Princess of Shadows: A Dark Fae Fantasy Romance by Olivia Hart (read me a book txt) 📕

I jerked toward the sound and saw a plume of dust rising into the air a mile down the street. I didn’t know what to do. The sane part of me said to run away, but a different part of me, a part that had gotten me into trouble too many times urged me to find out what had happened so that I could help somehow. It was the same part that had been stupid enough to become bait for rapists.

Still, those words echoed in my mind. Trust the Prince. I turned to the woman to see what she was doing. When I looked, she was gone. Somehow, without a sound, she’d disappeared in less than a second.

The sane part of me lost again as it normally did. I stood up and began running down the street. My heart raced, and that part of me that needed to help people surged, pushing the logical side of me away. I knew that regardless of what had happened, I was going to do whatever I could to help the people that had been hurt.

As I got closer, the dust seemed to clear, and I realized what catastrophe had happened. People had begun to gather around the edge of a wide hole that had opened up in the earth in the middle of the street.

A sinkhole. Supposedly, they were caused by leaking water slowly eating away at the rock underneath roads, but when I looked down at the twenty-foot deep hole, I couldn’t believe that it was natural. It was so perfectly circular. Pipes sprayed water into the hole that held an entire bus.

The bus that I was supposed to be on.

Screams came from that bus. The people standing around the hole murmured quietly. People were on phones calling in to 911. But no one was helping.

I couldn’t just stand there. I didn’t know what I could do, but I couldn’t listen to those screams without moving. I got down on my hands and knees and lowered myself over the edge of the hole. The concrete had plenty of handholds, and there had never been a tree that I couldn’t climb.

One step, one handhold at a time, I began the descent into the hole that should have been my death.

Chapter 6

Sebastian

Why wasn’t Rose dead? How could she possibly survive a crash like that without any wounds? I’d watched her all morning. She’d been at the bus stop.

Now she was climbing out of that hell hole? Climbing. Out. Not being rescued like all the other people. Covered in dust and blood, but otherwise unhurt. What in all the realms could she be to make it through that without any training? And, without using magic.

If she’d used magic, I would have known. I was keyed in on her scent and it still writhed around her with no outlet, no purpose.

I sat on a balcony overlooking the sinkhole that I’d created. I hadn’t been able to watch the whole thing. I’d needed to be on the ground and nearby to create the hole. It was one of the limitations of working with stone.

Maybe she hadn’t got on the bus? But why would she be climbing out of the hole, then?

I turned away from the carnage below me. I’d already counted over fifteen dead. Whatever Rose was, there was no way that I was going to kill her from a distance.

I hated the idea of being close to her. It would allow the temptation to ignore my command. That close proximity to her, the knowledge that I would gain being within arm’s reach of whatever she was. I was already struggling with the command, and if that bitch Seraphina hadn’t sent Nyx to finish the job tonight, I would have already taken her to the Dark Court and hid her somewhere.

I ran my hands over the hartskin sheathes around my waist. Unlike a siren, Rose would be able to heal from a cut, but the iron dust that coated the inside of the sheath would be embedded into any wound that I caused with them.

It wouldn’t be permanent. Slowly, a fairy would push the iron out of them, and then would be able to heal from the wounds, but it would keep her from healing instantly during a fight. I normally wouldn’t worry about this with a half-blood, but this girl had surprised me at every turn. I couldn’t take any chances.

Thinking about that made me even more confused. A fairy that had embraced her powers shouldn’t be able to touch iron without physical discomfort. If she’d managed to somehow embrace them, she’d be lost in this world. Everything was made from iron and steel in the Mortal Realm, and it was one of the reasons the Fae had created the Immortal Realm to escape into.

Fairies were immensely powerful, but humans were plentiful. They reproduced a thousand times faster than fairies, and armed with iron and technology, the Fae would have become extinct hundreds of years ago.

I sighed and walked inside the apartment. The man who lived here was asleep on the floor. He would wake soon, and I needed to prepare for tonight. All of these questions would find no answers because, by midnight, she would be dead.

* * *

I sat in a condemned house. The walls smelled of mold and mildew, and the roof sagged. I’d had to run the vagrants living in the place out, and their belongings, along with empty bottles and cigarette butts, littered the floor.

I didn’t need anything nice. I needed discreet and dark. I needed a place where I wouldn’t be bothered. I needed to be close to Rose. And I needed this mirror. Silver-backed and large enough that I could crawl through it.

I closed my eyes, gathering my strength, and I built a tether between the two mirrors. With a muttered incantation, droch, I built the bridge that would allow me to both see and