Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

“Do you like dragons?” Cole asked as I headed back for the table. “There’s more on the walls about them than there is anything else.”

I nodded, taking my seat again. “They’re my favorite. Something that powerful and that beautiful roaming this world? It’s hard not to obsess over something like that.” I grabbed a pencil and leaned back, finding his eyes. “Now it’s your turn.”

Cole glanced to the book and back. “My turn for what?”

I smoothed out the brand new page. “Time for you to tell me about the Fallen. You can read all night if you want, I only have a couple of hours a day to interview you before I have to do my job. So, your turn.”

He studied me for a moment before shoving himself to a stand.

My brows furrowed. “What are you doing?”

He gestured to the chair beside mine. “Gonna join you. If you’re going to interview me, I’m going to make sure you write down what I say.”

I frowned deeply. “You think I’ll construed it into something nightmarish?”

“You hate our species enough.”

“I don’t—” I grasped the bridge of my nose. “If you people didn’t make it so easy to believe the stories told, I wouldn’t have ill feelings towards you. As it is, I would never construe anything. I need Mark to believe in thegood and bad of every species. The truth,” I pushed as he sat down beside me. “If you tell me about something good, I’m going to record that too.”

Cole angled his chair towards me and pulled over the witch books. “You tell your brother about us?”

I rolled my eyes. “I tell my brother everything.” Noteverythingbut everything that mattered. “I want him to see this world as it is, not as any High King or High Queen make it out to be. Especially now.”

“Why?”

I lifted and dropped my hand against my thigh with a slap. “Because everyone in this world deserves to believe that there is at least one person out there who knows the truth. That they aren’t all bad. Stories are told from enemies slain. Told by parents to scare their kids into behaving. I don’t do that. The Fallen just haven’t given me anything good to write about so,” I tapped the paper. “Prove the world wrong.”

Cole glanced to the paper and back, searching my eyes. “Okay,” he finally said, leaning back in his chair. “How about this for a good one; I’m half-Fae.”

I rolled my eyes. “Can we please be serious? I was completely truthful with you, I deserve the same.”

Cole smiled and shrugged. “I am. On my mother’s side. She lived in Obscura. Never got the chance to meet her, but I heard from a few nameless Fae that she was beautiful, kind. Good. My father? Not so much.”

After several seconds of challenging him, I finally nodded, hoping that he wasn’t just making something up for me to put down. I didn’t need his history anyway, but it was something, I supposed. So, I wrote down hisname.

“Age?”

His smile widened. “1,134.”

I scratched it down. He looked good for that age. “Wing color?”

“Black,” he answered, “with an outline of red.”

I paused, eyes lifting. “What?”

Cole nodded. “The stem is black, and around the edges of the feather it’s a dark red.”

Interesting. “Primarily the wings of the Fallen are one color. Does that stem from your Fae blood?”

“Unless I have a deficiency somewhere, then yes,” he chuckled.

I wrote it down quickly and lifted my eyes. “Okay, start from the beginning.” This was nice. This is something I knew how to do. Ask questions, take notes. Learn. It came easy to me, and learning more about Cole in particular might help me better understand why he was the way he was. Maybe we could even become friends.

Friends with a Fallen, I could have laughed.

Cole nodded, turning partway to me, one of his legs brushing against mine, causing me to tense, only to relax a second later. His leg was warm, strong, unwavering. I didn’t have to be afraid of that.

“My father was Fallen,” he began evenly. “A warrior working for Trick’s father and then Trick a long time ago.”