Raging Rival Hearts Read online

  RAGING RIVAL HEARTS

  Olivia Wildenstein

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  CHARACTERS

  GOTTWA LANGUAGE

  FAELI LANGUAGE

  Prologue

  1. The Plan

  2. The Assault

  3. The Research

  4. Remo

  5. Copper Harbor

  6. The Drive

  7. Zipline

  8. Birthplace

  9. The Big Spring

  10. The Visitor

  11. Hippies

  12. The Compound

  13. The Boat

  14. The Savior

  15. The Chain

  16. The Interrogation

  17. Cold Night

  18. The Illusion

  19. The Meal

  20. The Lock

  21. Absence

  22. The Stone

  23. Fixed

  24. Nails

  25. Goodbyes

  26. The Passengers

  27. Many Faces

  28. The Storm

  29. Lost And Found

  30. Betrayal

  31. Diles And Declarations

  32. Last Dance

  33. Jealousy

  34. After Party

  35. Glimmer

  36. My Beauty

  37. Terror

  38. Dile Poison

  39. The Pink Sea

  40. The Acorn

  41. The Boathouse

  42. Madison Square Garden

  43. Locker Room

  44. The Page

  45. The Runa

  46. The Traveler

  47. The Death

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Olivia Wildenstein

  About the Author

  Book 4 of The Lost Clan series

  by

  OLIVIA WILDENSTEIN

  CHARACTERS

  Adette: Taeewa’s mate; the bazash’s daughter

  Adison Wood: Ace and Lily’s mother; Linus’s wife

  Ace Wood: Linus’s son; Maximus’s grandson

  Aylen: Nova’s sister; Cat’s aunt

  Astra Sakar: half-fae; owns Astra’s Bakery

  Bee: Beatrice; owns Bee’s Place; Blake’s grandmother

  Blake: Bee’s grandson; Cat’s friend

  Borgo Lief: Ishtu’s lover; Cruz’s “adoptive” father

  Cassidy (Cass): Cat’s best friend in Rowan; Etta’s daughter

  Catori Price: main character

  Chatwa: Iya’s mother; twin sister to Holly’s mother, Ley; hunter

  Charlotte: mother of twins Cole and Kiera, and Danny; earthly Daneelie

  Cole: Charlotte’s son; Kiera’s twin brother; earthly Daneelie

  Cruz Vega: fae; faux medical examiner; friends with the Woods family; Lily’s fiancé; Lyoh & Jacobiah’s son

  Derek Price: Cat’s father; Nova’s husband; coroner

  Elika: Negongwa’s mate; Gwenelda’s mother; Kajika’s adoptive mother

  Etta: real name is Cometta; part fae; daughter of Astra; sister to Stella

  Faith Sakar: Stella’s daughter; bad blood between her and Cat

  Gregor: current fae wariff; soulless narcissist

  Gwenelda: huntress; first to awaken; absorbed Nova’s soul

  Holly: Ley; half-mortal, half-fae; Jacobiah Vega’s half-sister, Cruz’s aunt

  Ishtu: Kajika’s mate; looked like Cat

  Iya: Chatwa’s daughter; Cat’s great-grandmother

  Jacobiah Vega: fae; former wariff; Cruz’s father; killed by Lyoh Vega

  Jimmy: Cass’s brother; Etta’s son

  Kajika: Ishtu’s ex-husband; Gwenelda’s brother-in-law

  Kiera: Charlotte’s daughter; Cole’s twin sister; earthly Daneelie

  Ley: Holly; Chatwa’s “twin sister”; half-fae / half-human

  Lily Wood: fae; mute; Ace’s sister; Linus’s daughter; Cruz’s fiancée

  Linus Wood: King of the fae

  Lyoh Vega: Jacobiah’s wife; Cruz’s mother; killed her husband; killed Ishtu

  Maximus Wood: Linus’s father; ruthless, lawless, bloodthirsty leader

  Menawa: Gwenelda’s mate; Kajika’s brother

  Milly: mortician; works for Derek Price

  Negongwa: revered leader of Gottwa Indians

  Nova Price: Catori’s mother; Derek’s beloved wife

  Pete: married to a Daneelie; turned Hunter

  Quinn Thompson: earthly Daneelie; Forest Press owner

  Satyana: Aylen’s daughter; Shiloh’s twin sister

  Shiloh: Aylen’s daughter; Cat’s young cousin; Satyana’s twin sister; has the sight

  Silas: lucionaga

  Stella Sakar: part fae; daughter of Astra; sister to Cometta (Etta)

  Taeewa: Gwenelda’s youngest brother; the 13th hunter

  Tony: Aylen’s husband

  Woni: Iya’s daughter; Nova’s mother; Cat’s grandmother

  GOTTWA LANGUAGE

  aabiti: mate

  abiwoojin: darling

  adsookin: legend

  baseetogan: fae world; Neverra; Isle of Woods

  bazash: half-fae, half-human

  bekagwe: wait for me

  chatwa: darkness

  debwe: truth

  gajeekwe: the king’s advisor, like a minister, wariff

  gassen: faerie dust

  gatizogin: I’m sorry

  Gejaiwe: the Great Spirit

  Geezhi: day

  gingawi: part hunter, part fae

  golwinim: Woods’s guards, fireflies; lucionaga

  gwe: woman

  ishtu: sweetness

  kwenim: memory

  ley: light

  ma kwenim: my memory

  maagwe: come with me

  maahin: come forth

  Makudewa Geezhi: Dark Day

  manazi: book

  mashka: tough

  mawa: mine

  meegwe: give me

  meekwa: blood

  Mishipeshu: water faeries, Daneelies

  mika: beauty

  naagangwe: stop her

  nockwad: mist

  nilwa: defeater

  pahan: faeries

  tokwa: favor

  twa: men

  zava: love

  zavagingwi: I love you

  FAELI LANGUAGE

  adamans: glass flowers as tall as wheat stalks

  alinum: rowan wood

  astium: portal, door

  calidum: lesser fae; bazash

  caligo: mist

  caligosubi: one who lives below the mist, aka marsh-dweller

  caligosupra: one who lives above the mist, aka mist-dweller

  calimbor: skytrees

  capra: slithering Neverrian creature with rubbery skin that can paralyze prey for days

  captis: magnetize

  clave: portal locksmith

  cupola: cage of nightmares

  Daneelies: water faeries, Mishipeshu

  dias: day

  diles: venomous Neverrian creature, a cross between a frog and a crocodile

  draca: first guard; wariff’s protector (dragon-form)

  drosa: type of Neverrian rose

  duciba: council made up of a member from each faerie race

  Duobosi: coupling ceremony

  enefkum: eunuch

  fae: sky-dwellers

  Forma: underground-dwellers, bodiless, Unseelies

  Fias: child

  gajoï: favor

  Hareni: grotto

  kalini: fire

  lucionaga: faerie guards

  lustriums: clusters of stars

  lupa: wild dog

  mallow: an edible plant, faerie weed; doesn’t affect humans the same way it affe
cts faeries, and hunters are immune

  Massin: Your highness

  mea: mine

  mikos: Neverrian snake coated in sharp quills

  milandi: marvelous

  Neverra: baseetogan; Isle of Woods

  obso: please

  potas: I can’t

  plantae: plants

  quid est: Who is it?

  quila: Neverrian eagle with sharp talons and curved beaks

  runa: Neverrian gondolas carried by faeries

  Seelies: light faeries, Fae

  sepula: ceremony of the dead

  stam: giant flat shells that bob in the Glades

  ti ama: I love you

  Unseelies: dark faeries, bodiless, Forma

  vade: go

  valo: bye

  Ventor: Hunter

  Wariff: equal to Gajeekwe

  wita: faerie dust, gassen

  Prologue

  From the moment I was conceived, my life was mapped out. My teachers were selected, my friends handpicked, and my wet nurse—Ace’s before mine—stationed by my floating crib. The only aspect of my life that hadn’t been arranged at birth was the man I would be married off to once I came of age.

  Alliances were delicate and timely. And the timeliness of this alliance arose in the sixty-fifth year of my life, the year that bridged childhood and adulthood. Outside of Neverra, in the human world, they call that age thirteen.

  I was a mature thirteen-year-old. I did not have much of a choice considering I was the princess of a faerie kingdom and I spent my days—when my tutors weren’t pressing my nose into a book about the use of volitor wood or the effects of dile venom—with Ace and his best friend, Cruz.

  I followed them almost everywhere, and never once did they make me feel like one of the wild pups that roamed our mossy kingdom. Taverns and brothels were off-limits, but curiosity would make me peer through the thick glass. I’d watch the scantily-clad women inside and study the way their charcoal-blackened eyes tracked over the customers, the way their cheekbones dusted with shimmery powder from crushed adamans petals caught the muted lighting, and the way their lips reddened with a paste made of scarlet drosas would slip over the men’s jaws.

  I hated these women, hated their cloyingly sweet, crushed beetle scent that lingered on men’s skin, but I was fascinated by how they enchanted men. More specifically, one man: Cruz Vega.

  I wasn’t sure when I’d developed feelings for my brother’s best friend. No…that isn’t true. I was born with feelings for him. But like my body, they’d matured over time. Whenever a red-mouthed, glittery-lidded calidum approached him, my heart felt like it grew claws.

  Sometimes, I would fight the lucionaga in charge of my security when he or she tried to haul me away; sometimes, I would leave willingly, unable to endure the pain of seeing Cruz with another woman.

  My love for him turned fiercer still when my parents and his mother—the feared Neverrian draca—decided to bind our essences together in the Cauldron. I became his betrothed in my sixty-fifth year of life and remained so until my ninetieth.

  Four months ago, I released him from the bond that had tied us together, so he could bind himself to Catori Price.

  Oh, how I loathed Catori at first.

  I hated her exotic beauty that made men gape, and her strange magic that made faeries take notice. I hated that she’d kissed Cruz—twice—and how he’d made light of those kisses by saying our engagement was arranged and loveless. His words had hurt more than when I’d fallen midflight into the adamans field bordering the glade, and the sharp, glassy petals had shredded my skin. I hated that Cruz had marked her to know where she was at all times. And then I hated her more than ever when she’d hurt my brother, before I understood she’d broken up with him to protect him.

  Why more than ever?

  Because at that point, I’d come to like her.

  Life is a funny thing.

  The girl I’d despised the most became closer to me than all the friends my parents had hired to fill my social card. Weeks ago, she even became my sister-in-law, which was all shades of wild and wonderful.

  And the boy I’d adored my entire life became merely a friend. I still loved Cruz Vega, but I no longer craved his attention or his heart.

  Another man crowded my mind—a hunter, of all people. I was enamored with one of the people my brethren had taught me to fear and destroy. My nursery rhymes had been songs woven from the dust-thirsty lost clan’s most appalling deeds.

  How could I possibly desire my worst rival?

  I blamed my strange infatuation on my dwindling time. In another two months, the fire burning beneath my skin would extinguish. Unless someone found a way to get me back into Neverra.

  When life has an expiration date, you live it differently… dangerously.

  Or at least I did.

  1

  The Plan

  “Lily, are you listening?” Cat asked as she stared at me over the coffee table in her house, which I’d come to think of mine since I moved in four months before—the day I was cast out of Neverra.

  I blinked away from the window that framed the graveyard and signed that Yes, I was listening. But I hadn’t been.

  Kajika had told Cat he would stop by after he went to the barn, where he fought illegally for handfuls of twenties. Actually, I had no idea how much he made for each fight. Possibly several hundreds of dollars. Growing up in Neverra, with a limitless access to cash to burn in the human world, hadn’t taught me much about the value of money. It was something I was only beginning to understand.

  “What did I say, then?” Cat wasn’t digging her hands into her waist, but she sure sounded like she was.

  I glared at her. Sweetly, but still I glared.

  “Aha. You weren’t listening!”

  I wriggled my eyebrows.

  “Lily, we’re talking about your life. Your life! The least you can do is appear interested in saving it.”

  I sighed. Tell me again.

  Cat wasn’t fluent in sign language yet, but she was learning. Besides working to save my life, she’d enrolled in an intensive signing class. Oh, and did I mention she was also studying Neverrian politics with Gregor? Queens must learn how to rule.

  Before she could rehash her plan to save my life, which would most probably not work anyway, my hands fluttered through the air. Do you realize you’re a queen?

  She sighed, laying her notepad on her jean-clad lap. “It’s still really strange.”

  I bet Veroli would have an aneurism if she saw Cat wearing jeans. My heart pinched at the thought of my wet nurse. She’d come to visit me after the Caligo Dias—the Day of Mist, i.e. Neverra’s newest Independence Day. The day Cat single-handedly vanquished the mist from our world.

  If I died, my greatest regret would be not being able to glimpse this new Neverra. Although I’d stared through the boathouse portal during one of the many failed attempts at bringing me home, the sliver I could see of my world was no panorama. Sadly, phones and cameras didn’t work in our world, so snapshots were out of the question too.

  “I was thinking we could try a transfusion…”

  I gaped at Cat. I’m made of fire, not blood, doc.

  “I know. But if you heat gases enough, they produce plasma. And that’s a fluid.”

  I blinked. What is enough?

  “Very hot. It would have to be done in a lab, and then we could reinject that into your veins.” She paused. “Don’t look so horrified.”

  I shook my head slowly. I wasn’t horrified; I was intrigued, if a tad anxious. You think it could work?

  “We won’t know until we try. I’m going to look into specialized labs tomorrow.”

  That would be— I was going to sign incredible when my palm ignited.

  And then it flickered.

  I jolted to my feet.

  It wasn’t the first time the mark I shared with Kajika lit up. Every time he trained hard—which was often—his pulse would speed up and register on my palm as a bright
glow, but never had it flickered.

  The notebook slid off Cat’s lap as she too leaped to her feet.

  “Where is he?” The urgency in her voice made my stomach constrict.

  I closed my eyes and focused on the location of his pulse. Barn, I signed, before racing out of the house and shooting into the dark sky. Below me, Cat ran, her black hair ribboning out behind her blurred figure.

  My velocity decreased with each flight, an acute reminder that my fire was waning. I cast my mind off my failing body and focused wholly on Kajika. A mile away from the barn, I sensed him and dove down, hitting the ground harder than intended. I landed between him and two faeries whose faces were cloaked by ski masks but whose hands were extended, ribbons of dust winding and unwinding around their fingers.

  Kajika was on his knees. The tinny scent of blood tangled with the odor of charred flesh. I wanted to crouch next to him and ask him what happened, but Kajika needed a shield, not a nurse.

  I fixed my gaze on the faeries, trying to make out the faces behind the masks. My eyesight had dulled from the months spent away from Neverra. I could still see clearly, but only during the day. At night, I saw like a human…weakly.

  Anger flared behind my breastbone. Anger at the faeries who’d carved through Kajika’s skin and anger at my useless vocal cords and pitiful eyesight.

  “Please move, Princess.” The voice was deep, masculine. “We do not want to harm you.”

  I didn’t move.