Runaway Fae

by Runaway Fae

  Runaway Fae

  By

  A. J. Cove

  (copyright by A.J. Cove, February 2009

  Cover Art by Alex DeShanks, February 2009

  ISBN 978-60394-278-2

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Chapter One

  “If you have a problem with what I’m doing, Liam, that’s just too bad. I’m an adult and can make my own decisions.” Shauna glared up at her long time friend, annoyed that he had decided to block her opening into the human world. “I just thought you’d be supportive.”

  Liam ran a finger down her cheek, staring into her eyes. She trembled and pulled away and he sighed. “Shauna, you are a princess, a Faerie princess. You cannot leave Faeland without an armed escort. No matter how old you are, that’s still true.”

  She frowned, wanting more than anything to throw a childish tantrum right about then. “Like I need you to remind me of that, Liam? I’m reminded of who I am every freaking day when I have to sit in court with my parents, ruling over stupid, boring problems that these stupid boring people have.”

  With a growl, he grasped her by both arms and held her against his chest. She forced herself not to pay attention to her nipples skimming against his hard chest. This was her friend, and because they had both developed over the last twenty-five years, into adult Fae, lately, she had trouble remembering that.

  She had wrestled with Liam in the grass down by the lake, sparred with him in the school yard when the instructor wasn’t watching. Now, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from his body, all muscles and hardness in so many right places. She bit her lip thinking of it. But she didn’t want anything to change between them. Liam didn’t see it that way. So, she was leaving sooner than later.

  He glared down at her and then his gaze dropped to her mouth. He had caught the movement of her biting her lip, and seemed mesmerized by it. Shauna squirmed against him to get free. It had the opposite effect. “Shauna, you and I ....”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We’re friends, Liam. We’ll always be friends. But right now, I have to leave.”

  “Why?” She heard the hurt in his voice. It was no secret to her that Liam was content with living his entire life in Faeland. Even when he had been offered the position of retriever, he turned it down because it would mean leaving Faeland too often. She couldn’t respect that. “Why can’t you just stay, Shauna?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He kissed her then, rough and hard. Shauna allowed it because she would miss him with all her heart. And because he tasted so good. The tip of his tongue parted her lips, while she curled into his firm hold. The erection he sported was stiff against her stomach, making her want to stroke it, to feel it inside her. She was dizzy with his kisses and took a long time to remember her vow. Friends and only friends. Nothing more.

  She pulled away from him when his mouth trailed to her neck. “Let me go, Liam. Please let me go.” She cupped his face in her hands. “You know how unhappy I’ve been here, how this simple life just isn’t for me. I want excitement and adventure. If I thought you wanted it too, I would say come with me.”

  The shock of her words was clear on Liam’s handsome face. He paced some feet away in the brush. He rubbed at his neck as he appeared to be listening to the sounds of night around them. She had chosen a perfect time, midnight when all the Fae were at the Festival of Magic. No one would notice them missing. Hopefully.

  “It just seems wrong to let you go without telling someone. You are a princess ....”

  “Don’t start that again. And I know you won’t betray me, Liam. Please, you can’t betray me.” She rushed to his side, looking up at him to gauge his unspoken decision. “Once, you said you would do anything for me.”

  “I was drunk ... and off duty.” He had the grace to laugh. “I said some things that shouldn’t have been said.”

  Shauna ran a hand down the front of his uniform, feeling his muscles tense. She wasn’t above seducing him to get what she wanted. Liam’s growing feelings for her were obvious to everyone who watched him stare at her whenever they were in the same room. He could be stronger, she thought. Wilder, more dangerous. She had never told him that.

  “You said you love me,” she began. “So that wasn’t true? It was just the drink talking?”

  “Shauna.”

  “Tell me, Liam,” she demanded, already realizing her plan of seduction would not work. She was still a tomboy at heart. “Explain to me why you lied to me about how you feel. Tell me you say one thing and mean another.”

  He grabbed for her again, but she moved out of reach.

  “Loving you means caring for you. Making sure you’re okay.”

  “You’re not my guard! I left them in the town hall, partying like everyone else. Getting drunk, and saying what they don’t mean to some other unsuspecting virgin.”

  Liam’s features darkened. She had gone too far. Backing up a step, she tripped over something on the ground. When she would have fallen, he caught her. Then, with a wave of his hand, easily executing his magic, he closed the portal she had opened earlier. “Your guards may not be doing their job, but I am. I am still a royal guard, despite not being assigned to you. It’s my duty to watch over the king’s family. Period. Now, I am taking you back to the party. Or if you prefer, I can escort you home.”

  She fell into step beside him with no choice since he still had a firm hold on her arm. “Always safe,” she muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  She spoke louder, “I said, you’re always playing it safe. I’m sure that will make a nice common Fae very happy some day. After all, you’d be shooting too high for your station to pursue me.”

  Shauna knew she was hurting him more with her words, but she was bitterly disappointed. For months, she had planned and plotted to go. All that time, she had hoped he would give in and go with her. Instead, Liam had blocked her escape. Right then, she hated him.

  Liam walked stiff and proud at her side. “You’ve made how you feel very clear to me, Princess. The carefree children we were are in the past, as you’ve said. And apparently, so is our friendship.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. I’m sorry. She would have to start all over again to find a way of escape, and this time, if Liam had no reason to keep an eye on her, she might succeed.

  * * * *

  Shauna stepped stiffly up to the palace door and nodded regally to Liam, something she never did to anyone. It had the desired effect of making him back off. He gave a small bow but waited until she opened the door. When had he become such a stick in the mud, she wondered? Years ago, he had gone skinny-dipping with her in the lake at five in the morning. It was freezing cold and drizzling. They were so stupid, but they had had fun.

  Now, as she paused on the step with her hand on the knob to go inside, she noticed the moonlight shimmering in his midnight hair as it curled about his handsome face and pointed ears. It was true, with his build, those smoky grey eyes and that considerate disposition, some woman would consider herself lucky to have him. But not her. It couldn’t be her. Not because she was above him being a princess. She hated herself for saying that to him. But because she craved adventure and Liam craved security. They would never meld well together, would be at each other’s throats before a year was out, just like they were now.

  “Goodnight, Liam,” she whispered.

  “Goodnight, Princess.”

  It hurt. She turned to go when an explosion lit up the night sky. Both of them spun toward the orange ball
curling up from the town hall. When Shauna would have run back down the path leading there, Liam stopped her. “No, you go inside where it’s safe. I’ll send a guard to protect you.”

  She shook her arm free. “No, I’m not staying here while my family’s down there. Something is going on, and I intend to find out what.” She started off again, but this time Liam lifted her off her feet. As hard as she struggled against him, it was pointless. Shoving open the palace door, Liam called out to her family’s long time caretaker, “Ultan!” The old faerie shuffled into the hall. “Make sure she stays. For good measure, I’m putting a spell on all exits so she can’t come out before someone releases it.”

  Shauna stood in the lobby of her home fuming and worried. The explosions continued, and now as she watched Liam cast the spell and run down the trail, she saw that the fire was laced with red and black around the edges. Every Faerie knew what that meant. Evil. Something evil was attacking their village, and as far as she knew, it had never happened before.

  A check of all the windows and doors of her home indicated that Liam had kept his word. Each time she shoved against the doors or windows, they held. None opened more than an inch before an unseen force slammed them closed again. She tried magic of her own, as she had been trained right along side Liam as he developed over the years.

  When a warm glow started in her hand, she pointed toward the door. “Oscail láithreach bonn!”

  The door shook against its hinges, but didn’t give. She tried again with the same results. Then after trying for two hours, the door suddenly gave. It blew off the hinges and slid out across the bushes that lined the grounds around her home. Shauna darted out of the opening and ran full speed toward the town hall.

  The explosions had stopped a half-hour before, but she heard screams still as she neared the area where the Festival was held. She gasped in shock and terror as she witnessed her countrymen fighting the dark magic cast by tall slender creatures with skin as black as the night sky. The hollow ting of swords clashing and dull thud of one entering flesh, made her stomach turn.

  Shauna’s thoughts were of her family, her mother and father and older brother. They must be safe. She couldn’t imagine why the guards hadn’t escorted them back to the castle as she had been left. And though Liam had promised to send a guard to her, none had ever arrived. Fear drove her forward, to search the area for those she loved.

  The hall was destroyed. Only rubble remained where the old hall had stood for over three hundred years. Tears sprung to Shauna’s eyes as she stumbled over the debris. When she fell, she cut her hand on a discarded sword, and she picked it up. It hung too heavy, but she gripped it in two hands while searching.

  “Help me, please!” It was her mother, somewhere in the trees beyond the scene of destruction. Shauna ran carefully to avoid turning her ankle. When she burst through the trees to a small clearing, it was to find her mother being attacked by one of the dark creatures.

  Without thought, Shauna charged, holding the sword out in front of her. When the point pierced its back skin and it screamed on the night air, Shauna spewed the contents of her stomach. She dropped the thing dead at her mother’s feet.

  Shauna wiped her mouth on her once beautiful ball gown, now stained with soot and dirt, torn from sharp items snagging it. She tumbled into her mother’s arms. “Mother, what happened? What’s going on? Where is Father and my brother?”

  “Shh, baby. Calm down first.” Her mother told her to calm down, but she felt the woman trembling. Her mother had always been the strong one, standing up to anything, including her husband. She didn’t like to experience the situation that could bring her mother to her knees.

  “Mother, where is our family? Where is Liam ... or ... the other guards?” Shauna was terrified of hearing the words that she knew her mother would say.

  “They are dead.” Her voice quivered. “First the guards, then your father and brother. Those monsters came from portals all around the hall. I don’t even know how they could open so many at once and then for us not to know ahead of time. Our magic was no match.”

  Shauna sobbed against her mother’s chest. “Mother, you saw my father and brother die. What about Liam? Please tell me you aren’t sure, that maybe he can be around here somewhere.”

  Her mother shook her head. “I’m sorry, Shauna. I know how much you loved him, even if you denied it. Everyone else saw love growing between the two of you. Your father and I discussed it, him being a guard and you a princess. It would not have been proper for you to marry him.” Her voice broke. “But your father would have given you anything.”

  Shauna cried out, “No, Mother. It-I-I broke off our friendship just tonight. I said things that I didn’t mean to him. I was cruel. And now, he’s gone and I can’t make it better.”

  Her mother tightened her hold, as they sat under the waning moon, with smoke and ash in the air. The screams lessened, the clang of swords died away, and the black creatures slid out through portals as the sun rose in the sky over the weeping Faerie village.

  Chapter Two

  Shauna sat at her mother’s side in court. She no longer had to make decisions over the predictable problems of the Faeries, and neither did her single remaining parent. While she and her mother were still royalty because of their birth, her second cousin, Shamus, was now king. Impossibly, her life was even more boring. It had been three years since her father, brother and Liam had been killed, and she was still filled with unrest. She leaned toward her mother. “Mother, I’m going to step out a minute.”

  “Shauna, this is your duty.”

  “I have to use the facilities.” She didn’t, but any excuse to get free of this mediocrity would do. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Her mother nodded, and Shauna slipped from the room. Passing the nearest bathroom, she continued down the stairs, around a few corners and out through the front door. As if on cue, a guard fell into step behind her. Her heart was heavy knowing it would never be Liam again, who had frequently switched duties with another guard so that he could escort her. Guilt still wracked her when she thought of how she had treated him the last time she saw him.

  Shauna strolled down to the lake and along a short pier leading out over the water. She glanced back at the guard who stood a discreet distance away. Sitting down on the edge to remove her shoes, she remembered all the times she and Liam had splashed in the water here as children and then as young adult Fae.

  A time that stuck out in her mind was when she had first started growing breasts. Liam had grown too, she noticed—way too often. On one of their last skinny dip sessions, when she was ninety-eight years old, her friend hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. “Liam, what are you looking at?”

  His face reddened and he dropped his gaze to the water’s surface. “Nothing. You just look different, that’s all.”

  She had thought he meant different bad, not different good, so she had run to the water and jumped in to hide her changing body. “I can’t help it,” she snapped when she came up to the surface, to cover her insecurity. “And you changed too.”

  How could she have not noticed the long thick rod extending from his body? It made her pant with longings she had not had before. More and more she began to notice how Liam’s shoulders had widened and his chest had transformed from the scrawny look of an adolescent to the chiseled muscle of a man. And when they accidentally brushed against each other in passing, she had felt him grow hard, saw how his eyes dropped to her developing breasts too often. It had been time to end their innocent dips naked in the lake.

  Now, as she dipped her feet into the cool water, her heart ached as strong as it did on that fateful night three years ago, when the creatures that she now knew were the Darklings had attacked their village. The vicious and evil creatures had hated the Faeries for centuries, despised their way of life and the respect they commanded in most other realms. It had been pure and simple jealousy, she thought bitterly.

  “And with all that we lost, how can I leave
my mother. It would break her heart,” she whispered to the rippling surface below her. Yet, she did want to leave. She knew it was selfish and wrong, cruel even with the anniversary of the killings coming up soon. But more and more she found it hard to beat down the unrest in her soul. She needed to be free of the trappings of her gilded life. “How many princesses have wished to be ordinary?” she sighed.

  With full resolve to grin and bear it and even to consider courting the Fae her mother had recently begun pushing her toward, Shauna stood, slipped on her shoes and turned to go back to the castle. At least court would be almost over. Only another hour and a half to go before the doors were closed.

  * * * *

  Dejavu. She stood in the doorway of another portal into the human world, in the same wooded location as before with Liam. Shauna glanced back toward the newly built hall, with guards at the ready all around the perimeter and weeping Fae on the inside. They weren’t celebrating now, but mourning the loss of so many loved ones.

  Shauna had spent her time there, crying over her father and brother, but especially Liam. She had sat at the shrine in the center of the room, pleading with Liam to forgive her, while knowing he never would. And when the time was right, she slipped away into the night to keep her appointment with her destiny.

  She had slaved for hours over the letter she left on her mother’s pillow, begging for forgiveness for leaving. She would return in a few years maybe, when the novelty of the human world wore off or she became homesick. But she didn’t expect to feel a need to return, with memories of her lost friend all around her in Faeland.

  With one last look back toward the hall, though she couldn’t see the building from where she stood hidden in the trees, she stepped through the portal. As she did, she thought she heard running and yelling behind her to stop. It was too late; she was through and the portal was closing.

  She stepped into darkness, earth beneath her feet. At least she thought it was earth. The ground moved and wiggled, making Shauna lose her balance. Whatever was beneath her in the dark, reared up to toss her off itself, and she went hurtling forward and down. A scream was wrenched from her throat before her breath was cut off by freezing, cold water. She sunk beneath the murky depths, feeling something tugging at her ankles to drag her lower. Using magic, she flung bolts of light at the thing, shocking it until it let go. When she was free, she swam to the surface shivering and coughing.