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

the night sky and realized that two moons hung in the sky. One white, like moons are supposed to be. The other was purple, not at all like moons are supposed to be.

And the grass was weird. Also pinnacle of weirdness. Unlike normal grass, this was green and purple. The colors swirled in each blade in different amounts. And it didn’t crunch when we walked. It seemed stronger, yet softer as I walked on it with bare feet.

Even the air seemed weird. Little sparkles seem to pop in and out of existence like lightning bugs. Except that when one popped into existence right in front of me, it was nothing but light.

When we’d arrived in this land of the bizarre, I’d had a whole list of questions. Now I had two. Where the fuck were we, and who the fuck was Sebastian. Okay, there were three questions. How do I get home?

A wide field spread out before us. There was a small pond, and beyond that, a forest. It was beautiful. Almost normal. A scene from a storybook if you ignored the purple moon, invisible lightning bugs, and weirdo grass. It even included a beautiful, pure white horse grazing in the middle of it.

With a freaking silver horn sticking out of his head.

“Is that…” I asked, pointing at the horse, “is that a fucking unicorn?” Sebastian set me down and turned around, giving the unicorn a glance.

“Yeah. Never seen a unicorn before?” The tone of his voice told me that he gave absolutely no shits about the unicorn. None. I mean, I guess unicorns were normal for people who lived in purple moon land. Like crickets or something.

“No, Tinkerbell. Not a lot of unicorns in my area. I think they got put on an endangered species list a few years ago.”

He looked at the ground and shook his head, not responding to my sarcasm as he headed towards the pond.

“Hey,” I said, trying to catch up to him, “Sebastian, I’m sorry. I get snippy when I walk through magic mirrors and get carried through weird tunnels by strange men in black cloaks. And, of course, when someone is trying to kill me.”

“I guess those are new things for you,” he said softly. He pulled his hood back over his head as he walked.

“Please stop. Talk to me, please. I don’t know what’s going on.” I reached out and grabbed his arm and was surprised at just how large it was. My hand didn’t even get close to wrapping around it.

Sebastian pulled away immediately, but he did stop. “You’re a fairy like I told you in your dream. We just traveled from the Mortal Realm through a tunnel between the realms called a warren, and now we’re in the Immortal Realm where your kind rule.”

“I was sent to kill you, but I decided not to for reasons of my own. Now, the leader of the Assassin’s Guild is hunting for both of us. The Queen of the Fae wants both of us dead, and I have to get you to a safe place before I can deal with her. Is that enough of an explanation before I get a drink of water?”

I just stared at him, and I guess he took that as a yes because he turned back to the pond. When he started walking, I started following. What else was I supposed to do? I guessed that I was in fairy world with someone who was hired to kill me, or I was a schizophrenic nutjob and this was my life now. The unicorn chomping on purple grass a few hundred yards away seemed almost normal in comparison.

“Why does this Queen lady want to kill me?”

Without turning around, he said, “Because you have bloodlines from both courts. That means that there’s a slight possibility that you could be a rival queen, and there’s no way that she’d let you claim your place in the courts if that were a possibility.”

“Hold on there. Let’s back up a second. You’re telling me that my parents were fairies? How could they be fairies? Fairies have wings, and I distinctly remember them both being wing-free. That’s one of those things even a kid would remember.”

We were nearing the pond, but Sebastian answered anyway. “Almost certainly. There’s an extremely unlikely possibility that both of your parents were half fairies, and you somehow came out as full-blooded, but that’s far less likely than the possibility that you simply didn’t know about your parents’ magic.”

“Full-blooded fairies all have wings. Your parents probably just hid them or gave up their magic to live a mortal life. It’s not unheard of.”

“Then why don’t I have wings?” I turned to show him my back. “If I’m a fairy, then where are my wings?”

He chuckled. “You’re a fairy, but you have yet to claim your magic. You’ve never been to the Immortal Realm, so you couldn’t have claimed it before.”

He knelt down and put his hand under the placid water, scooping it into his mouth. I sighed and began to pace.

How was I a fairy? Wouldn’t I know? Wouldn’t I be able to do magic or something? Then the night in the alley flashed through my mind. I’d thought it was a miracle, but maybe it was magic. It was when everything had changed.

“How did you find me?” I whispered.

Sebastian took another drink of water before he stood up. “You pulled power from the Immortal Realm. That happens rarely enough that we track it. The Queen’s seers recorded where and when it happened, and they made this.” He reached into a pocket of that cloak, and he pulled out a sheet of weird paper that had been rolled up.

He slowly unrolled it so that I could see what was on it. A painting. Of me. But not me. My face was different, a prettier version of me, full of sharp angles where my eyes didn’t look weird. Kind of like Tinkerbell. It was me, though. No doubt.

I took a deep