Pixie-Led (Book 2 in the Twilight Court Series)

by Amy Sumida

  Pixie-Led

  Amy Sumida

  Copyright © 2015 Amy Sumida

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 1518699642

  ISBN-13: 978-1518699641

  More Books by Amy Sumida

  The Godhunter Series(in order)

  Godhunter

  Of Gods and Wolves

  Oathbreaker

  Marked by Death

  Green Tea and Black Death

  A Taste for Blood

  The Tainted Web

  Series Split:

  These books can be read together or separately

  Harvest of the Gods & A Fey Harvest

  Into the Void & Out of the Darkness

  Perchance to Die

  Tracing Thunder

  Light as a Feather

  Rain or Monkeyshine

  Beyond the Godhunter

  A Darker Element

  The Twilight Court Series

  Fairy-Struck

  (Pixie-Led)

  Other Books

  The Magic of Fabric

  Feeding the Lwas: A Vodou Cookbook

  There's a Goddess Too

  The Vampire-Werewolf Complex

  Enchantress

  Sign up for Amy's Newsletter and get a free gift: http://eepurl.com/bzwIhf

  Pronunciation Guide

  Aideen: Ay-deen

  Ainsley: Ains-lee

  Aodh: Ee

  Balloch: Bal-lock

  Baobhan sith: Baa-vahn-she

  Beag: big(k)

  Bean-sidhe: ban-she

  Cailleach Bheur: CALL-yack Burr or COY-ick Burr

  Catan: KAH-tan

  Dhoire: Doy-rah

  Diocail: JU-kel

  Duergar: Doo-ay-gahr

  Each-Uisge: Ech-oosh-kee-ya

  Eadan: Ae-dan

  Erdluitle: Urd-loo-it-tal

  Ewan: You-win

  Fir Darrig: Fear-durg

  Gancanagh: Gon-cawn-ah

  Ghillie-Dhu: Gill-ee-doo

  Glastig: Clee-stickh

  Gradh: Grah

  Gwyllion: Gwith-lee-on

  Iseabal: Ish-bal

  Keir: Keer

  Latharna: LA-ur-na

  Lonnegawn: Lonny-goon (forest dwelling plant-person)

  Mairte: Mahrj-tah

  Marcan: MOR-kawn

  Moire: Moy-rah

  Mór: Mo-ore

  Mufasa: Moo-fah-sah

  Nighean: Na-yee-in

  Nuckelavee: Nuke-ah-lah-vee

  Raza: Rah-zah

  Ryvel: Rival

  Searc: Sherk

  Seelie: See-lee

  Seren: Sare-rin

  Sorcha: SORE-sha

  Tiernan: Teer-nin

  Torquil: Tore-quill

  Tursa: Ture-sah (a type of fairy bear)

  Tnyn: Ten-yee-nah

  Uisdean: OOSH-jan

  Unseelie: Un-see-lee

  Pixie-Led: The process of being led astray by pixies; bewildered.

  Chapter One

  Life as a fairy princess wasn't getting any easier. I'd thought that once I'd made the transition from Extinguisher Seren Sloane to Ambassador Seren Sloane Bloodthorn that things would start getting simpler and more serene for me. As an Extinguisher, I was a psychically gifted soldier who monitored fairy activity in the Human Realm. I also extinguished those fey who broke the laws of our truce. Now I'm a half-human fairy princess of the previously unknown Twilight Court. I'm also the first Fey-Human Ambassador; a diplomat not only between fairies and humans but also between the feuding courts of the Fairy Realm.

  I was getting used to the lavish living conditions and being surrounded by the strange blends of seelie and unseelie races who were the twilight fairies. I was even comfortable with my new puka companion, Cat, who was actually a lot closer to a dog than a feline. She was named after my mother, Catriona and she was just as protective as a mother, rarely allowing me a moment alone.

  What wasn't getting easier were the constant revelations about the fey.

  Every day I learned something new, which sounds wonderful. I think I even saw that embroidered on a pillow once; Learn something new every day. Except I'd thought I'd known all there was to know about fairies. Turns out, I literally hadn't known the half of it. The very court I was now princess of had been unknown to me. It had been unknown to all humans actually, because its king had wanted it that way. Bringing me to Fairy had meant outing his court to the Human Council and now not only I but all of the Human Council and the Extinguishers were reeling with the knowledge that there was an entire kingdom of Fairy which had slipped under our fey radar.

  As the new half-human princess to the neutral court of Twilight, which lay between the warring courts of Light and Dark, I was in a unique position to expand my peace-keeper status into that of an ambassador. I was all for it but an ambassador needed to know the people she was working with and, as I mentioned before, I didn't know half as much as I'd thought. There were all kinds of things that the Fairy Council hadn't seen fit to share with us humans. Not that I blamed them, if the Human Council had known some of the things I was learning about, it might have caused a panic. It definitely would have threatened the truce between fairies and humans, and in the end, the knowledge wouldn't have helped them anyway.

  Then there was the magic I'd unlocked when I'd first stepped into Fairy and released the power of my fey blood. So far I knew of two different powers which I possessed. The first was called star-crossing. All of the fey had the ability to enchant a human into doing their bidding. This was considered a beag magic, a minor magic which all fairies had (ironically, it's pronounced big with a weird hard K sound at the end), and was called striking. Victims of striking were considered to be fairy-struck. The more powerful you were, the stronger a strike you could make. Some humans wouldn't even eat unless the fairy who enchanted them bade them to do so. Star-crossing is a version of this which only my father and I held. We could strike other fairies, render them fairy-struck. Though when we fairy-struck a fairy, they called our victims star-crossed.

  My other magic was dream-dusting. I could blow a sparkling dust from my fingertips which would induce sleep in any it landed on. Dream-dusting comes in handy when you need to sneak past guards or anyone else you just want incapacitated. But don't ask me where the dust comes from. I've spent way too many nights lying awake wondering the very same thing. Sometimes you just have to accept magic as inexplicable.

  A fairy's main magics, that which are specific to them and/or their family, were called mór magic. Pronounced; more , I thought this was a more appropriate word than the little beag but then that's Gaelic for you. Or maybe English is the silly language since it came later and really, a lot of English doesn't make sense. Gaelic, by the by, was a fairy dialect originally. The fey adopted English along the way, simply because most of the Human Realm was picking up the language and it just became easier for them to do the same. Most fairies spoke very proper English though and half the time I felt like I was dealing with the British aristocracy.

  Anyway, both of my mór magics were pretty cool but the soldier in me longed for a more aggressive power. Something like my new fairy father, King Keir, had. He could burn the blood within a body. Not boil but burn; set it on fire to roast an enemy from within. Now that was cool... well hot. Whatever, you know what I mean.

  As if all of that wasn't complicated enough, I also had to deal with a romantic entanglement. Okay, so that part wasn't so bad. Count Tiernan Shadowcall sounds like some stuffy royal fairy who spends his days strolling through extravagant gardens walking his teeny-tiny, fairy doggy but actually, Tiernan was kind of a bad ass. A Lord of the Wild Hunt (which he loved
reminding me of over and over again... it's kind of a big deal), Tiernan was from a family of seelie sidhe who possessed the only strain of Light magic which could actually command the Dark. Well, not the Dark exactly; the shadows made by his magic's light. You kinda gotta see it to know what I'm talking about.

  We'd met on my last Extinguisher mission, which ended up being a complete scam designed by King Keir to bring me home to Fairy. I'd been raised by a human named Ewan Sloane; a man whose wife, my mother, cheated on him with a fairy king and then had the nerve to pretend the child resulting from that union, namely me, was Ewan's. Mom had her reasons, mainly to protect me from all the nasty fairies who didn't want a half-human heir to the twilight throne. Still, my life had been a lie and she had paid for that lie with her life. Unfortunately, it had been a steep tab and I had to pay the remainder of the debt.

  The man I'd known as my father for most of my life, Ewan Sloane, wouldn't speak to me anymore. He had basically disavowed me as his daughter and told me to go to hell... or Fairy rather. It hurt. A lot. I don't know if it will ever stop hurting so I'm not going to stop trying to get through to him. I know my Dad, my human Dad. He's all bluster and gruff but there's a soft heart beneath that. My mom's betrayal had scarred him. He'd already been driven to the edge by her death and I knew he needed someone to blame, someone to pay for this additional pain, or he would truly go mad. I was a convenient candidate.

  Still, I hoped there would come a day when he'd wake up in his empty house and miss me. You can't erase twenty-six years of love overnight, not even with a heavy application of anger and resentment. Until then, he was moping about on assignment in Hawaii, and I was hopping back and forth between the realms as I tried to make both councils happy.

  The councils had been created after the last great war between the humans and the fey. They made the laws that kept our truce active and to enforce those laws, two military groups were created; the Wild Hunt, which was comprised of fairies, and the Extinguishers, which were humans.

  Tiernan was on assignment for the Wild Hunt when we met and I for the Extinguishers. Technically the Hunt and the Extinguishers are on the same side, that of peace, but the reality is, we don't work well together. The Wild Hunt handled humans who broke our laws (knowingly or unknowingly) and the Extinguishers handled miscreant fairies. This made for tension between our groups. Tiernan and I were the exceptions, mainly because of this instant attraction we'd felt for each other. Originally, I had no intention of giving in to that attraction but Tiernan intended to change my mind. And Tiernan can be very convincing when he wants to be.

  After I became the Twilight Princess (don't laugh) and then the Fey-Human Ambassador, the Fairy Council assigned Tiernan to partner with me. Which means he became my unofficial bodyguard and an official pain in my patootie. He made up for the patootie pain by making other parts of my anatomy feel very nice. I meant my heart, you perverts.

  “Amazing. How does this just keep getting better and better?” I curled up into Tiernan's side after he rolled off me. Okay so I wasn't just talking about my heart.

  “I've had lots of time to develop my skills,” he gave me a sideways grin, his silver eyes shining bright in the shadows my bed curtains made. The ring of black around his irises emphasized their unusual color even more but it was the silver scar curling up and over his right cheekbone that truly brought out the beauty of his gaze.

  “How much time exactly?” I asked casually as I traced the curving scar with my fingertip.

  “I'm still not telling,” long black lashes fluttered down over the silver as he narrowed his eyes. “You can't trick me into it, Seren.”

  “I will find out how old you are,” I vowed.

  “Not if I don't want you to,” he pushed back some of the hair around his face.

  My eyes followed the darkening strands; from the platinum color at his temples, to light gold, blonde, honey, chestnut, chocolate, and finally the jet black ends. No one could do ombré like the fey.

  “If you cut your hair, would the tips start turning black?” I asked as I pulled the sable ends of his hair forward.

  “No,” he took my hand and kissed my fingers. “It's the length that changes the color. The longer it grows, the darker it gets.”

  “Interesting,” I mused but my train of thought was derailed by a pitiful howl. “Alright, Cat!” I yelled and slid out of the silk sheets while Tiernan groaned.

  “Can't you leave her in there a little while longer?” Tiernan whined.

  “If I do, she's liable to break down the door,” I opened the door to my dressing room (too big to be called a closet) and Cat came barreling out.

  She was the size of a small pony and easily pushed me aside as she ran by me; shaggy gray fur flapping around her as she went. A small jump took her into the bed, making Tiernan groan again. I just laughed and climbed back under the covers as Cat did her usual three spins before settling somewhere near our feet. My bed was huge, we could have probably had two pukas and a cat-sidhe in it and still had room, but Tiernan liked to complain about Cat. I think it was a form of affection for him because he liked to complain about me too.

  Just as I got myself settled, twilight arrived and with it came a rush of power zinging through my body. I'd learned to control the lavender colored sparkles that used to drift from my fingers at twilight (again, do not laugh) but it was hard to control the shivers I experienced with that burst of magic. Tiernan loved holding me at twilight; feeling my body tremble with power, so I wasn't surprised to find myself in his arms when I opened my eyes. What I was surprised by was the collection of moths hanging above me in the branches of night blooming jasmine which arched over my bed.

  “What in the world?” I blinked up at the fluttering mass of insects. “I didn't call the mending moths.”

  “Those aren't mending moths,” Tiernan whispered with awe and I looked over to see both him and Cat staring up at the moths intently. Cat was completely quiet, an odd response for her. She generally liked to bark at new things, or at least sniff them.

  “What are they then?” I swear, sometimes the fey drug things out to the point of being exhausting. It's the whole immortality thing, they have the time for long conversations.

  “They're mirror moths,” Tiernan lifted a hand to point at winged fey insects and I followed the line of his finger to see that the moths had positioned themselves to form an oval; their settling into stillness as the opalescence in their dust caught the light of fairy lights hovering about the room. The moth wings turned silver and for a brief moment, they reflected our amazed expressions.

  Then our faces blurred, replaced by a single face; that of a human male with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. The perfect poster boy for the Aryan race. He was wearing an expensive suit and smiling brightly as flashes of light went off around him; cameras I think. There was a royal blue curtain behind him with a symbol on it that I couldn't make out. Blue seeped into red and the scene changed to one of war, men screaming and gunfire blaring against a dark sky. Then everything exploded. Buildings crumbled, bridges fell into the sea, and the White House burned. I inhaled sharply and Tiernan took my hand as the images faded into gray. Out of that gray mist came a wooden staff. It just floated forward and hung suspended for us to examine.

  Beautiful and elegant, it was an artistic masterpiece. Made of bone white wood, polished to a soft sheen, it was crowned with an intricate carving of a crow's head, stained black. The bird was so detailed, I could see each individual feather. Beady eyes seemed to focus on me, wooden feathers ruffled with creaking clicks, and a loud caw burst from its beak. With the startling sound, the moths erupted into flurry of wings and flew away together in swirling strings, heading out the open doors of my balcony.

  “Ooooo-kaaaaayyyyy,” I turned amazed eyes to Tiernan. “Was that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “I think it was a warning,” his face was even whiter than normal, the silver of his scar nearly fading into his pallor. “The mirror moths show t
hat which needs to be seen.”

  “A warning of what? The end of the world?” I huffed a laugh. That which needs to be seen. Of all the vague cryptic sayings, that had to make the top ten.

  “Perhaps,” Tiernan said in a low voice and Cat whimpered.

  “What?!” I gaped at him. “You think that was really a preview of an apocalypse?”

  “That staff, did you recognize it?” He sat up and stared at me intently.

  “No but I'm assuming it's important,” I sat up too.

  “It belongs to an unseelie hag named Cailleach Bheur,” he angled his head down and lifted his brows, staring at me like I might come up with the answer on my own.

  “Cailleach?” I frowned and searched through my memories. “That isn't the staff which grants the power of enchantment to any who happen to find it unattended, is it?”

  “That's my girl,” he gave me a grim grin. “Yes, it is and it looks like a human has found it. Or is going to find it very soon.”

  “And will use it to destroy the world,” I sighed. “I think I'd better get dressed.”

  Saving the world is best done clothed.

  Chapter Two

  As soon as I'd notified my father about what we'd seen, Keir had raced to his bedroom with Tiernan and me hot on his heels. He'd gone through a door to the left of his bed, which opened into a large room reserved for kingdom business. Against the far wall in this room, loomed a large, ornately-carved pedestal. On the pedestal sat an orb of polished, perfectly clear crystal. Keir veered around the solid wood table and scurried up to the crystal ball.

  “King Uisdean of the Unseelie!” Keir called out as he tapped the surface of the sphere.

  The center of the orb filled with gray mist. The mist swirled, changing colors and then forming the colors into shapes. Those shapes stayed blurry for quite awhile, like looking through an unfocused camera lens, and then they cleared to reveal my Uncle Uisdean's uptight face.