Prince of Air and Darkness
Prince of Air and Darkness
By M.A. Grant
Phineas Smith has been cursed with a power no one could control.
Roark Lyne is his worst enemy and his only hope.
The only human student at Mather’s School of Magick, Phineas Smith has a target on his back. Born with the rare ability to tap into unlimited magick, he finds both Faerie Courts want his allegiance—and will do anything to get it.
They don’t realize he can’t levitate a feather, much less defend the Faerie Realm as it slips into civil war.
Unseelie Prince Roark Lyne, Phineas’s roommate—and self-proclaimed arch nemesis—is beautiful and brave and a pain in the ass. Phineas can’t begin to sort through their six years of sexual tension masquerading as mutual dislike. But Roark is also the only one able to help Finn tame his magick.
Trusting Roark’s mysterious motives may be foolish; not accepting his temporary protection would be deadly.
Caught in the middle of the impending war, Phineas and Roark forge a dangerous alliance. And as the walls between them crumble, Phineas realizes that Roark isn’t the monster he’d imagined. But their growing intimacy threatens to expose a secret that could either turn the tide of the war...or destroy them both.
This book is approximately 110,000 words
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
For Reid. I wish I knew your love story.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
About The Marked Prince
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Phineas
The tip of the blade skims over my ribs, burning from the cold of the ice, but not drawing fresh blood. Not yet.
“How much more do you think he can take?”
Some part of me wishes she’d just get it over with. We both know it’s the next step. The slicing. The screaming. The metal cuffs biting into my wrists, taking my weight when my knees go out from under me.
Except I don’t think I can scream anymore. My throat’s too raw.
Maybe that’s why she doesn’t press further. She said she liked hearing those cries. Called them music.
“He’s useless,” the man says, voice echoing from a distant place in the chamber.
It’s large, dimly lit—everything a subterranean torture chamber should be. I had plenty of time to memorize the dips in the walls. To focus on the pattern of the strange grates in the stone floor while I waited for someone to come tell me why the hell I’d been snatched off the street on my way back to the apartment. The kidnappings are something I’m used to. The torture...isn’t. At least the grates make sense now. They’ll need them to wash my blood away when they’re done.
“Let’s put him out of his misery,” the man suggests.
I recognize that accent. Vaguely Irish, but older. But this man isn’t Roark Lyne. Roark and I hate each other, but he wouldn’t play with me like this. Roark would have killed me days ago. Or has it only been hours?
I’m too weak to swallow the sobs working free. Can’t stop my eyelids from trembling when I shut them, desperate to stop the tears.
In the earth deep below me, the ley line pulses dully with each beat of my heart, each throb of the fresh wounds covering my chest, as if it’s bleeding with me.
“Let me ask him one more time.”
Strong fingers grip my chin, yanking my head up. Stars explode in my vision and the air rushes from my lungs, but I’m too exhausted to fight.
“Open your eyes,” she murmurs, shaking my face with far too much gentleness for all the damage she’s done.
I force my eyelids up, but the figure in front of me weaves in and out of focus as the tears spill free.
She’s beautiful. The legends always say that about Queen Mab, but no one has ever done her justice. Dark eyes with long lashes, a strong nose, a stern mouth. Hair black as ebony and skin pale as snow. Maybe she’s where the Grimms got it from...
“Good boy,” she coos.
I flinch when her other hand, the one holding the dagger of crystal clear ice, rises in the corner of my failing vision. She laughs at that and brushes hair off my forehead with her knuckle.
“Now, Phineas, I want you to tell me how you’re able to use the ley lines.”
“Can’t,” I mumble.
The dagger drops from my sight. Her eyes narrow and her nails dig into my chin. “Can’t tell me? Is it such a secret that you would give up your life?”
The wound registers a second later when the skin peels apart and the numbness from the blade wears off. The ley line flares, energy so volatile it flows out of me with a high-pitched whine.
But the ley line dives back into the earth and the whine continues until the air runs out of my lungs and I have to gasp for my next breath. Only then does it start again.
Mab’s fingers dig into my sweat-drenched scalp, ripping my head back up by my hair. I don’t recognize the man in the reflection that plays over her soulless eyes.
“That,” she whispers, and the fear gripping my heart only tightens at her tranquility. “Tell me how you did that.”
I fight to form the words. “Can’t,” I repeat, trying to get her to understand. “Don’t know how.”
She can take it. Take my power. Anything to make this stop.
She makes a noise and releases me. My head rolls toward my shoulder. The world reduces itself to pain. Every heartbeat. Every breath. Every drip of sweat rolling down my neck and stinging its way over the broken flesh of my chest.
Soft whispers as Mab and her partner confer.
What they say doesn’t matter. I’m going to die here.
I’m going to die because I’m human and they’re treating me like something else...something that can survive this.
Will they take my body back so my parents can bury it? They’re fae. Surely they can hide what they’ve done. I don’t want my mother or father seeing me like this. Don’t want them to be haunted by questions of how long I suffered before it all was over.
Bury me under the oak tree on the hill. Next to the dogs and roses and the six tiny crosses memorializing the brothers and sisters I never knew. I’ll be able to watch the fields turn gold. Watch the snow drift against the fence posts...
“Wake up.”
I jerk at the dismissive words. I’d drifted off. Probably bad with this kind of blood loss.
Cool air. Goose bumps hurt. Skin pulls tight, even when it’s split open.
“You know what I want,” she murmurs. “This won’t stop until I get it.”
“Won’t help,” I gasp out as the blade tip digs into my pec.
She doesn’t watch the knife’s course. She watches my face instead.
The knife digs in deeper. I clamp my jaw so I don’t scream. Her hand’s
steady, ensuring every shift in pressure, every angling of the blade, tears out impossible sounds. She forces the ley line to rise again and again, feeding me raw power to keep me together, to keep the darkness circling my vision from taking me under.
The blade slips deeper, rasps as it grinds against my rib.
Back bowing at the sound. The tremor reverberates through my chest. Every nerve electric.
I can’t do this anymore. I give up all control. The ley line rushes to meet her winter magick. She shields herself, and smiles while I blaze.
“Beautiful,” she whispers and reaches out. Her finger slides into the wound and runs over the bone.
Please, let me die, I beg the ley line.
It hesitates, its power stalling for a half breath. Long enough for my body to register the full extent of my injuries and all the pain they bring—
I welcome the darkness.
Chapter One
Five Years Later...Phineas
It’s the nightmare, not an alarm that wakes me. I blink, staring up at my ceiling, while my mind processes how I’m no longer trapped in the Unseelie sídhe, strung up and bleeding. I’m not at Mab’s mercy. I’m lying in my bed, safe in my apartment that sits on the edge of campus at Mathers’s School of Magick. My mind may be grasping that fact, but until I clench my fists into my sheets, forcing myself to register the sensation of fabric beneath me, my body refuses to accept the truth.
The cheap cotton sheets steam from the combined effect of my panic sweat and the ley line’s shivering heat. At least this time I didn’t completely lose control and light my bed on fire. Small victories, right?
I wince and rub at the scars on my chest, trying to ease the old aches that never fully leave. They healed years ago, but sometimes, after the worst nights, I still feel the edge of the blade dragging over the bone. A shiver runs up my spine and I roll over, burying my head into my pillow, forcing my mind away from the memory. Another night, another nightmare.
A creak echoes through the darkness and I hold my breath, listening for other warning sounds. Roark Lyne, my royal pain in the ass faerie roommate, keeps strange hours. I can’t expect much else from the Unseelie Court’s Prince of Air and Darkness...the PAD. God, he hates it when I call him that. He always bitches about my lack of respect for his royal title, one he inherited from his mother. Ignoring his title makes us more equal. It helps me forget who his mother is, and how her actions define our awkward stalemate.
He feigns ignorance about my nightmares and their cause. The closest he comes to showing any sign of remorse is knocking on the wall to wake me up before I light the room on fire. That hasn’t woken me tonight, though. I strain to hear another sound, a sign of Roark’s presence. No rustle of sheets, no footfalls on the floor, no grunt of irritation when he tries to fall back asleep. On the other side of the wall, Roark’s room lies vacant, just like it’s been for the past few weeks. He isn’t back yet, I remind myself. He’s never missed a grand entrance in all the years we’ve been stuck together and I doubt he’ll change for our last year. He’ll waltz in, show off his magickal power, and remind me again why humans like me aren’t allowed to attend magickal universities like Mathers. Remind me I’m a freak and a fluke. As if his constant ridicule is necessary to remind me of my shortcomings on top of all the fucking monsters crawling out of the darkness to try to kill me.
After almost two weeks of recurrent nightmares, sleep deprivation may kill me first. The slow burn in my eyes warns that it’s got to be an ungodly hour of the morning. There is no other reason why this bitch of a headache is setting in. Going back to sleep would be incredible, but getting up and downing some painkillers is the smarter choice.
A piercing ringtone decides my fate. I groan and fumble a hand over my nightstand until I find my phone. I wince against the bright light of its screen to check the caller ID.
Mom.
Shit. I let it ring out instead of sending it directly to voicemail—avoiding the questions I know she’d ask later about why I’m up so freaking early—and toss my phone back on the nightstand. At some point I’m going to have to answer. I can’t avoid this conversation forever.
Painkillers. I need painkillers.
By the time I come back from taking a few, Mom’s given up calling me directly. Instead, a notification lurks on-screen, promising a waiting voicemail. Funny how such innocuous details—the red blip of a voicemail, the single-page letter from a bank requesting a meeting to discuss the foreclosure, the subtle appearance of moving boxes in the garage—can upend your world. Unlike monsters or faeries or kidnappers, you never see these details coming. They don’t draw blood or leave visible scars or bruises. You can’t fight against them or use magick to fix them. You can only wait to see if you survive them.
It’s too early to face her news, so I ignore the notification, abandoning my bed and waiting phone to move to my desk. A click of the lamp and the space is bathed in a warm, yellow glow. I push aside course texts and drag the heavy tome I borrowed from my Magickal Histories professor closer to the light. I’ve scoured the page of archaic calligraphy so many times I have the damn thing memorized.
Yef I may helpe ye to suffer this grete peyne, as god will that I haue suffered it, take my counseile—
“Rightio, Mr. Courtenay,” I mumble, continuing to skim his advice as I set out the tools I’ll need for this morning’s practice. “Brothers in peyne and all that...”
I obey the instructions to the letter as I channel the ley line. Every year it’s gotten easier to sense the river of energy flowing in the earth beneath me, easier to connect with it. Controlling how much of the power to use...that’s a bit more complicated. Hence the medieval how-to guide written by a former ley line host, Henry V’s bestie.
A guide which is apparently still full of shit, since the delicate feather I’m trying to lift from the aluminum pie plate has given up the ghost and transformed into a smoking pile of ash instead. Whatever. I’m going to be successful at least once before I have to leave for class. Emerging from the ley line when I’m this exhausted leaves magick clinging to my skin like hot wax, a distracting layer between me and the real world. I shake my head and pull another feather out of the stash in my desk drawer and try again. And again. And again.
* * *
Classes didn’t go any better than my practice this morning, and my intramural football team’s practice was too relaxed to work out my stress, so I’m practically vibrating when I walk into Thirsty Thursday at Domovoi’s bar tonight. Domovoi’s is a supernatural watering hole that lies a mere two blocks from Mathers’s campus. Between the bar service, the full menu with plenty of exotic options, the dance floor, and the magickal spells and charms put in place to provide privacy and peace for those who want it, Domovoi’s is everyone’s favorite hangout. Its clientele is a mixture of broke students and other magickal beings, although tonight’s crowd seems strangely subdued.
I excuse my way past the outer edges of the small crowd gathered near the bar. A raucous crow confirms the center of attention to be Robin Goodfellow, one of the faerie messengers between Courts. Most of the fae surrounding him and laughing are Unseelie, with only a few Seelie listening in as they wait for drinks.
I’m almost through the crowd when Goodfellow’s voice soars above the surrounding noise. “Let me through! I’ve got a great one for him.”
A moment later, Goodfellow stands across from me, a hand clamped to my shoulder, and a drunken grin twisting his mouth into the illusion of good humor. “Hey, man, can I tell you a joke?”
I hate Goodfellow. He’s a prick and a petty shit and even Roark despises him. But he’s popular and pissing him off can leave you the victim of practical jokes and unfortunate accidents for far longer than I’m willing to risk, so I let him support himself on me and say, “Sure.”
“What’s the best thing about humans?” Goodfellow asks. Behind him, the crowd watches us. I get the suspicion I’m not going to like his punch line.
“What?”
He throws his head back and guffaws. A few of the Seelie sitting at the bar look down at their drinks and snicker, but the majority of the Unseelie who’d been surrounding Goodfellow look down or away. Some are brave enough to shake their heads disapprovingly. A troll I had a class with steps forward and tugs at Goodfellow’s arm.
“You’ve probably had enough to drink,” he tells Goodfellow. When the faerie messenger allows another faerie from the crowd to lead him back to the bar, the troll glances at me and says, “Sorry about that, Finny. He’s drunk.”
“Yeah,” I mumble, “’s fine.”
No one else stops me as I head for more familiar and friendly company. My satyr roommate, Herman, and his demi-Gorgon girlfriend, Sue, have already claimed our usual table on the quiet edge of the dance floor. Sue’s tucked against Herman’s side in the booth, contentedly reading a book despite the noisy chaos surrounding us. Herman pushes an empty chair toward me with his hoof. “What happened back there?”
“Goodfellow was being a douche canoe, as usual.”
Herman clicks his tongue and frowns. “I hate that guy. Don’t worry about heading over there again. Gumba already went to grab the beer.”