To The Fairest Read online

  At first, when the music had begun to play, I’d thought one of the maids had been ordered to stay the night. At the time I’d been too busy enjoying the wind on my face after so long without it. My mother had encouraged me to place my feet on top of her own, and grabbing my hand she begun a dizzying waltz that had taken my breath away. My head had fallen back and to this day I still dreamed of the way the sky had spun in my vision, the way I couldn’t distinguish between the stars and the snow that fell and kissed my face.

  I should have been freezing.

  But I wasn’t.

  “The world is large, Alexandria.” She’d told me. “The universe never-ending. But never forget that you were carved from stardust and shadows.” She’d hugged me close and her heartbeat drummed in my ear, steady and strong. “There should be no room in you for fear. No room for doubt.” She’d smiled down at me and the expression had been contagious. “You are a Greyson after all.”

  For a moment a blissful moment, I was seven years old again and I was on top of the world. My mother loved me and the future was full of possibility. But then reality hit me like a sledgehammer. It wasn’t snowing and I wasn’t being held in the arms of my mother.

  No.

  Ashes were falling from the sky and I was being cradled Sam’s chest. We were sitting on in the dirt and across from us a building was burning. The flames so hot that they were white. I realized belatedly that the building in question was the theatre. We must have found our way out of hell and back to the Dragon settlement. Though how you moved from that realm to this one I’d never know. Maybe I wasn’t meant to. Rather than think on it, I pressed my forehead against Sam’s bare chest. He smelled of ashes. In fact, we both did. It was easy to see the soot that turned our skin black since we were both as naked as the day we were born. The only thing I wore was the Toadstone and when I brushed my fingertips across it I found it cool to the touch. I could see its pearlescent brilliance from the corner of my eye and I stared at it as I felt tears gather.

  “I think she’s awake.”

  It was Rachel. I didn’t bother looking at her. A hand settled at the center of my back and I flinched slightly.

  “Alex.” Chris said hesitantly. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” I whispered brokenly.

  “Will you be?”

  I thought about Danielle. About the fact that her ashes had been left in the burning pits of hell, and my breath hitched.

  “I don’t know.”

  Sam’s arms tightened around me and I felt Chris kiss the top of my head and my face crumpled as I allowed grief to get the best of me.

  Epilogue

  “You gonna be all right?” I jumped, flushing when I realized I’d forgotten I wasn’t the only one in the car. It had been months since Danielle and Rumple had died and in that time my baby bump had turned into a baby beach ball. Since I’d successfully explained to Sam that infants couldn’t ride motorcycles, we’d broken down and invested in a car. Which hadn’t been too much a strain on a resources considering the fact that Danielle had left me the entirety of her considerable fortune. While she hadn’t left anything in her will concerning Chris, my brother and his wife were still well off when it came to finances. Turns out, golden eggs were pretty damn valuable. Especially if you melted them down and sold them pound by pound. Giving LaRue her share of the proceeds had pretty much guaranteed that she would keep everything she’d seen and heard in goose form to herself and it didn’t hurt that a dashing older man name Jack was now frequenting her shop on a regular basis.

  Though LaRue wasn’t the only person in the city keeping their mouths shut about the mayhem that had affected so many. I’d never realized just how many ‘damsels’ lived in the area and it was a miracle really that there hadn’t been more casualties. Now that the Hellfire that had been building within Sam for months had been expelled, he seemed calmer. More like his old self. These days it was rare to catch the glimpse of purple within the dazzling blue of his eyes. It no longer felt as if he were a bomb waiting to go off each time he shifted.

  Speaking of recoveries, Maleficent had made a full one, though her probation officer had given her some time off in light of what she’d been through. When I’d asked her what she would be doing with all of her free time she’d smiled and told me that she had stories to tell and an old friend to see. Which had been cryptic, but her business was her own and I refused to pry after hearing that she’d been tortured for refusing to hand over Sam.

  For the time being Chris, Rachel, and I were now the responsibility of Clarabell. Which I thought was stupid since I personally couldn’t see her. Though when I thought about it, I suppose it made sense. Most charges didn’t have relationships with their Godmothers. They didn’t even know they existed. We were special cases.

  I still wore the Toadstone that had protected me from Sam’s Hellfire, and as I looked out my window at my childhood home I clutched it, rubbing my thumb over its smooth surface as butterflies danced in my stomach. I hadn’t been back to the house since Danielle had died. Sam had taken over keeping the property up and managing our new riches. The house had been left to both Chris and I, or more accurately her ‘ungrateful offspring and redheaded stepchild (assuming she hadn’t managed to kill him yet)’.

  Chris had been touched by the gesture, but since he and Rachel were currently on their honeymoon it was up to me to go through our mother’s possessions and divvy them up. I already knew what we should keep and what should be auctioned off. It was just a matter of getting out of the car and actually stepping foot inside the house.

  “I think so.” I answered finally. Catching Sam’s eye I smiled and reached over to squeeze his hand. “Can you give me a few minutes alone before you come in?”

  I could tell by the tightening of his shoulders that he didn’t like the idea of leaving me on my own. Understandable when my belly was large enough to impede most activities. Like seeing my own feet, bending over, sneezing without peeing and or farting, and etc. But I didn’t plan on doing anything more strenuous than climbing some stairs, which would be an adventure all its own. Sam must have read the pleading in my eyes because finally he sighed and nodded.

  “Fine.” He said. “Five minutes.” He waved me off and I got out of the car before he could change his mind. I waddled up the walkway and nearly bent over backwards climbing the front steps. By the time I actually made it into the house I was seriously considering the wisdom of this solitary walkthrough. But I needed. I didn’t just owe it to Danielle, I owed it to myself to look at our home one last time the way it used to be and remember what had gone on here. There had been evil committed in this house, there was no denying that. But there was a whole lot of good as well. Like she’d told me that last day, she wasn’t a monster but she had been capable of committing monstrous acts.

  But the Black Widow wasn’t what I remembered as I strolled from one room to the next. The woman who came to mind was calculating in her smiles, bold in her opinions, and free with her hugs. She’d loved me in her own way, and choosing me and her unborn grandchild over the power she could have gained through our deaths was proof of it. I don’t know what brought me to the room at the end of the hall, but there I was. Once more staring down at that glass dome with its dead rose. I lay my hand against the surface and my body flushed briefly with magic.

  “I’ll miss you too, Mama.” I said softly.

  “Alex?” It was Sam, and I let loose a shaky sigh, reluctant to leave just yet.

  “Alex?” He called again. “I can’t tell if you’re dead or ignoring me. We need to work on our communication before the baby gets here.”

  Rolling my eyes, I finally answered him as I heard his booming footsteps on the stairs.

  “Coming.” I called. Turning away from the case and its occupant, I let my fingers linger a second longer upon the glass before I hurried from the room. I went to him, a smile on my face as behind me the blackened rose shook free of the mantle of death in favor of a world painted in shades of
stardust and shadows.

  ~ END ~

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I’m not a big fan of normal. It has its place of course, but the imagination and things that inspire a person should transcend the idea of normal. Normal is a stepping stone. A building block you can use to make something fantastic and surreal.

  It’s why I write. I’m always looking for that angle, that previously unexplored aspect of a story. Don’t just tell me about Marie Antoinette, let me know about her executioner and how he was secretly in love with the woman he was forced to behead, and that’s the real reason she apologized to him on her way to the chopping block.

  My stories are a little strange, my methods unorthodox, but it’s how I see the world and the people in it. Some people call me antisocial, but really I just like to absorb things. I love writing enough that I don’t mind that I’m still in the ‘starving artist’ phase of my career, but I hope that one day I’ll make enough doing what I love to be able to afford something other than a kid’s meal from McDonalds.

  Connect with me online at www.AdrianneBrooks.com or Facebook.com/AuthorAdrianneBrooks.

  OTHER TITLES BY ADRIANNE BROOKS

  Kissed By Moonlight

  Haunted By Moonlight

  Touched By Moonlight