by Elena Lawson
Claimed By Night
The Queen's Consorts: Book 1
Elena Lawson
Copyright © 2018 Elena Lawson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events is strictly coincidental.
Cover Design by Sanja Gombar
Contents
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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
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Chapter One
The water beckoned, wild and dark, undulating in the crisp moonlight. Thana kept close to my side as we traveled the winding path to the shore. There the envoy waited, ready with a ship meant to carry me away from this lonely place. It heaved on the back of the midnight tide, a polished black beast with silver sails.
The queen is dead.
I was told the Night Court is grief-stricken and in shock at the abrupt end of Enya. But those were emotions I couldn’t bring myself to feel for the female who bore me. I knew her face only from the tapestry hung in the temple on the hill, but I had never heard her voice, felt her touch—had never known her. Spirited away to the Isle of Mist as an infant, I’d seen nothing outside this place. Thana, my handmaiden, and the seven females who tend to the isle were the only family—the only other Fae—I had ever known.
Thana folded my arm into hers as we neared the males gathered beside a smaller vessel nestled between the pebbles at the edge of the water. “Chin up, Liana,” Thana whispered, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze, “Never let them think you’re weak or they’ll eat you up and spit you out. You are their queen, now you must act the part.”
I nodded my understanding, attempted to make my eyes harder, my jawline stronger.
“Your Majesty.” The male closest to us stepped forward, bending at the middle in a small bow, “I am Captain of the Queen’s Guard. It is my honor to ferry you home.” His face was half concealed in shadow, but I could see his tired eyes, thick unibrow, and a face that was unshaven and rounded. The captain’s voice was brusque, and he wreaked of cloves and seafoam.
So, this is a male… How disappointing.
The other four remained still behind their master, hooded and cloaked.
“Your name?” I asked him.
“Ronan, Your Majesty. My sword is yours as it was your mother’s.”
I stepped past his outstretched hand, stifling the urge to snicker at him, “A lot of good that did her, captain. Shall we?”
I didn’t wait for his reply, stepping past the cloaked sentries and into the small boat, Thana on my heels. I said a farewell to the others this morning, with a promise I would return when I could, with gifts for each of them. They wouldn’t be joining me at court. The island has been their home for nearly a millennium, they now belong to it, and it to them.
But Thana, my Thana, had only been on the isle since I arrived as a babe, entrusted to watch over me these past twenty-three years. She was the only one able to leave and return, departing at the beginning of each moon cycle to gather supplies, and returning in days with a bounty of grain, cloth, and other necessities. I expected to wait at least a century before I could get off the damned rock, but fate, it seemed had other plans.
I only just began my immortal life one year past. Thana didn’t begin her immortal life until she was twenty-eight. The others on the island all at varying ages from twenty to thirty-three. It was like waking up. As though I’d been underwater all that time and had only then been able to breech the surface—to truly breathe. And it was cold, like a fist of ice curling its talons around my heart, shooting frigid water through my veins. In the days following, everything became clearer. My senses sharpened, and my reflexes were faster. Even my skin and hair grew softer.
But the people knew. The denizens of the Night Court would balk at my age. I would be the youngest queen to take power since the reign of Morgana two thousand years ago. They still sang songs about her greatness. Perhaps one day, they would have songs to remember me. If I survived long enough.
They told us Enya was assassinated. It was the only explanation. They found her in her chambers, fingers curled inwards, eyes bloodshot, her skin a pallid blue. Poison, they said. But how it got past her food tasters is a mystery. From the symptoms, they suspect it was verbane berries.
I dared someone to try the same poison on me. Verbane berries grew wild all over the Isle of Mist and I’d been eating them since I was a child. They almost killed me a few times before the seven sisters realized why I was constantly taking ill and warned me away from them. But I hadn’t died from them, and I liked the taste, so I ate one a day until my stomach didn’t turn anymore, and then a few a day after that. Eventually, I could eat as many as a handful without too painful of side-effects.
The small boat bobbed and rocked on the water as the four hooded males paddled us out. I watched as the Isle of Mist became smaller, the only sign of life a flickering light where the temple stood at the crest of the tallest hill. I wouldn’t miss it. It was a cage, the kind meant to keep you safe, not hold you prisoner, but some days—most days, it felt more like the latter.
Movement in the water caught my eye.
A flicker of glowing blue darted under the boat, another chasing it through the inky blackness of the depths. I leaned over the side, watching the wraiths below. Devious creatures, bound to no one, they served only themselves. I’d never seen one before and thought they lived closer to the shore, in tidal pools and underwater caves. They shouldn’t be this far out to sea.
“Don’t get too close to the edge, Your Majesty,” the sentry sitting next to me said, peeking up from under his hood. A set of eyes glinted in the moonlight, steel blue, and piercing, in a face that seemed chiseled from stone. I was so busy admiring him, I didn’t have time to react when a tendril of cold, wet tentacle wrapped around my wrist.
The last thing I heard was Thana’s shout as my body flew from the boat, crashing into the sea. My lungs constricted, the cold of the water seeping into my bones. I yanked at the tentacle around my wrist, but it was no use. The wraith pulled me down into the dark until the pressure was enough to squeeze the air from my lungs.
This would not be my end. I remembered the dagger at my thigh and tried
to yank it free of its leather holster. The water became alive with shimmering blue and silver. They surrounded me. Their sharp-angled ethereal faces snarled and hissed, their glowing white eyes fixed on me.
Come with us… Their raspy song-like voices sang inside my mind. Come…
A tentacle whipped out to snatch the dagger from my fingertips, but that same tentacle was then severed, the wraith emitting a hair-raising shriek. A dark shape came into view, brandishing a longsword. He grabbed me, slicing the head from the wraith who held me, her glowing blue light flickering, and then fading. The wraiths scattered further into the deep as we rose, his arm around my waist, hauling me toward the rippling surface.
We broke through, me sputtering and coughing at the warm night air rushing to fill my emptied lungs. Strong arms pulled me back into the boat where Thana wrapped her thin cloak around me, “You stupid, stupid girl. What were you thinking?” she shrieked as the male who saved me hauled himself back into the boat.
“That is no way to speak to your queen!” the captain shouted, and I turned to find him seated and dry, his sword still in its scabbard. Then who…
“Silence,” I commanded him, earning myself a pained scowl. It was the male still standing who drew my attention.
The male unclasped his cloak, letting it fall into a wet heap around him. His voice was husky as he said, “Are you alright, Your Majesty?”
Another of the males whispered to his companion, “The wraiths wouldn’t dare disrupt a royal vessel, much less attack…”
“Something isn’t right. The wraiths are a peaceful creature.”
Then the captain, “We must make haste, lest the beasts return.”
The male with eyes of steel resumed his position next to me, dripping wet. He met my gaze for only an instant before taking up his oar and begging to paddle with the other three.
The sensation returned to my fingers, Thana’s cloak and her hands working to rub warmth back into me. “Thank you, sir,” I said to the male next to me, his water dampened skin rippling with flexed muscle at each stroke of his oar.
He offered me one terse nod, his dark hair falling into his face. “Alaric, majesty. You may call me Alaric.”
As we climbed the ladder onto the larger vessel and sailed away, the mist shrouding the island from the rest of Meloran swallowed us up and spat us back out on the other side. The island evaporated as though it was a figment of my imagination. They say the Isle of Mist could only be found by those who knew exactly where to look. And until her assassination, the only person outside of it who knew its whereabouts was my mother. Its location was marked on a map, sealed by Enya herself, only to be opened in the event of her death.
Once out of the mist, the isle disappeared completely. I breathed a sigh. Of relief? Of sadness? I wasn’t sure.
It would be two days before we saw the shores of Meloran and I took my place at the Night Court. Three more days from then and I would complete the Blessing Ceremony and receive my Grace from the Fae who came before us. Thana was Graced with air, and it was her who coaxed the wind into our sails. She thought mine would be tied to water, for the stormy blue of my eyes, or light—for the shinning silver of my long hair, but I believed my Grace would be drawn of shadow, for the darkness surrounding my heart. I didn’t much care what it would be, only that I received one. A queen without a Grace was not one fit to rule.
I stood at the stern of the ship, keeping my eyes fixed to the horizon, searching for the first signs of land. From a cage of stones and mist to one of gold and sentries. At least it would be a change, and hopefully an improvement.
Chapter Two
“Drink it, Liana. It will quell the feeling,” Thana said, trying again to push the mug into my hands.
I moaned, shoving the mug back at her, the yellowish liquid splashing to the floor. “Just get me off this damned boat!”
I wasn’t sure if it was the boat’s fault or the nerves. By tomorrow we’d be docking on the shores of the Night Court and I didn’t know what to expect—how the people would react. It didn’t help that Thana brought up my birth father. Still living, Edris was acting as King Regent until my return.
The moment I landed on the continent, the power would fall into my hands, as it had fallen into the hands of each female before me. There hadn’t been a king in power for an age, not since the Mad King brought destruction to our lands. It was his daughter, Morgana, who brought back peace and decreed that the crown should pass to her first-born female heir with full council support. It had been that way ever since. I didn’t care to meet Edris. He left me on that damned rock, the same as my mother.
He didn’t deserve my respect. And he wouldn’t get it.
Thana rolled her eyes at me for the hundredth time, “I don’t know why you always have to be so difficult.”
“I don’t know why you—”
“Excuse me, milady, majesty, may I be of assistance? The captain heard shouting.”
I looked up to find Alaric standing in the doorway of my quarters and groaned again, “No. Thank you, Alari—”
“She’s seasick,” Thana said in a huff, standing to fetch more of her putrid tea mixture from the bedside table, “And moody as the gods.”
Alaric stepped into the room, no longer cloaked, but wearing his sentry armor. Glimmering black offset the tan gold of his skin and the blue-silver of his eyes. Stop it, Lianna. Just because you’ve never seen a male before doesn’t mean you need to go drooling over the first one you see… even if he is the most beautiful creature you’ve ever seen.
“I may be able to alleviate it.”
I wanted to tell him he already was, standing there being so distracting and all, but instead I nodded.
Thana tossed the mug onto the nightstand, stomping from the room with a shake of her head. “Knows me her entire life and won’t accept my help, oh no, but a pretty male she’s only just met—why of course!” she grumbled, her voice growing further away as she stormed through the bowels of the ship.
“May I,” Alaric asked, gesturing to the vacant spot next to me on the bed. The covers were strewn all over and I was laying in a massive pile of pillows, my hair sticking to my neck and temples. I hadn’t thought of how I must look, and rushed to push my hair back and rub the sleep out of my eyes as Alaric sat next to me.
He met my gaze with an unwavering one of his own. I was the first to avert my eyes as he said, “May I see your hand?”
I cocked my head at him, eyes squinting, but I gave him my hand nonetheless, ready to be rid of the nausea, “Is this some sort of sailor’s trick?”
He shook his head, a small smirk turning up the corners of his lips, “No, majesty, it’s something I learned long ago.”
He gathered my hand into his own, holding it palm-up. I attempted to hide the shiver running up my spine when he traced a line down my palm with his other hand. He then pressed firmly on a spot a few fingers width from my wrist on my forearm, deftly avoiding where the wraith’s tentacle left an angry red mark on my wrist—though it had already faded and didn’t hurt anymore.
There we sat in silence for what seemed an hour but could only have been a few moments, and then, “There,” he said, letting go of my arm and setting my hand into my lap.
I gingerly touched the spot he was holding, a phantom pressure still lingering there. Then I realized, my eyes widening as my hand flew to my stomach, “How?” I asked, incredulous. The nausea was gone, replaced with a ravenous hunger I hadn’t felt for the better part of two days.
Alaric shrugged, moving to stand, “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Your Majesty.”
“Liana.” I corrected, “We aren’t even at court yet and I’m already tired of all the formality.”
“I couldn’t possibly,” he stuttered, a note of worry in his words, “My captain would have my head.”
My dressing robe came off the post of my bed with a sharp tug. I stood next to him, wrapping the light material over my undergarments—not realizing until it was too late t
hat it’s improper for a lady to be undressed in front of anyone but her handmaidens. Damn all these rules! How am I ever to remember them all? They could have thrown a few males onto that rock in the middle of the sea with me if only so I’d have learned how to behave in front of them.
“When we’re alone then,” I said, immediately regretting the words. When we’re alone? Why should we have any reason to be alone together ever again? Stupid. Thana was right, I would be a disaster of a queen.
He cleared his throat, doing his absolute best to avert his gaze as I finished tying the dressing robe. “Yes, your maj—er, Liana. It would be my honor.” He moved to the doorway, and I was about to thank him for his help when he turned, “It’s best to be outside, to quell the seasickness. Meloran will be on the horizon at dawn. If you’d like, I can send word when it’s within our sights.”
“Yes. I would like that.”
Meloran. The land stretched on as far as my eyes could see in either direction. To the north lay the Wastes, and even with the distance I could see the mountainous landscape, and how the sun—though it shone brightly on us, didn’t dare touch it. It was where the first Fae settled, and was the original Night Court until it fell to ruin under the rule of the Mad King some millennia ago.
To the south lay the realm of the Day Court, our perpetual adversaries, though I couldn’t understand why. Sure, there was a war between courts a thousand years ago, but that was then. This is now. With my Fae eyes, I could see how the trees seemed greener, how the sunlight played on the water near their shores, making it seem more transparent, almost turquoise.
