in challenge.
I have nothing to argue against there. “They’re wizards.”
“I’m aware.”
“They may be looking at this… union… for their own gain when it comes to you marrying and producing heirs for their bloodlines.”
“Obviously.”
“And you’re all right with it?”
“Of course not, but look at me.” She shrugs, tapping her fingers on her forearms. Little sparks of crimson and amber light snake around her pointed fingernails. “It’s a smart move on their part. I also find it highly advantageous. Naomi and I are powerful in our own rights, of course, but then you have Sterling… who can’t do shit other than shift. Imagine a child of both a Firestone and a wizard, whatever they officially call themselves bloodlines.”
“Are you on the outs with all of your siblings?” There are only three of them, despite Maeve’s efforts to have as many daughters as possible toward the Firestone repopulation effort. I have vivid memories of my cousin Sterling’s birth, however. He’s only sixteen now, the youngest of the trio, but when Mom took me to visit Maeve and the new baby, Maeve told her that her Firestone ancestors made it clear to her that she only needed two girls and that Sterling was a gift–something both she and Soren wanted desperately.
I, of course, spent several years poring over the idea that external forces other than our Goddess were at play but found no concrete evidence either way, which was infuriating and frustrating, but I digress.
“Sterling is my favorite as it stands,” she concludes, picking an invisible thread from her dress before crossing her arms tight again. “But whatever. I find this entire proposal-nonsense anything but. Look at the political climate as it stands. Your great-grandparents were the last true tie to Maatua’s royal family, and the relationship with them has shifted greatly over the years. The generational gap is widening between the current players in power and the group that started all of this.”
“Isla and Maddox?”
“Yes,” she says, sniffing indignantly. “Maatua knows KiloKilo is a threat but uses Maddox’s seemingly close relationship with their Grand Wizard at the time as a safety net that’s no longer there, but they can’t see that. I can. Plainly. KiloKilo’s territory is massive, and Maatua is right there next to it, locked out by that pesky veil. And, what’s just past Maatua?”
“Crescent Falls and Veiled Valley, I know.”
She shakes her head, growing more frustrated by the moment. “I have an opportunity to see inside and get a feel for whether or not these people can be trusted and whether we should flex our powers as a family again and deal with it, once and for all.”
“By marrying a stranger?”
“Is that so bad?” She’s dead serious right now. I want to scoff, to tell her she’s being insane, but I think I might have fallen in love with someone recently, and ever since then, everything I thought I knew about the world makes less sense. “Anyway. Enough about me. What exactly are you up to in Lunaria?”
“You know what I do for a living.”
“I do. Seeing as your research into our solar system and beyond has greatly benefited our church and the mystics who think you’re the second coming of the Goddess, I guess I don’t need a run-down. But you’re seeing someone?”
Here we go. “I am.”
“Is he as brilliant and boring as you?”
I frown at her, but she’s beaming, mischief shining behind those incredible sea-glass eyes. “He is as boring as he is brilliant, yes.”
“I thought so. Oh, the aunts had a field day over the prospect of you finally finding someone.” She crosses the room to toy with the bottles of perfumes and tonics on her vanity. “But he’s not a shifter, is he?”
My heart falls into my stomach as intensely as a car wreck. “How–”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Skye. I’m not going to tell anyone. I will enjoy, however, being the one who knows this juicy secret while everyone else spends the next twenty years guessing.” Another radiant smile. She’s so good at this. Goddess, she will be the queen everyone either loves or fears one day. As it stands, Maeve is more feared by other kings than anything–and otherwise worshipped by her people. But she’s a young queen, and the first full-blooded Firestone to hold the title in over three-thousand years. It’s all still new, which means Fallon has an unbearable amount of pressure on her shoulders already, and that has given her an unnatural ability to get her way.
“I don’t think I have twenty years with him,” I reply, curling my knees against my chest, sunlight playing over my toes. The castle all around us buzzes with energy while the royal family, and mine, prepares to travel to Crescent Falls by train. Some royal promenade in honor of Maddy and Isaac.
“Oh, so it’s just casual? That’s disappointing.” Fallon runs a comb through her already perfect curls but catches my gaze in the vanity mirror’s reflection and slowly turns to face me. “Or is it something else?”
“Do you remember Misty talking about the war and how she went through that portal?”
“Of course. That’s a famous family story. What about it?”
“Well, the description of the people she saw–the women?”
“A shifter and what our beloved ancient Arthur believes is a mythical beast called a… vampire?” She arches her brows.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah… what?”
“They’re not so mythical.”
Her spine straightens vertebra by vertebra. “Tell me more.”
“You cannot say a word to anyone.”
“Who would I tell?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s for his safety.”
“Interesting,” she muses, tilting her head as she inspects my expression from across the room. “You actually like this man, don’t you?”
“I do, but it’s complicated. We haven’t had a lot of time to discuss things between us, but it’s clear we have feelings for each other, and biology may get in the way.” I take the deepest breath and spill my entire heart to the only person in the Allied Kingdoms who knows how to keep her lips sealed.
Fallon’s expression holds nothing back. Shock, confusion, suspicion, and awe. Those emotions tangle over her features until she’s bent at the waist with her chin resting on her fist and hasn’t blinked in over a minute.
“Has he told you why he had to leave his kingdom?”
“Kind of? I guess…. He killed someone important–a queen, I believe? He told me in such a rush.”
“And you haven’t just looked into his head yet?”
“No–I can’t. It’s not like looking into a witch's or shifter's head. It’s totally different.”
“Do you think he’s somehow responsible for the murders in Aurorium? Skye, if he is–”
“He’s not.”
“But you said he killed someone important. That there was some kind of war going on where he’s from. Is he being hunted?”
The idea of that spirals through me, slicing me open. “He’s been in Lunaria for a decade. It seems improbable.”
“Yet, he’s so sure his kind has no idea our allied kingdoms exist?”
I nod, but Fallon leans back, and she does not look convinced.
“You can’t say anything.”
“I won’t, but I want something in return.”
“What? Anything.”
“You won’t help prevent me from going to KiloKilo when it’s time.”