There were preparations to make first. I had the energy—the comments just kept coming—but now I needed direction. Wandering into Faerie with nothing but a lovelorn heart and bald desperation didn't seem like it would take me very far at all, and it certainly wouldn't do Sy any good. I gathered up the various mismatched scented candles from around the chalet's various over-designed bathrooms and arranged them in a careful circle on the living room floor. There was a convenient grill lighter stocked beside the wood stove. Then I descended down into the studio and retrieved the nearly empty whiskey bottle from last night and Sy's beater guitar, the less-than-tour-ready model he played around on for fun. Into the candle circle they went. I had the iron poker, but in a world of magic and fae forms, the iron wouldn't be doing any convenient banishing. It would certainly hurt any faerie flesh it touched, but in all likelihood that would just make the fae party pissed and pained rather t

Darkness and cold buffeted my skin, tangible malicious magics nipping at me like tiny insects. But all of a sudden, we burst out again into air and light—that same, no-man's-land gray light of the sky. I twisted, trying to grip Jarrah's wrist to relieve some of the terrible tension on my scalp as I dangled by the hair in his grip. My eyes swam with tears, but I blinked them away, trying to focus. We were in the overgrown, stony ruins of what might have once been the great hall of some ancient palace. The floor was broken by huge tree roots and the shifting of earth. This place had been empty for a long, long time—forgotten, in fact. I'd never heard of a palace in the borderlands between the Seelie and Unseelie realms. I heard a cry of distress and despair—in a voice I knew as well as my own. "Sy!" I screamed. "Sy, where are you?!"Suddenly Jarrah's hand let go of my hair, and I crashed, sprawled, onto the broken stones. I raised my head, mind swimming with pain and confusion a

There was only a second to act. Luckily, Jarrah hadn't seen me pull my phone from my pocket when he flipped me over. And he didn't see my thumb hovering over the 'play' icon until it was too late.A burst of golden magic ignited on the air as mine and Sy's recorded voices burned together in the stillness. I felt the rush of magic through my veins, against my skin, and I took hold of the energy at once, pushing all of it I could gather in that second against Jarrah.The Unseelie lord flew backward off me, the knife flying from his hand as he crashed into the broken flagstones behind him. He was on his feet in the next moment, but so was I. The music was still playing. I balled my hands into fists, pulling more and more of that magic to myself. I pushed the magic around me in another rush, just in time. I felt Lord Raelen's attack smash against my magic barrier from behind me. I shuffled quickly to get out from between the two powerful fae lords, pulling golden magic around me agai

The magic caught at once: I felt it ignite like a dynamite fuse, searing towards unstoppable explosion. The Queen's attention was on us. It was like looking up at an impossibly tall ocean wave about to crash down on your head.But Realen moved fast. The next thing I knew, I had toppled out of his arms to the hard ground. The air around me was an explosion of silvery Seelie magic and the golden burst of Sy's invocation. I scrambled blindly forward over the broken stones, toward that sense of safe, familiar gold. Toward Sy. I had to get to him before…Song echoed to my ears, a song so delicate and lovely it shimmered against my skin like pleasure. The might of the Seelie court in its glory crashed like waves of thunder. The gray light of this place exploded into brilliant silver. Horse hooves, charging, shook the ground. The horses were spectral, cloud-like, too lovely to be physically real, as was the armored woman astride the lead mare's back. Queen Titania sat tall, impossibly, on

The morning light struck in through the wide picture windows of the chalet bedroom. We were still firmly in bed, sticky with sweat and Sy's slow whiskey kisses from the night before. I couldn't stop touching him, even lazily half asleep. I kissed his jaw, the subtle rise of the dark laurel tattoo, his shoulder. I felt him nuzzle his nose into my hair. "We have to get up," he whispered, and I shivered with pleasure as I felt his hot breath against my ear transform into a teasing nibble. "People are going to start getting here soon.""Hmmmph…Just a little while longer."His palm slid up my rips, kneading distractingly at my breast."And you're not helping," I scolded, pressing against him. I felt his c*ck stirring against my leg, and we lay there together in the tender potential of what might come next. A gentle repetition of last night: my lips coaxing him to attention, his hips firm and strong against mine as he pushed deep, igniting all my most secret senses. He was careful aroun