Page 1 of Queen of Ever (Curse of Fate and Fae #2)

Chapter 1

Imogen

T he world hadn’t ended the day my heart had broken. Here it was, another day, another sunrise, and still that ache persisted, that longing, that feeling of wrong . Most days, it pissed me off. Not only had Tarian betrayed me, but I had to feel the consequences of that, live the consequence of that, every day. Some days it fuelled me to study harder, to push myself further, to practice until exhaustion made it impossible to think. Other days, it made me wonder what the point of it all was.

And then sometimes, in the early hours of the morning when I’d barely slept for dreaming of him, it was an aching sadness that wrapped around me, that left me wondering what if as I pulled the shawl around my shoulders and sat on the marble floor of the balcony, looking out over the horizon. I couldn’t help my thoughts from wandering, couldn’t help asking the questions that hurt too much to dwell on in the light of day.

Did he regret it? Was he sitting at Dreadhold right now wondering where I was?

Did he even care?

I’d lost track of how many days it had been since I’d left him frozen in that sitting room, knowing I’d hurt him. But he’d hurt me too.

I chaffed at my arms as the cold nibbled my skin. How long was I going to mope like this? How long was it going to hurt? As the sun began to peek over the horizon, I knew that, at least for today, I’d get a reprieve. Tarian may haunt my nights, but the days belonged to me.

‘What are you doing up so early?’ a familiar voice asked, the kindness in her tone making me feel almost guilty.

‘I couldn’t sleep. What’s your excuse?’ I looked over my shoulder at the petite woman with flowing blond locks and youthful eyes stepping through the balcony door. Marietta physically looked like Solas, which made sense, since she was the Sun King’s sister. They shared the same golden hair, the same blue eyes, the same sharp cheekbones and sand-coloured skin, but she was so different in her manner. I’d liked her the instant I’d met her. There was something open and vulnerable about her that made me want to take care of her.

Although it felt more like she had been taking care of me.

She shrugged bashfully. ‘I always get up early. I like to watch the sunrise.’

I patted the floor next to me before I realised it wasn’t exactly an appealing invitation, sitting on the cold floor when there were perfectly adequate chairs available, but she sat down anyway, crossing her legs with all the grace of a princess. She’d spent most of her days with me since I’d arrived at the Summer Palace. Sometimes I wondered if she didn’t wish she could go about her normal life instead of having to always keep me company, but she was good-natured enough not to say anything.

‘You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you?’ she said as she leaned back against the wall, her eyes on the sunrise, as if she knew looking at me would make me feel worse.

‘I can’t seem to help myself.’ Every time I thought about him, I chastised myself for my weakness. How many times was I going to let him hurt me? And yet, that fundamental voice inside me yearned for him as if he was a part of me, a half of me that made me whole. Was that the price of the mate bond or the price of love? It was hard to know where one ended and the other began.

Marietta was one of the few who knew about my mate bond to Tarian. It was something that I was supposed to keep secret from the rest of the court, something I was never to talk about. Solas said it was something that could easily be used against me, and against him, since he was the one helping me. Not that I wanted a bunch of fae nobles poking about in my private business and whispering about it whenever I entered a room.

I ran my fingers over the golden cuff Solas had given me to cover my mark, and even as something in me rebelled against the idea of hiding it, I wore it every day. It was hard enough being confused about what Tarian and I should be to each other without other people getting involved. Though I was beginning to wonder if my head would ever be clear enough to see what my future was supposed to be now.

‘I know you don’t like to talk about it, but…’ Marietta began before trailing off, as if she was thinking better of asking her question.

She was right, I didn’t like talking about it, about him . But I was starting to think that not talking about it was worse, like letting a wound fester. ‘It’s alright. What do you want to know?’

‘What does it feel like to be mated?’

I puffed out a long breath as the weight of the question sunk in. ‘Coming right out with the difficult questions, aren’t you?’ I contemplated it. She wasn’t looking for the feelings I was drowning in. She was just a woman who thought the idea of a mate bond was some kind of fairy tale. I’d thought the very same thing once.

A mate bond isn’t some fairy tale, Imogen. It’s nothing but a curse that siphons away your right to choose your own destiny. There’s no romance in a bond like that, only pain.

The remembered words kicked me in the gut. How I’d naively dismissed them at the time; they’d been spoken by someone who didn’t believe in love. But I had believed, so who was the bigger fool, really?

But I wasn’t jaded enough to think that everyone in this realm was like Tarian. Surely there were some out there who revered a mate bond as something special, something sacred. Surely there were some out there who would cherish their mate above all others, above all material possessions or titles.

Or crowns.

‘It’s an intense feeling,’ I began slowly as I chewed on my words, trying not to dash her hopes with my own bitterness. Because for that bright, fleeting moment when it had been good with Tarian, it had been perfect. Perhaps that’s why it hurt so much when it fell apart. ‘It’s like a part of you awakens and you know that you were meant to be there with them. You want to be near them, to make them happy, to protect them.’

‘So, it’s like love?’

‘Sort of. It’s more of an instinct than an emotion, it makes you hyper aware of them.’

‘Did you love Tarian?’

I swallowed hard against the lump forming in my throat. The urge to lie danced temptingly in front of me, even as I knew I couldn’t. I could have said nothing at all, but I found my lips moving despite myself. ‘Yes.’ The single word came out as a whisper, and I closed my eyes against the pain that flared to life in my chest.

Because I loved him still, despite everything. It was like I’d opened a floodgate and now I couldn’t get it to close.

Silence slipped around us as we watched the sun climbing higher in the sky, as the bright oranges and pinks began to fade to blue. The light touched the courtyard, making the spires glitter like gold, and the waters spraying from fountains sparkle. The Summer Palace was at its most beautiful at sunrise. It was one of the things I loved about this place. Watching the sun bring it to life soothed something in me, making me feel like if I sat here long enough for that golden light to touch me, it would bring me back to life, too.

‘We should get you ready for breakfast. My brother is back and won’t like it if we’re late,’ Marietta said, finally breaking the silence. I wasn’t exactly hungry, but I couldn’t very well refuse the hospitality of the man who had offered me shelter when I had nowhere else to go. In fact, Solas had done a great deal for me since I’d arrived. He’d arranged for tutors to help me study and learn the ways of the Fae Realm, including etiquette and dancing, which felt ridiculous but at least it kept me busy. He’d also arranged for an instructor to help me master my newly-awakened magic—although I was still a long way from actually mastering it.

I let Marietta lead me back inside, watching as she sifted through the dresses in my wardrobe. Apparently, I couldn’t be trusted to dress myself because I chose things that were too plain. Not that I would have said anything in that wardrobe was plain. If I’d felt like a servant in a medieval movie at Dreadhold, here I felt like a princess. Or rather, like the pauper who was pretending to be the princess and hoping no one would figure it out and cut off her head.

‘This one,’ Marietta said, giving the dress a nod of satisfaction as she held it up to me. I didn’t argue; I’d long since given up arguing with her on matters of fashion. She helped me dress, the gold and cream coloured fabric making me look like a sunbeam, which seemed to be the fashion in the Summer Palace. Everyone wore gold trimmed clothes and gold jewellery with gems that caught the light. They all had blonde, or at least light-coloured, hair—though I suspected some of them weren’t naturally that colour—and they all dressed up for every occasion, even if they were only going to the library. I never thought I’d miss my servant dresses, but at least there was no social pressure when I wore a uniform.

Marietta finished the look with a simple amber pendant wrapped in gold before sitting me down to tend to my hair. ‘Why do you really do this every morning?’ I asked. It was a question I’d asked her many times, but she always gave me the same answer.

She raised an eyebrow at me in the mirror. ‘What makes you think my answer will be any different today than it was yesterday?’ she asked.

‘Because I don’t believe that a Seelie princess is helping the likes of me get ready because she wants to.’

‘But you know I can’t lie.’

‘True. But you’re not saying everything, either.’

‘Someone has to make sure you’re presentable. Besides, I like visiting you every morning. You’re like the sister I never had,’ she said, smiling brightly. Before I could respond, there was a knock at the door. ‘We’d better hurry. That’ll be the servant to collect us for breakfast.’

Solas had been gone for a week now, off on some matter of royal importance, no doubt. Honestly, I didn’t ask too many questions about it because I had enough to deal with and I doubted he’d tell me, anyway. He was the king, after all. It was none of my business. But Marietta had been different in his absence. More relaxed, more playful, almost as if she could breathe when he wasn’t around. Which made sense. Tt must have been a lot of pressure to be the sister of the king.

The servant led us down to the dining room, which was one of my favourite rooms in the palace, as strange as that might sound. It was like a glasshouse out of a fairy tale. The sun shone in on all sides and exotic plants filled every corner and lined every shelf, filling the air with a sweet, floral scent. The sun always made me feel good, so I suppose starting my day with good food in the sunshine was a definite perk.

Solas was sitting at the head of the table, his plate already filled with food, a teacup in one hand as he read from a scroll that lay where his plate ought to be. He looked up as we approached, his assessing gaze raking over me before he gave a small nod. ‘I see you’re growing accustomed to life in the palace, little rabbit,’ he said.

‘Marietta has been helping a lot,’ I admitted.

‘Perhaps, but you look as if you were born to this life,’ he said, a soft smile on his lips that alluded to more than he was saying. ‘How are your studies progressing?’

Marietta and I took our seats as I contemplated how to answer that. The theoretical side was fine, I’d always loved learning, but the practical side? Even though I was now fae, I seemed to lack the natural grace Marietta possessed. And as for my magic…

‘She’s improving every day,’ Marietta said warmly, offering me an encouraging smile. Even though I knew she couldn’t lie, it was pretty close to one. My progress was slow at best.

As a plate was placed in front of me, full of vibrant fruits, it occurred to me that I’d never once shared a meal with Tarian. In the wild, desperate whirlwind that had been our time together, there were so many things we’d never had the chance to do, so many things I never had the chance to discover about him.

‘Imogen? Is there something wrong with the food?’ Solas asked, but there was a slight edge to his voice that told me he knew where my mind had wandered to.

‘Sorry, no. Everything looks perfect, as always,’ I said, offering my best attempt at a smile before taking a bite to excuse myself from having to say anything more. ‘How was your trip?’ I asked, attempting to divert the conversation.

Solas let out a breath as if the whole ordeal had been tiresome. ‘These political matters always drag on far too long,’ he said, the words giving very little away. In fact, it almost seemed pointless saying them at all. Many of the conversations in this place went much the same way, people using a lot of words to say very little. Solas rolled up his scroll and turned to me then. ‘Seeing you this morning has given me an idea,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ I was almost afraid to ask.

‘We should put your training into practice, don’t you think? The summer equinox is coming up, we hold a soiree to celebrate. The entire Seelie Court will be there.’

‘That sounds like a lot of people,’ I said, anxiety beginning to coil in my stomach. I wasn’t sure a party was a good way to start practicing. The last time I’d faced a fully assembled fae court, it had been at the Hunt Ball, where Tarian had dragged me away to a storage closet. While some of the courtiers I’d seen around the palace had excised that piece of gossip from their systems, there were many others who had not.

‘Don’t worry, you still have a few days to prepare. I know you’ll do fine.’

My gaze darted to Marietta, but the tight smile on her face told me I didn’t have a choice in the matter. ‘Right,’ I said. At Solas’ raised eyebrow, I quickly amended my words. ‘I mean, yes, whatever you think is best.’ I couldn’t quite get the words your majesty out. They felt so foreign to me, as was thinking that Solas was my king because I was Seelie. But he nodded as if he approved of my response before turning back to his breakfast.

I was going to have to study hard before the equinox so I didn’t make a complete fool out of myself.

‘You can’t think at the water to move it, you have to feel it,’ my instructor said as I glared at the pool of water in front of me, willing it to move as it stubbornly ignored me. She’d said the same thing to me so many times by now that I could mouth the words in perfect sync as she spoke them—though I didn’t, because I’d made that mistake once and I was sure I still had a bruise from where she whacked me with that stick of hers.

Galacia was a master in water magic, and from the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, she must have been quite old, given that fae didn’t seem to age. But even her experience couldn’t get me to move a single drop of water from that pool.

‘You keep saying that, but I don’t feel anything,’ I said, dropping my hands in frustration. Whatever magic resided in me, I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t even know what it was supposed to feel like. I thought maybe there was a bit of something—a sort of hum in my chest, like I’d swallowed a handful of bees—when I concentrated really, really hard, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. When I’d used magic in Dreadhold, it had all happened so fast and with such anger that I could hardly remember doing it at all.

Galacia had been trying to teach me for a couple of weeks—and I say trying because I was a terrible magic student. I could draw a single drop of water from the air, sometimes, but that seemed to be the extent of my abilities. So how the hell had I managed to freeze Tarian back at Dreadhold?

But she didn’t lay all the blame at my feet, even though I probably deserved it. She said it was because of the lack of time we’d been allocated around all the other things I was expected to learn now that I was Seelie. It was apparently not the traditional way to learn magic, which Galacia had brought up with the king, and he had apparently ignored. I would have much preferred full-time magic training to dancing lessons, even though I picked up the steps to dancing far quicker. Galacia might be prickly, but my dance instructor was ridiculous, and I felt stupid twirling around an empty ballroom in shoes I could hardly walk in.

I knew very little about my magic instructor in general. She looked to be in her early forties, but there was a wisdom in her eyes that spoke to ages beyond those her skin showed. She spoke very little about herself, scolding me for not concentrating if I ever tried to ask her personal questions. There was a crystal-clear barrier between us as teacher and student.

‘You need to clear your mind. Don’t tell the water what you want it to do. Feel the magic, feel it connect to the water, then lead it, almost like leading it in a dance.’

That made no sense to me at all, especially bringing dancing into it because my dance instructor constantly berated me about not leading. But I closed my eyes and tried to do as she said. I tried to feel the magic in me, tried to feel the water, but I only felt that familiar prickle of cold under my skin, creeping through my veins, reminding me that the only reason I was even here in the Summer Palace failing to control my magic was because Tarian had betrayed me.

‘Imogen, focus!’ Galacia said. But how was I supposed to just forget? How was I supposed to put that all to rest, to move past it when it hurt as if he had done it only yesterday, when I hated him for doing it, when I hated myself for missing him? It made me want to cry, to scream, to run from everything. It made me wish none of it had ever happened, even as a part of me recoiled at the idea of never having met him.

A blast of cold shot out of me. I felt the moment it left my body, felt the wave of exhaustion that followed. I heard the sigh before I opened my eyes to take in the damage. By my standards, it was actually an improvement. I’d merely frozen the pool of water, rather than half the room.

Galacia walked towards me, pity in her eyes. That pity only stoked my anger further. ‘Magic feeds on our emotions. You look like a princess, but in here,’ she said, poking a finger gently at my chest, ‘a storm rages. You cannot run from your feelings and there’s only so far you can push them down before they explode.’

She took in the frozen pool, a thoughtful expression on her face, before finally turning to me again. ‘That’s enough for today. Your homework is to think about what I’ve said. Next time’—she quirked an eyebrow at the frozen mess—‘I think we will begin with some meditation.’

Meditation? I suppressed a groan. It felt like I was moving backwards, and I had absolutely no interest in meditating on my feelings. Ignoring them sounded far less painful than working through them.

I let out another sigh and left the now empty room, heading for my next lesson, which would hopefully be more successful that this one had been. But let’s face it, it couldn’t be much worse.