by R. A. Rock
Blade Of The Fae
R.A. Rock
Laurie Starkey
Michael Anderle
BrixBaxter Publishing
Contents
Description
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Continue the Saga
Author Note
About Seven Sons
About The Author
Copyright
Description
Secrets are dangerous.
The Fae Court was ripped apart centuries earlier. Now it is a divided court between the King and the Queen. There is nothing setting them right.
Secrets and intrigue have ruled the lands for eons.
Tessa is the Queen’s right hand, Captain of the Guard… and sick of it!
Now she needs to deal with this new idiot—Finn Noble. Who the hell is Finn Noble anyway?
He’s got fancy magic blades and is handsome as hell. Doesn't he just want to save his own hide?
Chasing after some tall tale of Finn’s, Tess is sent on a Queen’s errand—to satisfy the Queen’s lust for power.
Only the Stars know what this new quest might cost her. What will happen if she succeeds? What is the consequence of failure? Will she be exposed for who she really is?
Can she trust this swindler? Can she trust him not to vanish or double-cross her?
After all, it is her skin on the line too …
Chapter 1
“The King is never going to let me come home,” Tessa said to her friend, Nyall. Despair dragged her shoulders down, and fury pounded at her insides, demanding to be released.
“No,” he said, striding to his liquor cabinet and pouring himself a drink. “He’s not. You’re too useful to him.”
They had just returned from seeing the king of the Fae and were now in Nyall’s public chambers—the part he called the sitting room.
“Shadows take him,” she said, pacing back and forth across the expensive carpet, unable to contain her anger.
“Language,” Nyall said, sounding slightly shocked at her curse. He walked toward the window where there was a breathtaking view of The Valley. “You’re not in the Dark Court right now, Tessa. Try to act like a proper woman.”
At Nyall’s command to act like a proper woman, Tessa wanted to pull at her clothes and mess up her hair, but she knew better. She was in the Light Court and emotions were frowned upon—especially emotions in women—and Nyall would just roll his eyes. The silk of her gown ought to have been smooth and comfortable, but the dress felt as though it didn’t quite fit properly.
Like her.
Tessa didn’t fit here, and she didn’t fit in the Dark Court. She didn’t know where she belonged anymore. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wanted to come home.
No matter what.
She wanted it more than she wanted her next breath.
“We don’t talk like that in the Light Court, Tessa,” Nyall said, apparently not finished with his tongue lashing. “Have some decorum.”
“Decorum?” she asked, beside herself with outrage. She really hadn’t thought the king would refuse her request to stop being a spy in the Dark Court and return to her home in the Light Court. Tessa had been absent from the Seelie lands for hundreds of years, and she was over it. Totally over it. She wanted out. “Shadows take decorum, Nyall. I can’t believe he would do this to me. After everything I’ve done for the Light Court.”
She loved Nyall like a brother, but it annoyed her that he had the nerve to look shocked at her words.
“Tessa, honestly. I don’t even recognize you anymore.” Nyall had a disappointed look on his handsome face. “Who have you become, Tess?”
Who have I become? I have no clue.
Sometimes when she looked in the mirror these days, she didn’t even recognize herself anymore. The woman in the mirror was so unhappy. So trapped. So powerless. It made her sick to look at herself.
Even though in the Dark Court she had control, she didn’t make the mistake of thinking that was true power.
Because it wasn’t.
Freedom. Now that was power.
To be able to decide where you went and when you went there. That was freedom, and that was power over your own life.
She might be the Captain of the Guard and the Queen’s right hand in battle, but she knew that she had as little true freedom as one of the Dark Queen’s monsters in the dungeon.
“Sometimes, I don’t know who I am anymore either,” she murmured, dropping into a chair, her limbs weak with impotence. On the gentle breeze that blew in the window, she smelled the scent of lilacs, and it brought back her childhood so strongly that tears stung her eyes. She blinked them away.
“Well, that’s what you get,” Nyall said with the shrug of someone who had never known what it was like to have to give yourself completely to something you never really wanted. He didn’t turn from where he was contemplating the beautiful day outside the window, and the rays of sunlight pouring in lit his blond hair so that it shone like gold itself.
Her body went rigid at his words.
“What do you mean, that’s what you get?” Tessa asked, sitting up straighter. If Nyall had truly been listening, he would have noticed the dangerous edge to her voice. And if he had known who she’d had to become to be a spy in the Dark Court, he would have been afraid.
But he was completely unaware of how he was affecting her, and he kept on with his pompous lecture, sure that he was right and that Tessa—a weak and useless woman—would benefit from him pointing out the facts.
“You’re the one who volunteered to go to the Dark Court as a spy,” he said with another infuriating shrug of one perfect shoulder.
“I wanted to help,” she spat. He didn’t seem to notice her anger because he was still turned away from her.
“Sure you did. And you knew it was going to be hard. That you would get hurt. That it wouldn’t be pleasant. But you went anyway.”
Tessa clenched her teeth together so tightly she thought they might splinter. Nyall was one of her oldest friends, but he had lived his whole life as a privileged member of the Light Court, and it made her furious that he could make pronouncements like that as if he knew.
She was momentarily distracted from her rage by the sweet twittering of birdsong in the garden outside that was the exact opposite of the screeching, dissonant noise that clanged in her head at his words.
“Of course, I imagined what it was going to be like,” she ground out. “But the experience of living it for hundreds of years is a little different than what I thought it would be.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “But you made your choice, and I have to say it again. That’s what y
ou get for—you know—changing your mind.” If her skin hadn’t been holding her together, Tessa thought she might have flown into a thousand pieces. “You shouldn’t have gone in the first place. It was stupid.”
She supposed he was right.
It didn’t stop her from wanting to smash his face with her fist until it was a bloody mess.
Stars above, what am I thinking? Nyall is my friend. A good Fae man. He’s just pointing out a truth that I don’t want to admit.
“I wish you hadn’t gone because I miss you, Tessa,” he said, and her anger at him melted.
After all, he was right.
She had been completely changed by the Dark Court, and she hadn’t even really noticed until this very moment. She walked over to the mirror that hung over a small table and stared at herself. A woman with empty eyes gazed back at her.
Like a ghost.
“If it’s any comfort, the king seems bent on getting the Scroll of Severance,” he said. “And then this whole Seelie and Unseelie Court stuff will be over.”
“I should get the scroll,” Tessa said, almost to herself as the idea popped into her head. “It’s the only thing I could ever do that would convince him to let me come home.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Tess. You can’t get the scroll. Other Fae who are far more powerful than you have tried and failed.”
Tessa held on to her temper—tightly—as Nyall continued enumerating the difficulties.
“The Keeper of the Scroll has never been found—even by the king and queen. And they say that if you were to get the scroll, enacting the spell to end the Severance would destroy the person who tries.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Tessa agreed reluctantly, the bitterness soaking deeper into her heart.
“The king will eventually get the scroll, and you won’t have to do this anymore. You’ll be able to finally come home.”
“And when do you suppose that will happen?” she asked, forcing the question out.
“Another couple hundred years maybe,” Nyall said as if he couldn’t care less, still gazing out at the idyllic countryside.
“Is that all?” she asked, completely sarcastic.
“You’re so strong, Tess,” he said, unaware of her sarcasm or how callous he sounded. “You’ll survive.”
She knew she could put up with life in the Dark Court for longer, but she didn’t want to.
She didn’t want to just survive anymore.
“I probably will survive,” Tessa said, unable to tear her gaze away from the haunted woman in the glass. “But my soul will be dead long before that.”
The rage and powerlessness rose up in her, and she punched the mirror, shattering the glass and her reflection at the same time. Blood streaked down her hand. The shards fell with a crash on the floor, and she spun on her heel, heading out of the room.
Nyall’s expression was no doubt priceless, but she didn’t look at him. She couldn’t talk to him anymore.
Tessa strode down the light, airy corridor, fury burning inside of her like a fire raging out of control. And behind her on the pale tiles, she left a trail of bright drops of crimson blood.
Chapter 2
The queen held court in the throne room of Direwood Castle, beginning as usual when the last scarlet rays of the sun disappeared. Tess stood in the doorway to the queen's throne room and wished, not for the first time, that the Severance had never happened. If it hadn’t happened, then she wouldn’t have to be here.
Centuries ago when the King and Dark Queen had quarreled, Ahlenerra—the Fae land—had been split in two. Literally. The enormous Chasm divided the two lands, and no one was allowed to cross. The Dark Queen ruled over the northern half, which was referred to as the Dark Court or the Unseelie Court. And the King ruled over the southern half, called the Light or Seelie Court.
Tessa worked in the Dark Court and, Stars above, was she tired of it.
Her attention was caught by the prisoner the queen was speaking to. She stared at him, intrigued in spite of herself.
Tessa was so tired after her three-week journey back from the Light Court that she could hardly see straight. She could see well enough, though, to notice the man’s charisma and good looks.
And yet, it wouldn’t do to show interest in anyone or anything in the Dark Court, so she kept her face a mask of stone.
As the Captain of the Guard, the Queen required Tessa to present herself upon her return to the castle, and not for the first time, this injunction grated on her nerves. Why could she not have a bath and get a change of clothes before she had to report in? But the Dark Queen cared nothing for any of her subjects’ needs or wants—even if the subject was Tessa, her right hand and head of all her armies.
Tessa shoved away the traitorous thoughts. It wasn’t smart to even think such things. The Dark Queen had a way of finding out about them and making the thinker suffer—dreadfully.
The prisoner had dark brown hair and brown, intelligent eyes. Under the dirt the soldiers had kicked on him, she could see that his naked chest was strong, lean, and muscled. His torso was marked with bruises, scrapes, and cuts—no doubt from the guards’ tender attentions. The only other thing the stranger wore was a plain ring on one finger. Tessa wondered if he was married.
“Tessa Callahan,” came a voice from beside her, startling her out of her musings. “May the Shadows hide you.”
Tessa responded to the greeting automatically, clenching her jaw and not reacting. “And also you, Runa Byrne,” she said, mocking Runa’s use of her full name and not looking at her nemesis. “What do you want?”
“What I always want, Tessa. To kill you. And take your position of course, which you don’t deserve.”
Tessa turned her head toward the woman who had been her rival since the day she had walked through the doors of Direwood Castle for the first time. The Fae were immortal, magical beings that could not die under most circumstances. But there were ways to kill them, such as splitting their body up so that it could never heal and overloading their magical channels so that they exploded. They could also be injured so that it would take years for them to heal. So it was commonplace to use the word “kill” even though in most cases, it meant that they would simply cause you great and unending pain.
The woman addressing Tessa was tall and slim. She had long black hair and pale white skin. Her lips were always painted scarlet or purple, and her black eyes held nothing but contempt and hatred for Tessa.
“Runa, Runa,” Tessa said, shaking her head. “Will you never learn? The Dark Queen gave me the position of Captain of the Guard because you simply aren’t good enough. And she certainly doesn’t trust you."
Runa gave Tessa a look of loathing.
“Since the first day we got here, you’ve been trying to beat me, Runey. But you just haven’t been able to. It’s not your fault, though.” Tessa patted the other woman condescendingly on the shoulder. “It’s a natural, inborn lack of talent. You don’t have to feel bad about it.”
“You think you’re so great Callahan,” Runa said, fury in her eyes. “But I will take your position. And I will kill you. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Okay then, I’ll be waiting,” Tessa said, not worried in the slightest. The woman was definitely more bark than bite, and she just didn’t have what it took to lead. The Dark Queen saw that, as well as anyone else who had ever interacted with her, but Runa couldn’t see it.
Tessa felt annoyed at the brief interaction with her enemy and the persona she had to put on with the other woman. But she let it go and turned her attention back to what was unfolding before her.
Tessa gave herself a little shake. She had done enough skulking in the shadows. The queen had glanced in her direction twice now, and Tessa didn’t want to be called forward. That wouldn’t be good. Especially since she noticed the queen had her favorite monster—the Char—lurking in a cage behind her throne. The creature made Tessa’s guts churn.
Shadow-cursed monsters.
Tes
sa hated and feared them so much.
When she had first arrived in the Dark Court, she had been ordered to kill a prisoner in a training exercise as a test to see if she had the required level of brutality and disregard for human life to be a member of the royal guard.
She had stood her ground and steadfastly refused the order. Her superior hadn’t liked it. He thought it a good idea to make an example of her—in order to encourage the viciousness and cruelty that the Dark Queen required of her soldiers. So he had thrown her in the monster arena, while all the rest of the royal guard watched.
The monster arena was where Ransetta frequently amused herself by throwing prisoners in and watching them be devoured by the various different beasts and creatures she kept in her dungeon. But occasionally, it was used for this purpose. It was necessary to keep the troops in line, her superior had told her.
Tessa had been absolutely terrified. It was early on in her time with the Dark Court, and she had still been soft and fearful. The monsters had tormented her, and she had screamed and screamed. She had run. But they had chased her and hunted her down. Until she found a reservoir of strength—and rage—that she had never tapped before.
Tessa had fought her way out, killing monsters left and right until she had escaped, but the incident had left a scar. Now, she had an unreasonable fear of monsters that had to be kept hidden from everyone in the Dark Court, lest she be seen as weak. Well, of course, being afraid of monsters was smart. They were creatures to be feared. But she was afraid of them even now, when they were locked up and couldn’t hurt her.
