Iron Fey. Julie Kagawa

and wake Daddy? He’ll want to know that Meghan is home. Then you can sleep between us if you want.”

      Ethan nodded, but at that moment, the front door creaked open, and a cold breeze shivered across the room. The moonlight beyond the door shimmered, consolidating into something solid and real.

      Ash stepped over the threshold.

      Mom didn’t look up, but Ethan and I jumped as my heart began to thud loudly in my chest. Ash looked different now, the cuts and burns healed, his hair falling softly around his face. He wore simple dark pants and a white shirt, and his sword hung at his side. Still dangerous. Still inhuman and deadly. Still the most beautiful being I’d ever seen. His mercury eyes found mine, and he inclined his head.

      “It’s time,” he murmured.

      For a moment, I stared at him, not understanding. Then it hit me all at once. Oh, God. The contract. He’s here to take me to the Winter Court.

      “Meghan?” Mom looked from me to the door, not seeing the Winter prince silhouetted against the frame. But her face was tight; she knew something was there. “What’s happening? Who’s there?”

      I can’t go now, I raged silently. I just got home! I want to be normal; I want to go to school and learn to drive and go to prom next year. I want to forget faeries ever existed.

      But I gave my word. And Ash had upheld his end of the bargain, though he almost died for it.

      Ash waited quietly, his eyes never leaving mine. I nodded at him and turned back to my family.

      “Mom,” I whispered, sitting on the couch, “I … I have to go. I made a promise to someone that I would stay with Them for a while. Please don’t worry or be sad. I’ll be back, I swear. But this is something I gotta do, or else They might come looking for you or Ethan again.”

      “Meghan, no.” Mom gripped my hand, squeezing hard. “We can do something. There has to be a way to … keep Them back. We can move again, all of us. We—”

      “Mom.” And I let my glamour fade away, revealing my true self to her. It wasn’t difficult this time, to manipulate the glamour surrounding me. Like the roots in Machina’s domain, it came so naturally I wondered how I ever thought it hard. Mom’s eyes widened, and she jerked her hand back, pulling Ethan close. “I’m one of Them now,” I whispered. “I can’t run from this. You should know that. I have to go.”

      Mom didn’t answer. She kept staring at me with a mix of sorrow, guilt, and horror. I sighed and rose to my feet, letting the glamour settle on me again. It felt like the weight of the entire world.

      “Ready?” Ash murmured, and I paused, glancing up toward my room. Did I want to take anything with me? I had my clothes, my music, little personal items collected in my sixteen years.

      No. I didn’t need them. That person was gone, if she had been real in the first place. I needed to figure out who I really was, before I came back. If I came back. Glancing at Mom, still frozen on the couch, I wondered if this would ever be home again.

      “Meggie?” Ethan slid off the couch and padded up to me. I knelt, and he hugged me around the neck with all the strength a four-year-old could muster.

      “I won’t forget,” he whispered, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. Standing up, I ruffled his hair and turned to Ash, still waiting silently at the door.

      “You have everything?” he asked as I approached. I nodded.

      “Everything I need,” I murmured back. “Let’s go.”

      He bowed, not to me, but to Mom and Ethan, and walked out. Ethan sniffled loudly and waved, trying hard not to cry. And I smiled, seeing their emotions as clearly as a beautiful painting: blue sorrow, emerald hope, scarlet love. We were connected, all of us. Nothing, fey, god, or immortal, could sever that.

      I waved to Ethan, nodded forgiveness at Mom, and shut the door, following Ash into the silver moonlight.

      *****

       Read on for a sneak peek of

      THE IRON DAUGHTER

       the thrilling second book in Julie Kagawa’s addictive

       Iron Fey series!

       CHAPTER ONE

       The Winter Court

      The Iron King stood before me, magnificent in his beauty, silver hair whipping about like an unruly waterfall. His long black coat billowed behind him, accenting the pale, angular face and translucent skin, the blue-green veins glowing beneath the surface. Lightning flickered in the depths of his jetblack eyes, and the steel tentacles running the length of his spine and shoulders coiled around him like a cloak of wings, glinting in the light. Like an avenging angel, he floated toward me, hand outstretched, a sad, tender smile on his lips.

      I stepped forward to meet him as the iron cables wrapped gently around me, drawing me close. “Meghan Chase,” Machina murmured, running a hand through my hair. I shivered, keeping my hands at my sides as the tentacles caressed my skin. “You have come. What is it you want?”

      I frowned. What did I want? What had I come for? “My brother,” I answered, remembering. “You kidnapped my brother, Ethan, to draw me here. I want him back.”

      “No.” Machina shook his head, moving closer. “You did not come for your brother, Meghan Chase. Nor did you come for the Unseelie prince you claim to love. You came here for one thing only. Power.”

      My head throbbed and I tried backing away, but the cables held me fast. “No,” I muttered, struggling against the iron net. “This … this is wrong. This isn’t how it went.”

      “Show me, then.” Machina opened his arms wide. “How was it ‘supposed’ to go? What did you come here to do? Show me, Meghan Chase.”

      “No!”

      “Show me!”

      Something throbbed in my hand: the beating pulse of the Witchwood arrow. With a yell, I raised my arm and drove the sharpened point through Machina’s chest, sinking the arrow into his heart. Machina staggered back, giving me a look of shocked horror. Only it wasn’t Machina anymore but a faery prince with midnight hair and bright silver eyes. Lean and dangerous, silhouetted all in black, his hand went to the sword at his belt before he realised it was too late. He swayed, fighting to stay on his feet, and I bit down a scream.

      “Meghan,” Ash whispered, a thin line of red trickling from his mouth. His hands clutched at the arrow in his chest as he fell to his knees, pale gaze beseeching mine. “Why?” Shaking, I raised my hands and saw they were covered in glistening crimson, running rivulets down my arms, dripping to the ground. Below the slick coating, things wiggled beneath my skin, pushing up through the surface, like leeches in blood.

      Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should be terrified, appalled, majorly grossed out. I wasn’t. I felt powerful, powerful and strong, as if electricity surged beneath my skin, as if I could do anything I wanted and no one could stop me. I looked down at the Unseelie prince and sneered at the pathetic figure. Could I really have loved such a weakling once upon a time?

      “Meghan.” Ash knelt there, the life fading from him bit by bit, even as he struggled to hold on. For a brief moment, I admired his stubborn tenacity, but it wouldn’t save him in the end. “What about your brother?” he pleaded. “And your family? They’re waiting for you to come home.” Iron cables unfurled from my back and shoulders, spreading around me like glittering wings. Gazing down at the Unseelie prince, helpless before me, I gave him a patient smile.

      “I am home.”

      The cables slashed down in a silver blur, slamming into the faery’s chest and staking him to the ground. Ash jerked, his mouth gaping silently, before his head lolled back and he shattered like crystal on concrete.

      Surrounded