Reign Fall (27 page)

“Happy reading, Princess Nikki,” he said with a last glance at the book in my arms. He headed down my driveway and walked away along the sidewalk.

I pressed my fingertips to my lips. He really was an arrogant, elitist jerk. And I’d just practically begged him to stay in the human world for another month because I couldn’t bear the thought of saying good-bye to him.

Holding the book tightly to my chest, I turned toward the door and immediately froze.

It was open.

And my mother stood there staring at me.

My mouth went completely dry. “How long have you been standing there?” Her eyes were wide. “A while. I didn’t want to interrupt you and Rhys, but, Nikki...I don’t understand...”

Oh God. She’d heard. I rewound what we’d just spoken about.

Faeries. Kings. Unicorns. Princesses.

My father.

Her gaze moved to my shoulder and the rip in my sweater from the sword. She came forward and turned me around to see the rips in the back from my wings. “Nikki, what on earth is going on here?”

“I...I...” I couldn’t find my voice. It had packed up and left town.

She moved back to the open door and gripped the edge of it as if she needed something to hang on to. “You were talking about your father. And you said it so...matter of fact, like it’s no big deal. Have you been in contact with him?”

I wanted to lie. It was my knee-jerk reaction to finding myself in deep trouble. But this time I couldn’t force the deception out. I just stared at her as she stared back at me.

She inhaled sharply. “Why aren’t you saying anything? The things you and Rhys were talking about...I thought you were just playing a game. One of those role playing games. But you were serious, weren’t you? And it has something to do with Desmond. Talk to me, Nikki! Have you seen him?”

My throat hurt, so all I could manage was a jerky nod.

Her hand went to her mouth, as if she was horrified at the idea of it. “How do you even know it’s really him and not some—some predator who is trying to hurt you?”

“He’s not a predator,” I said immediately. What a horrible thought, but of course that was where her mind would go. She wanted to protect me. But she didn’t know the truth. None of it.

“What does he look like?” she demanded, anger and panic fighting in her gaze.

“He’s tall, handsome, and he has dark blond hair,” I said. “And he looks like me. Our eyes are almost exactly the same. But you already know that, right? Every time you look at me you have to see him, too.”

She flinched. It was the right answer. “It still might not be him.”

“You met in college—you hated him. I always thought it was love at first sight between you, but it wasn’t. You thought he was a jerk. You guys got in trouble together and you saved his life when somebody attacked you.
Then
you fell for each other.” Her face had paled. More evidence that what Dread had told me about my parents’ history wasn’t just lies. “This is insane. Completely insane.” The wash of emotion I felt right then—fear, panic, shock—would once have been more than enough to make me involuntarily shift to my Darkling form. But luckily I’d been doing a little bit of practicing. I was able to stop my horns from popping out. That might have given my mother a complete heart attack.

“Mom,” I managed after several uncomfortable and tense moments went by. “I know what Rhys and me were talking about sounded kind of crazy.”

“Kind of?” Her expression had shifted from stunned disbelief to something more filled with worry and concern. “Nikki, please tell me everything.” I swallowed hard. “Do you trust me, Mom?”

I knew this was a dangerous question. There had been many instances when I’d lied to her face, deceived her, or just withheld the truth to stay out of trouble or keep information from her. I knew that lately I hadn’t exactly earned her trust one hundred percent.

She frowned so hard that her forehead formed these little elevens between her eyebrows, wrinkles that I knew she hated so much she’d considered Botox to get rid of them. “Yes, honey, I trust you.”

I looked into her eyes. “I want to tell you everything. But I...I can’t. Not right now. Will you give me a little time to figure everything out first?” She didn’t speak for so long that I wondered if she ever would again. She backed up until she was fully in the house. I followed and shut the door behind me. Just before it closed completely I saw a suspiciously dragon-shaped silhouette do a loop-de-loop over the light of the moon.

Chris was still testing his new wings.

My mother’s hand trembled as she brushed her dark hair back from her face, her expression haunted. “I need to know more. I can’t just leave it like this right now. Where is he? What does he want? Why did he contact you and—and not contact me?” A tear slid down her cheek.

“Where has he been all of these years? Is he okay?”

The pain in her voice was enough to make me want to start crying too. I knew that she still cared about him. The anger had left quickly, leaving only this raw pain behind. And she wanted to know if he was okay. That wasn’t something she’d ask if she hated his guts, or didn’t care at all about him.

I
knew
she still loved him.

She’d been dreaming about him. Somehow, some way, they were still connected.

“Tomorrow,” I whispered, grabbing hold of her shaking hands with the one not clutching the book. “I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I swear I will.”

Before she could say anything else, ask more questions, or demand more truths, I turned from her and ran up the stairs to my bedroom. I locked the door behind me.

I’d wanted to tell her about my father for a long time, but had stopped myself because he demanded that I not say a word. Who knew she was such a shameless eavesdropper? But I couldn’t go back now. She knew I’d seen my father, that we’d been in contact. However, she didn’t know he was a demon king who lived in another world.

That was going to be very hard to explain.

I sat rigidly on the edge of my bed, trying to will myself to calm down. It wasn’t easy.

I held the book Rhys gave me tightly in my sweaty hands. It took me a couple more minutes before I opened the cover and forced myself to concentrate on what was written inside.

It was handwritten, which made sense if this was considered a one of a kind book. Page after page was filled with writing. Luckily for me, I was able to read it, it wasn’t in the strange language that I’d seen my father piece through in his work.

The pages talked about Shadows and their relation to their amulets, how it held their life force. That forcibly removing it would cause a Shadow to lose their solid form and slowly wither away and die. That the amulet could also be channeled with power to be used as a weapon, although very few Shadows knew of this. How the amulet also allowed a powerful demon who could access magic from the dark worlds to bond a Shadow servant to a demon master or mistress.

There was information about the Shadowlands once belonging to Shadows—of course. That was how it got its name. It surprised me that the conquering demons hadn’t renamed it. Then I found something interesting after reading information I already knew.

There is speculation that because the Shadowlands sits directly next to the Faery Realm
that there was, at one time, a connection or kinship between Shadowkind and Faerykind.

This knowledge and history, unfortunately, has been lost to all.

I’d wondered the same thing. They were so close, there had to be a reason for it.

Finally, I came to the end of the information about Shadows, which hadn’t been that much. To fill the pages, the author of this book had repeated the same stuff over and over, just rewording it differently to fill up space. I’d used the same tactic when writing a few essays for school, thinking I could fool my teachers into believing I’d done more research than I had. It never worked. They knew.

Just as Rhys had warned, there were blank pages that filled up the rest of the book. I flipped past a couple of them...

But then I stopped flipping when I suddenly came to more pages filled with writing. Different writing this time, another hand had written this. And another pen.

To whomever is reading this,

You are very special. I have waited a long time for you and worried that you’d never
learn the truth. You’re the only one who can help.

The true history of Shadowkind is lost, not by time or misplaced information, but on
purpose. Even I don’t know everything. But I know enough.

Once, not so very long ago, a truly evil curse was placed upon all of Shadowkind—a
curse that reached back through the years, rewriting the truth. Only I, a victim of another
evil curse, am able to remember some of the truth. I can’t say anything because I know I’ll
be killed if I do. So I have to sit back and watch as the years go by and no one learns of this.

Shadows were not always servants. Shadows were not always dependent on their
amulets. It’s the amulet that keeps them enslaved, that prevents them from having a choice
in their own destinies. It’s the amulet that will trigger an even worse curse—if they kill
anything from the dark worlds, they will develop a dangerous hunger that can lead to their
execution at the hands of demons who have always been more than happy to kill anything
they see as a threat.

I stopped reading for a moment, my heart racing. Michael didn’t only destroy Jonas in the Underworld, but he also killed a hellhound that attacked me. Is that what could have triggered this new curse?

I believe I know how to break the original Shadow curse and help return them to their
previous power, but doing so will change the world from that day forward. It is up to you,
whoever is reading this, to decide if it is worth it to break a curse that stretches its false truth
back a thousand years. Despite knowing all this, I’m personally powerless to do anything but
wait. For you.

You’re the only one able to read this. Anyone who is affected by the spell that protects the
curse won’t be able to see anything here but empty pages.

You alone have the power to change the worlds. To break the Shadow curse. To save
Shadowkind. And while you’re at it, it would be really great if you could break my curse too.

Pretty please.

Hoping to see you soon,

Beasley

I stared at the signature.
Beasley.
I recognized the name. It was the name of the demon council member I’d met during my trip to the Underworld. The one who looked more like a six foot tall talking cockroach than anything else. Did he have that monstrous form because he was cursed?

I flipped forward through more blank pages and found nothing else that might help fill in the blanks.

But this was enough to completely stun me.

Michael said that the hunger he now felt was like a curse. He had no idea how close to the truth he actually was.

Shadows were cursed—a curse that, according to this, wasn’t created very long ago but it was somehow able to reach a thousand years back through history. This was why Shadows were servants to demonkind and, possibly, why faeries and demons accepted this class distinction without a single argument. Why no one could remember their history except for bits and pieces.

Why everything had been taken away from them and they couldn’t exist without their amulets.

Their amulets were part of their curse. And yet without their amulets, they couldn’t hold solid form and could die. It was a lose-lose situation.

Now that I thought about it, that really did sound like a curse.

Was I really the only one who could read this message from Beasley? Dread had called me the girl with a foot in two worlds. I was half demon and half human. That made me different, I already knew that. I was rumored to be the first Darkling in a thousand years.

Beasley said the curse had reached back in Shadow history a thousand years.

The last Darkling had been killed because she was allegedly too dangerous to live, and any further demon/human romantic interaction was outlawed at risk of death. Darklings had the stigma of being out-of-control dangerous.

Suddenly, I had my doubts about the last Darkling being so dangerous. I knew that I wasn’t that way. I didn’t want to hurt anyone; I wanted to help them. Maybe the last Darkling had seen the truth when no one else could.

Maybe she’d tried to stop it or tell other people about it. And maybe that was what got her killed.

So many questions. They made my head spin.

My hand shook as I put the Shadow book in the top drawer of my bedside table, along with the beautiful faery rose from Rhys and the drawing that Chris had done for me that I now knew was of Clara, the murderously jealous faery girl.

Then I concentrated on my dragon’s tear and tried very hard to open a gateway to the Shadowlands. It still didn’t work. All it gave me was a headache from concentrating so hard.

I fumbled in my pocket until I pulled out the black rock. It hadn’t worked before, but it
had
to work now. I needed to know what had happened in the castle after I left. Michael was cursed.

Killing that hellhound had triggered this darker side that he wouldn’t be able to control. He thought he could find the answer himself, but according to the letter from Beasley, he would fail.

And he would be executed to protect others.

“Please work this time,” I whispered. I clutched the rock and it warmed in my hand. The room around me began to spin, and that made me hold on tighter. Faster and faster my bedroom spun until it shifted into the gray hallways of the Shadowlands castle.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone this way, but it would have to do for now.

I hurried through the hallways until I reached my father’s work room with the fireplace, the long table and the gazer in the corner. My father sat in a tall backed chair in front of the fire, staring into the flames as if mesmerized by them. There was a harsh expression on his face.