Princess of Shadows: A Dark Fae Fantasy Romance Read online

  “No. You just got done telling me that you didn’t trust anyone. Why would I surround myself with people I can’t trust? I may never be as strong as you, but I’m tired of being treated like a princess. If you won’t teach me, then I’ll find someone else. I doubt that they’ll be as good as you, but at least it will be something.”

  I snarled, showing her my teeth. “You will not find someone else to train you to fight. They’ll only give you bad habits. If you’re bound and determined to learn to fight, then I’ll train you. I have to warn you that it will involve me hitting you repeatedly. There’s no way around that.”

  “I’m a fairy. I can heal. I already know that’s possible.”

  I gave her a half-smile and reached out a hand as a dagger materialized from mist. “Not from this, and not from anyone else who is used to fighting fairies. They’ll coat their blades in iron shavings just as I do. You won’t be able to heal from a cut filled with iron.”

  “I’d hope you wouldn’t be training me with those,” she said as she eyed the obsidian blade.

  “Eventually I will. If you’re going to learn to fight, you’ll learn to fight like me, and that will require you to wield an obsidian blade.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine. Then let’s get dressed and I can start training. God only knows when something will force me to race off and stop learning.”

  I nodded, but before I got up, I kissed her. A simple kiss on the lips to remind her that this was not the last time I was going to wake up with her. She blushed again as my hand ran over her breast. “Yes, let’s get dressed, but when you’re done being a good little fairy, I’m going to show you how to be a bad one.”

  Chapter 26

  Rose

  Cara stood next to me in her silk robe. Her eyes were a milky white as she stared into mine. Unnerving, I let her explore my soul with her powers. As I stared into her eyes, I felt a pull not unlike the mirror or the portal.

  The forest surrounding us faded and I was standing on a lakeshore staring at a different forest. One that was on fire. Bodies littered the shore of the lake. Some in armor, most in simple leather clothing.

  Blood ran into the lake, turning it a dark pink. The air was filled with smoke as shouts and screams came from the forest. A woman holding a baby in each arm ran towards me.

  “Help me Cara!” the woman screamed. My body moved on its own, and I began to run into the water, trying to cross the narrow bit of lake. Then an arrow came from the forest and struck the woman in the chest. She didn’t survive even long enough to scream in pain. Her eyes stared at me, dead already as she fell to the sand, her babies hitting the ground hard.

  They screamed in fear and pain, and I began to swim, my robes heavy around me as they soaked up the lake water and pulled me downward. I continued to swim, desperate to get to the infants.

  A man in gleaming golden plate stepped out from behind a tree, shouldering the bow. He walked towards the dead woman lying face down on the sand, unworried about me.

  I would never get to the babies in time to save them from him. Never. I couldn’t stop swimming though. I couldn’t just give up on them. Something inside me knew that this one man was no match for me.

  A shadow seemed to grow from the ground around the woman’s body, and a man in an assassin’s cloak stepped out of it. I kept swimming, my hope renewed that I would get to the babies in time now that the man in plate had a distraction.

  As I got to the shore, the assassin flicked his hand outward towards the man in plate, and an obsidian dagger appeared from mist right before it left his hand. The man in plate raised his arm to block the throw, but the assassin was already rushing him.

  The dagger hit the man’s armored forearm, but when he moved his hand away from his face, the assassin was already too close, and his other dagger hit him right between the eyes, piercing flesh and bone.

  He pulled it out immediately, and brandishing both daggers now, he approached me. I stared at him and saw the darkness inside him. A darkness that I knew.

  Sebastian, the Prince of the Dark Court.

  “Prince, please do not hurt the children. Let me take them far from here.” My voice sounded differently. More flowing. More lyrical. And stronger.

  “There’s nothing we can do for the rest of them,” he said, pulling back his hood and letting me see his face. He looked different as well. Younger. Leaner. Less burdened.

  I tried to run to him, but I couldn’t. Instead, my body went to the children and picked them up, tearing them from their mother’s arms.

  “Take my arm, and I’ll get you to a place that is safe.”

  I looked into his eyes and knew that he was telling the truth. No lies. No falsities. No fairy truths.

  I took his hand, and he reached down, touching the shadow of the dead woman.

  And then the forest returned. Cara stood in front of me, and Sebastian was further away, sitting on a tree stump covered in his assassin’s cloak.

  “Interesting,” she said, her eyes becoming green again. “You have a remarkable gift, Rose. A gift not heard of in a very long time. It was once called the Gift of Sacrifice.”

  “In times long past, dragons ruled the Fae Courts. A different dragon each millennium. They called it their sacrifice because they were never allowed to slumber as dragons tend to do. For a thousand years at a time, they were required to interact with the Courts as all rulers must.”

  “Dragons had many gifts just as fairies and all of the other Fae do, but a singular one was reserved for those who held the High Seats. It was their belief that to understand a person you ruled, it was necessary to understand their gifts and the curses that went along with them. In order to do this, these ruling dragons were given the power to hold the same powers as those around them.”

  “What you just experienced was the gift of a seer. You saw into my past, a scene that always plays through my mind when Sebastian is around. I am sure you understand why now.”

  “That is my gift. You do not understand your own gift enough to understand my curse.” She glanced at Sebastian and smiled. “But you may understand Sebastian’s. Have you felt his hunger? A hunger for a person that does not begin in the loins?”

  I thought back to last night. It was all such a blur. “Maybe?”

  “Maybe it’s too early for you to have felt the curses. It will come though. Be prepared. When you forge a connection to someone, an action that we’ll practice, you’ll get both sides, the gift and the curse.”

  “Regardless, that is something that we’ll work on later. First, you need to learn to use magic at its most basic level. It’s an instinctual action that you need to understand so that you can use your power on demand.”

  She said, “Your primary magic stems from light. As Sebastian weaves mists, you’ll weave light and its opposite, darkness. Luckily, I have a similar affinity.”

  She smiled as she raised her hand and a light so bright that it seemed to burn shown from it. Directly at my face.

  I put my hands up to stop it, but the light seemed to wrap around my hands. I tried to close my eyes, but it was so bright that it hurt even with my eyes closed.

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  “Stop the light,” she commanded, but I didn’t know how. It continued to burn me, growing in intensity until it all seemed to go dark. I opened my eyes, and everything was blurry. Pain was everything, like someone had stabbed my eyes with a hot poker. It felt like I’d never get over the pain, but seconds later it was gone completely.

  “Can you see?” she asked as her form became clearer.

  I nodded. “Excellent. At least your healing powers are in full effect. You would have been blind if they weren’t.”

  “You blinded me?” I asked incredulously.

  She nodded. “You didn’t think this process was painless, did you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I thought that learning magic would be like learning anything else. Namely, that it wouldn’t require you to burn my eyes away.”

&
nbsp; “Those are mortal thoughts. Everything in the Immortal Realm requires sacrifice. Pain is an insignificant one. Ask Sebastian how much pain matters to him.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out at Cara. A darkness seemed to flow through me.

  “Sebastian, come here. She seemed to value connections and there is a very strong one between the two of you. Maybe she’ll act out of instinct when you’re in pain.”

  He didn’t hesitate as he hopped off the stump and made his way over to Cara. He removed his hood and put his hands behind his back, ready for her to repeat her actions on him instead of me.

  His eyes open wide, he glanced at me. “No. This is ridiculous, Cara. There has to be an easier, less painful way to teach me magic.”

  “There is, but it takes time. That’s a luxury you don’t have, and you know it. We will gain time with the sacrifice of pain. Or, you could just move my light.”

  A grin crossed her lips as she raised her hand again. A beam of light so powerful that it seemed to burn the air flashed from her hand, and Sebastian began to scream.

  I moved instantly, putting myself between her and him. Pure shadow like that of my wings flowed around us, a barrier between the light and myself. I snarled at Cara, and a liquid blackness flowed from my hand towards her.

  I saw inside her, as she must have done to me. Seeing that twisting, seething seat of power, and I knew that she did not control the shadows. Only the light. The liquid blackness coming from my hand covered her face, blotting out all the light around her.

  She tried to penetrate it with her own control of light, to break the stream of blackness, but it was like a child trying to break down a door. I felt her throwing all of her magical force at it, but she could do nothing.

  “Stop,” Sebastian said softly from behind me, grabbing my shoulders. Suddenly, all that rage went away, and with it, the blackness evaporated.

  She fell to her knees gasping. “What did you do?” she whispered between gasps. “That is not light manipulation. That was something different.”

  “I wanted you to stop hurting him,” I said meekly. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded as she slowly caught her breath. When she finally stood up, she said, “Good. Let’s see if you can do it again.”

  I nodded solemnly, but a part of me became overwhelmed with excitement. I’d just done fucking magic. Not just a little thing. I’d just put a zillion year old elf on the ground with my magic. I was not going to be some fairy princess anymore.

  I took a deep breath and felt those forces inside me. Ones that had woken in that moment. I felt the shadow shield inside me, and I pushed it outward, surrounding Sebastian and myself in a ball of shadow. Sebastian put his hand to the semi-transparent wall and slid through it easily.

  Then he stepped out, and when he put his hand to it, there was a resistance. I could feel him pressing against it, but it took almost no strength to resist him. He pulled a dagger from his sheath and stabbed the shield.

  Pain shot through my stomach as I felt the power inside me seeming to flow out of me as though someone had poked a hole in the bucket holding my very essence. I screamed and fell to the ground trying to find the source of the pain. The shield disappeared immediately, and the shooting pain began to fade.

  “Guess it’s like most shields. Not useful at all against an assassin’s dagger.” Sebastian’s voice was almost unconcerned at the fact that I’d just fallen down in pain. I looked up at him as he slid the dagger back into its sheath. He’d known that was possible. More than possible. He’d known that it was likely.

  He stared down at me, and I realized that he was analyzing my emotions. I’d felt that power when we’d been intimate, that sense of knowing exactly what the other was feeling.

  “It’s necessary to know the limitations of your magic,” he said. “More than anything, you need to know if you have weaknesses. Assassins are a real possibility. Nyx was sent to kill you, and there may be others soon enough. You may be safe here, but eventually, Seraphina will find you. When that happens, if you throw up a shield, they’ll stab it just as I did, and then they’ll drain you completely. I had to know if yours was different.”

  I took a deep breath and pushed myself to my feet. It felt so callous. It was logical and important to know, but he’d hurt me, nonetheless. I glanced at Cara and saw her raised eyebrows. This was a test. A test to see if I could do what was needed. A test to see if I was strong enough.

  “Fine. Tell me what to do next.” Sebastian grinned.

  “Fight me. With your liquid shadows.”

  He raised his hand and mist streamed towards me, rippling and curling in upon itself as it seemed to grow outward. It hit me square in the chest and somehow seemed solid. I had to step backward to catch myself from the impact, and then it began to wrap around me, solidifying as it covered my body.

  I screamed as it began to tighten around my waist. I could feel it squeezing tighter and tighter, threatening to crack my ribs.

  “Use your power,” Cara said. “You have more power than anyone else. Don’t try to be smart. Just overpower them.”

  The pain raged through my entire torso, and I screamed again, but as I did, I let the dark power flow out of my skin once more, sliding underneath the mist. The pain immediately relaxed, and I could feel my body reknitting the bones that had begun to crack.

  With a loud exhale, I pushed the power outward until the mist began to snap and crumble as it broke away from the main line of mist coming from Sebastian’s hand.

  I smiled at him as I saw him straining to keep the mists together, and I reached my hand out just as I’d done before. Liquid smoke flowed through the air at Sebastian’s face. Unlike Cara, he dropped his hand and rolled out of the way, my stream of smoke missing him and continuing past where he’d been.

  Before he’d even finished his roll, he pressed his hands to the ground, and the world shook for a brief moment before I felt myself begin to fall as the very ground underneath me gave way.

  “Your wings!” Cara exclaimed.

  With nothing more than a thought, my wings came to life, moving faster than the eye could see behind me. I stopped falling and began to rise out of the hole in the ground.

  “Holy shit, I’m flying!” I screamed in excitement. I looked down as I slowly floated down to the ground and landed. I could fly! I mean, I wasn’t zooming through the clouds, but I was freaking flying. I’d get to zooming soon enough.

  I looked up at Sebastian and he was grinning like a kid with a new toy. “You’ll need to move a lot faster in an actual fight, but that was a lot better than I expected.” Now he wasn’t callous. He was a cat playing with a mouse, enjoying the game that he knew he’d win.

  Then, I glanced backward into the hole in the ground and reality hit me. It was ten feet deep at least. Enough to break someone’s bones. Sparring with Sebastian was not like sparring in some kind of gym here. He wasn’t afraid to hurt me because he knew that I would heal. That didn’t change how much pain I had to endure, though.

  “I would have broken my leg at the very least if I’d fallen,” I said as I steeled my jaw.

  “You’d have healed. You’ll never get out of a fight without being hurt. If you let the pain stop you, you’ll die. If you ignore the pain and keep fighting, there’s a chance you’ll survive.”

  I took a deep breath and decided to stop playing nice. I’d see what light could do. I raised my hand into the air, and instead of darkness, I let pure whiteness flow through my body.

  Sebastian pulled his hood down to cover his face as the first rays of light began to stream from my hand. He bent down and picked up a rock, casually as though we were just standing around talking. Without needing to see, he threw it at me.

  My body reacted without thinking, twisting to the side. The rock clipped my shoulder, but more than that, the light stopped streaming from my hands. As I turned back to the fight, Sebastian was standing directly in front of me, his dagger an inch away from my throat.


  “Never let anyone get close to you,” he said. “You may be the most powerful fairy in the Dark Court from a distance, but once I get this close, you’re just as dead as anyone else.”

  I swallowed hard as I felt a power radiating from the dagger. A power that terrified me. It pulled at me, seeking to draw my strength. Like the bridge, it called to me, begging me to touch it.

  I stepped backward and nodded to Sebastian. “How am I supposed to fight someone like you? I’m supposed to be some super powered fairy who should be able to crush you, but you know how to deal with everything I do.”

  “You learn new tricks. You get faster. You learn how to guess what I’m going to do. More than anything, you need to practice your powers and learn what you can do. Your base powers aren’t unusual. What you can do with them is going to be different, though.” He smiled. “Especially if you learn to combine them.”

  “What do you think, Cara? Could you imagine how strong she’d be if she learned to combine earth and light? Or seeing along with my empathic abilities?”

  “Unstoppable,” she murmured. “There’s nothing you couldn’t do. With the right people beside you, you’d be able to do anything.”

  Sebastian nodded with a grin. “But first, you need to figure out how to work with your own natural abilities. You’ll always have those regardless of who you’re near, so you need to be as good with those as possible. We’ll work on combining them with other people’s after that.”

  I nodded, feeling at least a little bit of hope that I could become strong enough to survive the Immortal Realm and everyone that was trying to kill me.

  Sebastian stepped back twenty feet, smiled, and pulled out his daggers. “Now, try to kill me.”

  Chapter 27

  Rose

  I wrapped one hand around Kasia’s waist as she galloped across a field as fast as she could. She wore thick leather armor and carried a spear and shield as she galloped. A group of three dummies stood at the end of the field, and I held the silver sword with one hand as I tightened my thighs around her, doing my best not to lose my seat.