Reign Fall (28 page)
Authors: Michelle Rowen
Tags: #Young Adult, #teen, #Romance, #love, #faeries, #fairies, #demon, #paranormal, #faery, #slayer, #Fantasy, #high school, #demons, #fairy, #friendship, #princess, #teenager
Anger. Regret.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, although I knew he couldn’t hear me. “Where’s Michael?” I looked around, then I left the room and ran through the hallways trying to find him. I emerged into the courtyard. It was as bright and shiny as the last time I’d been here, a small splash of color that smelled of spring flowers and fresh grass in an otherwise cold and bleak place. He wasn’t here either.
I entered the castle again and raced down the halls, passing servants who scurried here and there.
“You’re back,” a voice said. I turned sharply to see Dread standing there.
My breath caught at the sight of him. “Your rock worked again.”
“Yup.”
“It didn’t work before, after I’d been sent away.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t want it to work then.”
I fixed him with a dark look. “You
are
the castle, aren’t you? You are the castle’s...
personality
. Its guardian spirit.”
He gave me a grin. “That’s me.”
I clutched the rock tighter so I wouldn’t lose my grip on it. “What happened when I left? With my father and Michael?”
“They argued.”
“I’m sure. But what happened then?”
“I can’t say.”
Frustration filled me. This guy picked and chose what questions he wanted to answer. It was incredibly annoying and not helpful in the slightest. “There’s a curse, you know. A Shadow curse. Does that effect you, too?”
“I’ve been here from the beginning. I have seen everything. And, yes, I know everything.”
“So you can help me!”
He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m only able to help a little and I’ve done all I can. But I do wish you luck.”
Before I could say anything else, he faded away into the wall behind him.
I let out a growl of frustration. “Where is Michael?”
“Your father knows,” Dread whispered, although I couldn’t see him anymore.
Fine. I headed back to my father’s room. He still sat in the chair facing the fire, studying the flames as if they might hold all the answers he sought.
I squeezed the black rock for courage and approached the chair. “Okay, you can’t see me and you can’t hear me, which means I’m not going to be able to ask you any questions. But we need to talk. As soon as I’m able to open another gateway, I’ll be back. You told me that Michael would be okay, that you’d help him. But I can’t find him anywhere. Did you lock him up somewhere so he wouldn’t cause any more trouble? Because if so? Not cool.” Something caught my eye then. A glint of green. My gaze fell to what dangled from my father’s right hand.
A long gold chain. On the end of it was a green stoned amulet.
I stopped breathing. It was Michael’s amulet.
My father had Michael’s amulet. And Michael was nowhere to be found.
I staggered back from him, my chest tightening. “Did you take that away from him? Or did he take it off himself?”
The answer to that question had suddenly become the most important thing in my entire universe. If my father had punished Michael for stealing my energy by taking his amulet, he would fade away to nothing. He would die.
But if Michael had taken it off himself, he would still be strong, but incorporeal. A true Shadow, but one who needed the life energy of his victims to stay alive.
Both answers were bad. But only one meant that he was lost to me forever.
The shock of what I’d seen made me drop the black rock. The image of my father whose rigid expression was lit by the fire spun away and was replaced by the familiar interior of my bedroom. I fell to my knees and began to sob.
He was gone. Michael was gone.
It took me a while to get a hold of myself. Immediately, I grabbed the Shadow book and flipped through the pages to Beasley’s message. I read it over and over until I’d practically memorized it.
Shadow were cursed, but there was a way to break it. To break it would cause more devastation—it would change the world from that day forward.
The question was, which world?
According to Chris, I was prophesied to destroy only one world—the Shadowlands. How I felt toward my father at this precise moment—seeing him holding Michael’s amulet and not knowing what happened—made me think that actually could be possible.
The only one who knew the truth, other than me, was a cursed talking cockroach.
And there was a possibility, a remote one, that I could still save Michael’s life.
I had to find Beasley and talk to him. I needed to know how to break the curse that had rewrote Shadow history and kept them from their true power and freedom for a thousand years.
Beasley, however, didn’t live in the Underworld. Or the Faery Realm. Or the human world.
Nope, none of the above.
It was time for a field trip to Hell itself.
How does it all end?!
The fourth & final book in the
Demon Princess
series REIGN STORM
is Coming Soon!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Rowen is a national bestselling and award-winning author of many paranormal novels for both adults and young adults. Learn more about Michelle and her books at