Tempted By Fae

  Copyright © 2020 by The Midnight Coven

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  The Willow Trail

  Darkest King

  Fires of Valor

  Crowned Torment

  Come What Fae

  The Summer King’s Mate

  Three Times Charmed

  Second Chance Fae

  Kiss of Eternity

  Her Fae Warrior

  Menagerie of Oddities

  Nuit Rouge

  About The Midnight Coven

  The Willow Trail

  May Sage & Alexi Blake © 2020

  You know the deal. Piracy bad. Authors need to buy cat food, blahblahblah.

  Chapter One

  To get to live, I have to die a little more each day.

  I don’t know the name of the boy. I never bothered to ask. All that matters is that he belongs to this world. He’s human. His kisses soothe the deep ache thundering inside me. I could drown in them. In him. For a moment, I love and hate him all at once.

  I let him pull me deeper into the shadows of the library and press me against the wall.

  “You’re so beautiful.” His voice is hoarse, rough. He surely believes that’s due to his growing need for me. I know better.

  I’m sucking the life right out of him. Just a little kiss. Just a little bit of life. If he persists in trying to shove his hand down my pants, it will be a lot more. Fortunately for him, he has trouble unbuckling my belt.

  Someone clears their throat behind us. I grin, taking in the girl glaring at us, arms crossed on her chest. Five foot six, strawberry-blonde hair falling in waves around her shoulders, small breasts, and curvy hips. She’s my opposite, although we’re almost identical.

  Clary wears a cheer uniform—a red and white crop top with a pleated skirt that flirts with the hem of her shorts, revealing plenty of skin. I’m in black from head to toe. Boots, jeans, a tank top, and my favorite leather jacket.

  “Already?” Her eyes are fixed on the boy still plastered all over me. “Can’t you wait one day before spreading your legs?”

  She’s disgusted with me.

  We used to be closer than anything as children, until things changed. Until I changed.

  She stayed on the path paved by our type-A parents. I started to see things that may not be there, and want things no kid should want.

  Then, I began to need them.

  My skin burns, my insides are ice and daggers, my head is all but ready to explode at all times, except when I’m touching boys. And girls. I kissed a girl or two, and definitely liked it.

  My sister thinks I’m a slut. I know I’m something much worse.

  She blames me for the move. She thinks my stalkers finally forced our parents to leave LA. The truth is, they’re both professors. We’ve moved seven times in eighteen years. We would have moved regardless of my antics.

  Besides, it’s not like I ask boys to follow me around like lost puppies. We use each other for a little while, and when they ask for more, I pull the brakes. It’s not my fault some of them can’t take no for an answer.

  “See?” I point downward. “My legs are closed. And covered, you’ll notice.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Mom sent me a text. She wants us back as soon as I’m done with practice.”

  She tells me because I don’t have a phone. I’ve never seen the appeal. In fact, I have a marked distaste for most technology. I don’t even like cars, hence why I wait around until she’s done with practice. Our new house isn’t more than a couple of miles away from Willow Prep, so I could have walked, but there are much better things to occupy myself with.

  I push against the boy’s chest. At first, he doesn’t budge, but after I raise my brow, he takes a step back, then another.

  “Thanks. Until next time, then.”

  There won’t be a next time. He might be cute enough—athletic, well dressed—but his technique leaves a lot to be desired, and I didn’t appreciate the unprompted wandering hands. I join my sister and send him a wink over my shoulder before falling into step with her. He doesn’t need to know I’m not up for a redo. I’m not entirely unfeeling, and he gave me no reason to wound his pride.

  We walk in silence to the parking lot. Clary applies apple balm to her lips, and without a word, she hands me the little pot. I dab my finger in it and moisten my dry lips.

  She may not like me very much, but she loves me still.

  Her car is one of the last still in the lot at five o’clock. It stands out like a sore thumb. It’s all about grayish ecofriendly cars or four-wheelers here in Oregon. Like any LA princess, she drives a convertible—a bubblegum-blue BMW our grandparents gave us both for our sweet sixteenth.

  And yes, they knew I don’t drive. Clary offered to drive me anywhere, feeling guilty that they’d passed me over in all but name.

  I can’t envy her—or blame them, either. I’m not the grandchild I should be. They did everything in their power to raise their daughter well, and then they spoiled us, like any grandparents should. I remember nights staying up late to watch movies and eat too much candy at their ranch. They keep horses. One pony is named after me, and I own their best thoroughbred.

  Edith and Gerald Ross deserve the perfect granddaughters. And they got it in Clary. Life shortchanged them when it comes to me.

  “What do you think it’s about?” She fires up her engine and I wrinkle my nose in distaste. Even the sound of it irritates me. “Mom wanting us back early.”

  It’s unusual, to say the least. Our parents have a tolerant policy when it comes to our education. They’re too busy shaping the minds of college students to worry overmuch about their own progeny. So long as we keep a spotless 4.0 and avoid getting pregnant, they’re happy to let us do as we please.

  I shrug. “Maybe she cooked?”

  Clary shudders, appropriately horrified. “Lord, please no.”

  We exchange a knowing glance, my smile echoed on her lips. For a moment, we are twins again.

  It’s a miracle we’ve lived so long, given that neither of our parents are capable of cooking pasta without causing a major fire hazard in the process. We were eight when we taught ourselves to cook. Clary’s best at baking. She has the patience.

  “Keira, can I ask you for a favor?”

  Her voice has changed, and she doesn’t meet my eyes, even fleetingly. Her grip around the steering wheel whitens her knuckles.

  No.

  The real answer is no, she can’t.

  Whatever she has to ask me, it’s serious, and I don’t do serious.

  “Shoot.” I’m noncommittal as ever.

  “Can you…be discreet this year?”

  I gape at her, surprised.

  “I mean, I know you like to play around. You always have.”

  “A gross exaggeration. I distinctly recall boys had cooties in third grade.”

  Jokes aren’t helping this time. She’s still dead serious. “Yeah, well, you’ve had boys drooling at your feet for years. I get it. But I’m your twin sister. You don’t know how things are for me. The boys who want to score both twins. The girls who call me a slut.” That’s ridiculous. She’s had all of two boyfriends, and I don’t think she let either of them go past second base. “It’s our senior year. Mom and Dad tore us from all our friends, and we—I—have to start over. I don’t want to have to fight your shadow on top of everything else.”

  I silently fume. I want the names of everyone who badmouthed her. I’ll make them suffer, and I’ll enjoy i
t.

  Whatever I am, Clary’s got nothing to do with it. It skipped her. It always skips every child in the family, except for one.

  Except for me.

  In our parents’ generation, it’s Aunt Julia, our father’s youngest sister. I was twelve when she took me aside, after seeing me staring into the backyard, seeing something I knew no one else could see.

  She told me of our heritage. Our curse.

  She’s left us now. Everyone else assumes she’s missing, or dead.

  I know she’s crossed into fae land.

  I lift a pinkie and hook it around my sister’s.

  It’s the first time she’s asked something of me in years, and I’ll do it. I have to do it. Having me for a sister is difficult enough without my reputation staining hers.

  “I’ll be discreet. Promise.”

  Even if it kills me.

  Chapter Two

  Fae-touched. That’s what they call what I am. In the old days, they believed tiny, mischievous faeries whispered in the ears of boys and girls until they were driven to madness. Aunt Julia tells me the fae are neither tiny nor mischievous. They’re evil, cruel, and twisted.

  The things I see in the shadows are pixies and gnomes, pucks, sprites, and imps. They’re the little folk. The actual fae are taller than any man, and strikingly, maddeningly beautiful. None of them ever cross to our world if it can be helped. The pollution, the technology, the iron hurts them, ten times more than they irritate me.

  When Julia first told me all that, I thought she must have been joking, spinning some fanciful tale. I even suspected Clary had put her up to it. But I couldn’t deny I saw them—the little folk—when no one else did.

  Later, I felt the itch burning my skin. The need growing in me. And something else. The desire to do wicked, wicked things. To hurt those who have wronged me. Sometimes, to hurt just because it’s fun.

  I was fifteen when I took her advice and stole a kiss. It was the first time I knew peace in years.

  Julia told me that we fae-touched are made for the world of the folk, not ours. There’s a fae somewhere in our lineage, and he or she shared her curses with us. One per generation, in the Woodspire line.

  Clary parks in front of the handsome three-story house our father purchased. It’s an old home, right at the edge of the woods. Our parents work on it every weekend. They intend to redo it, and flip it for profit the next time they move.

  I expected to see little folk here. They avoid towns, cities, crowded places. This area seems to be exactly to their taste. Yet since we moved three weeks ago, I’ve not seen one.

  Maybe the fae don’t like Oregon.

  We’ve just gone in when we hear the shouts from upstairs.

  “Clary, Keira! Up here!”

  We follow our mother’s screeches to the top floor—the messiest, and therefore, the one I’ve claimed for my own. My room is a little damp, and its flooring squeaks in places, but I like it more than any other I’ve ever lived in.

  Our mother is in my bathroom, hunched over the rusty cast-iron tub I never use.

  “Oh my—”

  Clary is horrified. I can barely keep myself from laughing.

  Pietra Woodspire’s hair is bundled atop her scalp in a messy bun. Gone are the neat, careful blonde waves. It’s dyed bright red.

  “Mom!”

  I inch toward the sink, then wince. “You used my hair stuff?”

  Mom sighs. “I couldn’t wait any longer. Twenty years. I’ve had my hair done the same way for twenty years. No more. I am not boring. I refuse to be.”

  Neither I nor my sister need to ask what happened. A student made a snide remark.

  Still beautiful at forty-four, our mother thrives on love and compliments. The slightest critique troubles her for weeks, and often launches her into spontaneous choices such as this. Dyeing her hair. With my cheap products.

  I don’t keep my hair the same color for more than a couple of weeks at a time—I don’t buy the best products. She should have known better.

  “It’s going to look awesome,” I profess, rummaging through my cupboard until I find what I’m looking for: another box of red dye. “Clary, can you go get some plastic gloves from the kitchen? I’m just going to make sure it’s even at the back.”

  Glad to be given a task, she rushes downstairs, leaving me to inspect the damage.

  All in all, she didn’t do too badly, though it’ll be a far cry from her usual five-hundred-buck hair appointments.

  I carefully section her hair in eight parts, and when Clary comes back with the gloves, I slather it with the second box of dye. I wash it, and Clary blow dries it heartfully.

  I grin at the result.

  Our mother always looked young, but she managed to shed at least a decade with this color. Her eyes brighten when she looks at herself in the mirror, and she hugs us both.

  “I can’t wait to show Robert! Where’s my phone?” As soon as she finds it in her pocket, she calls our dad. “Rob! What time will you be back? You’re taking me out. Yes. Tonight. Absolutely.”

  She rushes downstairs, to find something to wear, no doubt.

  I watch her leave. She’s young at heart, free-spirited. Our father is a little more contained, like Clary. I wonder if he chose her because he recognized something familiar in her happy, ditzy disposition. Something a little like Julia’s weirdness. I wonder if Clary will choose someone like me.

  I dismiss the thought. My sister is going to find a perfectly boring husband someday. A lawyer, or an accountant, maybe. She craves normalcy. A house where she won’t have to cook for her parents. A sister she can understand.

  “I’ll cook tonight,” I offer.

  She turns to me. We alternate days for that chore, but I cooked yesterday, too. It’s her turn.

  “We don’t have homework yet, but I bet you want to practice cheerleading or something.”

  I don’t pretend to know anything at all about cheering.

  “Thank you,” she says, still unsure, as though she expects a trick.

  She has reasons to be cautious. My favors have always been bargains. Sooner or later, I collect, with anyone else.

  I like to think I can perform a task for my twin sister just because I want to. I’m not sure that’s entirely true.

  Downstairs, I tie my ink-black waves into a high ponytail, turn my dad’s old gramophone on, wash my hands, and get started. We went shopping yesterday, so I can cook whatever I’d like. I pick ground beef, because the expiration date is sooner than anything else, and chop onions, sweating them, before I decide whether it’ll be lasagna or chili. I throw a generous helping of cumin, paprika, and chili powder in the pan. Chili con carne it is.

  I’m chopping oregano when my eyes lift away from the board, drawn to the window above the quartz countertop.

  Our yard stretches right to the edge of the woods. Dad loves hiking on weekends—he hasn’t had a chance yet, with the house renovation. He told me these woods stretch for miles and miles, providing the perfect trail for someone like him. But it’s raining now. I doubt many people would want to hike at six o’clock on a Tuesday evening under a rainy Oregon sky.

  Yet I see someone right there, in the shadows of the trees.

  He isn’t dressed for hiking. He isn’t dressed for anything I can think of. His long, high-collared coat looks dark, perhaps forest green or navy. The way the fabric sways in the wind suggests it may not be suitable for the weather; too flimsy in this wind and rain. Under it, he wears pitch black.

  I have the urge to go hand him an umbrella. Or a cup of tea. Or nothing at all. I could talk to him. Ask if he wants to come in. Invite him in for a taste of chili. Perhaps even a taste of something else.

  But no. Despite the distance, I know he’s nothing like the boys I play with. He’s not a boy at all, and for all my sins, I’ve never been one to chase men. The one or two who caught my eye give me a different look, one I don’t like. Teenagers might wish to get in my pants, but they don’t take it for grante
d. I prefer the male sex young and manageable.

  I can tell the stranger in the rain isn’t manageable.

  And yet, my eyes stay glued to him.

  Come, come, come closer.

  Run, run, run away.

  I can’t decide between one impulse and the next, so I simply remain where I stand.

  “Your onions are getting past caramelized, sis.”

  I’m shocked to see Clary standing right beside me. She’s never managed to sneak up on me before. I always hear her.

  I note that on the gramophone, Rachmaninoff has given away to Chopin’s first nocturne, one of my favorite songs. When that happened, I have no idea. For a brief moment, everything in my world faded.

  Everything but him.

  Clary sniffs the air. “Chili. It’s been too long.”

  I don’t attempt a reply. I’m looking out the window, scanning the yard and forest through the rain.

  But the man in the dark coat has disappeared.

  My heart rages in the cavity of my chest, racing in fear. A fear I can’t explain—at least out loud. I thank Clary, toss the herbs in the pan, and add water, acting as though everything is just fine.

  As though I haven’t seen my first fae.

  Chapter Three

  I sleep wonderfully, dreaming of wicked things that leave me soaked with sweat and tears come morning. I see the fae in my dream, imagining a face worthy of any tale. When I wake, I don’t remember a thing about the dream, but I know he starred in it.

  For the first time in years, I’m the first to rise. The house is still and silent on every level. Downstairs, on the mahogany grandfather clock that came with the house, I read the time. Five.

  Five.

  I’ve always been a night owl. When I’m conscious at this time, it’s generally because I haven’t gone to bed yet.

  I know going back to sleep would be a pointless endeavor. I’ve never been more awake.