Crown of Shadows (Court of Midnight and Deception Book 1) Read online

  “So much for becoming a Responsible Adult.” I grimaced as I peered down at my gunk-spattered slacks. “But I have another set of business casual clothes. I’ll shower to get the spider stink out of my hair, and then I’ll go drop off my resume. I will own this—my entire life’s goal!”

  I pumped my hand in the air, but neither Bagel nor the fae horse seemed particularly impressed. Didn’t matter—I was determined to live out my life in as human a way as possible.

  That might sound like a ridiculously small life goal, but as a half fae, it was beyond most people like me. Fae loved to play mind games and push Court politics. I wanted a peaceful, stress-free life, so my greatest hope was to live like a human, get a regular job with insurance, vacation time, and every other beautifully mundane benefit. Crushing fae spiders was the most excitement I ever wanted to face.

  I glanced at the fae horse, which was staying in step with me even though it was capable of zooming ahead. This time, when I placed my hand on its neck, the fae horse shivered, but it didn’t react.

  I pressed my lips together. “I don’t think owning a fae horse counts as a life of excitement,” I said. “Or really, we’re not going to let it count. I’m going to get some weight on you, and you can live out a peaceful human life here with me.”

  The horse made a noise in its throat that sounded weirdly like a chortle, but it didn’t even flick an ear when Bagel released his gusty, deafening hee-haw.

  As I patted the horse, it didn’t occur to me to be wary of it for any reason besides the possible physical threat it could have been.

  I’d never seen a horse like it before, and with good reason. Almost no one outside fae Courts had ever seen a night mare before, so I had no way of knowing that—for me—its presence was a harbinger of the worst kind.

  Chapter Two

  Rigel

  I used a fragile sheet of rice paper to clean my dagger, wiping it free of dust and excessive oil as I waited in the shadows for my target.

  A cat pounced on a mouse hiding in a fresh pile of wood shavings, one of the grooms picked up a leather saddle, which creaked as he carried it off, and the quiet tap of footsteps on stone announced two fae had arrived.

  I looked away from my blade long enough to peer through a crack in the hayloft I had chosen for my position.

  One of the new arrivals was one of the two stable managers. He whipped his baseball hat off and picked a leaf from his hair as he and his companion entered the shadow of the stables.

  “It’s as I’ve told you,” the stable manager said. “We set the night mares loose every night, just as we have for the past two months. About a week ago, one of them didn’t come back. Almost every morning since then, a new one has been missing.”

  His companion was a fae noble I vaguely recognized as a peon to the previous Night Court monarch, Queen Nyte. Or rather, he’d been her peon, before she’d lost all her sense and picked a fight with the most lethal vampire Family in the Midwest, who killed her for her numerous assassination attempts against their leader and his pet wizard.

  The noble tilted his chin back and looked imperiously down his nose at the stable manager. “I cannot believe you are so inept at your job that you do not know where the night mares have gone.”

  The stable manager was a dryad, but the green hue to his skin was a sickly yellow-green rather than the usual healthy moss color. “We give them free rein—we have to. They won’t go anywhere if we try to handle ’em, and we can’t keep up with ’em once they set out.”

  The noble pressed his lips into a thin line. “If the night mares are congregating it means they’ve finally selected the next monarch of the Night Court.” He convulsively tightened his hands before he got a hold of himself and pressed them against his white trousers. “The Night Court needs a ruler. We’ve been without one since late fall, and it’s already May. The Night Realm…”

  He trailed off, but I knew what he’d been about to say.

  The piece of the fae realm that the Night Court owned was suffering without a ruler in place to keep the magic flowing.

  They should have had a new ruler before the end of last year. But since the founding of the Night Court centuries ago, whenever the reigning monarch and their spouse died, the night mares chose the next monarch.

  But the night mares had been ignored under Queen Nyte’s rule and run wild. It had taken months just to capture them all, and just as long to convince the savage horses to look for the monarch.

  “I don’t know if they’ve found the monarch or not,” the stable manager said. “They’ve been searching for weeks—much longer than they should have. The missing night mares may have just decided to stay free.”

  “A minimum of three night mares are required to choose our next monarch. How many are missing?” the noble demanded.

  “Six,” the stable manager said. “The most recent one failed to return with the rest of the herd this morning.”

  “Then it would seem they’ve found several candidates,” the noble said. “Find them tonight. Failure will bring consequences you can’t afford to pay.” He swept from the stable with a storm in his face and pompousness biting at his heels.

  I blinked, comfortably motionless.

  The stable manager rubbed his face and groaned. He shed a leaf or two—revealing just how frightened he was—and went out the back of the stable, to the pastures behind it.

  I folded up my used rice paper and slipped it into a pouch on my belt—I wasn’t going to leave any sign of my presence behind.

  I wasn’t concerned about the Night Court’s lack of a monarch. The Court had been in a downward spiral for decades. A new monarch wasn’t going to solve anything—we were too far gone for that. Besides, it was our rulers who had gotten us into this position.

  But I was interested in the next monarch candidate because I’d been hired to find and eliminate them.

  Rather, try to eliminate them.

  As an assassin, I had a perfect record. I’d never missed a target, and never bungled an operation. But given that my newest contract was to take out the next Night Court monarch, my chances of success were small.

  As a fae I was forced into obedience to my monarch. The same kind of magic that kept all fae from lying also made it that we couldn’t raise a hand against our rulers.

  There were ways around it. One might be able to arrange an accident, and the magic couldn’t keep us from annoying our monarchs. But coups and assassinations were near impossible.

  My only chance of eliminating this new monarch was to kill him or her before he or she was officially sworn in, activating the ancient magic that governed us.

  I’d stated this when I initially refused the contract, but the contractor insisted that merely trying was enough to consider the contract fulfilled.

  Fae aren’t known for our generosity, which meant there was a fairly good chance this was a trap for me rather than an actual attempt to kill the next king or queen.

  Which was why I took the contract. Traps didn’t worry me—there was no one they could hire who was skilled enough to kill me. But it would always be more efficient to eliminate a threat I was aware of rather than blindly encounter one.

  Besides, I had no love for the Night Court throne. The idea that a monarch could save us was a fairy tale. It made no difference to me if the candidate died.

  I hadn’t moved since putting the used rice paper away, but I heard the rustle of a rat, and looked down through the crack in the floor again.

  Sure enough, the rat—my target—scurried down the stall aisles, moving to the far end of the barn, where he would pass just under the hayloft I hid in. He was sweating in his silken robes, and his complexion was waxy.

  He was one of Queen Nyte’s old officials—her steward, if I remembered correctly. He was as crooked as they came, and had lorded his position over others while funneling extra funds into his pocket and punishing anyone who didn’t try to curry favor with him.

  I wasn’t killing him because of his s
ins. He’d angered a fae noble lady from the Autumn Court when he refused to repay her for a magical artifact he’d purchased from her. She hired me to kill him as revenge.

  He should have known better. It was well known she’d inherited the artifact from her brother, who had “mysteriously disappeared.”

  That’s the way we fae operate. We can’t lie, but we twist and distort reality, struggling to amass power and taking what we like until it inevitably catches up with us.

  It’s a never-ending game, even though the players die off like flies.

  I was soundless as I crept across the loft. When the crooked official scurried under the hay chute I was positioned at, I dropped down, landing directly behind him.

  “Mortem.” I breathed the name of my dagger. Its blade glowed a golden yellow color, and before the official even knew I was there, I stabbed him in the back of the neck.

  The magic in the blade made it a simple thing to cut through bone and sever his spinal cord, resulting in a near instantaneous death.

  All of the air in his lungs left with a gasp, and he collapsed to the ground, dead before I stepped back from the body.

  I wiped my dagger off on his shirt then felt for a pulse, confirming his death. A few moments later I left the stables, keeping to the shadows where my magic and my dark gray clothes would cloak me.

  I mentally mapped out my plans to contact the fae lady from the Autumn Court and begin tracking the night mares.

  Killing had very little impact on me—I was just as much a villain as the fae I murdered.

  But this game of power and dominance had been in existence for centuries. No one could escape it. It dragged us all down eventually.

  Chapter Three

  Leila

  My phone blasted my ringtone so loudly I jumped. I’d picked out a Lord of the Rings ringtone because I loved those movies, but it was pretty startling to have the Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack blast out of your butt pocket at a volume loud enough to wake the barn cats.

  I fumbled with the phone for a moment before I managed to swipe and accept the call. “Hey, Mom!”

  “Hi Leila. I’ll be home soon—I’m leaving the store right now. Would you tell Paul? I tried to call him, but he didn’t pick up.”

  “Yeah, I think he’s in his workshop. I’ll let him know.”

  “Thanks. How has your day been?”

  I grimaced. “I heard back from the marketing firm. They went with a different applicant.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I know you said you really liked them when you interviewed with them.”

  “Yeah, but it’s okay. There are a few online positions I can apply for. Otherwise I saw there was one at the Curia Cloisters.”

  I’d normally avoid the Curia Cloisters—it was basically the town hall for the supernatural community here in Magiford, which was pretty big since Magiford was considered the supernatural capital of the Midwest region.

  It’s not that I was against working for supernaturals, it just didn’t mesh well with my goal of living like a human and remaining out-of-sight/out-of-mind to the fae community. They didn’t usually let anyone with fae blood waltz around free, so I had to be pretty purposeful about where I lived and worked.

  But I started looking for a full-time job in February when I was still in college. Now it was May, I’d finished my classes, and I still hadn’t gotten a job. I was getting a lot less picky these days.

  “That’s a nice idea.” She sounded kind of flat—which was pretty unusual for her.

  “What, you’re not going to tell me ‘I told you so’?” I joked, trying to break the moment. “You told me last winter I should apply for something at the Curia Cloisters—in between times when you were showing me pictures of your friends’ sons and trying to set me up on dates.”

  That got a weak chuckle out of her. “Wherever you end up, I know you’ll be fine. I will always believe in you, Leila.”

  I briefly pulled the phone away from my ear so I could frown at it.

  Mom was normally pretty sentimental, but not usually on the phone when she was driving home from the grocery store.

  “Oops,” Mom said. “I should go—I see Mrs. Brown out at her farm stand—I want to ask when the strawberry season will start.”

  “Okay—see you soon!” I ended the call and stared at my phone for an extra moment or two.

  Mom has been acting off for the past few days.

  My mom was always a super warm and sweet parent. But recently she’d been hugging me a lot more, and watching me with sad eyes whenever she thought I didn’t notice.

  It was probably because since I had graduated college I was all “grown up” or something. She’d been harping on me about dating until about two weeks ago—which was a total waste of her time since I was way more consumed with finding a job and launching my Responsible Adult plan. But she’d stopped telling me to get out there and date the day the first fae horse showed up. Maybe she realized I aspired to become one of those old cat ladies, and figured I’d just do it with horses instead?

  I finished cleaning out the horse stall I’d been working on and dumped out the dirty shavings, waving to all the equines as I mulled over Mom’s sentimental actions. I went back into the barn just long enough to dump fresh sawdust in the stall, creating a mushroom cloud of dust that got me sneezing.

  Dad hadn’t noticed anything odd about Mom when I asked him about it yesterday, so maybe it was just the “grown up” thing.

  Dad was just as warm and kind a parent as Mom—especially because I wasn’t really his kid.

  He was my step-dad, but he married my mom when I was about ten, and he taught me how to drive, helped me with my homework, and had been the best dad I could ask for—way better than my bio father, the fae degenerate that had gifted me with my fae blood. So, he was Dad to me.

  Finished with the stalls, I stepped out of the shade of the barn and into the hot afternoon sunlight.

  I rounded the corner of the barn and slipped through the wooden fence, stopping just by the water troughs.

  Dad’s horses were all clustered at the far side of the pasture, stamping their hooves and swishing their tails as they waited to be let inside again.

  Bagel, however, was a spot of velveteen brown surrounded by six fae horses.

  Wait…six?

  “Oh, you dirty weasel.” I sprinted down the length of the pasture, upsetting horses and ignoring Bagel when he hee-hawed to me.

  I made it to the far side of the pasture where the tree line that the fae spider had tried to take over stood.

  I boosted myself over the wooden fence and shot through a thin gap in the trees, popping out in a ditch right by the road.

  I scrambled up the slight hill, my paddock boots slapping the asphalt when I reached the road. Shading my eyes, I looked up and down the road.

  We lived pretty far out in the country, and were surrounded by cornfields and the giant estate that belonged to our next-door neighbors, the Drakes—the most powerful vampire Family in the Midwest.

  Since there weren’t many buildings around, I could see pretty far. There were no trucks or trailers on the road—not even a single car.

  “Come on!” I shouted to the sky. “Why can’t I catch the dirtbag doing this? There were five fae horses when I dumped the dirty stall shavings, and I only went back into the barn for a few minutes! Who can drop off a horse that fast?” I growled and took one last look—just in case I’d missed a truck or something—and then stomped my way down into the ditch and through the tree line.

  Since the first fae horse had been dumped, more kept appearing. They showed up randomly. One had arrived sometime between night chores and when I went out to tell Dad dinner was ready. Another had been abandoned in our pasture when I’d gone to the feed store for more grain—I was going to get some weight on these fae horses even if I went broke doing it—and to drop off some more job applications.

  “I’m going to find whoever is doing this, and I’m going to make sure they n
ever own another animal again.” I climbed over the wooden fence and dropped down with a huff. “I should get the Curia Cloisters involved. Whatever nutso is doing this is clearly from the supernatural community—probably a fae. Oh—or I’ll file charges with the county and get humans involved! That will scare the supernaturals into doing something!”

  The Drake vampires’ presence should have been enough to scare off anyone from doing something stupid like this—the Drakes were known for their ruthlessness. And since Killian Drake had fallen in love with Hazel Medeis—the Adept of the wizard House Medeis, and a good friend of mine—they’d only become more respected. Though, admittedly, having petite Hazel and a bunch of hug-exuberant wizards running loose around Drake Hall did make them a tad less fierce.

  Bagel and the fae horses had chosen to follow me, apparently, and were congregating at the end of the pasture.

  As I walked through the herd, scratchy muzzles bumped me, and two of the horses crowded me, wheezing like asthmatic hippos.

  “Yes, yes, I have treats.” I patted the biggest one—I’d taken to calling him Solstice. He was a coal black color with oozing red lines in his coat that made it look like someone had stitched him together like a stuffed animal.

  Solstice wheezed and rested his chin on the top of my head until I elbowed him in the chest to make him back up. He took his treat happily, as did Blue Moon, Comet, and Twilight.

  I’d done my best to give them pretty names even though, as far as animals went, they were really ugly. Twilight was runty and such an off gray color he looked perpetually ill. Comet drooled red, but when I had the vet out to look her over, he swore up and down she didn’t have any wounds or sores in her mouth.

  All of the fae horses were as skinny and skeletal as the first mare that had shown up—I called her Eclipse.

  Eclipse was last—or second-to-last thanks to our new addition—to come forward. She daintily accepted her treat, even though she looked as skeletal as the day she’d arrived a little over a week ago.