Silver Dust

By Leslie Claire Walker

Silver had it all—eternal life, long-term memory, and a real sweet princess gig as the heir to the Faery King’s throne. But then the Faery realm caught a terrible disease, and she tried to save her people by taking the sickness into herself. She ended up banished with a price on her head and only days to live. The cure cost her memory and left her in hiding, a stranger to herself.

When her one friend in all the worlds disappears while trying to help her find a way home, Silver must come out of the shadows to save him. She must face the danger and the unknown lurking in the Human and Faery realms—and in her own strange heart and soul.

A story set in the Hunt Universe and part of The Uncollected Anthology Portals & Passageways, Issue 4: May 2015.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Secret Fire Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2015

Leslie Claire Walker

I live in the lush (humid and green) and darkly magical (crazy insane) bayou country of southeast Texas with various companions, including a Doggie Ranger and two cats, one older and distinguished and the other young with hellion ambitions. I am a legal secretary by day and a fiction writer at all other times. In my rare spare minutes, I play the lever harp (mostly Irish tunes) and enjoy gluten-free baking adventures. I write in the fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and young adult genres. I love to sit in my writing chair in the early mornings with the world's biggest mug of coffee and have no idea where the story will take me next. My fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Chiaroscuro, Electric Velocipede, GUD Magazine, and DAW Books anthologies.

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

SILVER DUST

Copyright © 2015 Leslie Claire Walker

Published 2015 by Secret Fire Press

Cover and Layout Copyright © 2015 by Secret Fire Press

Cover Design by Secret Fire Press

Cover Art Copyright © Fernando Cortés | Dreamstime.com

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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About the Author

The Uncollected Anthology

Copyright Information

I DROPPED MY black backpack on the floor of the one-room cabin with a thud and a poof of dust. Morning sun streamed through the single east window, bright enough to make me blink. I caught the faint shimmer of the protective shield from the corner of my eye as it melded with my magic and confirmed that I belonged—so it didn’t shoot me back out the door like a cannonball. Small favors.

I breathed as shallow as I could. The hot stink of the In-Between, the sulfur-drenched shadow world between the Human and Faery realms, coated the back of my tongue. Much as I didn’t want to spend a hot minute here, keeping to the shadows made a girl hard to track. And if that girl had been banished and a death sentence placed on her should she return to Faery, hard to track fell into the plus column by a mile.

The horde of white seven-day candles I’d left burning on top of the blue milk crate in the far corner flickered. The two rolled sleeping bags were where we’d left them, propped against the wood planks of the wall. Ditto the crude charcoal drawings I’d scribbled and felt compelled to tack everyplace, lost pieces of myself that formed no pattern and made no sense. When the ghosts of memory came, they curled and faded like smoke if I didn’t draw them right away.

I had no clear recollection of anything that happened to me before two weeks ago.

Not the little things, like brushing my hair or the first time I tasted a ripe peach or the particular orange glow of a sunset. Not the big stuff, like how I’d met Max, or the first time I’d kissed him. Or why he still hung around in spite of my not being the same Faery princess he fell in love with.

Amnesia did that. Made you into something different. Someone else.

Gazing at my own reflection felt like an interesting intellectual exercise. I had short, spiky blond hair and silver studs through my eyebrows. I wore a black leather bomber jacket, jeans with frayed hems, and black boots. I carried a stone blade in my back pocket and a silver watch on a chain in my front pocket. My fingernails were pocked with snags.

Max said my name was Silver, though I wore a gold pendant with the name Stacy, which was confusing. The actual Stacy was a Human Witch, he said, the one whose magic took away the details of my past. The pendant grew warm in the presence of danger. Since danger seemed to follow me everywhere I went, it felt warm all the time. Strange comfort. I was a stranger to myself.

The idea that I’d let her do that to me—that I’d fucking volunteered for it—burned so deep I couldn’t imagine