She swept into the room and accepted a chair. “Regina contacted me. She warned me of what’s going on with Geoffrey and Leo, and the Blood Oracle. You must all be cautious until they are caught and Crawl is back under lock and key. Nothing can go amiss. You must undergo the initiation and coronation without delay.”

As she sat there, it almost felt like she was one of us. Regal though she might be, the aura of her rule was fading. It made me want to cry.

“We’ll watch out. I promise. I’m also asking the guards to keep an eye on the Veil House during the day to protect Peyton and the others. Regina promised guards at night.”

“It heartens me to know you are taking this seriously. Myst must be destroyed. The balance must return. And you, Cicely, must finally visit the Court over which you will be ruling. It’s time to see your new home.”

The Barrow here would become Rhiannon’s new home. When she married Chatter—Grieve’s best friend and now soon-to-be King of Summer—they would live here, in the warmth of eternal summer. My own home was destined to be colder, caught in the grips of the eternal winter.

I sucked in a deep breath. The thought of living in perpetual snow and ice frightened me. “I wish…” But I stopped. There was no turning back, no walking away. Wishing for something that wasn’t meant to be wouldn’t make it happen.

“Yes, my child?” The Queen’s gaze rested on me, glorious and yet like fading flowers.

“I can’t wait to see my new home.” I forced a smile to my face. She knew how I felt, but I wouldn’t let her, or my father, down. I picked up the cell phone. “But I will admit, this is one thing I’m going to miss.”

“Once you take the throne, you must relinquish some of the trappings that keep you tied to the mortal world. The changes in lifestyle will take some getting used to, but there are wonders, Cicely. There are wonders you haven’t even dreamed of yet.”

With that, she smiled, rose, and passed to the door. “Your father will escort you to your new home tomorrow at noon. Be here, ready to go. Your cousin may attend. And so may your friends.” And, the hem of her dress whispering against the floor, she left the room.

I suppose this is the time for introductions.

My name is Cicely Waters. I’m twenty-six years old, and I’m one of the magic-born. Or at least, I always thought I was. I never knew my father, but had assumed he was the same lineage as Krystal, my mother. But a few weeks ago, I discovered that I’m also half Cambyra Fae—the Shifting Ones—and it threw my whole worldview into a tailspin.

So yes, I was born a witch, and I can control the wind. Or I’m learning to, at any rate. Until I was six years old, Krystal and I lived at the Veil House with aunt Heather and cousin Rhiannon.

When we were around five, Rhia and I met Grieve and Chatter out in the woods, and they secretly taught us how to increase our magic. They watched out for us, and we felt safe with them. Rhiannon and I made a pact never to tell anyone about them because my mother hated the fact that she was born to the magic and didn’t want me meddling in it either. And so they remained our secret, and everything was fine, or so we thought. That was a wonderful summer—as good as it could get, in my opinion. Heather acted as mother to both of us, while Krystal boozed her powers into oblivion.

Then, a few weeks after I turned six, my world crumbled. Fed up with her life, Krystal dragged me kicking and screaming down the front steps and away from everything I’d ever known. I spent the next twenty years on the road—eighteen of them with her. We moved from town to town, scamming, stealing, and doing whatever we needed to survive. Krystal sold herself into the booze and drugs so deep that, by the end, there was no reaching her. She drowned herself in a haze, to get away from the clamor of voices and visions in her head. Even at six years old, I realized that the only way we’d survive was if I took over, and so I bucked up, stepped in, and—with Ulean’s help—got us through.

Ulean warned me when the cops were on our tracks. She kept me from getting raped half a dozen times by telling me to get the fuck out of wherever I was. And she guarded me in the only ways she could.

Along the way, I also had help from the odd person here or there—they just seemed to fall into my life. The most important one was Uncle Brody, an old black yummanii man who, for the first few months when we were staying in Portland, Oregon, took me under his wing and taught me as many street smarts as he could. Maybe he could tell that Krystal was going batshit crazy. Maybe he just had a premonition that I needed his help. Whatever the case, he taught me the rules of the road. He also taught me to gamble so I could make money from penny-ante street games. And he taught me how to fight dirty.

“Cicely, girl, you have to learn how to hurt people,” he told me once, when I flinched at learning how to jab someone in the nuts. “Because there are plenty of people out there just waiting to hurt you. And trust me, if you give them an opening, they’ll take it. So don’t let them in.”

I paid attention; I learned to fight. And I used my wits and prescience to steer clear of potential situations.

And then, I’d also had my wolf…

When I was fourteen, Krystal met a man named Dane. I liked him and secretly hoped that he’d marry her and take us away from the streets. I think he would have, too, if my mother hadn’t been so skittish about committing herself to anyone or anything. But at any rate, he took care of us for a few months, until Krystal stormed out in a tantrum, and Dane got his brains blown out.

Dane was a tattooist and he inked all of my tattoos. First, came the faerie on my left breast, a little feral girl peeking out from a patch of belladonna. Second, the blackwork owls that encircled each of my upper arms. A pair on each side, over a moon with a dagger sticking through it. Matched sets, they heralded a part of my lineage I wouldn’t know about until I returned to New Forest. And third…third was my wolf.

My beloved wolf stared out from just above my navel, a vine of green leaves, silver roses, and purple skulls sprawling behind him, starting down on my left thigh, crossing my abdomen in a diagonal line, ending under my right ribs. From the beginning, I knew my wolf was a guardian. What I didn’t realize when I got the tattoo was that my wolf was a direct link to Grieve, who was a wolf shape-shifter.

The Cambyra Fae shift. All of us, half-breed or full-blood. Some of us shift into the form of an animal, but others—like Chatter—can turn into Elementals. Hence: the Shifting Fae. I’m part Uwilahsidhe, of the Owl Shifters.

My father, Wrath, is King of the Court of Rivers and Rushes—and I’ve known about him only for the past couple weeks. I’m the daughter of a king.

Wrath is Lainule’s husband, and we recently discovered that Lainule’s brother was Rhiannon’s father. It seems our very existence was planned out from the beginning. Rhiannon and I were born for this moment, born to be Queens, born to fulfill a destiny that wasn’t even clear at the time of our conception.

Add to that a past-life connection with Myst and with Grieve, and I feel pulled in so many directions sometimes it feels like I am coming apart at the seams. Myst is a monster, and I hate the fact that I was her daughter so many thousands of years ago. But she nurtures a grudge against me that was born back in the distant past and is determined to make me pay. She wants revenge for what I did to her then, and what I’m doing to her now.

Caught between worlds, caught between powers, I’m transforming so fast that sometimes I look in the mirror and don’t even recognize myself. Oh, yes, I’m still five four, 140 pounds of muscle, and I still have long, straight, shiny black hair and emerald eyes…but on the inside, I’m changing. And I’m not sure what I’m becoming.

And that scares me. Just a little.

By the time we finished hashing out matters, it was too late to do much, but I wasn’t tired. Grieve took my hand and led me outside. Here, behind the barriers of the portals, at least Winter wasn’t gripping us in her icy claws.

Grieve’s skin had an olive undertone, and his features were alien and yet exotic. But his eyes…his eyes had always captured me. When I was young, they’d been cornflower blue. That had changed when Myst conquered Lainule’s land, bloodied the Barrow, and killed and enslaved hundreds of the Cambyra Fae. She’d turned my beloved Grieve into one of the Vampiric Fae. She had drunk him down.

Like all Fae turned by either the vampires or the Indigo Court, Grieve had not died. Instead, he recovered, stronger than the vampires, stronger than the Fae. He’d become part of the Indigo Court, and his eyes had turned deep black, like the true vampires, but scattered with the sparkling stars marking the Indigo Court.

Only we’d managed to reverse some of the hold that Myst had on him. Although still a dangerous predator, at least he was no longer at the mercy of the constant bloodlust that drove the Shadow Hunters. He was my Wounded King. But his eyes would never be blue again.

Most of the birds were silent by midnight, but the animals of the Summer realm were out and about, and we could hear them slipping through the woods around us. A snake slithered past and it suddenly occurred to me that, once we took our place in the realm of Winter, we wouldn’t see snakes again. Or the giant banana slugs that inhabited the forests of the Pacific Northwest from spring to fall. Or robins, returning for the spring. A deep sense of loss began to sink through me, and I lowered myself onto a fallen snag covered with moss and mushrooms.

Grieve sat beside me, picking up my mood. I leaned my head against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of bonfires and rainstorms and chill autumn nights. He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head.

“How are you holding up? I know the training is coming fast, and it’s not easy. But soon we’ll be married and you’ll be my Queen. We’re going to make it this time around, Cicely.” He nuzzled my neck, and I caught my breath.

Grieve held my heart hostage with love, and he knew how to make me respond in a way no one had ever been able to before. He freed me to soar.

I caught his hand and brought it to my lips, kissing his fingers. “I hope you’re right. This lifetime hasn’t been much easier than the last.” Grieve and I were bound by a love that spanned lifetimes, soul-bound by a potion taken long ago when I was Myst’s daughter and he was crown prince of the Summer realm. We’d been Cherish and Shy then, and in the end, our love had gotten us killed.

“I felt Lannan, yesterday, sliming on you.” Grieve kicked a rock near the stump. “Someday…I will kill him.”

“But not today. And not tomorrow. We need him, still. And remember, he no longer holds my contract. Now that I’m Queen-Elect, I don’t have to submit to him. Let it go, for now. Let it be.” I didn’t want to think about Lannan. “Tell me about the Golden Isle—where Lainule and Wrath are going.”

Grieve let out a long sigh and stroked my hair back away from my face. “The Golden Isle lies long distant, in the mists. It is the homeland of the Cambyra Fae. Where we began. Where all of the Sidhe come from. We are born in body to this world now…though millennia ago, we were born in the Golden Isle first and then emigrated here. And when we die, when we begin to fade, we return to the Golden Isle. The islands are not paradise, but rather secluded, away from all other realms.”

I pressed my lips together, thinking. After a moment, I gave him a sideways glance. “Lainule is dying, isn’t she? Even though we found her heartstone. Tell me the truth. I need to know.”

Grieve slowly nodded. “Yes. Once you reunite a queen with her heartstone, she begins to age in this world. Only by returning to the Golden Isle will she live out her natural life span.” He looked like he wanted to say something but then shook his head.

“What is it?” I poked him gently in the side. “Tell me. No secrets!”

His dark eyes, with the swirling stars, turned toward me. “You do realize that as long as your heartstone stands and you are not murdered, you will not die. Becoming Queen, going through the initiation, will make you effectively immortal.”

The forest echoed with silence. I closed my eyes, trying to wrap my head around what he was saying, but it seemed so huge, so immense, that there was no way of comprehending the full extent of what I’d gotten myself into.

I hung my head. “On a logical level, yes, I think I knew that. But it still hasn’t hit me, yet—what this all means. Not in my gut. So much has happened in such a short time that I’m reeling with the changes. Sometimes I take a breath and wonder if this is all a dream. A prolonged nightmare…” I touched his hand. “Most of it, that is. Not you. You’re the dream come true.”

He entwined his fingers through mine. “When Myst took over the Barrow and routed our people…when she turned me…the only thing that kept me going was the hope you would return. That something would end the eternal winter. I know now that I can never return to who I was. I was born to rule the land of Summer, I know it in my heart. And now, I must take to Winter’s throne. But it’s all right, because you will be there with me. And thanks to Luna, and her sister—Zoey—I can control the Shadow Hunter in my soul.”

Bringing my hand to his lips, he grazed my wrists, nipping gently and tasting the blood that flowed. His tongue played gently over my skin and I closed my eyes, reveling in his touch.

“Do you really believe that this time, we’ll get our happy ending?”

When he brought his gaze up to meet mine, his dark smile widened. “I hope so, my love. Finally, after all the years…I hope so.”

Long ago, there was a vampire named Geoffrey. Only his name wasn’t Geoffrey at the time. But he had a yen for power, and he was determined to take over the Vampire Nation. His reasoning went thus: Turn the Dark Fae, and the result—the Vampiric Fae—would be under his control, with both their own powers and those of the vampires. And it would make him stronger and more powerful and he could throw down the Crimson Queen and take the throne for himself.