by Amy Sumida
Contents
Enchanted Addictions
More Books by Amy Sumida
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
A Special Look
Chapter One
Grammar Giggles
About the Author
Pronunciation Guide
Enchanted Addictions
Amy Sumida
Copyright © 2020 Amy Sumida
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9798697033449
Legal Notice
This book is copyright protected. It is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote, or paraphrase any part of the content within this book without the consent of the author or copyright owner. Legal action will be pursued if this is breached.
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
Blood Bound
Eye of Re
My Soul to Take
As the Crow Flies
Cry Werewolf
Pride Before a Fall
Monsoons and Monsters
Blessed Death
In the Nyx of Time
Let Sleeping Demons Lie
The Lion, the Witch, and the Werewolf
Hear No Evil
Dark Star
Destiny Descending
The Black Lion
Half Bad
Beyond the Godhunter
A Darker Element
Out of the Blue
The Twilight Court Series
Fairy-Struck
Pixie-Led
Raven-Mocking
Here There Be Dragons
Witchbane
Elf-Shot
Fairy Rings and Dragon Kings
Black-Market Magic
Etched in Stone
Careless Wishes
(Enchanted Addictions)
The Spellsinger Series
The Last Lullaby
A Symphony of Sirens
A Harmony of Hearts
Primeval Prelude
Ballad of Blood
A Deadly Duet
Macabre Melody
Aria of the Gods
Anthem of Ashes
A Chorus of Cats
Doppelganger Dirge
Out of Tune
Singing the Scales
The Spectra Series
Spectra
A Gray Area
A Compression of Colors
Blue Murder
Code Red
With Flying Colors
Green With Envy
A Silver Tongue
Fairy Tales
Happily Harem After Vol 1
Including:
The Four Clever Brothers
Wild Wonderland
Beauty and the Beasts
Pan's Promise
The Little Glass Slipper
Happily Harem After Vol 2
Including:
Codename: Goldilocks
White as Snow
Twisted
Awakened Beauty
Erotica
An Unseelie Understanding
Historical Romance
Enchantress
Pronunciation Guide in the back of the book.
Chapter One
“He's going for the loch!” I screamed at Killian.
“Son of a bitch!” Killian revved his motorcycle and leaned forward against the wind.
My husband looked damn fine on a motorcycle. Wind whipping through his auburn hair, twin swords strapped to his back, and leather hoodie flapping in the breeze. He had a pair of sunglasses on but no gloves. The lack of gloves was purposeful, as soon became apparent. Kill flung out a hand and it shifted into a thick snake tail. The tail wrapped around the neck of the each-uisge—pronounced ech-oosh-keeya, in case you're wondering—that I was riding and jerked back.
Each-uisges are a type of fey water horse. They're safe to ride on land—though I still wouldn't advise it—but if one of them gets you anywhere near the water, it's best to leap off his back—if he'll let you—and run as if your life depends on it... because it does. Once you're in the water with an each-uisge, you're a goner. He'll drown you and eat you, leaving only your liver behind. They don't like paté.
This particular each-uisge had been making trouble around Loch Gairloch—kind of a redundant name if you ask me—and had left a few livers on the shores of the loch which, understandably, had freaked out the locals. This would normally be an extinguisher problem but each-uisges are fey animals, not fairies. All Fairies can speak to animals, especially fey animals, so communicating with the horse wasn't the problem. It was the fact that it couldn't be convicted of a crime like a fairy.
When a fairy does something wrong on Earth, the Extinguishers hunt it down and stop it. If that fairy does something as horrible as killing a human, a warrant of extinguishment is issued and that fairy would be hunted by extinguishers and his or her lovely fey light would be extinguished, AKA they'd be executed. But you don't kill a horse for doing what's in its nature to do, even if that nature includes killing humans. After all, many beasts of both Earth and Fairy kill humans and fairies alike.
Okay, yes, humans do “put down” animals for having the nerve to attack humans—humans who are usually encroaching into their territories, which have been reduced to pathetic amounts by said humans, or
are otherwise provoking the animals in some other typically human way, but at least I'm not bitter about it. Fairies, however, see that as almost sacrilegious. You don't kill an animal unless it's gone mad, you're going to eat it, or it's about to eat you. If one of the humans the each-uisge had attacked had killed it, that would have been fine—fair is fair—but if a bunch of extinguishers hunted down a fey animal—not so fair—and killed it without getting the permission of the Fairy Council—which had not been given—it would mean war. And no horse, no matter how terrifying, was worth starting a war over.
I feel like there's a Trojan joke in there somewhere.
But back to the fey horse. The Human Council had called Killian for advice on how to handle the each-uisge problem in Scotland. Killian had turned to me, the Human Council's new consultant on all things fey. I was sort of still an ambassador, I think, but technically not. It was a strange situation. You see, I had intended to work for both the Human and Fairy Councils, but the High Fairy Council in Ireland—not to be confused with the High Council which is the combination of the two High Councils of Fairy and Earth—had yet to get back to me on my offer. Which is why I was in Scotland.
Kill and I had gone there to wrangle us a water horse.
It was my first assignment after months of being on the payroll, as it were. My pay hadn't actually been discussed. I don't need the cash since I'm the Queen of Seelie and Unseelie as well as the Princess of Twilight, but that's beside the point. I should be compensated for my time. Especially if I was going to spend it riding across the Scottish Highlands, in the middle of a very cold night, on the back of a deadly, fey, liver-hating horse with, frankly, a bad attitude.
When my other husbands—I have four in total, don't judge—agreed to my new job, it was with the understanding that one of them would get to tag along with Killian and me on our missions. They'd take turns since they all wouldn't be able to come along every time. We had saved the world from a pearl thief recently—far more dangerous than it sounds—and all of them had come along on that mission. But we have children at home and we didn't want to leave them with their grandfather every time I was called in. Plus, my husbands have kingdoms to run. Even Daxon, who lives in California, is King of the Fairy Undergrounds of Earth and is a busy guy. Killian is the only one who's a prince instead of a king and as such, had a bit more freedom. So, Kill had taken over my previous position as Ambassador between the Realms, Councils, Coven, and Casters. Yes, he worked for all of them even though I still didn't. Thus the confusion on my title.
The Coven and Casters are factions of Witches, the latter being Killian's people. All Witches are descended from the Fey. A lot of fairies bred with humans back in the day—and I'm talking about a day over a thousand years ago—but only a few fey races had magic that managed to survive the dilution of centuries of humans breeding out the fey blood by only breeding with each other. Nearly all trace of feyness left their descendants but what did remain of those stalwart magics had turned those descendants of fairies into their own race: Witches. But not all Witches are the same; they're divided into clans by magic just as their ancestors had been divided by their races.
After many years of figuring out who they were, the Witches decided that it would be a bad idea for the eight clans to interbreed. However, love knows no bounds and if you try to restrict it, it flourishes just to spite you. Love can be bitter and rebellious like that. Witches from different clans fell in love and some of them decided to run off to be together. When enough of them had left the clans, they decided to form their own group—the Casters. Children of these outcast witches were once considered mutants or monsters and were even labeled “bloodless.” But now that the Witches know who their ancestors are and that those ancestors saw nothing wrong with mingling magic, the Casters have been accepted. Mostly. Racism can't be banished overnight.
Killian is one of those Caster children—a child of two clans—Storm and Flame. His ancestors were Sylphs and Snake-Djinn, who happen to be Seelie and Unseelie Fey, respectively. This is significant because there are three kingdoms in the Fairy Realm (FR for short): the Seelie, Unseelie, and Twilight Kingdoms. Each kingdom has its own races of fey but the Twilight races are a combination of Seelie and Unseelie. It's a long story, but Danu, the Goddess of the Fey, created the Twilight Kingdom to keep the other kingdoms from fighting all the time—a sort of truce through marriage but on a much greater scale. Of course, that didn't work so well and it finally took the Princess of Twilight—yours truly—marrying the Kings of Seelie and Unseelie to unite the Fairy Realm and stop all of the damn fighting.
Back to Killian. The combination of Seelie and Unseelie ancestors made him a type of Twilight Caster Witch. When Kill visited FR for the first time, the magic of the Fairy Realm reacted to the fey magic in his blood and transformed him into more of a fairy. It didn't take away his humanity so much as enhance his feyness. This wasn't surprising, we'd seen the shift happen to other witches who had visited FR previously—it's how we found out who most of the ancestors of each witch clan were. What was surprising was that Killian became a Nathair-Sith—a new type of Twilight Fairy who can shapeshift into a giant snake. He can also transform his limbs into snake tails, which isn't as gross as it sounds.
And that brings us back to the horse.
Actually, the each-uisge was behaving more like a mule than a horse currently. I had tried to tell him that it wasn't cool to go around eating humans and behavior like that would get him hunted down and slaughtered by an angry human mob, but he didn't see anything wrong with what he was doing. Honestly, I hadn't expected him to. After all, he wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary for an each-uisge. But when I suggested that he go home to Fairy, where he could swim in lakes with lots of other each-uisges and try to kill fairies instead of humans, he balked. Oh, it wasn't that he didn't want to go home—FR was great—but fairies are a lot harder to kill than humans and a ticket home would mean fewer livers to toss on the shore. So, he was going with option two: kill me and toss my liver on the shore.
The each-uisge tossed his head until Killian lost his grip. Killian cursed again as he retracted his tail back into an arm. I could have leapt off the horse's back but this was the first time we'd been able to get close to the damn thing, and I wasn't about to let it go. The plan had been for me to jump on the each-uisge, then Killian would help me herd it (is it still considered herding if there's only one animal?) to the nearest rath, where I would ride it into Fairy. Once in the Fairy Realm, I could then jump off and set it free. Yes, fey animals have navigated the raths on their own before but they generally need help from Danu to do that—or someone to open the doors for them—and Danu would know better than to let a killer horse back into her brother's territory after we'd gone through the trouble of saving it. In short, the each-uisge would be stuck in Fairy for good.
Except the plan hadn't worked out so well.
“Hold on, babe!” Killian called to me just before he punched it—the accelerator, not the horse. And why is it called punching when you use your foot?
Kill sped ahead a few feet then angled sharply in front of us. The each-uisge reared. Oh, he'd meant that I should literally hold on. Okay. It was a good thing I'd wound my fingers through the horse's slick mane. Even when the animal was out of water, it stayed sort of damp. It didn't smell the greatest either, kinda like low tide. But I clung to its back as it pawed the air, then landed facing away from the loch. Or at least facing to the right of it.
Killian did the maneuver once again and directed the horse back toward where we wanted him to go. It screamed furiously but continued its wild run across the hills. Once Killian got the hang of it, it became fairly easy to wrangle the each-uisge to the rath, even though the closest rath was several miles away. The Rath Lord had already been warned of our plans and had the gates to the property open for us. I galloped past his house—a manor, really—and straight for the rath, where he waited. The Rath Lord yanked open the golden door as I approached, and I rode the ea
ch-uisge straight into Fairy.
And that's when I encountered another problem.
Chapter Two
Once inside the rath, I kept riding. At the end of the dark tunnel, another door waited. I flung out a hand to use my air magic to open the second rath door—all fairies have minor elemental magics called beags, in addition to their personal magics that are called mórs—and was nearly unseated by the bucking horse. I flailed, scrambling for a handhold and got so tangled in the wet mane that when I actually wanted to dismount, I couldn't.
My scry phone started to chime in my jacket pocket—likely Killian wondering why I hadn't come back through the rath yet. Scry phones are slices of enchanted crystal balls, held in leather cases so that they resembled cellphones. The Fey use crystal balls to communicate with each other in a way similar to skyping but with magic. Scries could reach anyone, in any realm, who had an enchanted ball or a piece of one, as was my case. My Unseelie husband, Raza, had come up with the idea of scry phones and had increased his already-significant wealth with the sale of them to fairies. Unfortunately, I was a little tied up and couldn't answer mine at the moment.
The each-uisge was pissed and was running for water. There wasn't a lake near the rath we'd just exited, which was both good and bad. The beast kept galloping pell-mell through the Seelie Forest toward the water it could doubtless smell, giving me time to extricate myself but also taking me further and further away from the rath. Trees blurred past me and the sound of night predators echoed through the darkness. I wasn't afraid of the creatures of Fairy—we generally got along pretty well, current mount excluded—but I was afraid of getting lost in the Seelie Forest. Scry phones are great but they don't have GPS and there are no cars in Fairy. So, if I got lost and didn't know where I was, it would take awhile for someone to find me and they'd likely be coming on horseback. Which meant that I could be stuck in the forest all night.
