Chapter 3
“IS THAT HIM?” Damion asked, before she’d pointed Riker out from the many beautiful young men crowding the beach.
Another atypically hot day had brought out the locals and tourists alike, which was both a boon and an annoyance.
Damion, hidden behind large sunglasses and one of Riker’s trendy straw fedoras, was still a strange sight.
But while many people saw him, the crowds were so thick that no one had a chance to stare too long.
She didn’t need to ask Damion how he’d spotted Riker.
He’d spotted him the same way they all knew each other.
The scent of the Lands remained in them.
The magic they kept hidden released a heady powerful odor, at once specific to an individual and yet immediately recognizable as belonging to the Lands.
Down on the soft pale sand, under a blue-and-white-striped umbrella, Riker was buried in the shade, his lips sunk against the neck of a lanky golden-haired human.
Damion let out a menacing growl and took a step forward, but she threw her arm out in front of him.
“You should not allow—”
“He’s not mine, Damion,” she said. “He’s free to do as he likes.”
“What are you talking about?” Damion squared off with her. She glared back at him. The longer they lingered on the boardwalk, the more attention they would draw, especially if they continued to argue.
“You are a Rae. He is a Prince. You are living together—”
“Yes.”
“And have you slept with him?”
“How could I not? You know how it is.”
“Then what—?” He flung his arm out towards Riker and the blonde, almost smacking a passing older woman in the face. She yipped, clutching her purse to her chest.
“We’re sorry,” Magda said, smiling as sweetly as she could with her teeth clenched. The woman hurried off down the boardwalk without another squeak.
Magda seized Damion’s shirt and tugged him off the boardwalk onto the congested beach.
“You listen to me,” she said, lowering her voice. “I haven’t performed the claiming ritual with him.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t know what it means. And there’s no need, besides .
. .” She folded her arms and gave the blue-and-white umbrella, which was all they could see now, a dark look.
“We’re happier this way. He would despise me if I claimed him fully.
He wouldn’t understand and what would be the point?
I don’t want children. I can barely afford to feed myself.
And if I had any, they too would become targets.
It’s better this way. And also, I promised my mother that I would not claim a Prince until after I became Radiant.
And obviously, that’s never going to happen, so . . .” She shrugged.
“You allow him to sleep with . . . humans?” Damion said, as if she’d told him that Riker was sleeping with dead squids.
“I don’t allow him anything. He does as he likes and so do I. I have no intention of returning home or fighting to be Radiant.”
“Unless another Rae discovers there’s a Prince here,” he said.
“And how would that happen?” she asked.
“I found out. That troll truck driver who brought me here told me as much. What’s to keep him from telling someone else? Does he realize what could happen?”
She ground her teeth. “I told you. Riker doesn’t understand the way it is back home. He only knows what his parents and I have told him. They don’t want him to go back.”
“And they have not told you to claim him? For his own safety?”
“Claiming him wouldn’t make him safer,” she said.
“It would only get him killed if anyone came after me. He doesn’t know how to fight.
He was born here. He was raised here, as a human.
His parents left everything behind. They weren’t happy when he found me.
But they know there’s nothing they can do to stop it.
He’s a Prince and I’m a Rae. We’re drawn to each other, even in this world, but that doesn’t mean—”
“The disrespect—”
“Mags?” Riker appeared with his arm wrapped tight around the blonde’s straight and narrow waist. “I thought I smelled . . . saw you. Who’s your friend?”
“Who’s yours?” Damion asked, emanating tension.
Riker stepped back. He, like so many of their Princes, was achingly beautiful.
Lean and broad in the shoulders, he was tall, with a messy swath of dark hair, a fine square jaw, and full lips.
He modeled, when he remembered to show up for the shoots.
Magda did her best to remind him and get him there, because they needed the money.
Working as a lifeguard didn’t earn her very much.
All the gold and silver she’d brought with her had been put towards buying the house and paying off the conductors who had escorted her safely from Alfheim to this world.
“Why don’t you take off, Sophia?” Riker said, extricating himself from her.
The girl shot Magda a dirty look and then wrapped her arms around Riker’s neck, murmuring in his ear and pressing her barely-clothed-in-a-bikini tanned-golden-brown body against his.
“I hate this world,” Damion snarled, turning away as Riker half-heartedly attempted to coax Sophia to leave.
Riker was giving Magda a pleading look over the girl’s slight shoulder.
The girl’s hair cascaded all the way down to the dimples of her lower back.
Magda brushed the black sweep of her side-bangs off her brow.
The back was shaved close. She was taller and heavier and broader than this little sprite of a human, who was giving her threatening looks when she wasn’t begging Riker to stay.
Back in the old world, Magda would’ve killed any woman, no matter her race, for deigning to touch her Prince. Not that her Prince would’ve allowed such a thing, had he been claimed.
For a brief instant, Magda could feel the ghost weight of gild-silver on her fingers, metal sheaths that had been especially designed for her by the dwarves. How easily a human body would peel under the wicked blades of the finger-knives, into pretty gold-and-red ribbons.
Magda swallowed back this uprising of her old self. She hadn’t realized how dangerous it was for her to have a true Pixie back in her life. Damion was awakening thoughts and feelings in her that she’d believed long dead.
She wanted to resist them. She tried. She succeeded, in a way, because she didn’t call her finger-knives to her and peel the California girl out of her flawless skin.
Instead, she said, “Riker, let’s go.”
She turned and strode off the beach, up the boardwalk, and back towards home. And she knew that Riker followed, even if he didn’t understand why, she did. Exiled or not, she was a Rae. And a Prince always follows his Rae.
Frank was a grizzled old knocker, who spent most of his days lording over his little manufactured home kingdom from his artificial turf-covered patio, smoking a mix of pot and tobacco—and sometimes other things—out of a hand-carved bone pipe.
He claimed it was dragon bone, but everyone in their small community of exiles greeted this with a healthy amount of skepticism.
As Magda strode back up their road, Frank pushed his fat tomcat, Mr. Fuller, off of his lap, and proceeded to grunt and snort his way out of the deep hollow of his lounger.
“Hey, hey!” he called in his phlegmy bellow.
She sighed and slowed. She hoped he wasn’t going to ask about the lot rent. It was only a week—or two—late. Pay day was still three days away, and Riker had been too busy working on his nonexistent tan—their skin simply wouldn’t—to bother returning any of his agent’s calls.
While Frank passed himself off as a little person of the human ilk, he looked much more like a full-grown barrel-chested man who had been hit with a shrink ray.
The top of his head barely came to her mid-thigh, but his hands, his head, his legs, all remained proportionate.
He was often mistaken for a husky child, especially from behind.
This wasn’t helped by the fact that he found it more practical to buy his clothes in the kids’ department.
But anyone who saw his deeply-lined mug quickly realized their error.
Once he got up and moving, he was exceptionally sprightly.
In a blink, he had clambered down from the large deck built off of his double-wide and onto the palm-shaded blacktop.
His sneakers, also intended for children, lit up as he hurried towards her, flashing red and white with every step, his mop of dusty brown curls flopping around his head.
He stuck out his chest and gave her a look that would’ve wilted a flower nymph.
Jabbing the brown-stained stem of his pipe up at her, his silvery eyes flashed over the top of his reflective aviators. “You can’t have new tenants in your place.”
Damion and Riker weren’t far behind, hiking up the slope through the gates that cordoned off their tiny beachside enclave.
“Tenants? I own that box, Frank. You’re not my landlord.”
“I sure am.” Frank tapped his pipe against his thick palm with each syllable. “I own the land that box sits on. My land. Land-lord.”
“He’s not a tenant,” she said as Damion came up beside her. “He’s just visiting.”
Frank harrumphed and took to stabbing his pipe in Damion’s direction. Damion glowered down at him.
“I know his type,” Frank said. “You’re bringing trouble.”
“He’s an exile,” she said. “Like us.”
Frank crossed his arms over his Magic Kingdom T-shirt. “First, the pretty Prince boy and now a warrior? You know what that looks like—”
Damion took the slightest step forward. “What does it look like, pit-dweller?”
Frank’s mouth dropped open. “I am no pit-dweller! I am descended from Laurin, the son of—”
She placed a hand before Damion. “He apologizes, Frank. He just got here today. His Radiant was defeated, his sister.”
Riker strolled up, still in his swim trunks, sunglasses pushed back into his hair, a blue beach towel tossed over his shoulder, bringing out the blue of his eyes—not that it was difficult. Blue toothpaste brought out the color of his eyes.