The Far Realm Chronicles Anthology

by Annette Archer

  Under him, with his cock slowly shrinking inside of her, her body gave itself to him one more time.

  She bit her lip and wrapped her arms around his strong back. She didn’t know what to say. Emotions mixed with distracting thoughts swirled through her mind. There was so much to tell him, so much she needed him to know. Thankfully, he took that burden from her and spoke first.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Sorry? He was sorry? How could he be sorry for that?

  “I usually last much longer,” he explained. “But you were so into it, so feral and intense. And so incredibly tight.”

  Melodielle flushed at his compliment. “I…didn’t know what I was doing.”

  She so wished that she could stop saying stupid things to him.

  He kissed her collar bone. “You aren’t supposed to know what you’re doing. You’re supposed to feel it, to experience it. Here is the only thing to ask yourself after sex. Did you enjoy it?”

  “Oh, yes,” she purred. Her skin was tingling. “So, so much.”

  “There. Then you did it right.” His eyes drank in the sight of her lying there in her afterglow. “You were a virgin before this,” he said to her slowly, quietly. “It will forever be my honor to be the man you gave yourself to this first time.”

  She nodded, her body still in the throes of the incredible ecstasy that he had brought her to.

  Crystal Elves

  Chapter 4

  Melodielle awoke some time later in her bed, Tolan’s arm across her belly, the both of them naked and spent.

  How long had they been asleep? She didn’t know. There were things that her father had expected her to take care of today, functions to attend, people to meet with, all in the name of that idiotic arranged marriage he was pushing her into.

  Well. Tolan had expressed himself on that subject very…physically. Even if he hadn’t said so in words, it was obvious to her that Tolan wanted her for himself. He wouldn’t tolerate her being forced to marry someone she didn’t love.

  He would tell her father, the King, that she couldn’t marry Estogan.

  She smiled and rolled over to her side. Tolan cozied up to her. The way his naked front was riding up against her ass gave her very naughty ideas. She blushed. One time with him and she was already craving more.

  A snuffling laughter drew her attention away from her fantasies.

  Jerking fully awake she sprang up in bed only to have rough hands grab her by her arms and pull her from the sheets and toss her to the cold stone floor of her room. She twisted over onto her rear end, elbows and knees scraped from the impact of her fall, and looked up at her attackers.

  Their red skin was rough and warty. Overly long arms stuck out of clothing made from the hairy hides of animals. Hideous eyes glowed menacingly down at her from misshapen faces with long and crooked noses.

  Red Goblins.

  Melodielle screamed. A Goblin that was a little faster than its friends caught her from behind and held his hand over her mouth. She thought she would gag from the stench of his unwashed flesh but she kept trying to scream and kept kicking and struggling against the creature. It was no use. He held her naked body fast in the crook of one arm and kept that stinking hand over her face.

  He leaned down close to her ear, greasy black hair caressing her cheek. “Scream more, little piece of meat. I eat you.”

  Her eyes nearly popped from her head and she felt anger growing inside. These bastards would not take her this easily! She was a princess of the Crystal Elves. She would not let them do this!

  But how could she stop them?

  A part of her mind had just enough sense to wonder how they would have gotten into her room in the first place. How could they have gotten this far into the castle undetected, unchallenged? The castle’s protectors would have all died before allowing—

  Into her unsettling train of thought Tolan roared and leaped from the bed. His fully naked body was a thing of beauty as he smashed a fist into the face of the nearest Goblin and then took the thing’s sword away as it fell to the floor. He slashed a deep cut across the midsection of another and left it for dead before the rest of the monsters in her room came at him all at once.

  The one holding her loosened its grip just enough for her to twist her way free, and then coming up on her feet quickly, she kneed him in his groin. Her aim was true, and his eyes crossed as he gripped his crotch and fell to his knees. Doubling her fists together she brought them down hard on his beak of a nose. Blood spurted down his front and across her ankles as the Goblin fell. She hoped it was dead.

  She didn’t have time to find out. Two more Goblins took hold of her, hands gripping her waist and her arms and her breasts. She yelled at them at the top of her voice, calling Tolan’s name the whole while.

  She saw him, just momentarily, as four of the creatures leaped on him at once and he went down amid a tangle of red arms and legs and sharp weapons. She did not see him get up.

  “Tolan!” she burst out, before a Goblin clenched a hand around her chin and forced her mouth shut.

  The door to her room burst inward, heavy wood splintering as the combined force of several men—several Human men—shouldered their weight against it. With deadly accuracy the man in front loosed two arrows across the room and both of them struck their marks in the skulls of the Goblins holding her. Both of them fell away and she was free again.

  She tried to run to where Tolan had been.

  Hands of a different sort caught her fast now and ran her out of her own room. The Humans were more gentle about it, and they kept their swords up and ready to defend her, but the result was the same. She was being taken somewhere she didn’t want to go.

  “No, we have to go back!” she tried to order them. “Tolan is in there and he needs our help!”

  “We have our orders, Princess,” the one on her right told her. He was a short man who barely came up to her shoulders, but he was stocky and strong. “We need to get you away from here first.”

  “No, no, no!” She dug her heels into the flagstone of the floors but it was no use. They carried her on anyway. “I am a princess of the Crystal Elves. You will obey my orders!”

  “Sorry, Princess,” the man on her left said with a sneer. “We takes orders from one man. You ain’t him.” His eyes roamed down her front as they moved. “Ain’t even a man, though what you is would do right well, I expect.”

  She seethed. Words failed her in her anger.

  “Watch that tongue, Silin,” the one on her right snapped at his companion. “We’re in her castle and she’s to wed Prince Estogan. You will not insult her like that.”

  “Ah, Thronimere, give us a break, will ya? Ain’t no one ‘round to hear me. Except her.”

  “And me,” Thronimere pointed out. They had stopped, finally, in a hallway that Melodielle recognized as one that led to the quarters the Humans had been given.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, Silin, that if you can’t show the proper respect, I’ll teach you how.”

  “Oh, big words from such a little man.”

  Thronimere’s dark skin flushed darker, his black hair falling forward in long strands as he stepped into Silin’s personal space. “Call me little man again, and we’ll see what size has to do with it.”

  “Both of you, stop it!” Melodielle shouted, her fists pressing into her thighs in frustration. “That is enough! This is intolerable. In case you hadn’t noticed, you just abducted a princess of the Crystal Elves in her own castle, while she was naked!”

  Silin eyed her again and if she’d had a dagger she would have carved that smile from his face. “I noticed it just fine.”

  Thronimere punched Silin so hard against the side of his face that the taller man’s head snapped sideways and he staggered back a step. Nodding in satisfaction, Thronimere unhooked his cloak from his throat and handed it to Melodielle.

  “It isn’t much, my Lady, but it will cover you. I beg your forgiveness for the necessity of our action
s. We could not leave you in danger.”

  Melodielle accepted the cloak gratefully. “Thank you, Thronimere.”

  “Please, my Lady, call me Thron. It weighs less heavily on the tongue.”

  Other Humans had joined them by now, some of them just out of their rooms but ready for a fight with weapons drawn. A few Crystal Elves had arrived as well, the commotion in her room no doubt sending frantic messages across the castle. But if the castle guards were only just now hearing of the attack, then she had to ask herself again, how did the Goblins get so far into the castle to be in her rooms?

  Her rooms. Tolan.

  Holding the cloak tightly closed with both hands she turned to her own soldiers until she found a familiar face. “Kalani, we have to get back to my rooms. Censor Tolan is there with some of the Humans fighting the Goblins. Quickly, we have to get there before…”

  She trailed off as she saw, from down the hallway, Prince Estogan himself walking up to them, flanked by three or four Human soldiers, all in their shining chain mail and their brown leather. The expression on his narrow face was grim. Black blood was smeared across one cheek.

  He stopped in the middle of the hallway, making sure that all eyes were on him. “The Goblin threat is beaten. Every one of the bastards who got into the Princess Melodielle’s rooms is now dead. There is no cause for celebration, however. For although the Princess is safe, thanks to me and to my men, there is one other casualty to report.”

  No, Melodielle thought.

  “I am afraid that Censor Tolan has been killed.”

  The world tilted under Melodielle’s feet. She found herself lurching sideways and it was Thron’s strong arms that saved her from a fall. “Defile the sun,” she swore.

  Silin stepped forward, spitting blood onto the hallway floor. “My Prince. Your orders?”

  Estogan nodded to him in recognition. “Take the Princess to my quarters. I’m sure she’ll be safe there among all of you. I must report to the King.”

  Several of her people formed a wall between Melodielle and most of the Humans. She was grateful for their support. Right now she needed it.

  Tolan was dead.

  She forced herself to stand up straight without anyone’s help. Still clutching the borrowed cloak to cover her nakedness, she straightened her shoulders and held her head high.

  “I will do no such thing, Prince Estogan. I will remind you that we are not married yet. Our union, and your claim on me, does not occur until tomorrow night.”

  “Tonight,” he corrected her.

  “What?” she blinked, unsure what he meant.

  “Our wedding is tonight, my Princess. You retired to your rooms as soon as we reached the castle yesterday and have not been heard from since. You have missed most of a day. Your father would not have you disturbed for the ceremonies over your dead soldiers from the Shadesthorn Forest, nor for dinner, nor for anything else. So I respected his wishes and left you alone. Or at least, I thought I left you alone. I must confess that I’m a little curious as to why Censor Tolan was in my fiancé’s rooms. At night.” He looked her in her eyes very meaningfully. “And more than a little curious as to why he was naked.”

  She caught the looks from the other Crystal Elves. She didn’t have time to try and decipher their meaning. She had done something with Tolan that both of them hadn’t wanted. She was not ashamed of it. Not in the least.

  So she held Estogan’s gaze and dared him to say more. “My business is my own. As I said, you do not own me. Not yet. I am going to my rooms to get dressed. After that, I will meet with my father myself. If he has any questions about my personal activities in his castle, then I will hear them from him. I will hear yours after we are married and not before.”

  Estogan’s eyes flared. His expression never changed, but Melodielle could tell that she had struck a deep nerve by standing up to him.

  He spoke, “Then I will save any other questions I might have, my Princess, for tonight. After our wedding.”

  He turned sharply on his heel, and walked away. The four soldiers who had been with him in her rooms followed him now as well. Silin hurried to catch up.

  Kalani, a lithe woman with ears that curled at their tips and a smile that was usually quick, was suddenly at Melodielle’s side, bowing deeply in her armor. “We will bring you back to your rooms, my Lady.”

  Melodielle knew Kalani better than most of the other soldiers. She trusted this woman implicitly and had even played cards together with her and some of the other soldiers a few times. Now she nearly broke down in tears as she nodded and indicated with a hand that Kalani should lead the way.

  Time slowed as they came back to her busted door and she went inside. The Goblin bodies had been removed, no doubt to be burned outside the castle walls on unsanctified ground. But gone also was Tolan’s body. She had hoped to at least see him one more time, if only to say goodbye.

  “We will wait for you outside,” Kalani said to her, leading the other two Crystal Elves with them back into the hallway. Melodielle saw her look back once, a sad expression on the woman’s face.

  Melodielle broke down in that instant, the tears hot on her cheeks.

  She looked at the wreckage of her rooms. Dressers were overturned, personal items smashed on the floor, blood smeared across the stones. She tried to determine where Tolan would have died, figured it must be close to the worst of the blood stains just off the foot of her bed.

  So much death in so little time. It had been worse, in some ways, than the ambush at the Shadesthorn Forest. At least there they had seen it coming. This was a total and complete surprise to everyone.

  She looked around her room one more time before sighing and searching for clothes that hadn’t been blood spattered among the mess.

  At the back of her closet she found what she was looking for. A simple dress, gray in color, fitting to her mood. Would she ever be able to love again? Or trust a man again? She doubted it. Certainly not if her life was to be with Estogan for the next forty or fifty years. Melodielle thought that maybe she should go to her father herself, and beg him to break this off. At the very least, tell him they needed time to mourn their dead so that the wedding could be postponed—

  Hands grabbed her arms and pulled her further back into the hanging clothes, through a panel in the wall that she had always thought was solid stone.

  When she went to scream, one of the hands covered her mouth. The man, whoever he was, held her fast around her naked waist and she felt her body fit up against the muscular frame that melded so easily to her own…

  She gasped, her eyes wide, and stopped trying to fight.

  It couldn’t be.

  Slowly, the grip on her loosened, and she turned in the dimly lit space to see his face. The brown hair, gently tipped ears, deep-set eyes.

  Tolan.

  She couldn’t find her breath. In a bare whisper, she managed a single word.

  “How?”

  He held his finger first to his lips and then to hers to indicate they had to be quiet. She kissed his fingertip, wanting every bit of contact she could have with him.

  “We can’t talk long,” he said to her. “The Humans are watching your every move, even here, I suspect.”

  Her hands would not stop touching him everywhere. His bare chest and hips and arms were cut and crusted with dried blood and he seemed to be favoring his left arm. He was still naked. Dear Maker, Tolan was alive!

  He saw the questions in her eyes and couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, I’m alive. I managed to slip through the fighting and use this secret passage to hide. It was pretty obvious what was going on as soon as the Human soldiers entered your rooms.”

  Melodielle was enthralled, wanting all the answers.

  Tolan continued, “Estogan has been playing everyone. He set the Goblins up to attack us on the trail, then slaughtered them all and blamed us. Then he set up this attack in your rooms, planning to whisk you away to safety and once again kill all the Goblins and blame us Crystal El
ves.”

  Anger seeped into her once again. “That squat little toad. Why would he do this?”

  “The answer is easy when you think about it, Melodi. He wanted an alliance with our Kingdom. The only way to force one was to create a threat that both Kingdoms would have to rise up against. He’s been arming the Red Goblins and feeding them information. The stupid brutes snapped it up, of course, because they thought it would increase their own stature if they could decimate the Crystal Elves. What they hadn’t planned on was being double-crossed by Estogan and his Humans.”

  She fisted her hand and beat it gently against Tolan’s strong chest. “I’ll kill him for this. I’ll rip his scrotum sack out from between his legs and—”

  He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Hold that thought, my Lady. I have a better way. While I was here, hiding, I heard certain things. I’m sure I can bring him down in a way that will be worse than even torture.”

  “I think my way will be more fun.”

  He smiled at her. “Don’t be so sure.”

  Crystal Elves

  Chapter 5

  Melodielle stood at the front of the worship space, a long hall filled to capacity with Crystal Elves and Humans alike. Her people’s warriors flanked the walls and the doors and stood up here at the raised dais as well. Four Human warriors stood up here to protect Estogan, among them Silin and Thron. She nodded respectfully to Thron. She glared at Silin.

  She was in a white dress of flowing gossamer material. Silk arm sleeves went from her wrists to her elbows. The silver tiara that marked her station as Princess of her peoples sat atop her carefully braided hair. Her eyes sparkled in the light.

  Her father the King, standing next to her, leaned over and whispered in her ear. “You look beautiful.”

  “I have to look my best for such an important ceremony, wouldn’t you agree, father?”

  “It will be one to remember, certainly,” he answered cryptically.