by Ella Fields
The Savage and the Swan
Copyright © 2021 by Ella Fields
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, resold or distributed in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, without permission in writing from the author, except for brief quotations within a review.
This book is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Editor: Jenny Sims, Editing4Indies
Formatting: Stacey Blake, Champagne Book Design
Cover design: Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
ALSO BY ELLA FIELDS
For those who love with a ferocity that reinstalls faith and burns through armor.
My hand fell away from the door I’d been about to open to bid my parents good night.
“The human prince?” my mother cried. “To hand her to him, to them, is not only a betrayal to our daughter but it is an insult to everything we’ve built while suffering their presence in these lands.”
“You think me unaware of that?” my father boomed. Frozen, I waited, withering on the spot as his voice softened. “We have no other choice, Nikaya. It’s this or await the map of the stars to unfold, and we both know what he will do to her, to any of us, should he be given the opportunity.”
My mother gave no response, and I could picture her serene face mottled with concern, ruby cheeks twisting with her worrisome thoughts.
“They will take her, this I know, and although she might not care for the prince, nor he for her, she will be safe.”
“Safe?” My mother half laughed. “They may fear us and do our bidding, but make no mistake, Althon, they mock us all the same,” she seethed, her voice uncharacteristically cold. “They will be anything but pleasant to her.”
Water welled in my eyes, my hand shaking as I lifted it to open the door. My father’s next words stopped me. “Better for her to be uncomfortable than to be tortured or to meet her end before she can produce an heir like Joon. This grants protection and therefore time for Opal to ensure the Gracewood line continues.”
I turned away at that and raced downstairs to the empty kitchens below, my nightgown fluttering behind me, catching the gathering wind as I exploded through the door and into the rear gardens. Uncollected fruit and leaves splattered and crunched, but I didn’t stop.
The sky deepened with darkness as I forced my feet to carry me faster through the ankle-deep grass. As I tried to outrace my thundering heart.
The swish of the blades, the lavender fields, the stars overhead, and the spray of dirt beneath my bare feet were the only witnesses to my escape.
I ran for the shelter of the pitch-black woods—to the path through them I’d memorized by heart as a child long before the attacks and bloodshed began—and I didn’t stop until I’d reached the mouth of the low-lying cave.
There, I crawled through, rising to my full height as the tunnel grew deeper while yawning slowly down toward the cliffside of the ravine. The dead tree, hollowed out and nearly as wide as the castle towers, blocked the exit. I walked through it, desperate to escape the damp dirt and feel the breeze and starlight upon my wet cheeks once more.
A branch, gnarled and blanketed in moss, tucked against the inner belly of the tree, awaited my soiled feet. Up they climbed until my head breached the hole, and I could grip the knots on either side of it to haul myself up to sit aside the opening.
For precious moments, I just breathed, the bark warm and rough against my legs, my feet dangling high over the water that trailed beneath the tree. It danced its way between the two lands, turning the numerous bends as it gradually headed out to sea.
The moon’s reflection wrinkled and warped, the stars winking within the ripples and gurgling bubbles. This tree hadn’t always been here, though it’d been here far longer than I had. Long ago, two gigantic bridges kept Nodoya and its mystical kingdoms of Sinshell and Vordane joined—its people united.
They said we were once a whole. Though something told me that wasn’t precisely true, else there would never have been such a divide. A crack was all we needed to create a chasm. And a chasm would only grow and deepen over time.
Staring down into the ravine widened from war and hatred, the rotted remains of wood and stone from decimated ships and a long-ago bridge, I cursed and brushed my hand beneath my nose, willing my eyes to dry. I’d known since I was a youngling that I’d be forced to marry and likely before I was ready, but I had never dared to think it would turn out like this.
That most suitors would be dead—and the only one who remained was human.
It wasn’t that I hated the idea of marrying a human. Quite the opposite. Prince Bron was handsome. He carried himself with an air of nonchalance that struggled to veil his arrogance. He was lean and tall with deep brown hair struck through with streaks of gold from his many days spent outdoors hunting and training in the sun. The few times I’d seen him, he was wearing a smile that never failed to make the heart stall a beat.
I’d spent countless hours afterward trying to capture the way that smile touched his dark eyes on my pad of parchment, never quite satisfied I’d gotten it right. He’d seldom even looked my way. Though when he had, his lips had lowered and flattened, eyes assessing.
To him, I was nothing but a faerie—just another creature who could not be hunted.
If history was anything to go by, many of us did stupid things out of fear, so I wouldn’t allow myself to fall into wishful thinking. To believe that, should we wed, he would be happy about it.
And although I thought him handsome and charismatic, my mother was right. I would live in perpetual discomfort at best and in fear for my life or injury at worst.
“And here I’d thought I had this rotted-out corpse of a tree all to myself.”
Startled, I scrambled back over the last remaining crossing that linked the lands of Nodoya and nearly fell, my nails scoring into the bark. Never, not once, had I encountered another soul in my hiding place.
The hooded figure slipped a broadsword inside a sheath at his back and crept closer along the rocky cliffside with alarming agility.
I should’ve moved. I should’ve demanded he go back the way he came. Though something whispered that either would be futile.
He was not of gold blood, nor was he human. His scent of smoke and cedar washed over me, into me, raising every tiny hair on my body. “You cannot be here.”
“Says whom?” he asked with a tilt of his head that exposed pieces of white-blond hair. His voice was lemon and chocolate—decadent and bitter, rich and low.
“Says me,” I declared, thankful my words did not shake.
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“Ah.” He then dropped with eye-widening speed and accuracy onto the fallen tree, the hole—my only exit—between us. “And who might you be?”
I was too stiff to be offended, every part of me locked and preparing to flee. “You know very well who I am.”
Removing the hood of his cloak, he slowly lifted his eyes to mine. “We are a realm divided, Princess, so do not expect us all to recognize you.” My heart raced, my mind skipping over avenues of escape. All the while, his dawn blue eyes tracked over my face. “I’ve no interest in hurting you.”
I blinked. “You’re crimson. I can scent it…” My eyes slid over his tunic and cloak, both a midnight black fringed with red. “As well as see it, so if you don’t mind—”
“Why are your eyes wet?” Gazing at my cheeks, he murmured, “You’ve been crying, oh sunshiny one.” I made to slip back inside the hole, but his next words halted me. “I wouldn’t do that just yet if I were you.”
He’d barely finished speaking when footsteps, howling hounds, and snarling shifters carried over the breeze, the water below. “You’re on patrol.”
“They’ll move along soon.”
Confusion twisted my features. He watched with an amused glint in his eyes.
“You’re a guard,” I said, eyeing the hilts of the two blades visible over his shoulders. “A warrior. Why not alert them to my presence?” Stupid words to say, but if he were going to hand me over to the blood king, the king of wolves, he’d have made his move by now.
“Call me curious,” he said in a tone that sounded more bored than intrigued. “It has been a while since I’ve seen a gold one up close, a daughter of the sun, and royalty at that.”
A collection of growls grew nearer, followed by laughter as his murderous friends called to one another.
The male next to me wasn’t just any male. He was a crimson—blood Fae—which meant I couldn’t trust a word he said. It was because of them that our people were now divided. Violent, bloodthirsty, and corrupt—mayhem was a song in their veins, and it’d made enemies of Nodoya’s royal factions long before my two and twenty years.
One kingdom was life—creation and peace. The other death—power and violence.
We of the sun had fought and lost many battles against the crimson’s invading armies these past several years, and though it had been relatively quiet for a couple of moons, I wasn’t naïve enough to believe they wouldn’t attack again.
No one was certain of what they hoped to gain besides death and destruction and—due to the demise of the blood Fae’s previous king and queen—revenge. The decimation of the harbingers of light—my family and my people.
The ravine below made it harder for them to surprise us, but it never stopped them. Our ranks grew thin, and they knew we could no longer patrol and protect as we once did.
They’d been the ones to destroy the First and Old Bridge, but they continuously brought their own contraptions for those who couldn’t make the leap or fly across.
A loaded minute passed with my breath growing hotter. Then another. The patrol began to move on.
“Shouldn’t you be going with them?”
The guard shrugged. “They won’t come looking for me if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Many things currently worried me—his presence, so heavy the air seemed to slow into an oil that slathered my pebbled skin, being the biggest concern.
As if he could sense that, his plush lips curved slightly. “You didn’t answer my question.” Noting my frown, he said, “You were crying. Why?”
That last word was clipped, a command more than a question, and I would’ve balked at his audacity if I didn’t know better. We were alone, and though I could hold my own to a certain degree, he was a trained killer wearing weapons.
The only weapon I carried laid inside me. For the most part, it was as useless as many of the gifts bestowed upon the light carriers. Healing, mending, growing, creation—we were but wisps compared to the dark’s descendants. Their abilities were vast, and I knew only some. I’d only heard tales of their might.
Tales that made me wonder how we’d survived all this time and what in the stars had ever possessed my grandfather to go up against the late rulers of the blood kingdom—to war with Vordane.
The male stared down at the water, so very still. I wasn’t sure why I answered, but the words left my mouth before I could think much of them. “I hear I am to marry.”
If it were possible, the stranger seemed to still even more, his entire frame, large and imposing, shunning the starlight that attempted to reach his blond hair. Clearing his throat, he kept his attention fixed on the traveling water below. “That is what princesses do, do they not?” His tone was colder, frosted. “So it seems pointless to whine about it.”
If I hadn’t been offended before, I was now.
I released a rough laugh as I curled my legs up over the tree to leave. My feet hit the inside of the trunk when I heard him say, “Wait.”
I didn’t. I’d been a fool to even spend time in his company. Guard, foot soldier, beast warrior—whatever he might be—it didn’t take away from the fact that he was the enemy, and I should consider myself lucky that I still breathed.
A yelp tore from me when he appeared before me. I stepped back, my heart galloping. “What…?”
“There’s another hole,” he said by way of explanation. Before I could look up to see where it was, he took my hand, calluses rubbing over my skin as he pulled me through the fallen tree’s innards and back inside the cave.
“Release me,” I snapped, tugging my hand free.
He didn’t apologize for his poor decorum. He merely smirked as he turned to walk backward, half shielded in shadow. “The human prince, I presume?”
It took me a moment to realize what he meant, and I felt my stomach ice. “That’s really none of your—”
“Makes sense,” he murmured. “Your lot are growing that desperate.” He stopped, and I almost walked right into him. “Tell me, sunshine, do you know how to fight?”
Incredulous, I gaped at the overconfidence of this male. “Sunshine?”
His smile tilted higher into one cheek, revealing a dimple and darkening his commanding eyes. “Answer the question.”
“Answer mine.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
I half rolled my eyes. “I believe it was, and you know it was.”
He blew out a petulant sigh. “Are you always this difficult? And stupid?” My eyes widened, but before I could retaliate, he raised a large hand, waving flippantly at me. “Did you not hear me say daughter of the sun?”
My cheeks flushed, the burn creeping down my neck. I was grateful he couldn’t see.
His rough chuckle said otherwise, but I was too distracted by the sound to care. It slid over my skin to seep inside it, slipping underneath to warm my blood. Tearing myself away from the feeling, I lifted my shoulders and chin. “I’m sure you’re aware that you’re insulting royalty.”
“Insulting?” he purred, unsheathing a sword from his back in one swift movement. “Why, you’re lucky that’s all I’m doing, Princess.” He hissed the title, his blade absorbing the precious little light from behind us.
Fear clouded, weighing every limb as I stepped back. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Pursing his lips, the crimson looked from his blade, which hung limp at his side, to me. I didn’t let that fool me into thinking he couldn’t strike before I could protest.
I was as hard to kill as he was, but all he needed to do was slide that sword into my skull. If it contained iron, then my heart, or he could carve the organ from my chest and reduce it to dust.
None of it sounded very appealing to me.
“If you hadn’t so rudely interrupted me, then you’d know I do not intend to kill you…” The way he made those soft words linger suggested he would not harm me right now. “Insults, sunshiny one, are going to be the least of your concerns if you are indeed to marry the human prince.”
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He spoke true, so I said nothing, trying to gauge if I could move past him and somehow outrun him. I was royalty, and though my powers were not as great as those who hailed from Vordane, I was faster than most—especially a lowly guard who’d taken it upon himself to go rogue for the evening.
As though he could guess at my thoughts, his eyes flashed. A dare. A male who wanted to chase. Since some of the blood Fae and all of those in the king’s military were shifters, that did not surprise me. Though I’d heard enough horrific tales of what his ilk did to females they chased down to reconsider.
Careful, a whispering voice seemed to croon. Careful now.
He tossed his sword to his other hand, eyes never leaving me. “Where’s your weapon?”
“I’ll have you know—”
He raised a brow.
I bristled, loathing to admit, “I… I don’t carry one.”
Thick golden brows furrowed. “You truly wish for me to believe you’d leave the safety of your nest to tempt the shadows beyond without being prepared?”
I swallowed, unable to look at him, and shifted on my bare feet.
He drank me in then. I could feel it, his cool gaze chilling my blood as he no doubt studied my soiled gown and feet, and pieced the puzzle together. “You fled in a rush.”
“I did.”
“Fool,” he spat as though I were a child in need of scolding.
I had no idea who this mongrel was, but he’d lingered long enough for me to detect and confirm the scent of a wolf. I was about to call him as such when he threw his sword at me. “But you do know how to fight, don’t you, sunshine?”
I caught it, the leather pommel warm from his touch. “Of course, I do.”
He unsheathed his other sword, this one shorter. His gaze cooled a fraction, lips lifting once more. “For your miserable life?”
“You’re disgustingly rude.”
“But am I wrong?”
I scowled. “My life is not…” I stopped and drew in a lungful of breath, not wanting to go there. My life was anything but miserable, but I wasn’t about to admit to him that it wasn’t anywhere close to what I’d hoped it would one day be. That would be selfish given the many people, villages, and towns we’d lost. Though I hadn’t created a dream firm enough to seek even before the attacks had begun, I had hoped for something. Something more. “Yes.”
