Chapter One

SHADE’S ONLY THOUGHT was of running. She let the ground fly under her feet, feeling the dirt shifting with her shoes as they were imprinting themselves into the dark, soft earth. She was not afraid, nor did she have to run. No, she wanted to run. The need to feel the air rush past her with its fingers ripping through her hair, and the bushes and leaves whipping on her skin was overwhelming. The fresh earthy air fed her lungs, and the beating of her racing heart was the drummer of the tempo.

Running in the forest had turned into a soothing meditation for her since returning from the Santiran Fountains. It was funny that the woods seemed to have become her sanctuary, even though her adventures in the great outdoors had been no less than scary. She often wondered; since her powers had grown, did it mean that the ‘Faery’ in her now craved the intimacy of nature more and more? Regardless, she enjoyed her daily sprints in the forests around her house.

The solitude gave her time to think. To think about her powers, her life, her future, and her commitments. She had pledged her allegiance to the Guildrin Clan, a Seelie Court of Faeries. Shade hadn’t realized how much allying oneself with Faeries would involve, but for now she was happy that it did involve a lot of magical training, weapons training, fight training, and the history of the Fey lessons. It was a ‘Fey University’ of sorts. Her brain was often fried and required her to use her daily runs to recharge it.

*****

SHADE’S REFLECTION STARTLED her in the dismal dark of night. The mirrored closet doors reversed the room enough to make her wonder where the heck she was. Blinking, she rubbed her face and let her eyes adjust to the dim twilight. She let her breathing slow to a more calming rate as her heart slowed its frantic flutter. It was just another nightmare to wake her from her sleep. They had become more and more frequent since returning from the long journey across Faerie. The dangers she had endured to retrieve a powerful Santiran Water Magic for Queen Zinara of the Guildrin Seelie Court had left its mark. She wasn’t exactly sure what had triggered the nightmares, but the delirium of sleeplessness was getting old fast.

The soft tap on her door as it slowly creaked open made her jump again.

“Shade, are you alright?” Dylan’s whisper floated across the room to her. His hair was growing out and lay in dark wisps across his left eye. His piercing blue-grey eyes seemed to glow in the dim twilight, and flashed about the room as if scanning for disturbances. She lay back, relieved to see the Faerie guard. Dylan waited patiently as she reached over to click the nightstand light on.

“Yes, Dylan, I’m fine. Just another bad dream.” She yawned and rubbed her eyes. Her hair was a messy chestnut tangle that snarled around her shoulders. She watched Dylan as he gave her a slight nod and retreated, clicking the door shut behind him. She wondered how it was that he always knew when something was going on with her. He just seemed to be there, immediately, every time. Of course being so near and down the hall at her house did seem to have something to do with it.

Her mom had been cool when Shade brought him home and introduced him as her new friend from school, who needed a place to stay so he could graduate from their high school. They had played it off like his family was moving for his father’s work and he didn’t want to change schools. Dylan had appeared as innocent as a teenage boy could appear. He had used his glamour and charms on her mother. Somehow it had worked, and Shade’s mom had agreed to let him stay. Her mother wasn’t naïve; she had her hawk eyes on them constantly, but she seemed to loosen up after a few weeks had gone by without any kind of ‘incident’.

Shade smiled at the thought. Dylan did make her heart jump with a flip or two when he was nearby, but they had not really had much time together since returning from the journey. School graduation, parties, and high school friends had sucked up her time like leaches. Ultimately, it had kept their conversations to a minimum, but that hadn’t kept her from dragging him along to every function. He hadn’t found them quite to his liking, but he had been too curious to admit that he really hadn’t minded going with her that much and seeing what went on at the parties. At the very least, he liked to be near her. She was glad her mother hadn’t objected when Dylan had asked to stay longer, probably for the whole summer. Her mother had just nodded and smiled while moving about her day as usual.

Shade reached over and clicked her lamp off, robbing the room of light. Blinking, she let her eyes adjust to the night glow that slowly drizzled in from the streetlights outside. Wiggling down into her bed, she pulled her pillow under her head and sighed. The sweet warmth and softness of her bed beckoned her back into the lull of sleep. She silently prayed that the nightmares would stay away, at least for tonight.

Chapter Two

“YOU KNOW, YOU could come with me,” Brisa, Shade’s friend, inquired. “I don’t have a roommate yet. You don’t have to stay in this ho-hum town Shade. Why the hell would you want to stay here anyway?”

Brisa pushed the bowl of chips towards Shade. She grabbed a handful and munched on the salty bits. Shade was trying to avoid Brisa’s constant badgering. She had told Brisa everything that had happened in Faerie, but it was all so beyond her that it was no surprise that she didn’t understand why Shade wanted to stay. Brisa was headed to UCLA after the summer was over and Shade had decided to stay put in their hometown and attend the local community college. Well maybe, she hadn’t really decided on what she wanted to do with her life quite yet. Finding out you’re a part-Fey Changeling, along with being a fire-resistant human does kind of change things a lot.

“Look Shade, I know you want to go and ‘find yourself’ and all, but you have to come with me. What am I gonna do without my BFF to rule the campus alongside me?” Brisa stared back at her. Shade’s silence was more than she could bear. Brisa sighed while grabbing her sketchbook and pen. Her eyebrows furrowed as she scratched the pen on the paper. She didn’t know what to draw; she just knew she had to draw something when she was frustrated.

“Brisa, I can’t go, you know that. There is so much I don’t know about everything right now, and I can’t find out anything about myself if I’m hundreds of miles away from here. I have to do this, for my own protection at the very least.” Shade crossed her arms and let her head drop back onto the edge of the bed as she sat on the floor. She didn’t feel so vulnerable and open there. Closing her eyes, she took a breath in and tried to think of something else they could talk about. The tension between them wasn’t so bad, but it got thicker whenever Brisa tried to lure her out of the city. It just wasn’t going to happen right now.

“I really wish you would change your mind,” Brisa mumbled back. “I just don’t think that staying is what you should do. It’s dangerous out there. Why would you want to risk yourself in the lands of Faerie? I sure as heck wouldn’t want to. You hated it out there, remember? All the dirt, bugs and crap! What did it get you? An array of scars and some really sore muscles. Plus you almost got yourself killed, not once, but several times! Come to college with me, it’s nice and safe.” Brisa was furiously scratching at her drawing pad now, her olive complexion burning red in frustration.

“Brisa, I wish you could understand. It’s really weird, but even though I hated it out in the wild during that journey, now I feel compelled to go there. Maybe I draw my energy from the land... I told you that my powers were stronger in Faerie than they are here. I guess it’s something I need to be near.” Shade slumped as she yawned and stretched, already sick of the subject.

“Well, at least that Dylan guy is pretty cute,” Brisa said as she gave Shade a smug grin. “It might be worth it if everyone in Faerie looked that good. So, is he like your boyfriend now or what? You take him to all the parties, but you definitely don’t get all touchy-feely with him. What’s going on with you two?” Brisa chewed on a sour twist candy she had swiped from Shade’s nightstand as she waited for an answer.

Shade sighed. Pressing her lips tight, she could feel her face run scarlet. “No. For your information, Dylan is not my boyfriend. He’s like my bodyguard; He’s bound to protect me since his brother tried to kill me. It was the only way Queen Gretel of the Teleen clan would let Darren live. Otherwise, he was screwed. I have to figure out how to dissolve this bind before anything else too. I can’t have a Teleen Warrior ‘guarding’ my body all the time. Especially not at college, though I do really like him.” Brisa giggled and made smooching noises with her lips. Shade just rolled her eyes.

“Well, he can ‘guard’ my body anytime he wants to, if you don’t want him I mean,” Brisa added.

“Stop that!” Shade threw an empty can of soda at Brisa, which she promptly dodged. Both girls laughed as they began to smack each other with Shade’s bed pillows.

“Are you girls okay? What’s going on in here?” Shade’s mother Jade pushed the door open and scanned the room, finding them both frozen in swinging positions. She shook her head as her eyebrows rose in a suspicious arch.

“Shade, how ‘bout tidying up your room while I make us all some lunch. Brisa, you can help her, and I’ll make one for you too. Sound like a deal?” The girls nodded and quickly began to reassemble the trashed room as Jade turned away and disappeared down the hall.

“Your mom is so cool, Shade. My mom would have told me to get out of the house for that. Anyhow, I’m starved. You’ll figure it out Shade, you always do. That’s why you’re Queen of this castle, besides your mom of course.” Brisa snickered as Shade rolled her twinkling eyes back at her, letting her pillow bounce once more off Brisa’s head.

*****

SHADE SLIPPED HER plate into the sink while scanning her eyes across the lawn out the kitchen window. The dusk was absorbing the day away in colors of tangerine, red, and gold. Rinsing the dishes and putting them away, she looked again out into the dimming evening. She spotted Dylan standing near the edge of their lawn. He was staring into the woods behind her house. The property was large, and extended a couple acres beyond the grass and into the woods slightly. The house was surrounded by forest, and was spaced far enough away into the trees that no one could see the house from any other house on the road. Shade thought her mother had probably loved the privacy of the lot when she had bought it.

The gentle breeze swayed Dylan’s hair, teasing it into a halo that swirled around his head. It hung past his ears and lay straight in jet-black chunks. He looked almost like a statue out there, alone and still. Shade wondered what he was doing.

Brisa had taken off before it had gotten too dark. Shade wiped the counter clean and headed out the back door towards the Teleen Warrior. He remained where he was, still and as straight as a board, even when she came to a stop beside him. She took a long look into the forest, hoping to catch what he was watching.

“Hey Dylan, you okay? Did you eat any dinner?” When he didn’t respond, she turned to study his face. His white skin had tanned a bit since leaving the Teleen caves and now had a healthy glow. His shining black hair framed his face nicely as his grey-steel eyes glowed in the sunset and scanned the trees and tall grasses.

“Dylan?”

He turned his eyes to Shade and took in her face, acknowledging her before turning back to the remnants of the day. The seriousness that clung to his face worried her.

“I thought I would be home by now, Shade.” His solemn voice made her shiver.

His arms hung at his sides, never wavering from his statuesque stance, as though his feet were rooted to the land under him. Shade stared at him; he seemed so lost and alone. She wondered often what went through his head. At the graduation parties she had dragged him to, he had hung out at the edge of the rooms or in a corner, trying to fade away and become inconspicuous. He would nod and smile at the friends she would introduce to him, but he would leave that as the extent of his conversation. Getting him to mingle was like pulling teeth.

“I know, I’ve been thinking about that same thing. Look, I’m seeing Ilarial tomorrow and I’ll talk to her about it. Maybe she has an idea of what must be done to break our bond. You are coming tomorrow, right? It’s weapons training day, and I really would like it if you were there.” She watched his face for any hint of emotion. His eyes were full, but like a deep well that one would fear to fall into, they remained elusive. All her pals from school had immediately become infatuated with him. His piercing grey eyes and smooth skin drew all of them in and caused them to become stuttering, lovesick, fools. He never seemed to take notice of it, or pay them any kind of attention though. Either that, or he just didn’t care.

“I will go with you. I am of no use there though. I don’t see why you would need me there at all.” He sighed while crossing his arms and lifting his face up. He turned towards her. Shade pressed her lips together. She hated that he felt useless to help her with weapons training now. Ever since they had first started weapons training and he had gotten that good knock on her in the face with a solid thump of a wooden sword. They had found themselves wide-eyed with matching split lips and blood dripping down their chins.

Apparently, a side effect of the blood bind that kept them together had grown stronger, and now caused them equal injuries if Dylan caused Shade any sort injury or vice versa. This had ended being paired with Dylan for sparring, and left him an infinitely frustrated sideliner. It didn’t help that Soap; whose given name was Rylan, was now her sparring partner and didn’t receive any injuries when she got hit. She had watched Dylan steam with jealousy when Soap had tripped her and her right arm received the brunt of scrapes, blood dripping from her scratches. As long as she was injured by someone else, Dylan would not receive injuries like hers, but he could feel her pain thrashing though him as it coursed through her. They were all the casualties of the fight training.