Outcast: Faerie King, #2

By Ashlyn Pierce

Months after Bethany tranverses the Veil the Recruiter is sent to kill her. She survives, but in the attempt one thing is made painfully clear:

She made a mistake. 

Hunted by otherworldly forces, and desperate to protect a lethal secret Bethany discovers more and more that her fate and that of the Empire are inextricably intertwined. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashlyn Pierce
• Release date: Nov 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215547373

Ashlyn Pierce

Ashlyn Pierce is part fae, part mortal mixed with fairy dust and filled with the magic of a untold thousand stories.  She lives in the rolling hills of Northern New York, where she writes fantasy YA and dystopian novels when she is not skulking through the forest or foraging through her favorite bookstore.  Ashlyn Pierce is the penname of Sarajean Gatch. 

Book preview

Chapter One

Ijerked to a sitting position in the darkness. My heart pounded hot blood through my aching skull. I cowered beneath the thick blankets, eyes searching the shadows for what had frightened me.

There had been something, hadn’t there?

Silence alone dominated the darkness. So stark my eardrums ached. Nothing moved. The seconds ticked by painfully as I waited for some creature, fresh from the darkness, to attack me.

And, as the seconds bled into minutes, I started to catch my breath and realized that, whatever it was, it hadn’t been real. I was safe and warm in my room, like every night. And, like every night, I was alone. There was no threat. There was no monster hiding in the corner. No crazed stalker staring down at me from my windowsill. No reason for fear.  

I rolled onto my back and slipped my wet palms across my sweat dampened cheeks and heaved a gusty sigh.

It was a strange feeling. Thrust into consciousness by terror and uncertainty, only to be crushed a second later by the letdown—almost discouragement—of realizing that I was safe.

The night was black and peaceful, a soft breeze swept through the pine trees into my half-open window.

All was well here.  

It would have been better had the monster just been where I’d expected him. Or if he’d existed at all. I had been ejected into a calm, dark reality from a nightmare that—just now—I realized I couldn’t even remember.

Where was that fluffy pillow? My hands stretched out blindly across the bed until the tips of my fingers brushed against its silky surface. I snatched it up and tightened my arms around it greedily, falling fast amidst the comfort of my throws.  

Go to sleep, I told myself.

I might as well. There would be nothing happening here tonight. No late-night murder attempts. No sentries rushing in to advise me of a new prisoner. My life was about none of those things, now.

But what was I to live for, if not the clash of arms and the thrill of battle?

The times when I relied the most on my friends, and when their lives depended on me, were some of the worst and best days of my life. I’d had a duty, family of my own, of sorts. Not that I didn’t have those things here. But it was different. Sometimes, painfully so.

Those ancient times were like another dream. The memories were clear and bitter. But they held less and less significance for me with the passage of time.

After all, the past is not for living in.

Decades had floated through me in the weeks since I’d last seen the others—slowly chipping away at all the pieces of me that ever mattered. I no longer had a cause to fight for. Perhaps the worst of it was I didn’t want to find one. Not that I hadn’t tried.... Without the structure of military life, or the struggle and urgency of day to day survival, it all seemed so....pointless.

I cuddled the pillow tight beneath the blankets and tried to think of something else. Wallowing woke me further, rather than sending me off drifting to sleep. Other, less painful memories wafted through my mind.

Like how, the first week after my return, everyone began to realize Marissa and Jason were gone.

At first, Claudette had called my house on the hour just in case Marissa turned up. She seemed convinced that Marissa would come to my house if she ever came back. Which was an idea that haunted me—her own mother didn’t think she’d come home. Not willingly, anyway.

Did Marissa decide to go over to the dark side because of family problems? It didn’t seem likely, at first. She’d had everything to lose by choosing to follow Darrell—and did.

I would probably never know, but I owed it to the version of her that had been my friend to understand why she had done it. Or, at least, to try to understand it.

So, I spoke with Claudette often, those first few weeks. She never gave away much, just enough to paint a picture of the darker side of the girl I’d thought I’d known.

I found a way to hack into Marissa’s social media accounts. Tried to see if I could fit all the little pieces together into one cohesive overview. But even in all that I found nothing, no indication of what had happened, or where I’d lost my friend.

The whole town really erupted about three weeks after my return. People put up signs, Claudette harassed the police, and everyone did whatever they could think of to try to figure out what had happened.

Just like I was. Except, I had the advantage of knowing she would never return.

MY ALARM JOLTED ME into consciousness, I hated the sunlight that poured through my window. Today, I would be facing a battle of a different kind.

I threw off my blankets and got out of bed. I dressed quickly, scrunching my hair into a messy ponytail and slid my feet into my sneakers before heading downstairs.

Mom and I ate our breakfast quickly in the dark kitchen. Neither of us spoke, though I could tell she was racking her brain for something appropriate to say. Perhaps something to comfort me.

She didn’t like the idea of the police speaking with me alone. Marissa being gone was traumatic enough. I could tell she thought the cops were pushing it. At the time, I’d told her that I wanted to do it this way.

Probably the only reason she hadn’t booked us on a spontaneous vacation to Cancun already.

As far she could tell, they were looking for leads where there were none.

Of course, they were. I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I wouldn’t know anything about it, so why ask?

Of course.

Despite the initial glow of sunlight, it was pouring when we ducked our heads and ran to the car’s warmth. I pushed my hood back and settled in, but Mom’s hand hesitated on the ignition.

Are you sure you’re all right to do this? She asked, her big eyes taking in my face like she would gather me up and hide me away from the world if she could.

I forced a smile. "Yeah. I mean, they can’t ask me that many questions—right?" I shrugged.

Mom pressed her lips in a line. But something in my eyes must have encouraged her, because she turned the car on and pulled out without another word.

We drove to the police station in silence. A hot, terrifying silence for me. Although I tried not to let her see it, I felt as though they were going to throw me upon the rack.

It couldn’t be that bad. As far as they knew, I was her best friend. Just a teenager.

As far as they knew. No one would ever expect I’d spent the last year fighting against a horde of rebel faeries.

The tension did not ebb as we pulled into the parking lot, if anything it got worse. Soon I felt like I was suffocating. I twisted around in my seat, so that my back was to Mom and I was facing out the window and tried to focus on my breaths. Long and slow. In and out. It couldn’t be that bad. They were a bunch of caffeinated paper pushers who sat in cushy chairs and asked questions all day.

Through the rain, the car beside us popped open a door and a striped beanie sprung out.  

My intuition flickered. I unclicked my seatbelt and peeled myself out of the warm car, into the frigid rain. I should know this person with the beanie, clad in a black rain jacket and swaddled in colorful scarves.

She kept her head down, hands jammed deep into her pockets, moving quickly around us towards entrance. As she slunk past, I caught a flick of yellow hair. Frustration tightened my shoulders. I should know her. Who was she?

Only when she reached the door—lifting her face for the first time to shoot a saucy glare in our direction before swinging her body inside—did it click. My blood chilled.

Tanya.

Too bad that she had not been trapped on the other side of the Veil. I watched the glass door sweep closed, heavy on its hinges and bullet proof. Still not enough to protect us from her if it really came down to it.

Not all the monsters were gone from my life.

My mom bumped into me. Beth—

I forced my blocky feet to move. Sorry, I mumbled, just under my breath and then wondered if she’d heard me as I grasped the cold door handle and jerked it open. It didn’t matter. I had much bigger things to worry about, just now.

A warm swatch of air cascaded over my face and hands, followed by the rasping sounds of police radios and the babble of dozens of voices as soon as we entered the building. People were everywhere. People in handcuffs with officers standing or sitting with them. People in handcuffs waiting alone at desks. People complaining at the front desk—yelling and pointing at other manacled people across the room.

The loudest of these was a woman in blinding neon pants who aggressively asserted: "That man is a menace. You are a menace!" She stabbed the air with a bony finger in the general direction of a young man in a hoodie.

The young man didn’t move from his cowed position at the table, staring at his hands like he was counting in his head, or, quite possibly, wishing for a nap.

I could relate.

Behind the screaming woman in bright yellow pants was a line that almost met the door.

Of course, Tanya was there already. If I was going to wait, it would have to be behind her.

The sound of my mother pulling the door closed just barely registered in my ears; I was already marching to the front of the line. I pushed in front of Yellow Pants and slapped my hand against the counter.

It was almost a mistake. My palm burned, but it was worth it to quiet some of the chaos.

The pretty officer jumped and glared, stark disapproval raging in her doe-like eyes.

Good. I was making an impression.

Yellow Pants was the kind of shocked angry that was almost laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. Oh, gurl, you ‘bout ta—

My name is Bethany Bonetti, I said, ignoring Yellow Pants. I’m here to speak to Detective Holland regarding my best friend’s disappearance. I was told he’d be expecting me. I pointed across the room, at a line of uncomfortable looking grey padded chairs. I’ll be waiting over there.

"Bethany," my mother hissed from the back of the line. I motioned her forwards and stalked over to the only two empty seats left in the room. I didn’t miss the sneer on Tanya’s face.

It occurred to me then that I might have just made the wrong move. Maybe I should have waited in line, breathing down Tanya’s neck.

Shortly after—it was much quicker than I’d expected, I barely had time to dread the moment—two plainclothes detectives came up to us. Perhaps the officer at the counter was getting nervous about the glare Yellow Pants and I had been throwing back and forth.

In any case, I was surprised that there would be two of them. They led Mom and me into a well-lit room that contained a small table and four chairs. One mirror traced along the east wall, from end to end. I made sure to look straight into the glass as I sat across from the two detectives.

One was Holland. The other was Finch. I wasn’t sure which one was which—the older cop introduced themselves as we and muttered everything else in one quick, jumbled sentence that I couldn’t understand, and that made me wonder if he was entirely sober.

I assumed the younger, blonde detective was Finch, and that the heavy browed black-haired man who smacked his lips each time he took a sip of his coffee was Holland.

What else was in that cup?

They sat down across from us in silence. For a long moment, their sad eyes burned into mine as if to impress upon me the magnitude of the situation.

It was worse than they thought.

Not that it really mattered. I couldn’t give them anything. And, as far as they could know, nothing was about as much as I knew.

They certainly tried to prove otherwise. They tried to trick me with sly questions like Where did Marissa say she was going, again? Or, When did she say she was leaving? Scrutinizing my every answer...looking for the tiniest detail that would crack up my testimony. They never mentioned Jason, and I wondered if they had discounted his disappearance altogether.

Come to think of it, no one had really seemed to notice his disappearance. I thought back, trying to remember if anyone had mentioned him, or whether he’d been on any of the numerous newscasts that’d covered the incident. None came to mind. Who were his connections here? Were they all fraudulent?

After about an hour, Holland and Finch decided they wanted to speak to my mother alone.

My mom gave me a stiff smile and five dollars for the vending machine out in the hallway. I didn’t particularly like the idea of leaving my mother alone with these two, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it. I crumbled the five in my fist and left.

She didn’t know anything anyway. What could she tell?

After forcibly removing my prize from the vending matching, I wound through the agitated rabble to the long row of chairs at the back of the room and sank down into one of them.

A police station is a unique place to people watch, and I had a lot of time on my hands to enjoy the spectacle. All kinds of interesting and frightening characters came and left. Most of them completely unafraid to air their grievances in front of everyone.

Things were not so uncouth in the Empire.

I bit into the soft, silken chocolate to hide my frown, ignoring the ache that the thought awoke in me. Only to be distracted from it completely by the reappearance of the striped beanie.

Tanya moved quickly, pushing her way through the crowd and out the door. She didn’t see me where I was parked against the wall. And, once she was gone, I realized I’d stopped breathing. I forced in a long drag and took another bite of candy.

Why was she out so early?

But then, it wasn’t like she had parents to cross-examine. I wonder what excuse she’d given the police. I cast a look to the rotund clock on the wall. 1:30 already. What could possibly be taking so long?

When the waiting became too painful, I got up and started pacing. Checked the time on my phone. 1:55.

2:05.

2:15.

2:30.

2:35

They would never find Marissa this way, I thought to myself, biting my cheek and ignoring the Sergeant’s reproachful eyes on my back as I made another turn.

They would never find her at all.

Besides I had homework that had to be done. I contemplated knocking on the door and saying so—I was already failing math—but something held me back. If they were suspicious of me now, that kind of intervention was exactly the kind of thing that could only make it worse. I sighed and dropped my hand away from the door. Maybe if I’d been a better student, they wouldn’t find me so suspicious.

A part of me wished I just could go in there and tell them everything, even if it meant I would wind up in a padded cell.

My teeth sank into my cheek. No. I couldn’t tell anyone.

The door cracked open, then, and they hustled out. My mother’s face was hard. She didn’t appear to see me as she laced her purse over her shoulder and murmured goodbyes to the police.

Their eyes were definitely on me. I ducked my head and followed her to the door.

The silence in the car wound tighter the knot of anxiety that had started to tie itself inside my chest at the station. What did they say to her after I left?

I racked my brain, trying to remember if I’d made any mistakes since my return.

I was ready to spring out of my seat the second we pulled up to the house. I should have known the other shoe was going to come crashing down on my head when she didn’t move towards her door as I had. The door handle stuck—locked.

I slouched back.

My mom ran a hand through her curly black hair and then ran the fingers of both hands down her thighs, like she was trying not to wrap them around my neck.  

She still would not look at me. I watched with growing discomfort as she formulated her approach. Bethie. She fidgeted with her keys. Bethie, you need to tell me what’s going on.

Nothing, I squealed. She was going to make this difficult. But even if I told her what I knew, she would never believe me. What good would it do?

For the briefest instant, I felt a flash of anger. Erik shouldn’t have let this happen. He shouldn’t have let me leave—to be locked on the other side on my own. With my ‘own kind.’

The more time I spent amongst them, the more foreign they seemed. I would have been much better off at home. I hid my fists in my pockets, blood boiling.

Oh come on. My silence had sparked something in my mother. She looked at me then, and I tried not to flinch away from the accusations in her eyes. We both know you know more than you’re saying.

"Mom, I don’t know where she is." That part, at least, was true.

So Marissa just what...dropped off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again, huh? Never told anyone—including you. Even though you’re her best friend.

"I already told them. That was Jason. They should ask him what happened to her."

Yeah. Well. He’s gone too.

Well there was one for Jason. I mentally tallied the mark in my head while I played with the zipper on my jacket. The urge to barrel out of the car and make a run for it almost overpowered me. I might have gone, had the door not been locked.

Or had I still had control of my powers.

I just want what’s best for you, Bethany. Her voice sounded strained, and tired. I wondered again, just what the police had said to her in that room. I blew a gusty sigh.

It’s got nothing to do with me. They should try looking for her for a change.

My mom dropped her eyes and nodded. She reached to unlock the doors, releasing me into the downpour.

Chapter Two

Ahand pressed on my shoulder. Bethany?

I looked up at my mom's worried eyes as the eggs sizzled in the pan. Yeah, fine. I squirmed in my chair uneasily. I pressed my lips between my teeth and tried to be more focused on what I was doing.

She didn’t look convinced.

It would never occur to her that I was the reason—no, I was more than that. I had been both judge and executioner. I had everything to do with the fact Marissa could never come home. And, although Jason might find his way out from whatever rock he was hiding under, he would never come back to school either. He wouldn’t dare.

All of that was on me.  

Mom slid the plate of steaming food in front of me. It smelled good—it looked good.

My stomach twisted.

I shoved forkfuls of eggs in my mouth, forcing myself to swallow it down, knowing full well that if I didn’t she’d only become more anxious. Looking happy or at least content was not easy, but at least I tried to relax.  

Mom narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. For a beat, I wondered whether she would call my bluff. But then she grabbed her own fork and sat across the table.

Behind my mother’s shoulder, the green numbers on the stove shifted, warning me that we’d come to seven-thirty. Almost time for me to get going.

Good.

I took my escape from the breakfast table, donned my coat and boots and nearly ran for the car.

I wanted to feel relief as I pushed open the door into the moist spring air, but I couldn’t help feeling like I was dragging a part of the morning’s shadow with me.

Perhaps I should just skip the whole day. Visit my waterfall for a change.

My feet almost carried me past the car and onto the old dirt road that led to the little meadow and the waterfall that had once been my and my father’s special place.

Mom’s face flashed in front of my mind and I realized, with a twang of regret, that I couldn’t run from my problems today. Perhaps, not ever again. I wondered what her reaction would be like when the school called to inform her of my absence. There was no way I could do that, not with Marissa’s disappearance still so fresh in her mind. Well, in everyone’s, I supposed.  

I heaved a sigh and mentally redirected myself towards the school.

Was coming back a mistake, then? I shouldn’t have let them seal me on this side of the realm. It wasn’t like I was having a good time of it. Here I was, lonely beneath the single moon and our one sun while Erik’s war raged on without me.

I abandoned them.

No. I couldn’t let myself think like that. They could handle it. The hard part was over, and I had shouldered most of it. I deserved peace. I’d earned it.

Still... I couldn’t help but feel as though I made a grave error. Though there hadn’t really been another option. I couldn’t have left my mother and sister here alone—not knowing what was out there. I had no choice. 

The thought nagged at me, and I fidgeted with my car keys as I crunched back across the gravel driveway and got into my car, fingers scraping hard against the keys. I thrust the car into reverse and headed to school, lost in a pointless reverie.

As usual, the drive was a mystery to me. Dangerous, I chided myself. I had to pay more attention. Lack of focus would not do me any favors, even now.  

I clicked my seat belt off and turned to open the door. Tanya stood at the top of the steps, leaning against one of the short stone columns that lined them. For a tense moment, our eyes locked, and we waited, neither willing to be the first to break and look away.

I sighed and dropped my eyes, pushing myself out of the car. I had other things to do—far more important things than feeding my rivalry with Tanya Rivers. I already knew full well that she had it in mind to kill me. I wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, or why she hadn’t tried yet. Perhaps the order hadn’t been given before the Veil had been sealed.

I retrieved my bag from the back seat and slung the strap over my shoulder. The cold air bit into my skin as I turned into the wind, and I jammed my hands deep into the warm, fleece lined pockets of my jacket.

Tanya was still staring; I took a deep breath and trudged up to the sidewalk, keenly aware of her eyes on my face.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, she slunk back into the school’s wide doorway. I smothered a smile. The war had left me broken, and weak. But at least I was the only one who seemed to know it. Although there would have been rumors speculating my reasons for leaving...none of which Tanya could verify, if any of it had even made it to her ears.

A cold slice of rain grazed my face; I’d made it just before the downpour. Perhaps that was a good sign. Today might just be salvageable.

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