Sofia was an adventurous young shifter. Her parents were forever admonishing her about getting into trouble, about discovering new ways to inadvertently end up in potential danger. As she was four years old, she wasn’t yet good at comprehending the whys and whats of their admonishments. She was just too eager to learn about new things.
Lightbearers were certainly new to her. Her old pack master believed they held great magic, and that it was possible for a shifter to gain that magic, if he could only catch and kill one of them. Part of their shifter education was to sit about the pack master’s knee and listen to him tell his stories about magic and killing and shifters being the top of the magical food chain.
“Lightbearers exist for us to kill,” he said, “In the same way as four-legged mammals exist for us to eat.”
Undoubtedly it was at least partially due to this brainwashing that Sofia was so fascinated by the lightbearers with whom she’d come to live. Probably, the glow they wore like elegant jewelry was part of it too. Then there was the fact that Tanner, who, according to her mother, had become their new pack master, glowed, too. Just like a lightbearer.
But Tanner hadn’t killed a lightbearer. Tanner didn’t believe his dad’s stories. Besides, Tanner was so nice to them, especially to the prettiest one, the one who insisted she call her Olivia.
Olivia was a princess, according to Dane’s niece, who had stopped by for a visit the day Sofia and the other shifters were taken away in magical chains. Sofia hated the chains. They frightened her, and those lightbearer guards were not as nice as Olivia and Dane and Cecilia. She didn’t understand why the shifters were the ones in chains. They were the top of the magical food chain.
Then Olivia had rescued them. Rescued by a princess. It was better than any children’s book her mother had ever read to her. Now they were all living in this great big house that was full of windows and sat on a great cliff overlooking a lake that was so large it could be the ocean. Sofia had never seen the ocean before, so she liked to pretend the lake really was an ocean.
Because of all the windows, Sofia could scarcely sleep past dawn. But her mother could, because her little baby brother had to eat every few hours all night long, so Momma said she needed to sleep whenever she could, and dawn was when the littlest pup chose to sleep.
Left to her own devices, Sofia had wandered about the great big glass house until she discovered the kitchen. The kitchen was really a series of rooms, all huge and all bustling with activity. The smells had been what led her there. One lady lightbearer was in charge. Her name was Carley and she was just as nice as Olivia and Dane and Cecilia. She smiled warmly at Sofia and made a sandwich of warm biscuits, a sausage patty, and freshly made cherry jam. It was so good, Sofia ate two, and washed it all down with a tall glass of milk.
Carley then shooed her out of the kitchen because she said the queen was throwing a fancy dinner party in a few hours, and she had a million things to do to prepare. Sofia wondered if she would get to go to the fancy party. She didn’t have any fancy clothes, though, because when they’d left their pack, Momma had been crying and hadn’t really paid attention when she’d stuffed clothes into Sofia’s bag.
Sofia tried to retrace her steps and head back to the suite of rooms she shared with her mother and baby brother, but the glass house was so huge that she quickly became lost, and found herself at the end of a corridor, in front of a door leading outside. There was a garden outside the door, and the north side of the garden was edged with several rows of cherry trees. Sofia loved cherries, and she could see that the trees were heavy with fat, ripe fruit. She wasn’t supposed to eat cherries unless it was under the strict supervision of her mother, but Sofia knew how to bite into the cherry and spit out the pit. She didn’t need to wait for her momma to wake up to have a taste of fresh cherries, plucked right from the tree.
She slipped through the door and ran through the garden toward the trees. She could hear voices, kid voices, indicating that she wasn’t the only one who thought that cherries were delicious. When she came upon the small group of lightbearer children, they all had cherry juice smudged on their faces and the front of their shirts, and their fingers were stained from picking so much fruit.
“Hi,” she said shyly, and all five turned to look at her at the same time. There were three boys and two girls. All but one was at least a few years older than her. The youngest girl, who looked to be about Sofia’s age, widened her eyes and backed away as if she thought Sofia might attack her.
“I’m Sofia,” she announced proudly.
The boys looked at one another and then back at Sofia. None of them introduced themselves.
“You’re a shifter,” one of the boys commented.
Sofia nodded. It wasn’t a big secret. Not anymore.
“I heard your kind likes to try to eat my kind,” the same boy said.
Sofia shook her head. Eat lightbearers? Gross.
The boy walked toward her. The other two fell into formation, flanking him. The two girls hesitated, and then trailed after them. Sofia stood there, feeling a strange sense of alarm. The way the first boy looked at her, it didn’t seem very nice. More like the guards than Olivia or Dane or Cecilia or Carley the cook.
He was two heads taller than her, and the other two boys were only a shade shorter than him. They towered over her, looking down at her as if she were a particularly disgusting sort of bug. She shrank away from them, feeling frightened by the menacing look in their eyes. The girls stepped up, and Sofia suddenly found herself surrounded by lightbearer children.
She sensed she would regret her decision to help herself to cherries straight from the tree.
* * * *
Genevieve Bennett, once Genevieve Vanderling, had been born and bred to be a queen. Her family, so it was said, was connected to fae royalty. Her parents raised her with the expectation that she would catch the young prince’s eye, that they might be mated someday.
Their plan worked.
Unfortunately, Genevieve fully understood her role as queen and held incredibly high standards for herself. She lost three babes in the womb, before Olivia finally, finally stuck.
Sander fretted and her healer relegated her to her bed for the duration of the pregnancy, to ensure this one would, indeed, see its way to the end, even though they knew almost from the start that it was a girl, not a boy. But Genevieve figured if she could carry this one to the end, she would be able to carry another. A male, for Sander to declare as his heir, to carry on the line, to be king someday.
She would be the mate of a king and the mother of a king.
The labor and delivery were terrible. It was a ridiculously long, painful affair. No matter what the healer tried, the babe would not leave Genevieve’s womb. After three days, mother and babe were exhausted, near to giving up. The desperate healer suggested something so daring, so frightening, that at first, Sander refused. But another day went by and it became all too clear that he would lose both his mate and his babe if he did not do something.
“Cut her,” he instructed.
So the healer did, slicing the babe from its mother’s body. The process was actually uncomplicated, and the babe was pulled from her mother’s womb without incident. While a servant tended to the babe, the healer focused on healing the queen.
Therein lay the problem. Closing up the gaping, bleeding wound was the difficult part. It took the full magic of three healers to finally complete the task, and it was so sloppy, so poorly done, that they warned the queen she might have difficulty conceiving again. Lightbearer healers did not normally resort to such drastic measures to heal someone, so they were wholly unprepared for the process of repairing the cut afterward.
Genevieve, despite her very best efforts, was never able to conceive again. She was never able to give her mate a son, an heir. By the time Olivia had passed ten summers, her mother had fallen into such a deep depression that Sander was desperate to find anything, to do anything to pull her through.
Party planning, as it turned out, was the answer. Genevieve loved parties. She loved to plan them. She loved to gather lightbearers together, to show off her chef’s fabulous creations, to flutter about the crowd like a butterfly, ensuring everyone was happy and pleased with the event.
Initially, the need to plan parties was a substitute for her need to bear more children. Soon, however, party planning became her outlet for anything and everything. Every time she felt stress about something, anything, she planned a party.
There had been a great deal of stress in Genevieve’s life over the course of just the last few days. Shifters in the coterie. Her daughter nearly dying due to some freak accident that involved guards and arrows. Sander’s stress spilled over to her as well. They’d been mated a very long time, and over time, Genevieve had fallen in love with the man. She sensed it when he was unhappy, unsatisfied, worried, frustrated.
Sander was certainly stressed if he was drunk on faery wine before noon. He’d burst into their chamber a short time ago and insisted that she put on a dinner party today. Genevieve had been so excited—two parties over the course of three days!—that she hadn’t even asked for a reason. She’d simply donned a dress and rushed down to the kitchens to discuss the menu with Carley.
She then tracked down her niece, Cecilia—that child was always at the beach house—and gave her the list of invitees, and then sent her to inform them of the start time of the party. That was when it occurred to her that a side of fresh green beans, sautéed with tiny sweet onions, fresh garlic, and chunks of sausage would be quite divine with the main entrée she’d selected. She immediately changed direction and headed to the garden, to see for herself that there were enough ripe beans, before making her way to the kitchen to inform Carley that she’d slightly altered the menu.
Before she made her way to the patch of bean plants, she heard the voices, and recognized them as children’s voices. Curious as to who had slipped into the royal gardens this time, Genevieve made her way toward the sound. The closer she drew, the more apparent it became that the children were not playing nicely together. In fact, she distinctly heard someone crying. Feeling alarmed, Genevieve lifted her skirts and hurried to interfere.
She discovered a small group of lightbearer children—she recognized every single one of them—surrounding another child, a tiny thing with dark hair and big, pale blue eyes. Those eyes were full of tears, and she was sobbing, flinching every now and then as another child hurled an insult at her.
Genevieve had not yet seen the shifters that she’d heard had infiltrated the coterie. Sander hadn’t wanted to cause her undue stress by subjecting her to the experience. As she looked upon the poor, helpless dark-headed child, she wondered what in the world her mate was thinking. Other than the fact that she had darker hair and a slightly darker complexion than most lightbearers, and that she did not carry a faint glow of magic about her, this child looked as harmless as any of the hundreds of other children within the coterie.
“Children,” she barked, and all six of them jumped and turned toward the sound of her voice. “What do you think you are doing?” she asked sternly, giving each of the young lightbearers a good glare.
“She’s a shifter,” one of them said, as he pointed at the crying child.
“And you are very mean to our guests,” Genevieve admonished.
The boy’s eyes grew large. Genevieve motioned at the little shifter. “This child is a guest of your king. You are insulting your king by insulting this child. You should be treating her with the utmost respect. I am highly disappointed in each and every one of you.”
All five looked abashed.
“Run along,” she commanded. “And inform your parents that the queen caught you doing something bad and that they should punish you. If you do not, I shall tell them myself and instruct them to punish you twice as much as they would otherwise.”
None of the children hesitated. They all turned tail and ran, as fast as they could, toward the garden gate. Genevieve hoped they did not inadvertently hurtle themselves down the stairs as they clamored down to their respective cottages, which were all located at the base of the cliff upon which the beach house was situated.
“Come here, child,” she commanded the fairly quivering youngling. “I will not harm you.”
Some lightbearer at some point had been nice to the child, because she literally threw herself into Genevieve’s arms, buried her face into Genevieve’s shoulder, and sobbed with relief as she clung to the queen.
Genevieve sighed and wrapped her arms around the little girl, as every single one of her not-nearly-utilized-enough mothering instincts kicked into gear.
* * * *
Tanner barely lifted his arm to knock on the chamber door when it was flung open, and a harried looking Lisa stood there, a wild look in her eye and her youngest pup cradled against her shoulder.
“Sofia is gone,” she said without preamble.
Tanner’s pack master instincts automatically kicked into gear, not based on her words as much as her demeanor. “When was the last time you saw her?” he demanded.
Lisa waved in an agitated way. “I don’t know. Earlier this morning. She wakes up at the crack of dawn because of all of these stupid windows,” she complained. “Little Freddy had just fallen back asleep after nursing, and I wanted to sleep with him, so I told her not to disturb me. I guess she left the room. I don’t know,” she repeated.
Tanner turned and sniffed the air, searching for Sofia’s scent among all of the lightbearer magic hanging in the air. He found it immediately and headed down the hall, with Lisa trailing in his wake. Her scent led him to the kitchens, where there were twenty lightbearers working diligently on preparing what looked and smelled like a ridiculously lavish feast. Inwardly, Tanner cursed. Sander clearly hadn’t heeded his advice.
As soon as he and Lisa stepped into the main portion of the series of rooms that comprised the kitchens, all activity ceased, and all but one of the lightbearers rushed to the far side of the room, as far away from the shifters as they could get. The only one who remained was the head cook, a young woman named Carley, who did not appear to be frightened of them in the least.
“Cecilia and I are distantly related,” she explained. “She told me all about you, and how you saved Olivia from being killed.”
Tanner gave the explanation the briefest acknowledgement, and then inquired about Sofia. Carley smiled brightly.
“She’s adorable,” she gushed. “Such a sweet thing. With a large appetite for such a youngling. She ate two whole sausage-and-cherry biscuits.”
“She loves cherries,” Lisa said in a bemused way.
“Maybe she went out to the gardens,” Carley suggested. “There is a small orchard out there, and the cherries are perfectly ripe right now. If the queen hadn’t directed me to immediately begin planning this dinner party, we would be out there picking them even as we speak.”
Out near the cherry trees, Tanner picked up Sofia’s scent, as well as a hodgepodge of lightbearer scents, as if there had been a large group of them. He frowned and looked around, but the orchard was empty.
“Where did she go?” Lisa demanded.
He walked toward the nearest door leading into the beach house. Her scent was still there, although faintly. “I’m not sure,” he replied, and he pulled open the door and let his nose lead the way. It wasn’t Sofia’s scent he was following, though. It was a lightbearer scent, one that was oddly familiar to him, even though he was certain he’d never smelled it before.
His nose led him to the king and queen’s private chambers.
“What in the world?” Lisa asked, as they stood outside the door, and Tanner lifted his arm and knocked.
“No idea,” he replied. “But this is where the trail ends.”
A handsome blonde woman with a stature that practically screamed queen pulled open the door and gave them a startled look before smiling politely.
“Yes?”
Tanner cleared his throat and ran his hand through his hair. This was Olivia’s mother, he knew without asking. Besides the fact that she was very clearly the most elegant and regal woman he’d ever met in his life, she bore a strong resemblance to Olivia. He’d already alienated Olivia’s father. He did not want to do the same to her mother, yet he was positive Sofia had at least been here, if she wasn’t still in the queen’s presence. He introduced himself and Lisa and the pup.
Just as soon as she lay eyes on the pup, the queen’s eyes softened, and a bemused smile stole across her face. “He is just a newborn,” she said on a sigh. “May I hold him?” She looked hopeful.
Lisa gave her a startled look before turning to Tanner, as if seeking an answer. Tanner shrugged. It was Lisa’s pup, not his. She looked hesitant, but then she lifted the pup off her shoulder and offered him to the queen. The woman gently cradled the pup as if he were the most fragile and precious child in the world. He blinked big black eyes up at her as she cooed and murmured and rocked him.
Then something strange happened. Tanner could have sworn the pup smiled at the queen.
“He smiled at me,” the queen gasped.
“It’s probably gas,” Lisa replied.
The queen laughed. “I had no idea shifter younglings were so adorable. I assume Sofia must be yours as well? She told me she has a baby brother who cries all night.”
“You met Sofia? Do you know where she is?”
“I certainly do,” the queen responded, and she pushed open the door. “Come in,” she invited, and Tanner and Lisa walked into the royal chambers.
Sofia sat at a frilly little vanity, which was full of all sorts of girlie stuff: jewelry and makeup and scarves and the like. She wore makeup on her face, bright pink paint on her nails, and a matching pink evening gown that looked as if it had been tailored specifically for her. Probably because it had, courtesy of lightbearer magic.
“Hi, Momma,” the little girl greeted them. “Grandma Gigi says I get to go to a party today. She even made me a dress. Isn’t it pretty? I’ve never worn a dress like this before.”