Fateful Magic (The Star-Crossed Series Book 8)

Fateful Magic

The Star-Crossed Series

Lilly’s Novella

By Rachel Higginson

Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2014

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Cover Design by
Caedus
Design Co.

Other Books Now Available by Rachel
Higginson

Love and Decay, Season One, Episodes
One-Twelve

Love and Decay, Season Two, Episodes
One-Twelve

Love and Decay, Volume One (Episodes
One-Six, Season One)

Love and Decay, Volume Two (Episodes
Seven-Twelve, Season One)

Love and Decay, Volume Three (Episodes
One-Four, Season Two)

Love and Decay, Volume Four (Episodes
Five-Eight, Season Two)

Love and Decay, Volume Five (Episodes
Nine-Twelve, Season Two)

Reckless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series,
Book 1)

Hopeless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series,
Book 2)

Fearless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series,
Book 3)

Endless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series,
Book 4)

The Reluctant King (The Star-Crossed
Series, Book 5)

The Relentless Warrior (The Star-Crossed
Series, Book 6)

Breathless Magic (the Star-Crossed
Series, Book 6.5)

Heir of Skies (The Starbright Series,
Book 1)

Heir of Darkness (The Starbright Series,
Book 2)

Heir of Secrets (The Starbright Series,
Book 3)

The Rush (The Siren Series, Book 1)

The
Fall
(The
Siren Series, Book 2)

Bet in the Dark (An NA Contemporary
Romance)

Striking (The Forged in Fire Series)
This
is a co-authored Contemporary NA

To Lilly,

You’ve been with me from the beginning.

I finally get to give you a voice.

Prologue

Then

My face heated to the same color as my hair and I
wanted nothing more than to walk through the door and disappear. Why did he
keep looking at me?

Why had he been looking at me all day?

Did I have something on my face?

Or was it worse?

Did he know?

Oh my god, he
knew.

He had to know!

My parents had risked everything to send me here and
with the arrival of one Titan Guard, my life was over. They had almost
abandoned me for this cause and he was going to murder me before I even got
close to graduation.

Not exactly abandoned.
But
they’d left me here by myself so that I could finish my education at a real
Immortal school. They’d wanted me to have a proper education, surrounded by my
peers, by my kind. They’d wanted me to be treated equally, even if that meant
hiding my identity. And I couldn’t argue with them.

Even if I did think they were being difficult about
it.

I could have finished school anywhere. I could have
gone to the best human private school in the world and nobody would have known
the difference.

But, no.
My parents, the defenders
of justice and equality, wanted to take a stand. They wanted their
Shape-Shifter daughter to attend school with all the privilege every other
Immortal child received. They wanted their daughter to have the education she
deserved.

They wanted her to mingle with the society that should
accept her because it was right. Even though, they didn’t accept our kind. Even
though, I was too afraid to actually make any friends to be considered
mingling. If anyone found out, I would be dragged away to a Romanian prison and
never heard from again. That fact alone guaranteed me loner status.

I wanted rights and freedom as much as anyone else,
but I was only sixteen. I had a really long life ahead of me. And I’d heard
terrible things about those prisons.

For instance, rats.
I did not
want to be forced to make friends with rats.

Most days I kept to myself and blended into the
background. While the other kids at Kingsley did their best to ignore my entire
existence, I floated through classes and kept my head down.

When I waded through my fear and
imprisonment-resistance, I really did believe what my parents believed. My
convictions mirrored their convictions.

I wanted Shape-Shifters to be completely free from
persecution and have equal rights over everything in the Kingdom. I wanted to
walk the streets confidently and not be afraid of some cover team of Titan
Guard swooping down with a weighted net and swords that would drain me of all
my Magic. I wanted to be able to go to whatever school I chose, and walk among
the other students with my head held high and my Magic in full bloom.

But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Lucan was as opposed to my existence as every other
King before him had been to my entire race. And after seeing his son for the
first time in person this morning, I had no hopes for the future of the
Immortals.

We were doomed.

Kiran
Kendrick couldn’t be
more spoiled or conceited. He’d been at school for only a couple hours today
and the entire atmosphere of Kingsley had shifted.

The students catered to his every whim. The teachers
sniveled at his feet. He would turn out just like his father and persecute my
kind for the next thousand years. Only to raise another son that would carry on
the Kendrick legacy.

I had no doubt that if Prince
Kiran
knew my
secret,
he would not hesitate for even a
second before he had me hauled away. Like father, like son.

And if it wasn’t bad enough that I had to hide my
secret from the freaking
Crown Prince
,
he’d brought his Guard with him.

His Titan Guard.

Who hadn’t stopped looking at me all
morning.

I had never been more paranoid in my entire life.

I swore the very
Magic
in my
veins trembled with fear.

However, as bad as this morning had been, good things
had come out of it. I had almost made a friend. At least this girl seemed to
want to be friends.

She also seemed completely clueless. I didn’t know
anybody in the Kingdom that didn’t know who
Kiran
Kendrick was. Even Shape-Shifters that were forced to hide in the most remote places
knew every member of the Royal family. And she wasn’t a Shape-Shifter. She
hadn’t been forced to live her entire life in hiding. She should know better.

I wondered why she didn’t. I kind of loved the way she
talked to Prince
Kiran
. She didn’t seem to care for
him at all. I wanted to know why she wasn’t afraid to make waves. I wanted to
know where she’d grown up that kept her so sheltered. I wanted to know who her
parents were and why they’d kept her in the dark for so long.

But it wasn’t like I could start asking her questions.
What if she started asking
me
questions? That would be unacceptable. I couldn’t give her any answers that
wouldn’t end in me getting arrested and stripped of all
Magic
and what little rights I still maintained.

I caught him staring at me again.

I felt my cheeks heat even more than usual and
followed the urge to look at anything but him.

Eden had been talking to me, so I should probably talk
back.

“Do you know where your next class is?” I asked her
with the strongest voice I could muster. I didn’t want him to see how nervous
he made me. He was trained in warfare and all things bodyguard-related or
whatever. I felt like he could smell my fear.

And maybe that’s what he was trying to do… sniff out
my sins.

Eden looked just as anxious to exclude the guys from
our conversation as I was. Both of them hovered around us as though we would
fall into line with all the other students that worshiped them this morning.
Not happening.
From either one of us.
Even if it meant prison for me.

Eden answered, “I think French. Is that in this
building too?”

We walked through the hallways as quickly as Eden
could. I hurried along with her, trying to downplay my animal-like grace. I
needed to be quick without revealing anything of my true nature.

It was a lot more work than it should have been.

I was naturally graceful, just not in the ballerina
way.

More like the feline way…

Prince
Kiran
pulled Eden’s
attention away from me and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Thankfully, he
seemed absolutely absorbed with the pretty new girl.
Which
was kind of a scandal since he was definitely engaged to Seraphina Van
Curen
.

I just hoped Eden kept him distracted enough that he
never noticed me.

Although, his Guard definitely noticed me, it didn’t
matter where the Prince kept his attention. Talbott Angelo had just as much
pull to end my life as anybody. Maybe second only to the Royal family.

“I would like you to tell me your name.”

It was the first time he spoke to me and something
inside of me jerked alive. Not just awake, but
alive
.

I shook my head and tried to get over the sensation,
but it refused to leave. His small greeting made something bloom in the core of
my being.

It felt like I had drowned and his words were the
first breath I took after being revived. It felt like I’d been buried alive my
entire life and then he’d pulled me from the gritty, suffocating earth with
just that simple statement.

I sucked in oxygen and breathed purely for the first
time in my entire life. And all he’d done was speak a few simple words to me.

I glanced over at him while we descended the steps and
my breath caught in my throat.

I should be terrified of this Titan. I should be
running in the opposite direction.

But there was something about his full lips that
tilted up in the corners and his deeply tanned skin. Maybe it was his
impressively masculine body that was nothing but coiled muscle and tightly
packed aggression. Or maybe it was his eyes: rich, dark chocolate that twinkled
with intelligent awareness and saw everything around him all at once.

They definitely saw me, saw through me. They saw every
piece of me.

Those expressive eyes swept over me with a quick
brilliance that made my feet stumble.

He knew. He had to know.

I cleared my throat nervously before admitting, “Lilly.”
My stomach churned with unease. I knew he could find out from anyone else what
it was, that he could demand the right to know it even. But offering it to him…
giving it to him freely made me feel like I had some semblance of control in my
life.

“Lilly,” he repeated with a small smile. “Pretty.”

His thick accent made me smile in return. His simple
words turned into poetry with the lilting way he spoke. I thought I could
listen to him talk for hours if he’d let me. If he wanted to, he could have read
me the phonebook and I would have been a very happy girl.

“Thank you,” I squeaked.

He leaned into me with a formal bow. “Lilly, I’m
Talbott.”

“I know who you are.”

His smile faltered. “I’m sure you do, Lilly.”

My mouth spoke before my brain could decide if it was
a good idea or not. “Why do you keep saying my name?”

Not that I was complaining.
My name,
that accent, those lips.
Did he have to be so completely perfect? It
would be so much easier to hate him if he weren’t so utterly breathtaking to
look at.

“I don’t want to forget it.” That was his reply. He
didn’t want to forget my name. As if this Titan, born and bred for warfare,
trained since birth to be the most perfect warrior alive, charged with
protecting the heir to the Throne, could ever forget anything!

I thought it had been sweet for a half-second until I
realized this was probably part of his Titan training. I was sure he met a lot
of people protecting the
Royals,
he no doubt had to
have tricks to make his job as successful as possible.

“Do you forget a lot of names?” I asked because I had
the sudden, desperate urge to make him feel stupid.

Maybe it was vindictive. Maybe it was petty. Maybe it
was just plain stupid. But this man would imprison me for the rest of my life
just for being born the way that I was. A part of me needed to punish him for
that.

He shrugged with a lazy lift of one shoulder.
“Possibly,” he said. “But it seems very important that I remember your name in
particular.”

My heart jumped to my throat and started pounding
frantically. My nerves and fears pinged around in my blood at light speed and I
was positive I would pass out from my anxiety. He was going to put me on a
plane to Romania before the end of the day. I just knew it.