City of Fae

“I’m sorry, Alina. I am. We’ll get you help.”


“No, Andrews please. You don’t understand. He wants this.” I bucked, and struggled but Andrews had me pinned.

Miles climbed to his feet, shaking blood from his hand. Rivulets of red dribbled over his lips and dripped from his chin. He grinned, teeth bloody. “She’s right. I do work for the queen.”

Andrews never saw the right hook coming. Miles struck him hard, throwing him to the floor. With a groan, Andrews tried to lever himself upright, when Miles kicked him in the stomach. “Stay down, Danny. I don’t wanna hurt you, but I will.” He kicked again, and Andrews collapsed, spluttering blood.

Cuffed, facedown, all I could do was watch. “You son of a—”

Miles fisted a hand in my hair and jerked my head back. A ragged cry burst from me. “You … Shame I can’t enjoy you before I hand you back.”

“Touch me and I’ll kill you.”

“No, you won’t. That’s your problem, Alina. You can’t even carry out simple orders. Is it so hard to kill Sovereign?”

“You’re insane. What are you talking about?”

He shook his head with a dry laugh and licked blood from his lips. “You really are fucked up.”

“What do you mean kill Reign? I’m not who you think I am. I’m a reporter. I just want to know what’s going on, that’s all. I just want the story. I’m Alina O’Connor. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not a killer.” A memory flashed; the dagger sinking into fae flesh. The look of horror on the fae’s face and the chilling calm in me.

Miles snorted, released my hair, stepped around me and yanked on my wrists, pulling me onto my feet. “Every time they say the same. Your kind never last. Always burn out. I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Miles frog-marched me to the door. I chanced one look back at Andrews out cold on the floor and prayed Miles hadn’t killed him. He’d be all right. He had to be … He was the only sane thing left in my life.





Chapter Fourteen


The ride from Andrews’s flat to Chancery Lane could have taken an hour, or five minutes, I barely registered the passage of time as I sat cuffed in Detective Miles’s car. He uttered a few words about pleasing the queen, mentioned Saturday, and constantly checked his phone. When his gaze wasn’t on his phone, or the road, it roamed over me. My hands fisted in my lap, palm itching to close around a weapon.

“Andrews will come after me,” I said.

Miles laughed. “That upstart kid? He has no idea what’s going on. I’ll tell him you attacked him. If he remembers? Well”—he sniffed hard, and dabbed at his bloody nose— “it doesn’t matter; nothing matters. By the end of the week, it’ll all be changed anyway.”

Turning my head I forced myself to look him in the bloodshot eyes. “What’s happening at the end of the week?”

“Nothing, if your boy Reign doesn’t pull his finger out. The queen’s tired of him. About time too. Soon, she won’t need him, or you.”

I tied to swallow the saliva pooling in my mouth but my throat tightened. “Why does she need me?”

Sunlight cut into the many lines on Miles’s face, hollowing his cheeks and pooling shadows under his eyes. Was he mad? Somehow, I doubted it, but I wished he was.

One corner of his mouth tucked into his cheek. “You were the failsafe, but you’re broken. Have you blacked out a few times, maybe entered rooms but had no memory of getting there?” He saw the answer on my face. “Don’t worry that pretty little head over it. She’ll set you right in no time and you’ll go back to doing what you do best.”

“Which is what?”

Miles’s eyebrow twitched. “Nothing you need to worry about right now.”

Perspiration speckled my clammy skin. I shivered, as though feverish. “I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know the queen. I only saw her once and I wasn’t even meant to be there.”

“Weren’t you?”

My hands trembled. I cut my gaze away and searched the sun-blushed street outside. Wisps of clouds hung in an azure October sky. The world continued around me, life marching on, as I sat cuffed beside a corrupt detective spouting crazed nonsense. I denied Miles’s words meant anything and instead let them slip off my hastily constructed armor of denial.