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WICKED LOVELY
Tattoo Faeries Series, Book 1
Melissa Marr
For Loch, Dylan, and Asia,
who believed in me even when I didn't,
and
the memories of John Marr Sr. and Marjorie Marr,
whose presences linger and give me strength
when I would falter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I've been lucky enough to have some pretty wonderful people keeping me steady along the path: my lovely and fierce agent, Rachel Vater; my insightful and passionate editors, A
And to those who have inspired and encouraged me throughout my life—John and Vanessa Marr, for teaching me about believing, about courage, about the things beyond our sight; Dylan and Asia, for reminding me every day that the impossible can come true; and Loch, for showing me that true bliss is possible on this side of the veil. Without you, there'd be nothing.
PROLOGUE
The Summer King knelt before her. "Is this what you freely choose, to risk winter's chill?"
She watched him—the boy she'd fallen in love with these past weeks. She'd never dreamed he was something other than human, but now his skin glowed as if flames flickered just under the surface, so strange and beautiful she couldn't look away. "It's what I want."
"You understand that if you are not the one, you'll carry the Winter Queen's chill until the next mortal risks this? And you'll warn her not to trust me?" He paused, glancing at her with pain in his eyes.
She nodded.
"If she refuses me, you will tell the next girl and the next" — he moved closer—"and not until one accepts, will you be free of the cold."
"I do understand." She smiled as reassuringly as she could, and then she walked over to the hawthorn bush. The leaves brushed against her arms as she bent down and reached under it.
Her finger wrapped around the Winter Queen's staff. It was a plain thing, worn as if countless hands had clenched the wood. It was those hands, those other girls who'd stood where she now did, she didn't want to think about.
She stood, hopeful and afraid.
Behind her, he moved closer. The rustling of trees grew almost deafening. The brightness from his skin, his hair, intensified. Her shadow fell on the ground in front of her.
He whispered, "Please. Let her be the one…"
She held the Winter Queen's staff—and hoped. For a moment she even believed, but then ice pierced her, filled her like shards of glass in her veins.
She screamed his name: "Keenan!"
She stumbled toward him, but he walked away, no longer glowing, no longer looking at her.
Then she was alone—with only a wolf for companionship—waiting to tell the next girl what a folly it was to love him, to trust him.
CHAPTER 1
SEERS, or Men of the SECOND SIGHT,…have very terrifying Encounters with [the FAIRIES, they call Sleagh Maith, or the Good People].
— The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk and Andrew Lang (1893)
"Four-ball, side pocket." Aisli
Her playing partner, De
She rolled her eyes. "What? You in a hurry?"
He pointed with the cue.
"Right." Focus and control, that's what it's all about. She sank the two.
He nodded once, as close as he got to praise.
Aisli
"Three, corner pocket." She sighted down the cue. It was a good shot.
Focus. Control.
Then she felt it: warm air on her skin. A faery, its too-hot breath on her neck, sniffed her hair. His pointed chin pressed against her skin. All the focus in the world didn't make Pointy-Face's attention tolerable.
She scratched: the only ball that dropped was the cue ball.
De
"Weak-assed?" She forced a smile, looking at De
De
At the jukebox Grace keyed in one of the few not-country-or-blues songs: Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff."
As the oddly comforting lyrics in that gravelly voice took off, building to the inevitable stomach-tightening rage, Aisli
Before the song was over, De
"Nice." Aisli
"Rack 'em again?" But De
Pointy-Face slid the strands of her hair over his face.
Aisli
"Sure." De
She walked away from the table, murmuring good-byes as she went, consciously not staring at the faeries. They moved balls out of line, bumped into people—anything to cause trouble—but they hadn't stepped in her path tonight, not yet. At the table nearest the door, she paused. "I'm out of here."
One of the guys straightened up from a pretty combination shot. He rubbed his goatee, stroking the gray-shot hair. "Cinderella time?"
"You know how it is—got to get home before the shoe falls off." She lifted her foot, clad in a battered te
He snorted and turned back to the table.
A doe-eyed faery eased across the room; bone-thin with too many joints, she was vulgar and gorgeous all at once. Her eyes were far too large for her face, giving her a startled look. Combined with an emaciated body, those eyes made her seem vulnerable, i
None of them are.
The woman at the table beside Aisli
Aisli
In a blurringly quick move, Doe-Eyes flicked a thin blue tongue out at a cloven-hoofed faery. The faery stepped back, but a trail of blood already dripped down his hollowed cheeks. Doe-Eyes giggled.