Page 1

Chapter

One

“ D arling, if we poison the wolves using their water sources then they’ll never trace it to either of us. All we have to do is make sure no one realizes it was intentional until they’ve already lost the numbers to defend themselves. The Singsong Werewolves won’t need any of their caves when they’re dead. Their bodies will fertilize the caverns when we turn it into a garden.”

I jerked awake while the words tangled in my thoughts, panic and confusion breaking through the haze I spent most of my days in.

I reached for the pills outside my cozy cocoon, then stopped. The pills wouldn’t help me think clearly, and the panic made clear-thinking necessary. Why was I panicked? What had I heard? Werewolves were going to be poisoned? Good. I hated werewolves. All fairies hated werewolves, and me more than anyone. So why the panic? Because you couldn’t poison enough werewolves quickly enough to keep them from invading your country and slaughtering everyone you loved.

Once upon a time, in days long past, there was a beautiful fairy queen. She was truth, goodness, mercy, and light, and she had made Fairyland the beacon of shimmery bliss it was supposed to be.

And then Malamech the Dark Lupin Sorcerer came with his dark beasts and his soldiers, and invaded Fairyland, but first they had assassinated the queen, her consort, and most of her court. The princess was dodging her responsibilities, or she would have been slaughtered with them, and wouldn’t have used the blood of the queen to become something even darker than a dark wolf or lupin sorcerer. That blood, that rage for vengeance, fueled her and her people, until they defeated the invaders and she personally ripped off Malamech’s head and ate his heart.

The thing is, fairies don’t really thrive on vengeance, blood, and carnage, so when the invaders were gone, they were left with a princess too sick to do anything to hold the people together.

That’s me. Princess Grace the marvelous, who spends her days struggling to breathe, lost in a haze of medication. Lots of fairies abandoned Fairyland entirely in the days since the war, making their home on Earth. Good for them. Fewer people whose sickness I bear. Like the land, all of the sickness remaining was my responsibility. Which I accept, more or less, but it’s not a happy thing. Not even a little bit. I’m linked to my people, so I can hear their thoughts if I concentrate on them, and they can hear mine. It’s not something I cultivate, because honestly, not a lot of people think positively about the princess who should have died with the Queen but instead turned her people into psychopaths.

But those words, spoken aloud. I’d heard them and felt their intent. Could I trace those thoughts? Not when my own thoughts were so blurry. We couldn’t poison werewolves in some earthen city I’d only heard rumors about, supposedly a place where everyone could live together in harmony. It was the most ridiculous thing imaginable, because we would not survive a second invasion even if we defeated the attacker. Soaking in that much blood and violence would destroy us forever. I personally would love to see every werewolf in existence wiped out of, well, existence- but not if it put my people at risk.

I took a deep breath and sent my thoughts out, seeking the origin of those words, but when I found the fairy, I was blocked.

I opened my eyes, shocked at the sensation. I was the princess. I couldn’t remember the last time I sought someone’s mind, but you couldn’t just shut me out. It wasn’t illegal, just impossible. Except for now.

The panic combined with my weakness and nausea, making me more than slightly disoriented. I climbed out of my cocoon bed, caught on the folds of pale purple silk, and fell to the floor with a thud. I lay on the gold floor, with its strands of gems in elaborate designs of a flower that glimmered in the reflection of the pale moonlight. The moon was bright and beautiful, lending me some space between the panic and the illness. This world was beautifully made, but it was sick, weak, like me.

If I couldn’t find the person who planned to slaughter the werewolves of Singsong City, then I’d just have to go there and stop it personally. Maybe I could catch whoever had blocked me out and give them a lecture. It must be one of the newer fairies who didn’t remember the war. It had been fifty, a hundred… anyway, many years ago. The newer generations were the future, the hope of our land. I would protect them and keep them from turning into monsters like I had become. All I had to do was stand up.

Talk about impossible goals.