Page 8 of Night’s Fall (The Four Realms #1)

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She had the male in her maw, shaking him viciously before she tossed him to the side, his body breaking grotesquely against the bricks of the wall of the alley.

She whipped her head toward the other one.

While she’d been dealing with the first, he’d produced a weapon.

It was aimed at her.

She went to attack…

No.

To defend.

To defend me.

I saw the look in his eye.

He wasn’t afraid.

He wasn’t fleeing.

The other one was a sacrifice.

This one…

He was here to do just this.

“No!” I shrieked, tucked protectively in her broad breast, powerless to stop her.

The weapon fired.

And all turned black .

I jerked awake, feeling hot, sweaty, scared.

All familiar.

Too familiar.

My bedroom was not dark. With the half-wall, continuous slant of windows that connected to the roof allowing the city lights to drift in, it was never dark, unless I activated the privacy shields.

I didn’t like to do that.

Not anymore.

The alley they’d dragged me in had been dark. Dank . Reeking .

I used to set privacy at sixty percent when I slept, so I’d have the city, but I’d still have that cocoon of night.

Not after the incident.

Not after she was gone.

I needed the light.

I fell to my back and rubbed my chest with my hand.

The phantom wasn’t there with me. It hadn’t made itself known since we left the club.

As bittersweet as it was, alone in the dark of night with memories assaulting me, I could use her.

The nightmares came too often. I was beginning to worry it wasn’t healthy.

My gals were worried too.

Gayliliel had suggested I speak to a counselor.

Catla had suggested a visit to a clinic for a memory scrub and went so far as to talk to Mr . Truelock about it, whereupon he agreed to pay for it (he really did like me…and Gayle ).

I couldn’t scrub that memory though. As hideous as it was, it was the last moment we had together.

It was her doing what she did for me.

It was her taking care of me.

To her dying breath.

My own breath hitched, and I sent three cats flying as I pulled the covers off me.

I shuffled out of my bedroom into the living area.

My place was the top floor of a Pre - Unification warehouse.

Spacious , with the whole back wall being that slant of windows that started at about four feet up.

Occupying the entire floor under it was my studio.

The floor under that, the one at ground level, was divided into two.

It housed a pizzeria and a mystic sanctum run by a witch named Alchemy , who I suspected was just a human, but I didn’t think she was a scammer.

Instead , she wanted to have magic so much she convinced herself she did and was able to convince other people of the same.

Bottom line with Alchemy , her sanctum rocked. There might not be any actual mystical healing happening, but I’d used her before, and she gave great vibe.

Maybe it was time for another visit.

I went to the open kitchen and got myself a glass of water.

I stood at the counter looking out the windows, where, across the road there was a broken block that contained a row of six Pre - Unification , three-story brownstones, and next to those, a Post - Crash , personality-less, five-story cube filled with micro-flats.

Over the last few years, my neighborhood had begun shifting.

Island living off the coast had almost always been out of everyone’s but the elite of the elite’s price range, this being the reason it was populated by castles, villas, mansions and a gamut of really exclusive (but excellent) shopping and eateries.

Now uptown was becoming too expensive for most as well.

So downtown they went, buying up old brownstones or blocks of micro-flats and renovating them.

I didn’t pay attention, but I suspected, instead of fifty units in that cube, there were now maybe ten, because there were always noisy construction crafts and rubbish tips lining the road, workers inside undoubtedly tearing down walls and making micro, macro.

Human, fae, demon, witch, conjurer, we seemed to always be searching for more space.

As I sipped my water, it wasn’t hard to turn my attention from the nightmare to the night.

I rested a hip against the counter and glanced behind me at the seating area where I’d left the two empty bottles of wine and three glasses, the detritus of Gayle , Cat and I dissecting and re-dissecting every second I spent with Prince Aleksei (and incidentally, not coming up with any answers to his and my short, bizarre tête-à-tête).

We’d left the club almost immediately after Prince Aleksei left me because we had a ton of dissecting to do, and we didn’t want anyone to hear it.

Although we came up with no answers, I did learn from Cat that royal etiquette was expected to be observed, no matter where you were.

“King Fillion , but more, Queen Calisa are really into that shit,” she said.

She would know. She’d actually met King Fillion and had been presented to Queen Calisa and served two seasons at court in her seventeenth and eighteenth years.

She’d also been at a weekend house party at Capice Point with Princess Aleece and had been propositioned by Prince Timothee in an ante-tent during a laser joust (she had declined, but only because he was more than mildly inebriated at the time, and if she went there with him, she wanted him to remember it).

I still thought all of that protocol nonsense was archaic.

Yes, I (along with everyone else) had seen Prince Aleksei’s beast soaring over the midnight waters around Celestial Palace , and his beast was as handsome, huge and powerful as Prince Aleksei , with his gleaming blue-black scales, purple-hued webbed wings and abundance of cruel spikes.

Anyone with an imagination could hark back centuries and see that beast laying claim to Night’s Fall in a manner no one would challenge him, and if they did, they’d be reduced to ash in purple fire.

But it wasn’t that way anymore.

Constant war, death, intrigue, broken accords and treachery had given way to the establishment of the Four Realms , the slender strip of a neutral Center and diplomacy.

So sure, sometimes that diplomacy was tenuous and other times heated.

But there had been peace among the realms for decades.

And at this juncture, each realm had stood solid under their royal claims for centuries.

The Center , where nearly everyone who lived there was involved in governance and inter-realm relations, was where ambassadors debated, trade deals were forged, and compromises were sought for grievances. Onward from that, each realm had its own government, both realm-wide and locally.

On the other hand, in the lands of Night’s Fall , Dawn’s Break , Sky’s Edge and Land’s End , kings and queens held state dinners, hosted elaborate balls and provided pomp, circumstance and militantly guarded tradition.

Not in generations had anyone in the Celestial Palace shed blood or sacrificed anything for the glory of Night’s Fall .

And although the king, all three princes and the princess were delegates to the Center , and the king’s word held great weight, each province, parish or county of each realm had an elected official at the Center , so the royal family was not our only representation.

No.

They were merely born royals; they hadn’t done anything to earn their status or the respect they thought it demanded.

I didn’t argue this with Catla . She was a royalist, through to the bone.

Gayliliel didn’t really care one way or the other, but if forced to lean in a direction, I knew she’d lean toward the royals because she adored pageantry…and gossip.

I would have done the same, until I was forced to curtsy to a male who was just a male, doing this with the attention of a room full of rich people, and then made to feel like a fool by him.

A shadowy streak jumped up to the counter from the floor, and my flame-point Comet asked, “ Meow ?”

“No, it’s not time for breakfast.”

“Meow,” he disagreed.

“I think you’ve well learned these last few months, just because I’m awake, it doesn’t mean you get food.”

“Meow!”

I set the glass aside and took hold of my cat, tucking him under my arm.

Comet wasn’t a fan of being held (because usually, me carting his heft around induced me to telling him he was too chonky), and therefore his next, “ Meow ! ” was filled with insult.

As usual, I ignored it, and we went to bed. The minute we were ensconced, he shared he was still nursing his affront by jumping away.

Nova, my cuddle muffin, took his place, already purring.

I rolled into her, stroking.

She made biscuits on the duvet.

I sighed and forced my eyes closed.

I had Gayle . Cat . Monique . Lancet (the designer who’d made my pink dress). Other friends. Comet and Nova and their brother, Jupiter .

I was not alone.

And yet, I so very much was in a way I always would be.

Forever.

At the pain of that thought, I opened my eyes, Nova’s affectionate drone humming in my ears.

“Just tonight, baby,” I whispered to my cat.

“ But this is the last time. I can feel sorry for myself tonight. Tomorrow will be the day after I met the True Heir to the realm. Sure , it had been annoying, and weird, but he’s even better looking in person than in digital, and it’s a story I can tell for the rest of my life.

And tomorrow will be the day after I pulled myself together and got back out into the world, which meant I had the opportunity to meet the True Heir , even if it was in an annoying and weird way. ”

I cuddled Nova closer, and my voice dipped lower.

“They took her, they didn’t take me,” I mumbled. “ She made it so I’m still here. I owe it to her to be here , not back there, when she sacrificed herself for me.”

Nova head butted my chin.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “ We miss her. But we’re here.” I drew in a breath to steady my emotions and repeated, “ We’re here.”

Nova continued to knead and purr.

I continued to feel sorry for myself and listen to her.

Eventually I fell asleep.

It wouldn’t be long before someone woke me up.