Faerie Path #2: The Lost Queen (eBook)

Camden, North London

The van's horn blared loudly in the quiet of the early morning London streets: three short bursts followed by a cheery whistle from the driver.

Princess Tania, seventh daughter of Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Immortal Realm of Faerie, turned her head to look. The driver of the van was half leaning out of the cab, grinning at Tania and her companion as the vehicle sped by.

Tania laughed. She didn't mind the effect she and Edric were having as they walked along together, it was quite funny, actually, and that driver wasn't the first person to have reacted enthusiastically to their strange clothes. They had already been on the receiving end of several odd looks on their journey from Hampton Court in southwest London to Camden in the north of the city.

Tania knew why they were getting these reactions: Their ornate clothes would have blended in perfectly in an Elizabethan court, but they struck an odd note in twenty-first-century London. Tania was wearing a full-skirted, olive green velvet gown with long sleeves and embroidered panels picked out in leaf green and russet red stitching. Edric's clothes were similarly archaic: a dark gray doublet and hose trimmed with black brocade and with puffed sleeves slashed to show a lining of pearl white silk.

Edric smiled. 'He probably thinks we've been to an all-night costume party.'

'Probably,' Tania agreed. 'One thing's for sure: He'd never guess the truth.' She paused and gazed into Edric's wide, chestnut brown eyes. A thread of wind caught his dark blonde hair and whipped it around his smiling face - the face of the boy she loved. A seventeen-year-old boy called Evan Thomas, who had turned out to be someone quite different - just as she had turned out to be a different person from the girl she had always thought she was.

Three days ago she had been Anita Palmer, an ordinary girl on the brink of her sixteenth birthday. Three days ago she had known nothing of the enchanted world of Faerie. She smiled to herself. Back then she had been only half alive.

Three days ago she had loved a boy called Evan, but now she knew who he truly was: Edric Chanticleer, a young courtier of the Royal Palace of Faerie.

The sharp click of heels on paving stones brought Tania out of her reverie. A woman was walking toward them, staring at them in amused curiosity.

'Hello, there,' Edric said. 'We've just come from the Immortal Realm of Faerie.' He nodded to Tania. 'She's a princess.'

'Is she?' the woman said as she passed. 'Good for her. The pair of you certainly brighten up the place.'

'Thanks,' Tania called as the woman walked on and disappeared around a corner.

Edric grinned. 'You see? People are okay with the truth.'

She looked thoughtfully at him. 'So long as they think you're kidding,' she said. 'But that's not going to work with Mum and Dad.'

Edric's face became serious. 'No,' he said. 'I know it won't.'

Tania glanced down at herself. 'I can't turn up at home dressed like this,' she said. 'I'm going to have enough explaining to do without these clothes.' She had been out of the Mortal World for three days since both she and Edric went missing from hospital following the speedboat accident - three days and nights for her desperate parents to fear the worst. She had to get back to them as soon as possible and let them know she was all right, but not in her Faerie gown.

Edric looked up and down the street. 'The shops aren't open yet,' he said. 'It can't be much past seven o'clock. But even if they were open, we haven't got any money to buy clothes.'

Tania frowned, thinking. 'There's a charity shop not far from here.'

'That won't be open, either.'

'It doesn't matter.' She gripped...