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
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.