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  About Julie Leto

  “Leto’s got the touch!”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  “She loves pushing the envelope, and dances on the edge with the sizzle and crackle of lightning.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “Smart, sophisticated and sizzling from start to finish.”

  —A Romance Review

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Harlequin Blaze has been a perennial home for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Leto and her ultra-sexy, yet romantic stories of powerful men and the women with the strength and moxie to tame them. With more than thirty novels to her credit, Julie has been recognized with such awards as a Romantic Times BOOKreviews Best Blaze for her 2007 release Stripped, and she was nominated for a RITA® Award for her novella “Surrender.” She shares a popular blog, www.plotmonkeys.com, with her best friends, Carly Phillips, Janelle Denison and Leslie Kelly—with whom she also shares this collection. For more information about her upcoming releases and to win great prizes, stop by the jungle!

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Julie Leto

  INTO THE WOODS

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  To Leslie Kelly—thank you for opening the portal

  into Elatyria and allowing me to play in your world!

  Even without the “f.”

  Prologue

  In the enchanted land of Elatyria…

  ONCE UPON A TIME, Tatiana Starlingham believed she was destined to be a princess.

  She was, after all, the seventh and youngest daughter of the wealthiest merchant in the land. As her sisters were each more beautiful than the last, every one, including Tatiana, had been courted by none but the most eligible princes. Heirs from the surrounding kingdoms lavished the Starlingham daughters with jewels and furs and priceless gifts. Girls from peasants to princesses wished to have been born into the Starlingham household.

  So it wasn’t surprising that on the day after her sixth sister’s marriage, Tatiana answered the summons to her parents’ salon, fully expecting to learn that a gorgeous, kind and wealthy man of noble birth wished to make her his bride.

  When she entered the room at dawn, sunlight streamed through the many glittering windows. She blinked against the brightness, but strolled in with grace and measured steps, eyes dutifully averted, aware that her intended groom might be waiting beside her father right now. She had flirted with several interesting prospects at the reception the night before. Prince Michael had incredible green eyes and when he’d realized how well she understood the importance of well-bred horses to an effective infantry, he’d nearly fallen to one knee on the spot. Prince Dennis, while not quite as tall as she’d have liked, had spent nearly a quarter of an hour crowing about how his mother’s sapphire choker would glisten against Tatiana’s appropriately pale skin. And Prince Lyle! He’d actually sought her advice on a tricky truce negotiation with a warlord from his kingdom who lived on the border of Tatiana’s father’s most profitable trade route.

  Tatiana, you see, was not like her sisters. She did not intend to marry the first prince who asked. Like all the Starlingham daughters, she had been blessed with unsurpassed beauty, but Tatiana had also been gifted with brains, tact and cunning. While her sisters had ignored their tutors to try on new gowns or experiment with the latest hairstyles, Tatiana had studied. Her greatest ambition—to become a princess—was merely a stepping stone to her coronation as a queen.

  After a deep curtsy to her parents, she looked up, only slightly surprised to see not a prostrate prince, but a woman standing beside her father. Or rather, floating. Tiny wings flittered behind her, elevating her delicate slippers a foot above the ground. The woman was lovely, but had a keen look in her eyes—one that made Tatiana quiver.

  “Father? Mother?”

  “Sit down, Tatiana,” her mother said, an extra dose of regal in her tone.

  Tatiana noticed immediately that her father would not look her in the eye.

  She curtsied again, but remained on her feet. “Who is this woman?”

  A corner of the woman’s mouth curved upward. “Headstrong, this one. Good. She’ll need to be stubborn to fill my shoes.”

  Tatiana glanced at the floating slippers. “Father, what does she mean?”

  “This is Romilda, the fairy godmother to the kingdoms,” her mother introduced.

  Had the atmosphere not been so fraught with tension and foreboding, Tatiana might have been excited at meeting a fairy godmother. The main duty of such women was to arrange love matches that benefited a young lady’s heart. But there was something about this Romilda’s shrewd stare that made Tatiana believe the fairy had something else in mind for her—something that did not include a lucrative engagement.

  Before she could say another word, Romilda floated to her, hovered for a second, then flew in a circle, checking her out from head to toe. She must be prowling on behalf of an extremely powerful prince if she was inspecting Tatiana so carefully.

  “Do you like what you see?” Tatiana asked.

  The godmother snorted. “Never quite learned that don’t-speak-until-you’re-spoken-to rule, did you?”

  “That is for children.”

  “And princesses,” the godmother contradicted. “No man likes a mouthy woman.”

  Tatiana watched her parents exchange an uneasy look.

  “My prince will have to be more tolerant, then,” Tatiana replied.

  “Your prince?” The godmother laughed, the echo ringing as she glided back to her place beside Tatiana’s parents. “Haven’t you told her? And I thought magical creatures such as myself were the cruelest in the land. To keep your daughter in the dark about our bargain—”

  Tatiana’s blood chilled. “What bargain?”

  The fairy godmother zipped toward her and instantly, Tatiana’s mouth dried. The woman’s eyes were cold and calculating. Tatiana’s father still would not look at her and her mother sat, back ramrod-straight, as if in a trance.

  “I should let them tell you,” Romilda said. “But let me ask you a question which may lead you to the answer on your own. Why is your father so wealthy?”

  Tatiana looked to the man she’d revered her entire life with a hopeful glance, but still, he would not meet her gaze. “He’s a brilliant merchant. He’s found the means to trade peacefully with all the kingdoms and stay out of their wars.”

  “Has he always struck you as a smart man?”

  Tatiana’s heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. Her father was easy with a laugh, kind and indulgent, but she was old enough now to know that he wasn’t exactly the brightest flame in the candelabra.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Only Tatiana could hear Romilda’s surprisingly girlish giggle. “Apparently, you are both diplomatic and smart, girl. Good. That will serve you well.”

  “How?”

  “Fairy godmothers have to be sharp-witted, discreet and tactful. You’ll be arranging matches that will affect the political future of the kingdoms.”

  Tatiana swallowed, but found her throat had swelled with fear. Her entire life, she’d dreamed of taking her place within the political hierarchy of the kingdoms by becoming a queen. To rule. To command. Her aspirations soared above those of her simplet
on sisters. How could she now be destined to serve them?

  “I’m the daughter of an influential merchant,” Tatiana insisted, finding her voice. “I am destined to be a—”

  “Queen,” Romilda finished. “Yes, yes. You do dream big. You would have been a pleasure to place. But your ambitions are, I’m afraid, the ultimate irony. And the price you must pay for your parents’ greed. Your mother was a princess once, did you know that?”

  Tatiana’s eyes widened. She’d always perceived her mother as distant and haughty, but she was of royal blood?

  The fairy godmother pretended to frown, but the light of a nasty smile sparkled in her eyes. “Forty years ago, her father was deposed in a terrible war, spawned when she married her footman, your father, for love. She ignored my advice to marry a prince to ensure peace in her kingdom. Then, a year later, she called me, begging me to save her from abject poverty, to make her new husband rich and give her beautiful daughters she could marry off to princes and continue her regal bloodlines.”

  Tatiana gasped when her mother—always so proud, always so perfect—dropped her humiliated gaze to her lap.

  “I made a bargain with her,” Romilda continued. “In exchange for seven daughters of untold beauty and wealth normally afforded only to those of royal blood, I wanted a way out of my servitude as a fairy godmother.”

  “Servitude?”

  “You don’t think we’re born like this, do you? We’re not exactly compact size and living in flower gardens or tree hollows. Fairy godmothers are made, dear. We’re like genies in a bottle, enslaved to our magical purpose. Unless we find someone desperate enough to free us.”

  Her greedy eyes darted to Tatiana’s mother.

  “And my mother can help you gain your freedom? How?”

  The fairy’s lip curled into a snarl. “By promising me that her youngest daughter would be my replacement.”

  And it was at that moment that Tatiana Starlingham, for the first and last time in her life, fainted to the floor.

  1

  Four centuries later…

  SHE WAS going to kill that elf.

  Her feet hurt. Her cloak was snagged and torn by brambles. Her wings itched. Still, she pressed onward, her wand out of sight but at the ready in case Rumplestiltskin’s no-good, great-great grandson had lied when he’d pointed her down the path to her emancipation. The chasm between her world and the next—the so called “real world”—had to be around here someplace. Tatiana had to find the doorway tonight or she’d go mad. If she had to listen to yet another vapid, airheaded princess sing another saccharine aria listing all the impossible qualities Tatiana should find in the “prince of her dreams,” she was going to puke a rainbow.

  She stumbled in a divot on the uneven ground, caught herself, cursed, then looked over her shoulder at the land behind her. In the far distance, sparks of the golden glow that hovered above her homeland defied the darkness. At one time, she’d thought the place remarkably beautiful—enchanting and full of promise and possibility. Just like her. Four hundred years later, she could hardly picture the girl who’d mused about marrying a prince in order to ascend to the throne.

  She had no trouble, however, remembering exactly what she’d felt like that fateful morning when her parents had turned her over to the fairies. And for four centuries, she’d served dutifully. Thanks to her, every one of her nieces had married well, even if she’d had to pawn a few of the less-bright ones off on dukes and earls. And she’d found loyal young ladies for all her nephews. She’d worked her magic for their daughters and sons, and their daughters and sons. Nowadays, some weren’t so adamant about marrying only for royal blood or political gain. A few had actually opted to wed for love—and without selling out any of their children in the process.

  Not that Tatiana understood the concept of love. As part of a fairy godmother’s bargain, her ability to experience romantic emotions like desire, lust or heartbreak had been magically suppressed. But while she couldn’t understand the instantaneous spark her charges often sang about, she did find the physical expression of those feelings rather interesting to watch.

  There was no rule in the fairy godmother Book of Decrees that said she couldn’t learn a few things by observation, but that she’d been reduced to voyeurism did not sit well with her.

  After spending more generations than she could count as a spectator, Tatiana was ready to play the game. She’d spent four centuries matchmaking and saving mostly doormat divas from servitude to wicked stepmothers and upstart trolls (or otherwise ill-tempered royal playboys) and Tatiana had had enough. According to Joe Stiltskin, Rumple’s equally dodgy progeny, she had only one way out.

  Time had not erased her disgust over the bargain her mother had made. Tatiana wasn’t about to hoist this job off on some other unsuspecting girl with tiaras in her eyes. No, she was going to get out of the fairy godmother business the only other way that existed—she was going to cross over into the human world and grant the wishes of the first young woman she met.

  And she was going to do it without magic.

  Because if she could accomplish this task before the next full moon, she’d be transformed into a human herself and would never again have to hear the impossible dreams of another bubbleheaded bride-to-be.

  Above her, the moon emerged from behind a blanket of thick, dark clouds. A chill spiked through the cloak and the ground suddenly seemed both rockier and loamier. She closed her eyes tightly, spoke a spell that might have ensured her safety in the world of her birth, then stepped into the dense trees that were the boundary into the human realm.

  She stopped twenty paces in and looked around. Other than the fact that it was darker than a witch’s soul, she felt no difference. She marched another ten paces into the forest, slapping aside low-hanging branches that in any other forest she’d accuse of trying to cop a feel. The cloak shifted, hanging heavier on her shoulders and the stab in her side from her wand disappeared. The woods were eerily silent—as if no one existed to hear even the whispering whirl of the wind.

  She walked for what seemed like an hour until finally, she heard something.

  Crying.

  Definitely feminine and definitely distraught.

  Tatiana smiled. If there was one sound that was music to a fairy godmother’s ears, it was a young girl in misery.

  Girls in misery always had wishes they needed granted.

  Tatiana hurried forward, stopping short when the same voice started cursing.

  “That’s an awful lot of crusty language coming from a girl your age,” Tatiana said once she found the little slip of a thing stalking around a break in the trees, shaking her fist at the sky.

  The girl screamed and turned to run, but Tatiana snagged her by the sleeve of her oversized jacket.

  “Who’d you get this from, a giant?” she asked, enjoying the feel of the well-worn leather beneath her fingers. The sensation was surprising. She’d felt plenty of saddles and boots and even a few princely doublets in her time, but none had evoked such an instant warmth.

  “It’s…my…stupid…brother’s,” the girl answered, tugging hard against Tatiana’s hold with each word.

  Tatiana released her, which, of course, sent the chippy flying to the ground.

  The girl scrambled away from Tatiana like an overturned crab. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Tatiana,” she said, crossing her arms. “And you are?”

  “Harper,” she answered, sniffing and wiping her running nose on her hand.

  Ew.

  Tatiana waved her hand to produce a handkerchief, but alas, her magic, as Joe had predicted, was gone. Well, that was damned inconvenient. She dug into the pockets of the borrowed cloak and found a wrinkled bandana that smelled vaguely of damp straw. She handed it to Harper and once the girl was sufficiently blown and wiped, extended her hand to help her to her feet.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Tatiana said.

  “As if you could,” Harper shot back.

  Tati
ana ignored the child’s bravado.

  “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  Harper smirked. “Isn’t that some kind of old-fashioned pick-up line? You’re not a lesbo, are you?”

  Tatiana blinked. “You do speak English here?”

  “Last time I checked,” the teen replied.

  “Good,” Tatiana said with a sigh. “I know German and French, but I’m a little rusty. So, let’s go back to my first question. What is a pretty young thing like you doing out in the forest in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s not a forest. It’s a swamp.”

  Tatiana gave the air a tentative sniff. “Is that what that smell is?”

  “Hey,” Harper protested. “This is my home, okay? It’s really cool, once you get used to it.”

  Tatiana eyed the girl suspiciously. She had that whininess in her voice that Tatiana knew too well—the sound of someone trying to convince herself that she liked something better than she actually did.

  “Okay, the swamp is…cool,” Tatiana agreed, though in her estimation, the temperature was well beyond comfortable and more akin to sultry. “So explain why you were crying.”

  Harper swiped the residual moisture from her face. “I wasn’t—”

  “All right, all right,” Tatiana conceded, not exactly thrilled with how this was progressing. The girl was inordinately argumentative. And yet, she liked her. “You weren’t crying. But you were pretty angry, you can’t deny that. So why don’t you tell me what I can do to help.”

  “Why?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why are you going to help? I don’t know you. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  Tatiana rolled her eyes. Argumentative and inquisitive. She suddenly—and briefly—missed the self-absorbed princesses who accepted her magical presence without questions, told her what they wanted and let her get to work.