Page 258 of The Spider Queen
Part III
Prologue
Poppy
“Did we do the right thing?” I asked.
My mate came to my side to stand next to me. He grasped the balcony rail, looking out across the ocean of Purgatory.
“She was unhappy, Poppy.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But she was safe.”
“She spent her life in hiding. I know what its like to be confined for years. Our home had become her prison. That’s no life at all.”
“It’s a mother’s job to protect her child. How could I let her go?”
“She begged, Poppy.”
I wiped a lone tear that fell from my eye to roll down my cheek. It remained on my finger and looked like a drop of dew glistening on a thread of a spider’s web.
“The mage spelled Stella into believing she’s human. A human with strange hobbies she learned in the twenty years she spent here with us. Her human memories are manufactured and planted in her mind. She will have no idea that only a few months of mortal time has passed since the Great Battle.” I shook my head. “She’s going to think she had a tough childhood. She’s going to believe so many things—”
“It was the only way. You know that. By ridding her of her true memories, she won’t know who she is. And there’s a chance, then, thathewon’t find her.”
“I miss her,” I whispered.
Thane took my hand and brought it to his lips.
“Do you think—will she be happy?”
“Only time will tell, my love. Only time will tell.”
Chapter 1
Stella
Night wrapped around me like a protective cloak. Sounds of the city traveled to my ears—a homeless man digging through a metal trashcan, a rat scurrying between two rotting boards of a prewar building, the rubber tires of cars leaving their marks on the already stained streets of Manhattan.
The poultry shops of my neighborhood in Chinatown were now closed, but in the morning, they would be open with plucked, golden roasted ducks hanging in the windows. Tourists liked to gape and gawk at the whole, featherless birds. I hardly noticed anymore.
Chinatown was shrinking. One day it would disappear altogether, converted into high-rise condos. But for now, I thanked the stars I was able to live in a charming, rent-controlled, one-bedroom apartment above my shop.
It was just past ten on a Wednesday night, but the streets were alive and frenetic. They said Manhattan was the city that never slept, and I believed it. It was never silent. Someone or something was always coming or going.
My favorite bar was a small intimate place called The White Dove. I had a long-standing friendship with the middle-aged bouncer. We’d met two years prior when I moved to the city, and had hit it off immediately.
“Didn’t think you were going to make it tonight,” Gerry said with a wink.
“Don’t I always show up?”
Gerry was a big man, six feet three of solid muscle. And despite his dark hair, which was threaded with gray, and the deep smile lines etched around the corners of his mouth, he projected a sense of youth. A youthful spirit, anyway.
He waited.
I nodded.
Then he wrapped me in a tight bear hug. I hugged him back. He was one of the few people I allowed to touch me.
