“I just want to be sure you’re all okay there.”
“You do not have to worry about us anymore, Misty.” Kevin’s voice was quiet and firm, a far cry from how young he had sounded before he turned Lyccan. “We just want you to be okay, too. To be happy.”
“I am happy here, Kevin.”
Kelly looked away, not wanting anyone to see how Misty’s words scared her. She got that Domenico did something unforgivable to Misty, but she also believed with all her heart that every person deserved a chance for atonement. Misty herself had taught her that. She used to teach Kelly that every morning, telling her over breakfast – which was basically just cereal and water in those days – how Kelly should take the higher ground whenever other girls in school posted nasty comments about her online.
“We’ll visit you every weekend,” Kelly promised. “But for now, is it okay if we just stay where we are?” The hurt in Misty’s eyes made Kelly want to take her words back but she managed to stay silent. She had to do this. With every day that her family stayed with the Morettis, Misty would also be forced to remember that she had once loved a man named Domenico Moretti.
After, Misty kept her smile in place as she continued waving goodbye at her siblings. When they disappeared completely from view, Misty immediately broke into a run, gasping when she reached the beautiful brick house that Daryl shared with his lover Milo.
She raised her fist to pound on the door heavily, but with Daryl opening the door right away Misty almost ended up pounding his face.
“Whoa!” Daryl grimaced. “That bad?”
“Please” was all Misty could say.
Daryl stepped aside and locked the door behind them without a word. The silence persisted as they walked to a small room kept hidden at the back of the house, away from prying eyes, its doors hidden behind a full-length gilded mirror.
It was dark inside the room, Daryl lighting only a lantern that created a tiny halo of golden light. She sat on one armchair while Daryl sat next to her. “Are you sure?” he asked, worry lining his voice.
“I need this, Daryl. Please.” Misty didn’t like how desperate and needy she sounded but knew it was exactly how she felt. It had taken all of her control not to cover her ears every time her siblings talked about Domenico.
“Open your hand then,” Daryl said quietly.
Her fingers uncurled. She closed her eyes. She had done this every night and had memorized every step of the routine. Her heart started to hammer in a horribly twisted mix of fear and excitement as Daryl placed a burning-hot crystal on her palm. Her fingers closed around it, tearing out a gasp from her throat.
The crystal, imbued with Faerie powers, allowed her to replay and experience just one day of her life. And every night, she made the same choice.
The festive sounds of a ball played in her mind like a fading melody, the laughter and music, the chatter of familiar voices, all of it making her heart ache with painful nostalgia. This was the night that ended it all.
Her breath caught when she saw herself smiling up at Domenico, listening to what he had to say like he was her god. How beautiful he was. And how exquisitely stupid and foolish she had been to believe he truly loved her!
Tears blurred her vision, and when she blinked them away, Rafaella was already there.
“When we say ‘mated’ we’re not talking about sexual intercourse, you idiot. We’re talking about mating as the true joining of two mates…of you becoming like us.”
Even in her memories, the sound of Rafaella’s laughter was poisonous, but it wasn’t what brought the tears back to her eyes and tore her apart. It was the look on her face that night---the moment Misty had the painful inkling that Domenico Moretti would be breaking her heart.
“You may love me, Domenico…but you don’t love me enough.”
Daryl snatched the crystal from her hand, forcing her back into the present.
Misty found herself on her knees, heavy sobs racking her body.
Daryl gathered her in his arms. “Oh, Misty. You have got to stop torturing yourself.”
She shook her head even as the excruciating pain of her memories continued to squeeze her heart like a vise with thorns. “I can’t, Daryl. I need to learn how to stop loving him.”
Chapter One
“Misty, Misty, oh my God, Misty!” Daryl came running into the courtyard, his two-inch wooden sandals making clopping sounds on the brick ground. He skidded to a stop – just to kiss his partner, Milo, on the lips.
The love shining in the g*y couple’s eyes made Misty’s own eyes burn, and she hurriedly looked away, trying to distract herself with the shimmering beauty of her surroundings. Because that was how everything was her in the realm of Faeries – shimmering. Probably the only thing that wasn’t shimmering was her heart, which had been crushed to pieces by a no-good---
No, no, no. She wasn’t going to get to that. She wasn’t going to be melodramatic about it. That part of her life was over.
Daryl finally managed to pull himself away from Milo. “Misty, oh my God---”
The alarm in his face finally got to her, and the sword she had been holding fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers. She had been spending most of her time in the realm of Faeries practicing her sword-fighting skills, finding some strange sense of peace with the clashing sound that swords made. She didn’t have to feel when she was fighting. It was…peaceful.
“What is it? Is it my family?”
“No. Well…not really…there had been an attack against the Lyccans and one of their kind had been tortured.” His eyes were bleak. “It’s your sister-in-law…Estrella.”
After sixteen months of licking her wounds, Misty finally left the realm of the Faeries. As the emissary and liaison officer of the Faeries for the Lyccans, it was her job to make sure that the pact between the two races would be carried out.
The whispers and the stares began the moment she walked inside the majestic main hall of the Lyccan Council. She climbed the grand staircase to the committee office in the second floor, where Daryl’s father, the Castellano pack leader, waited.
“Misty,” Aurelius greeted her warmly. The white-haired old man gave her a slight bow.
“Sir,” she said, returning the bow with one of her own. She didn’t want to do it, but courtesy made her go through the motions. That bow wasn’t because she was the Faeries’ chosen emissary. It was because she was still Misty Moretti in his eyes, wife to the heir of the Moretti pack leader.