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Chapter 21: Out of Dodge
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Prince from the Other Side Chapter 22: New York, New York
Barely twenty-four hours later, we were standing on stage at Madison Square Garden. The view was a blur of brilliant stagelights, sliding and twisting around each other, their intense heat crisping my face like strong sunshine. I could sense the massive crowd invisible beyond those lights, the pressure of their cheers intensifying as the spotlight found me. For a moment I couldn't breathe. Then I felt the shift of air as Sy stepped up beside me. I felt myself relax. I suddenly felt balanced, as if some cosmic scale had come into alignment. It felt deeply absurd to be afraid of this moment, this dreamed-of goal suddenly materializing in real life. And it felt absurd to be afraid when I knew what we could do together.Sy looked at me, and the smile on his face was full of sweet secrets, remembered delights. The hotel countertop. The airplane shower. This morning in the sweet quiet of the early morning, tenderly waking each other up. When he was near, I felt like I could do anything. My
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 23: The Queen's Judgement
The first thing I registered was the light: sunlight that was more than sunlight, more tangible, more real, somehow, than sunlight in the mortal realm. I focused, trying to sense my fingers and toes, trying to feel the beat of my heart. I was whole and alive. My mortal form was intact. But I was in Faerie. There could be no mistaking that thrum of power on the air. The wind that was felt like a sensation in a dream rather than sensation against skin. Nothing in Faerie was physical: it was a world of illusion and magics while at the same time being more real and more immediate, than anything in the mortal plane. My mortal mind took a few long long heartbeats to settle into focus. It astonished me for a moment how adrift I was before the return of sight. Sight was the last sense to matter in Faerie—for all my life, I had lived through the brush of instinct and impression, not through the concrete visual data that my eyes communicated to my brain. But now I was mortal, perceiving throug
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 24: Rage Magic
Suddenly, I crashed back together, sucking in the second half of my interrupted breath in the stale air-conditioned chill of my dressing room. Awareness swam back slowly. I was lying on the scratchy carpet beside a much-worn couch, and it took me long moments to stagger back to my feet, using the arm of the sofa and the cosmetics table for purchase. I felt sick, twisted around and knotted up. That magic had been powerful, and it had not been at all gentle. There was rage at the bottom of it. I was definitely very lucky. And I was definitely in a whole lot of trouble.There was a pounding at the dressing room door that made me jump half out of my skin. As it was, I lost my balance, sinking back to my knees and folding my knuckles into the carpet to push down a wave of nausea. In the afterglow of Faerie, of the Court itself, the thrill of post-concert energy was next to nothing. How could I have thought I was powerful? How could I have thought I was strong? I could be torn apart at an
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 25: Careful Betrayals
He was tender with me that night, between the absurdly luxurious sheets of the absurdly luxurious hotel his people had booked for us. His hands, rough with their guitar calluses, stroked my breasts, my belly, my back, pulling me into him as he made love to me. His breath tasted sweet with magic and whiskey, his lips tender on my neck, in my hair, on my nipples, as if he were savoring me in every detail, every taste. As if I were so precious in his arms that he was suddenly terrified of shattering me to nothing. When we lay in bed afterward, in the early hours of the morning, our bodies sweetly spent and our magics humming beautifully in each soft, slow, aftermath kiss. I touched his face with my fingertips. I traced the shape of his lips, his cheeks, buried my fingertips in his dark, sweat-damp curls. "You said you would be safe from them," he whispered. "From the Court…""I am," I insisted, but my voice felt like a pretense of itself. "Hester," he said, so very gently, "Let's n
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 26: The High LIfe
But as it turned out, we had plenty of trouble waiting for us in the world we were in already.The morning started out slow and lazy, as we pulled ourselves reluctantly together and decided to go out in search of food. I texted Cass and Toby, suggesting lunch, but they clearly weren't up yet. Cass hadn't posted on any of her social media for hours, which was a near-guarantee she was fast asleep. Cass lived on her socials. How late did Cynthia's afterparty end up going? We had our second and final show at Madison Square Garden tonight, before we continued to Boston, DC, and Philadelphia, and then west. Maybe everyone was taking advantage of a rare non-travel day to sleep in and kick back, before the true sprint of the tour began.So, I had the surreal experience of watching Sy pick out which black t-shirt to wear as I hummed an abstract tune around my toothbrush."Let me take you shopping," said Sy out of the blue as I spat out my toothpaste. "You, shopping?" I chuckled, almost cho
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 27: Looking Out
The spotlights roved onto me and Sy as we took our final bows that night to the roar of applause beyond the wall of stage lights. I heard stamping feet and blank, ecstatic screams. The very air burned with magic, hotter than the stage lights, rich in my blood and burning under my skin. And they audience was still giving, giving, giving—dedicating all of themselves, all of their admiration, all of their loose, chaotic love to us, now, here. Some of them balanced on their friends' shoulders so that Sy and I might see them, so that they might have that one moment of connection. The grand scale of this magic was unthinkable. Even as I felt it burning through me, I couldn't sense the end. Sy squeezed my hand encouragingly, and I lifted the mic to my lips one last time. "Thank you, New York!" I cried. "We love you! Thank you!"And suddenly, Sy kissed me, full in the glory of this magic. The sweet depth of the kiss and the sear of the magic sent my brain into blank ecstasy for a long,
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 28: Bourbon and Brawls
True to form, Sy already had an Irish pub in mind, barely a block and a half away. The automatic explosion of noise that greeted us when Sy and I walked through the door gave me a good idea where a lot of the crowd had come from. If that wasn't enough, the sea of dark laurel-branded t-shirts told me the rest. In addition, there was a layer of magical aftermath clinging to almost everyone in the bar like golden dust. Sy and my distinct magic: like nothing else.Sy's bad mood seemed to have evaporated. Dave and his security detail seemed like their blood pressure was rising by the second, as Sy waded cheerfully into the crowd. "Next round's on me!" he bellowed, rising another generous burst of shouting from all around. Phones were out and snapping pictures. The volume on the music was cranked higher, and pockets of enthusiastic patrons started wriggling drunkenly in something approximating a dance. I took the shot Sy handed to me and raised it in a salute opposite him, grinning foolis
Prince from the Other Side Chapter 29: One More Wish
The sky was turning gray by the time the police were done talking to me. But for all that time, all I could see, over and over, was the moment when they'd handcuffed Sy and ducked him into a police cruiser. There was an ambulance for the drunk, who had finally registered the pain in his jaw even through the alcohol haze. In their absence, there was a circus: statements taken, more cruisers, sirens and lights…And then the photographers arrived. The cops didn't seem too concerned with letting me shield myself from the paparazzi. I tried not to think too deeply about how they pivoted and positioned themselves, as if trying to get their own faces in the photos too. They were professionally blunt, cold, impersonal, but I couldn't stop shaking. Over and over again, I related the quick sequence of events. There were other bar patrons showing video to the cops too, and I desperately wanted to ask to see the video too—to know if what I saw and remembered lined up with what would be all over t
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