Claiming the Prince: Book One (2 page)

His glum expression was made gloomier by the scars. They marred both his cheeks, the left worse than the right, where the wounded flesh had healed into a knotted web. They sliced across his nose and even his lips. His forehead remained mostly unscathed. It looked as though Lavana had tried to slice him into ribbons, like she’d toyed with him rather than simply killing him, which would’ve been more honorable.

“You have a Prince,” he said. “And you have the right to challenge Lavana to become our family’s Radiant. It has been ten months since my mistress took the High Road, there are only three months left for you to put yourself forward before the end of the year.”

The urgency was apparent in his eyes, as well as his voice. A year—thirteen months in the Lands—from the day the last Radiant died was all a claimant had to put herself forward.

She wiped the crumbs from her jeans onto the scuffed, fake wood floors. “I’m exiled, Damion.
We’re
exiled.”

“You were exiled by the Radiant. But my mistress is gone now. You have a Prince. Lavana doesn’t. That alone—”

“Riker has never even set foot in the Lands. He has no idea what it means to be a Prince. He really doesn’t even understand why he feels compelled to stay with me.”

“So, what are you saying? You don’t love him? What Radiant has ever loved her Prince? That’s not important. So long as you have one, that is all that matters, and you know it.”

He pushed aside the pizza box and sat on the coffee table—which groaned in protest—and looked her in the eye.

“You can go home, Magdalena. You can vie again.”

She gazed steadily back at him. “Is that why you came here? To convince me to return?”

“Why are you reluctant? Are you afraid?”

She stiffened. “I’m not afraid.”

“It’s been a long time,” he said. “Perhaps you have not kept fit—”

“That’s not it,” she said, though she hadn’t touched her finger-knives since she’d been exiled, let alone trained. She sat forward. “I am not a part of that world any longer, Damion. And I have no desire to be.”

Marred as his face was, it was easy to read. At the moment, it was disbelieving.

“We are safe here,” she said. “At least, safer than we were back home. We live in peace. All the races that have fled, Pixies, dwarfs, even some Elves—”

He recoiled. “Elves?”

“I haven’t seen any, but I’ve heard there are a few.” She pushed up from the chair, sighing. “That’s not the point. The Lands . . . all the fighting, vying for the family, the lust for the Crown . . . What has it gotten any of us? I know how this world seems at first, but . . . it’s better here. I have no desire to be the Radiant or to vie for the Crown or even to return there. This is my home now.”

Damion leaned back, looking thoroughly disgruntled, which to a human, she could imagine, would’ve been quite intimidating. The scars were off-putting. People would stare and that was not the kind of attention any of them wanted to bring in this world. Word might spread back to the Lands, and then mercenaries might come hunting.

“And what about the Elf King?” he said. “He has dragons, did you know that? They do his bidding.”

“The dragons are gone—”

He pressed on. “His torment of the small folk is ceaseless. The tides of refugees, endless. Now, we hear he is threatening the strongholds of the dwarfs. You know what comes after that,” Damion said. “We need a strong Radiant to protect our coasts and the peninsula.”

“And what has the Crown done?”

He rose to his feet, holding her gaze. “Rumors are the Crown is dying.”

A strange knot twisted in her chest. One she did not want to acknowledge. One she thought she had untied many years ago. She had no desire for the Crown, and yet . . . it was in her blood. As much as she’d left it all behind, she was a Rae, inheritor to one of the seven noble families, descendant of the first Crown, who was mother to them all. The Crown’s seven daughters had brought order and peace to the Lands, but then, after the Crown’s death, they had killed each other off until only one had remained—the first Ascension.

“Then may she travel the High Road to the Godlands,” she said, after choking back the sudden resurgence of her old ambition.

“Magdalena—”

“No,” she said. “I am done with that life, Damion. If you wish to return, that’s your choice. But I won’t. I’m happy here.”

He looked around, sneering openly. “Are you?”

The knot in her chest cinched tighter. She scowled, crossing her arms, annoyed, both at him and at herself. After all these years in relative peace and safety and happiness, all it had taken to revive that restless energy, those old merciless aspirations, was word that the family and the province were up for the taking. That she could be Radiant . . .

But no, she
was
better off here. She didn’t want to go back. And she wouldn’t. For what? To deal daily with her petty, scheming, backstabbing family? To subject herself to the tedium of governance over the Eastern Cliffs and all its thousands of inhabitants? To fight and bleed over and over, always sleeping with one eye open? Who in their right mind would wish for any of that? Let alone risk their life to take it on?

Not her.

Not again.

Never again.

“Where is your Prince anyway?” Damion asked.

“I
S THAT HIM?”
Damion asked, before she’d pointed Riker out from the many beautiful young men crowding the beach.

Another atypically hot day had brought out the locals and tourists alike, which was both a boon and an annoyance. Damion, hidden behind large sunglasses and one of Riker’s trendy straw fedoras, was still a strange sight. But while many people saw him, the crowds were so thick that no one had a chance to stare too long.

She didn’t need to ask Damion how he’d spotted Riker. He’d spotted him the same way they all knew each other. The scent of the Lands remained in them. The magic they kept hidden released a heady powerful odor, at once specific to an individual and yet immediately recognizable as belonging to the Lands.

Down on the soft pale sand, under a blue-and-white-striped umbrella, Riker was buried in the shade, his lips sunk against the neck of a lanky golden-haired human.

Damion let out a menacing growl and took a step forward, but she threw her arm out in front of him.

“You should not allow—”

“He’s not mine, Damion,” she said. “He’s free to do as he likes.”

“What are you talking about?” Damion squared off with her. She glared back at him. The longer they lingered on the boardwalk, the more attention they would draw, especially if they continued to argue.

“You are a Rae. He is a Prince. You are living together—”

“Yes.”

“And have you slept with him?”

“How could I not? You know how it is.”

“Then what—?” He flung his arm out towards Riker and the blonde, almost smacking a passing older woman in the face. She yipped, clutching her purse to her chest.

“We’re sorry,” Magda said, smiling as sweetly as she could with her teeth clenched. The woman hurried off down the boardwalk without another squeak.

Magda seized Damion’s shirt and tugged him off the boardwalk onto the congested beach.

“You listen to me,” she said, lowering her voice. “I haven’t performed the claiming ritual with him.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t know what it means. And there’s no need, besides . . .” She folded her arms and gave the blue-and-white umbrella, which was all they could see now, a dark look. “We’re happier this way. He would despise me if I claimed him fully. He wouldn’t understand and what would be the point? I don’t want children. I can barely afford to feed myself. And if I had any, they too would become targets. It’s better this way. And also, I promised my mother that I would not claim a Prince until after I became Radiant. And obviously, that’s never going to happen, so . . .” She shrugged.

“You allow him to sleep with . . . humans?” Damion said, as if she’d told him that Riker was sleeping with dead squids.

“I don’t allow him anything. He does as he likes and so do I. I have no intention of returning home or fighting to be Radiant.”

“Unless another Rae discovers there’s a Prince here,” he said.

“And how would that happen?” she asked.

“I found out. That troll truck driver who brought me here told me as much. What’s to keep him from telling someone else? Does he realize what could happen?”

She ground her teeth. “I told you. Riker doesn’t understand the way it is back home. He only knows what his parents and I have told him. They don’t want him to go back.”

“And they have not told you to claim him? For his own safety?”

“Claiming him wouldn’t make him safer,” she said. “It would only get him killed if anyone came after me. He doesn’t know how to fight. He was born here. He was raised here, as a human. His parents left everything behind. They weren’t happy when he found me. But they know there’s nothing they can do to stop it. He’s a Prince and I’m a Rae. We’re drawn to each other, even in this world, but that doesn’t mean—”

“The disrespect—”

“Mags?” Riker appeared with his arm wrapped tight around the blonde’s straight and narrow waist. “I thought I smelled . . . saw you. Who’s your friend?”

“Who’s yours?” Damion asked, emanating tension.

Riker stepped back. He, like so many of their Princes, was achingly beautiful. Lean and broad in the shoulders, he was tall, with a messy swath of dark hair, a fine square jaw, and full lips. He modeled, when he remembered to show up for the shoots. Magda did her best to remind him and get him there, because they needed the money. Working as a lifeguard didn’t earn her very much. All the gold and silver she’d brought with her had been put towards buying the house and paying off the conductors who had escorted her safely from Alfheim to this world.

“Why don’t you take off, Sophia?” Riker said, extricating himself from her.

The girl shot Magda a dirty look and then wrapped her arms around Riker’s neck, murmuring in his ear and pressing her barely-clothed-in-a-bikini tanned-golden-brown body against his.

“I hate this world,” Damion snarled, turning away as Riker half-heartedly attempted to coax Sophia to leave.

Riker was giving Magda a pleading look over the girl’s slight shoulder. The girl’s hair cascaded all the way down to the dimples of her lower back. Magda brushed the black sweep of her side-bangs off her brow. The back was shaved close. She was taller and heavier and broader than this little sprite of a human, who was giving her threatening looks when she wasn’t begging Riker to stay.

Back in the old world, Magda would’ve killed any woman, no matter her race, for deigning to touch her Prince. Not that her Prince would’ve allowed such a thing, had he been claimed.

For a brief instant, Magda could feel the ghost weight of gild-silver on her fingers, metal sheaths that had been especially designed for her by the dwarves. How easily a human body would peel under the wicked blades of the finger-knives, into pretty gold-and-red ribbons.

Magda swallowed back this uprising of her old self. She hadn’t realized how dangerous it was for her to have a true Pixie back in her life. Damion was awakening thoughts and feelings in her that she’d believed long dead.

She wanted to resist them. She tried. She succeeded, in a way, because she didn’t call her finger-knives to her and peel the California girl out of her flawless skin.

Instead, she said, “Riker, let’s go.”

She turned and strode off the beach, up the boardwalk, and back towards home. And she knew that Riker followed, even if he didn’t understand why, she did. Exiled or not, she was a Rae. And a Prince always follows his Rae.

Frank was a grizzled old knocker, who spent most of his days lording over his little manufactured home kingdom from his artificial turf-covered patio, smoking a mix of pot and tobacco—and sometimes other things—out of a hand-carved bone pipe. He claimed it was dragon bone, but everyone in their small community of exiles greeted this with a healthy amount of suspicion.

As Magda strode back up their road, Frank pushed his fat tomcat, Mr. Fuller, off of his lap, and proceeded to grunt and snort his way out of the deep hollow of his lounger.