“Just concentrate. See the gateway in your mind. Focus on it.”
“And then what?”
“And then”—he shrugged—“you’ll either know where it is or you won’t.”
“Not an exact science, is it?”
“Afraid not.”
“Okay, here it goes.” I closed my eyes.
After a few seconds I felt a sensation like fingers squeezing a sponge in my head. Hadn’t felt that the last time I’d tried to focus on the magic in my crystal. But maybe I hadn’t been concentrating quite this much. I felt the crystal heat up against my wrist. It was normally cold and had never warmed to my body temperature before.
Then, suddenly, I sensed where the gateway was. As if a GPS device had clicked on in the center of my brain, directing me to the right place, I knew where it was. Michael had been right — we were close.
I opened my eyes and felt a twinge of pain. I grimaced and brought my hand to my head. “Ouch.”
“What?”
“Headache.”
His hand was on my forehead. “Is it bad?”
“No, not really.”
He brushed his lips against my temple.
“Probably shouldn’t let my father see that, either, huh?” I grinned at him.
“Definitely not.”
The headache had faded to nothing as quickly as it had arrived. “Come on. I know where it is.”
I led him around a corner up ahead. We were only three blocks from the school and at the edge of the downtown business area. The gateway to the Shadowlands was near the back of a Starbucks and down an alley.
I felt suddenly nervous at seeing my father again, but I tried to be brave. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Princesses first.”
“Such a gentleman.” I turned from him toward the swirling gateway.
He grabbed my hand before I went through. “Princess, I just wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“For wanting to ignore the rules when it comes to me. You don’t know how much that means.”
I smiled at him. “I guess I’m a rebel.”
“You’re so completely different from how I expected you to be. I still can’t get over it. You’re not a spoiled brat who thinks she can get whatever she wants whenever she wants it.”
“Maybe if I’d been born a princess, I’d be more like that.”
“Somehow, I doubt it.”
“I only want a few very specific things,” I said pointedly. “But I do get cranky if I can’t have them.”
I really didn’t care about any rules, especially those that told me who I was and wasn’t allowed to like. And I’d make that very clear to my father.
Michael was my boyfriend. And if my father didn’t like it … well, that was just too bad, wasn’t it?
I stepped through the gateway feeling a new surge of purpose. I could change things. I
How difficult could it possibly be to change some stupid and outdated rules?
The moment after I stepped through the gateway there was a familiar feeling of vertigo, where I couldn’t see or hear anything. But before there was a chance to get scared or think about anything at all, I’d already arrived on the other side.
The gateway from the human world opened up at a beautiful pastoral clearing between the Shadowlands and the faery realm. Green grass replaced snow-covered pavement. The scent of spring flowers hung in the air. It was warm enough for me to remove my winter jacket immediately.
A second later, Michael appeared next to me — just like magic. He pushed his dark hair back from his face. “So are you ready to see your father again?”
I looked toward the line of tall thick trees — the forest that bordered Rhys’s land. So beautiful and lush and strangely welcoming. Then I turned to look at the field of flowers where we stood. Slowly it changed from soft green grass to sharp gray rock, leading to a black, windowless fortress with massive spires reaching up into the stormy, lightning-etched skies above.
The Shadowlands castle — the nasty-looking, scary place my father called home and that filled me with a healthy dose of dread whenever I saw it.
Despite how uneasy the castle made me instinctively feel, I finally nodded. “Let’s go.”
The walk took ten minutes, after which we reached the twenty-foot-tall front door of the castle. We stood on the threshold, and the door slowly began to creak open enough to let us inside. It did that automatically for me — apparently the castle itself could sense that I was the princess and therefore allowed inside.
Michael led me through the cavernous foyer toward a spiral staircase at the center that seemed to extend right up to a ceiling so high I could barely even see it. I’d been here before, of course, but this time I took a moment to look around at the darkness that surrounded me. This wasn’t a happy place. It was cold and unwelcoming, and it sent a shiver of fear down my spine.
The very stone this castle was made from helped keep unwanted elements from the dark worlds — including any demons who would like to find a way into the human and faery worlds for malevolent reasons. Supposedly it worked well — and had for a long time. I guess it didn’t have to look like Disneyworld, did it?
Still. A few colorful cushions or wall hangings might be a nice, friendly touch.
“I can’t believe you’ve lived here all your life,” I said to Michael in a hushed voice.
“Since I was a baby,” he said. “It’s really not that bad. You’d get used to it if you had to.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone walk by. I jumped. The gray-haired man glanced at us, then disappeared into a room up ahead without saying a word.
“It’s okay,” Michael said. “The servants have all returned to take care of the castle and the king.”
“More Shadows like you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, I’m the only Shadow here. The other servants are all demons. There aren’t that many, really, but you’ll see them here and there. They won’t bother you unless you need something from them.”
“Oh, uh … okay.”
The last time I’d been here, my aunt had sent the servants away while my father was dying, so they wouldn’t see him in such a weakened, pain-filled condition. It was out of respect for the king’s image. Of course, it turned out that he was only dying because she was slowly poisoning him. Any servants she allowed to stay around might have been witness to that.
Michael led me upstairs, and I found that my usual feeling of anxiety was now mixed with something more like anticipation. I honestly looked forward to seeing my father again, even though I was really mad at him for keeping Michael a servant.
My father was waiting for us in his large stone-walled meeting room. He sat alone at the head of a long black table surrounded by heavy high-backed chairs. A huge fireplace blazed across from the archway leading into the room. It seemed to be the only source of light, casting the room in flickering shadows. He stood up and walked over to us when we entered.
“Nikki,” he said, greeting me warmly. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
Even though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but smile, still shocked by how much I looked like him. My whole life, I’d never really wondered if I did, but now I could clearly see that I resembled my father.
