Page 1 of Broken Hearted (Cursed Fae #3)

I t was the night of the Winter Solstice. The portal was going to open, and I was about to either betray my people or my best friend. I was in an impossible position.

My mother smoothed down my long, dark hair, which mirrored her own. “You should have no fear. Even though you haven’t trained for this your entire life like Dawn, you’ve done well these last months. We always knew it would be a possibility, even if a small one.”

She was right. Every hundred years, the Summer princess, Faerie’s champion, went through their portal and returned with the heart of an Ethereum lord, stopping the curse that threatened our realm. If she failed, the task fell to the next princess. But that had never happened before. So there had not been much reason to train me for a job that was unlikely to come my way.

Six months ago, the portal to Ethereum opened in the Summer Court, and Dawn had traveled to the mirror realm, but she never returned. Princess Aribella, the Fall princess, then became the champion and went with the same directive. But she, too, never returned.

As the Winter princess, I was third in line.

I peered down at my bag, packed with maps and rations. I was as ready as I’d ever be.

I’d been surprisingly calm after Dawn’s ghostly apparition, along with Princess Aribella and the Ethereum lords, had come to see me. I knew Dawn at her core. She was not a woman easily fooled, and she would never give up on her people, so I had to believe that she had a plan to save us. I trusted her, which meant I could no longer trust Queen Liliana.

It had been hard to keep my questions buried deep inside over the past few months of training with the Summer queen. But I did. I trained with her, and I said yes, ma’am when she told me that I was Faerie’s only hope and ordered me to cut out the heart of the first Ethereum lord I saw.

I told my mother I would do the same.

Only I knew I had been living a lie, and it was eating at me. Negative thoughts crept into my mind. What if Dawn was wrong? What if it hadn’t been Dawn that visited me at all? What if it was someone pretending to be her in order to trick me?

But she knew about my birthmark and my first crush. Of course it was Dawnie.

I took a moment to really look at my mother. She was strong, emotionally and physically. She’d led our people well, with my father by her side, for twenty years. Until they ripped the illusion of a perfect marriage away from me and my sisters when I was fifteen by telling us they were divorcing.

Unhappy. Affair. I hate you. How could you? I’d heard my mother scream all of those things at my father one night when I was supposed to be sleeping. She wouldn’t stand for the betrayal, and I didn’t blame her. But I also still loved my father. It was a hard place to be: stuck between two people you loved. Now I felt that way again. Nineteen years old and I was torn again.

Between Dawn and all of Faerie.

“Your sisters want to say goodbye.” My mother gestured to the door.

I turned to her. “If I don’t make it back—”

“Nonsense.”

“Mother, if I don’t make it back in two days’ time, take everyone to the Spring Court,” I told her sternly.

She appeared a little shaken then, but the truth of the matter was that Dawn and Aribella had both been in my position and hadn’t returned. The same could happen to me, especially if Dawn’s plan to save Faerie was going to take a long time to execute. In that case, I wouldn’t be returning right away.

“I will get the heart immediately, or something has gone wrong,” I lied. I had no intention of killing one of those men. Not after Dawn claimed one was my mate.

Mate. That word was foreign to me, and I wanted nothing to do with it, but I recognized that I might have been lied to my entire life. That there was a chance the Ethereum lords weren’t evil like we’d been told, but rather that they were just men with families and people who depended on them.

She nodded once, and we both left the room.

Seraphina, Elowen, Aria, Freya, Thalia, and Amara were waiting outside the door to my dressing room, standing stiffly with their arms at their sides. I knew they were trying to be brave, but their misty eyes and quivering lips betrayed how they really felt.

After me, Seraphina was the eldest at seventeen years old and the one I was closest to. The rest of my sisters were born two years apart. My mother planned her heirs perfectly, as she did everything else in her court.

I looked Seraphina in the eyes and grasped her shoulders. “Be strong.”

For weeks, I’d agonized about whether or not to tell her about Dawn and what she’d said, but in the end, I decided it might endanger her life and my plan. So instead, I sent a letter to Lorelei, the Spring princess who was next in line to travel to Ethereum if I failed to destroy the curse. In the letter, I told her about Dawn and the Ethereum lords who had appeared in my bedroom. If I didn’t return, she needed to know there might be another way to save our worlds that didn’t involve carving a heart from someone’s chest. Lorelei was the gentlest and most kind-hearted fae I’d ever met. Her gifts were rooted in bringing forth life, not ending it. Even with Queen Liliana’s training, she wouldn’t be able to kill an Ethereum lord. Of that, I was certain.

“Come back to us,” Seraphina growled, and I grinned. There was the sassy sister I knew.

I pulled her into my arms, and then all the rest of my sisters pressed in around me, holding on to me and pushing me into the center of a giant sister hug.

Emotions clogged my throat, but I kept it together for them. When everyone pulled away, I was looking down at little seven-year-old Amara. She was missing one of her front teeth, and her hair had some streaks of red, like my father’s. She was the sensitive one of us who had yet to fully control her power, which was evidenced by the snow now falling on my head even though we were still inside.

Reaching out, I brushed my fingertip along the falling tear on her cheek and froze it. She smiled, and it fell to the ground like a tiny shard of ice. Amara constantly asked me to freeze things. Fruit. Flowers. The annoying birds that chirped early on Sunday mornings. I, of course, ignored that last request, but she loved to see my power on display.

“You be good for Mother and Father, okay?”

She nodded and I gave her one final hug.

I had to leave before I lost my nerve.

I nodded that I was ready to Mother, who was patiently waiting for me to say goodbye to my sisters, and we continued down the hall to the throne room, stopping at the closed doors. My father stood there in his finest black velvet suit and gave my mother a nervous glance.

“Can I say goodbye?” he asked timidly.

Even after four years, he wasn’t sure where things stood with her. She was the queen, and he was no longer the king consort now that they’d divorced. She’d allowed him residence on palace grounds in a guesthouse for the sake of my sisters and me, but it was a constant strain on our family when they were both in the same room.

“Of course. I’m not a monster, Leif,” my mother said defensively.

“I never said you were,” he added.

“Can we not?” I asked.

Always fighting. I’d vowed to never marry, just to avoid such a thing.

My father pulled me in for a hug. “Do what you have to in order to survive and come home,” he whispered to me.

If only he knew. In order to do that, I’d have to slaughter Dawn’s husband or one of the other handsome and seemingly kind men who had been present that night.

They weren’t monsters. They were our mates, whatever that really meant.

It was a good thing the only one I’d truly been attracted to was already engaged. That would make all of this easier.

I hoped.

After my father released me, I took his hand and squeezed it. “I love you,” I told him and pled with my eyes for him to get along with my mother while I was gone.

He must have learned to read minds because he nodded and said, “We’ll be fine.”

With a relieved sigh, I dropped his hand. My mother stepped up next to me, chin held high.

“Ready?” she asked.

I traced my fingers over the blue kyanite faestone dagger at my thigh and nodded.

Would I even use the weapon?

For a wild second, I had a dark thought. What was the heart of one man to save an entire kingdom? Even if he wasn’t a monster, even if he was my mate, if he could save my people, maybe the sacrifice was worth it.

I’m pregnant. Dawn’s words filtered back to me, and my heart pinched.

The princesses of Faerie were marrying the lords of Ethereum. Having children with them. I couldn’t just take one of their lives, not when there appeared to be another way. A way that wouldn’t just delay the curse for a hundred years, but actually destroy it once and for all.

I strengthened my resolve. I’d already made my choice. And that was to trust Dawn.

The doors opened, and the cavernous throne room broke into applause as I smiled and waved, following my mother to the dais. Everyone who was anyone in the Winter Court was here.

My mother’s most cherished advisors and courtiers stood around us, dressed in their finest attire. I nodded to the Honeyworths and then Mr. Thorpe before making my way past the Larkins. I’d grown up around these families, played with their children, and had dinner parties with them. It warmed my heart that they’d all come to wish me well.

We were Winter. We were resilient. We survived above all odds. This would not bring us down.

Suddenly, one of my mother’s messengers ran forward, breaking through the crowd, alarm evident on his face. He was holding a scroll between his fingers.

A messenger would never interrupt my mother during a big event like this for something trivial. It must be urgent. She took the scroll with a smile, as if she’d expected it, and waved him off. Then she clutched it in her hand as we moved quickly around the room, thanking people for coming and accepting their well wishes.

Once we got to the stage, we stepped back into the small private alcove behind which was the ancient mirror portal. It was covered in dust yesterday, but now it shone.

Queen Liliana was there and greeted me as I gave her a small bow. My mother ripped the seal from the paper and scanned the message, her lips pursed as fear crossed over her face.

“What is it?” I asked.

She folded it and stuffed it into her pocket. “Nothing we can’t handle. Let’s get you off to the mirror world so that this entire nightmare can end.”

Chills rose on my arms. I was a Winter fae, so that was saying something. “Mother, what does it say?”

I’d been preparing to take over from her for the past few years, she shared all matters of state with me.

Mother shared a look with Queen Liliana and cleared her throat. “The curse has started at the western edge of our lands. A deep freeze hit in the night and killed a dozen fae. They are frozen solid, and it comes this way.”

I gasped. It was eerily similar to my power. Okay, it was my power, but without any intention behind it. It was just moving forward, killing everything in its path. It took a lot to freeze a Winter fae to death. This was frightening.

“It doesn’t matter,” Queen Liliana said. “You are about five minutes from stopping this curse and bringing harmony back to all of Faerie.”

Right.

Crap.

I gave her a small smile, but I didn’t like the way she scanned my face, as if trying to ferret out something I was hiding. Her gaze went to the dagger at my thigh, and I grabbed it, gripping it tightly like she taught me.

She relaxed a little then. “Remember, dear. Don’t even let him speak. Get the heart, get home, and this is all over.”

I nodded, my mind a whirlwind of anxious thoughts. What if that whole thing with Dawn was a trick? What if she’d lied to me? What if—

The mirror began to swirl in front of me.

“Okay, clear your mind. Just focus on the heart. The black heart of an Ethereum lord,” she said.

I closed my eyes, taking in a deep breath, and doing as she said.

Black heart.

Black heart.

Tan skin, dark hair with honey-blond highlights, and bright teal eyes.

No. Don’t think of the engaged guy, you idiot.

Black heart .

Before I lost my nerve, I opened my eyes and looked over at my mother.

“I love you. Forgive me,” I said, and then jumped through the swirling portal before Queen Liliana could stop me, but the echoes of her furious screams followed.