The Far Realm Chronicles Anthology

by Annette Archer

  THE FAR REALM CHRONICLES ANTHOLOGY

  - A Sexy Bundle of 3 Fantasy Erotic Romance Novelettes from Steam Books

  Annette Archer

  Steam Books

  Table of Contents

  The Dragon Prince

  Crystal Elves

  Ethelia

  About Annette Archer

  JOIN TEAM STEAM and get an ebook in your inbox!

  BONUS - Preview of "The Weight of Love" by Annette Archer

  Copyright © 2014 Steam Books Erotica & Romance

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

  THE DRAGON PRINCE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Back to Main Table of Contents

  The Dragon Prince

  Chapter 1

  Damn.

  He had been so close. So close to having everything he wanted. Now he had nothing other than a splitting headache and a strong desire to kill something.

  Preferably, that something would be a Crystal Elf named Tolan.

  Estogan Perival, one-time prince of the Human Kingdom of Rikketh, sat in a tavern in the backwater town of Cedar Run in the southernmost part of the continent. It was hot here, and miserable. It suited his mood.

  Calling this place a tavern was generous at best. It was a run-down shack of a building with five round tables that hadn’t been sanded down for splinters in months if not years, run by a man who was portly and bald and sporting a growth of moles along the left side of his neck. The ale was watered down, the glasses dirty enough that Estogan was drinking straight from the bottle. For now, this place was all he could afford.

  He had been cut off from his people. His father, the High Lord Ferrogan, was not forgiving of anyone who brought dishonor to his house. Estogan had ruined a proposed union of the Kingdom of Rikketh and the Crystal Elves, and worse, been banished from the Elves’ territory altogether. Not to mention the unsubstantiated rumors that Estogan had been stirring up the Red Goblins to murder and mayhem.

  That last part was true, of course, but even as a rumor it was enough of a final straw for his father. High Lord Ferrogan had stripped him of his formal title and sent him on this fool’s errand as punishment for the insult to the High Lord’s name.

  Estogan had even gone so far as to beg mercy as his father’s only son. Such pleas had fallen on deaf ears. Not that he had much of a relationship with his father, he had just assumed it would count for something. He’d been wrong.

  He tipped the bottle of whiskey to his lips again and eyed the few other patrons in the place. There were three Dwarves at a table on the far side of the tavern, dressed in scarred leather armor and heavy boots, their long hair and beards braided in the manner of the mountain clans. At another table sat a woman covered from head to toe in a gray robe, her face deep in the cowl, making it impossible to see much of her features.

  Sitting with him at his own table were Silin Larisett and Thronimere Hawk, two of his best soldiers. They had been present with him when his plans had been foiled at the Crystal Elves’ castle, when his presumptive marriage to the little waif of a girl, Princess Melodielle, had been called off. They had been swept up with the same heavy hand that Estogan’s father had used to push him aside. Now they rode with Estogan on this idiotic quest. They didn’t have a choice.

  “When’s this contact of yers supposed to be here?” Silin asked. His tall frame was hunched over the table and he looked deeply into the contents of his cup as if expecting the answer to be at the bottom. Lanky brown hair fell across his eyes as he did.

  “I have told you several times already,” Estogan answered with a patience he didn’t feel. “Today. Soon. It will happen, when it happens.”

  “All fine and well,” Silin said with a twist of his mouth. “But it ain’t doin’ us no good to just sit here.”

  Estogan narrowed his dark eyes at the man. He was already in a bad mood. This heat had wrung sweat from him like he was a sponge. His once fine red silk shirt clung darkly to his back. His leather swordbelt was beginning to chafe. It was not a time he would accept anyone’s insults, especially Silin’s.

  “Talk back to me again,” he said slowly and with a menacing undertone. “And I will cut out that mumbling tongue of yours.”

  Silin sneered, but looked away and kept silent.

  Estogan looked over at Thronimere, the short bull of a man ignoring everything, including his drink.

  “You haven’t said two words all day,” Estogan said to him. “Are you even paying attention?”

  Thronimere shrugged his shoulders as he recounted the points of the conversation, “Wait for your contact. Take the information back to your father. Not much to remember.”

  “Oh, give over,” Silin snapped at Thronimere. “You been moping ever since we got here.”

  “I choose to keep to myself,” was all Thronimere said. His long, dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and sweat glistened on his skin too, but he ignored it.

  Silin’s eyes flashed and Estogan could tell he was about to say something more. The man was itching for a fight and determined to find it somewhere. He slapped his hand palm down in front of Silin and half rose from the table to lean in closer.

  “Enough!” Estogan hissed. “This is neither the time nor the place for this. Let’s just finish this and get back home.”

  “But he—” Silin tried, pointing accusingly at Thronimere.

  “I said enough!”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said a deep female voice.

  A woman joined them, dressed in riding leathers dyed blue, pants and a vest over a white shirt she had somehow managed to keep clean in this dusty, dirty town.

  The woman continued, “If you three could draw just a little less attention to yourselves, that would be wonderful, don’t you think?”

  Estogan sat back down slowly, admiring the woman’s fine features and her pale blue eyes that tilted up slightly at the edges. Her body was lean and willowy, with curves in all the right places. Hair that was so blonde it was almost silver hung thickly to her jawline. He smiled and decided to pour on the charm.

  After all, it wasn’t every day you got to meet one of the Ice Maidens.

  “Ah, you must be Aurora.” He leaned back in his chair, projecting confidence with a masculine air. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “And I’ve heard almost nothing about you,” she shot back without even the hint of a smile.

  Estogan fumed. The smirks on the faces of his two companions were infuriating.

  Aurora continued, “But I won’t let that stop me from completing our transaction, former Prince. Now, if you would be so good as to produce my payment?”

  Estogan reached down to the front of his weapons belt, his smile turning into a scowl. He unhooked the pouch he had been keeping there and tossed it over to Aurora. It landed on the surface of the table with a soft thud.

  Aurora sucked in a breath. “Could you be any more obvious about it?”

  Estogan couldn’t help laughing at that. “Do you honestly think anyone in this place cares what we’re doing? Look around you, Aurora. This is the place where people on the torture racks come to vacation! I could murder him—” he pointed to Thronimere “—and no one would bat an eyelash at me.”

  Thronimere clenched his jaw harder but said nothing.

  The woman considered Estogan’s words, then slowly took the pouch to hook its leather drawstring onto her own belt.

  “Fine,
” she said. “Then let’s conclude this so I can be on my way and you can be on yours.”

  “I’ve concluded my part,” he answered her. “Now it’s your turn.”

  The Ice Maiden smiled a cold smile and clasped her hands together on the table’s surface. “Your father wants to know if it is time for the hatching.”

  “And where,” he reminded her.

  “Obviously. The time is now. His instincts served him well. You should be proud that you are his son.”

  Estogan’s expression twisted.

  She raised an eyebrow at that and continued. “There are caves to the east of here, a good two day’s ride. That is where you will find what High Lord Ferrogan seeks.”

  “So, we’re just gonna ride around blindly?” Silin asked.

  Her gaze was withering. “No, oaf. You will follow the directions on this map.”

  She produced a folded piece of paper that had been tucked into her belt.

  …And then immediately spun, half-rising from the chair, long dagger drawn to block the smaller blade that had been aimed at her throat.

  Estogan jumped up from the table so fast that his chair toppled over. Silin and Thronimere were sower about it but all three men soon had short swords drawn and up and ready.

  Then they stood there, confused and waiting.

  The woman from the other table, the one that had been wrapped so deeply in her robes, had attacked in the blink of an eye; her small, curving dagger a deadly looking thing. Her hood had been thrown back to reveal a very young Human face with deep red hair that had been pulled straight back and cut short at the back. She was pretty, Estogan noted, but it was also obvious how well she could use that dagger.

  The Ice Maiden had risen to the attack before the three men had even been aware there was one, the fabled heightened senses of her people serving her well enough to save her life. The two women stood now, each glaring at the other, both holding their blades locked in place.

  “You can not give this to them,” the fire-haired woman said in a voice hot with emotion.

  In comparison, the Ice Maiden’s voice was cool and calm. “I will sell my possessions to whomever I please, cleric.”

  Cleric? Estogan couldn’t make sense of that.

  The woman, the cleric, spun suddenly and whipped her blade around to come in point first at the Ice Maiden’s abdomen. The Ice Maiden blocked it easily, but in the process her arm came up in such a way that it flipped over their table, sending pale liquor and coins spilling everywhere. Ice Maidens were well known for their strength and their fighting prowess.

  The map that she had placed down on the table flipped up into the air. The cleric split her attention between the paper and the Maiden both at once and stabbed her knife out like a serpent’s strike to impale the map and draw it into herself.

  The Maiden kicked the cleric soundly in the stomach and sent knife and map both spinning through the air. She grabbed at it, catching the knife by the handle.

  …Just in time for the cleric’s forearm strike to stun her wrist and send the weapon flying straight up in an ungraceful arc with the paper flapping, sliding further down the blade until it came loose and flapped like a bird through the air.

  The cleric scissored her arms at the Maiden’s neck, a move that Estogan knew would break the other woman’s spine. But the Maiden blocked the attack, and then somehow was flipping her own body over the cleric’s shoulders to land on the other side just as the map came down and—

  The cleric grabbed her knife from the air and stabbed it through the Maiden’s back. Blood that was the color of frost seeped down the Ice Maiden’s blue vest. She gasped, her face stuck in an expression of disbelief, and then she crumpled to the floor, her body twitching as it died.

  The cleric plucked the map from the air and turned to Estogan.

  “This will not leave this room.”

  And then her eyes went wide, and she, too, fell to the floor.

  Behind her, Silin held the cudgel he had smacked against the back of the female cleric’s head. He smiled sadistically.

  “Been a long time since I got a date like this.”

  From their table on the far side of the room, the three Dwarves lifted their mugs and raised a loud cheer. They had thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment.

  The pudgy tavern keeper shrugged as Estogan turned to gauge the man’s reaction. “Just another day,” he said, and went back to wiping at a spot on the inside of a glass that was apparently vexing him.

  Estogan and Thronimere slid their swords back into their sheaths.

  “What now?” Thronimere asked.

  Kneeling next to the limp body of the cleric, Estogan plucked the map from her hand, checked it over, and saw that it was just what he had been waiting for. Then he unhooked his bag of coins from the Maiden’s belt and put them back on his own. No sense in wasting them on the dead.

  As he was about to rise and leave, he checked the cleric’s pulse on a whim.

  Still alive.

  When she’d awaken, she’d wish she wasn’t, Estogan surmised. That hit Silin had given her would cause a powerful headache in an hour or so.

  He should leave her here. But then, he didn’t understand the cleric’s interest in this map. Why would a cleric be interested in the thing that this information would lead him to? Not knowing the answer could cause him problems in the future.

  She wasn’t hard to look at, either. Maybe having her with them could generate some unforeseen opportunities.

  “Bring her,” he said to his two companions. “Strap her to the pack horse and let’s get going.”

  The Dragon Prince

  Chapter 2

  When the cleric finally started to come around, it was full night, and they had made their camp in the foothills of the Aberbeak Mountains. Towering cliffs rose not far away, and the road had turned from hard-packed earth to loose, scrabbly rock. Estogan had called a halt before sunset, knowing that continuing to travel in these conditions could lead to a fatal misstep.

  A campfire blazed cheerfully, surrounded by larger chunks of stone which were easily found in this place. The evening’s meal of dried meats and warmed bread had been prepared over it. Silin walked the perimeter now—merely as a precaution, but still.

  There were Red Goblins everywhere these days. Or so he’d heard.

  The woman moaned and pushed herself up into a sitting position, cradling her head in her hands. Her cowl fell forward, hiding her face in flickering shadows that the fire did its best to chase away.

  Thronimere motioned to her with a thumb. “Your prize is awake, my Lord.”

  Estogan chose to ignore the use of his old title. Thronimere had been moody of late, and whatever the man had would hopefully work itself out when they got to their destination. Instead he finished the last of his bread and dusted his hands off as he shifted to face the cleric.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Ow,” was the woman’s slow reply.

  “Yes. Well. My man hit you rather hard, I’m afraid. He wasn’t sure what you were capable of and we didn’t want to take any chances.”

  “You…have no idea what I’m capable of.” She winced as she said it.

  “I know what you’re capable of right at this moment. Not much, by my estimation.”

  She moved as if she would lunge at him, then rocked back with a groan.

  “Precisely,” Estogan told her. “Now. Let’s start with something simple. What’s your name?”

  The cleric took a moment to steady herself. “Where’s the map?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s safe. Now, let me ask you again. What is your name?”

  “What’s yours?” she snapped back.

  Thronimere sighed. “As fascinating as this conversation is, I think I’ll help Silin take watch.”

  Estogan let him go. Then it was just him and the cleric.

  “Let’s try this again,” he said to her. “My name is Estogan Perival, of the Kingdom of Rikketh. See, that isn’t so ha
rd. Now you try.”

  The woman lowered her hands and glared at him from the depths of her hood. “I am Temani. I am a cleric of the Blue Sisterhood.”

  “Ah.” Estogan nodded to himself. “That explains much.”

  “Does it, little man of Rikketh? Please, enlighten your prisoner. What does it explain?”

  “Your skills. Taking on an Ice Maiden is difficult. Winning against one is almost impossible. And to clarify something, you aren’t my prisoner.”

  She scoffed. “Your man beat me over the head. You have transported me here…”

  She looked around them and Estogan saw the moment it dawned on her where they were.

  “Here, to the Aberbeak Mountains, for the love of the Maker, against my will. And you have something that belongs to my order.”

  “The first two things you made mention of are true, of course. We beat you, and we brought you here. But I am no thief. I have nothing that belongs to you.”

  “That map is a relic of my order.”

  “Ah. That. Well, I paid for it, so.”

  “So nothing. The map was stolen from us by that Ice Maiden. I was in that spit hole to claim it back. You will give it to me, now.”

  “I will do no such thing. Perhaps when we reach the caves where the—”

  She was on him in a heartbeat, far too fast for him to react. Her body splayed out over his as she knocked him over onto his back. With much less effort than he would have thought possible, she had both his arms and his legs pinned. From the shadows of her hood her eyes drilled at him angrily.

  “Give it back,” she demanded in a low voice.

  “Impressive. Can you do a cartwheel next?”

  Before she could answer him he had bucked his hips up and thrown off her balance and suddenly it was her under him, her legs spread wide, his torso held tight to hers, his hands holding her wrists in place at her sides.

  “Let me go!” Temani demanded.

  Estogan was surprised to feel his body react to the firm female body under him. He could feel her through her robe, her curves pressing up against him, her chest rising and falling with each deep breath. His crotch grew tight against his pants. His eyes dilated.