Shadow Borne

by Rachael Slate

  BOOK 7: NEVER MATCH A DRAGON

  BOOK 8: IN WOLF’S CLOTHING

  HALCYON ROMANCE BOOKS:

  HALCYON ROMANCE SERIES:

  BOOK 1: MOON BORNE

  BOOK 2: EARTH BORNE

  BOOK 3: WATER BORNE

  LORDS OF THESSALY SERIES: (series now complete!)

  BOOK 1: WICKED LORD OF THESSALY

  BOOK 2: BRUTISH LORD OF THESSALY

  BOOK 3: MASTERFUL LORD OF THESSALY

  BOOK 4: UNTAMED LORD OF THESSALY

  BOOK 5: LOST LADY OF THESSALY

  CURSED IMMORTALS SERIES:

  BOOK 1: SHADOW BORNE

  Want more Halcyon Romance? Read on for an exclusive sneak peek at the first chapter from Book 3, WATER BORNE, coming in 2017!

  Her path has been woven, and it doesn’t include him

  Mermayde Essa has sworn allegiance to the sun god, Apollo. To prove she’s ready to become his head Oracle, the Pythia, she agrees to infiltrate her enemy’s sanctuary, Halcyon. Using a powerful amulet as bait, she convinces the Wind Borne Nazrin to give her passage. A winged male from a race adversarial to her own, the darkly alluring Nazrin is anything but her enemy—he’s her fated mate. And he’s everything she’s been warned against—mysterious, seductive, and tempting enough to make her challenge the gods.

  What the Fates declare always comes to pass

  No one knows the consequences of a pact with Hades, Lord of the Underworld, like Nazrin does. The lovely and bewitching beauty Essa might be his mate, but the Fates have proclaimed she’s doomed to betray him, Halcyon, and the gods of the Underworld. When Hades threatened to eliminate Essa before the prophecy could be fulfilled, Nazrin traded his life for hers. Now, he’ll have to risk his future—and hers—to change her destiny.

  One false move will cost them their hearts, their lives, and their souls

  When their loyalties draw a line between them, they’ll either have to surrender to being the pawns of the gods, or rise up and fight for their love, even if means defying the Fates themselves.

  Spring, the Ionian Sea

  The twenty-third cycle of the current Pythia

  Or the human year, 1691

  Just an inch more. Essa gritted her teeth and fought the burning pain radiating up her arm as she extended her fingers. One, two, three. She flicked her wrist and the chain slipped, knocked loose from the loop of mesh. With a resounding thud, the amulet landed on the deck below. Out of her reach. Just as she’d intended.

  Perfect.

  She blew out a satisfied breath and concentrated on her dire situation. She was trapped. In a fisherman’s net. With hundreds of other fish. Others like her, well, partly like her at least.

  She was one of the Water Borne, a mermayde, her blood as ancient as the oceans themselves.

  Clenching her hands, she waited, repeating in her mind the story her aunt Cassandra had fabricated for this mission. The waves had carried a frightened sea turtle’s hissing to her ears and she’d been compelled to aid the creature ensnared in a gillnet set by the Earth Borne creatures. Humans.

  Alas, in her aunt’s tale, she’d dropped the shell fragment she’d used to free the turtle. Foolish Essa. If she’d been paying attention, rather than lost in her own thoughts, she would’ve listened to that tingle of foreboding, would have sensed the hundreds of gleaming fish closing in around her. Pyrates were more common than fishing boats in this area, so she hadn’t been watching for nets.

  She was a perfect damsel in distress.

  Now she waited to be rescued.

  Slowly, almost painfully so, they’d been hauled upward. The thrashing of the fish escalated as the surface—and death—neared.

  Blush-scaled red mullets enclosed her on all sides, floundering while the net swayed from side to side, suspended over the edge of a large vessel. Pressed against the mesh rope of the net as she was, the threads sliced into the delicate flesh of her tail, making her wince. Instinctively, her hand clasped her throat for her mother’s amulet, and she cursed as it taunted her from the ship’s deck.

  Closing her eyes, she envisioned the intricate chain enclosed in her fingers, her thumb rubbing across the lustrous white pearl floating in the center of a teardrop silver frame. Over the etchings of runes in an ancient language she’d never seen anywhere else. I have to get it back. Essa sighed deeply and steeled her resolve. I will.

  The missing necklace would play an integral role in her damsel story. When she’d tossed it off, the chain had caught on a loop of mesh and she’d had to knock it loose to ensure the amulet landed on the deck below.

  This was a final test to earn her place as Apollo’s next head Oracle—the Pythia. The ruse was a role she’d been all too eager to play…until last night.

  Shuddering, she cut out the echo of voices from her mind. If she couldn’t trust in her aunt and her god, Apollo, then she had nothing to hold on to.

  And this mission would fail.

  With it, the fate of the entire world would crumble.

  Apollo’s rays fell warm across her skin in reassurance. She’d agreed to use the powerful amulet as bait for her rescuer, but the necklace meant so much more to her. Their plan couldn’t fail. She must get it back. The amulet was all she possessed of the mother she had never met. With it gone, emptiness enveloped her.

  I will retrieve it, Mother. I promise. She often found herself imagining conversations with the human woman who had died giving birth to her.

  She cleared her mind and focused once more on her current dilemma. She was on the far side, facing out to the ocean, so the net and fish shielded her from the eyes of the humans on board. For now. She couldn’t see them, but she smelled them. Ugh. Wrinkling her nose, she attempted to block out the foul scents of their grime and sweat. She had more urgent concerns at the moment than the humans’ aversion to bathing.

  She huffed in frustration. When would this rescuer come?

  From the safety of the ocean, she’d watched the human fishermen for years. The catch would be examined and the undesirables thrown back into the sea. She shuddered to think what the men would do to her—once they recovered from the shock of snaring a mermayde.

  Revealing her race to humans was forbidden. If one saw her, she would be punished. By whom? My father? She sneered at the thought. This is not his ocean. Lord Nereus will never find me here. Apollo will shelter me from him. I must have faith.

  She stretched her neck and tried to spot the top of the net. What if the rescuer didn’t come? How would she free herself? Think. Think. Thought proved impossible in here. All around her, the fish writhed, gulping for the water, and therefore oxygen, they would not receive. She pitied them, but she could do nothing for them.

  Think. Think. Her heart pulsed faster and faster. The sun beat down on her. Sweat beaded on her skin. Air, must have air. Essa gasped for breath with the others.

  The fish and their promise of death invaded her mind. Her body trembled as panic overwhelmed her senses. Her composure fragmented while instinct assumed control.

  Breathe, just breathe. Blackness threatened to overtake her vision.

  A flash of silver glinted against the sun, blinding her. The sawing of rope vibrated in her ears. The weight of the fish behind her propelled her body downward. A solid hook snared her waist, tightened, and wrenched her from the net.

  Instead of crashing into the sea, she was hurtling through the air, her breath sucked from her lungs. A new terror rippled through her body.

  Breathe, a rumbling masculine voice commanded inside her head. Unable to resist, she gasped and choked. Tears stinging her eyes, she managed a small mouthful of air. She exhaled, then inhaled again and again. Her stomach heaved against the combination of the tight hold around her waist and the rapid movements.

  Remain conscious. Concentrate. In and out. There, it’s getting better. Now open your eyes.

  Were those her own thoughts, or someone else’s inside her head? She slammed another bolt through the mental locks in the depths of her mind. Her a
unt had spent countless hours instructing her, so the reaction came with as much ease as the beating of her heart.

  Still, the advice was sound, so she obeyed the commands. Shimmering hues of green, gray, and blue whirled unbelievably fast a hundred feet beneath her. She squeezed her eyes shut as bile rose once more in her throat.

  Fish do not fly! A hysterical laugh bubbled on the edge of her lips. This could not be her rescuer.

  It must be a dream. It had to be.

  She scoffed at her absurd imagination, swallowed her trepidation, and once more opened her eyes.

  An ominous shadow fell across the ocean below.

  Her heart dropped into her stomach and shot back up again, strangling her. She turned her head to the right and to the left. Wings loomed on either side of her. They were massive, spanning at least ten, mayhap twelve feet.

  Except, the creature carrying her was not a giant bird. It was a man.

  Not a dream, then. A nightmare.

  Terror froze the blood in her veins. The thundering of her pulse in her ears drowned out the sound of waves crashing against the rocky cliffs. This male could not be the target of her mission. He must be an intruder. Surely her aunt would have warned her, or at least prepared her.

  Wouldn’t she?

  The male carrying her was a Wind Borne. Her people’s timeless enemy.

  Born of a race as ancient as hers, the Anemoi, gods of the four winds, were their ancestors. Like the Water Borne, the Wind Borne was also a descendant species, the millennia-old product of gods interbreeding with humans.

  Whereas the Water Borne were half fish, and able to manipulate the powers of the ocean, the Winged Ones were in tune with their animal halves, the raptors—birds of prey.

  They were a bedtime story told to disobedient children, to frighten them into staying away from the surface of the sea. Given Essa’s penchant for exploration, her aunt made tales of the Wind Borne a nightly recitation.

  What had her aunt instructed?

  If she saw one, swim. If she had to fight, she must kill it, or it would surely kill her.

  Every few months, some crazed myrman or mermayde would race through the corals, shrieking with terrified eyes and ranting about seeing the shadow of a giant pair of wings.

  Some claimed they were monstrously ugly, with razor-sharp talons and a ravenous appetite for fresh fish. Being half fish, the Water Borne and their children were fair prey.

  What was worse than being trapped in a fisherman’s net, unable to move or formulate an escape? She shook her head and refused to believe the answer, to accept who had taken her.

  Where is he taking me? What will he do with me? Calm. I must remain calm. Apollo won’t let him harm me.

  She would not become his meal.

  The oceans swirled below her and the wind caught in her face. She reached up to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes, and realized her arms were unbound. Perhaps she might squirm and wiggle her way free? Would she survive the fall?

  As she contemplated this, the topography changed dramatically. They approached a land mass. Essa and her captor turned left, then a hard right, and straight up into the air. They burst through a cloud. Suddenly, her tail struck the ground. Her hands shot out along smooth rock.

  Where am I? A nest? Rising onto her arms, she observed her surroundings. They were on a cliff, no more than eight feet across. Behind her, sheer walls chipped away into sharp rocks and blended into the ocean. At once, she grasped she would not survive the dive. There were too many rocks. The water level was too low.

  She was trapped yet again.

  She much preferred the net.

  The whisper of a wing folding and a footstep drew her attention.

  Essa lifted her gaze as she pushed herself into a seated position. Follow the plan. If he truly is the one, Apollo will show me a sign. “I’m afraid I won’t make much of a meal. If you release me, I can find you something better. There are many delicacies on the bottom of the—” Her breath caught in her throat.

  Shining back at her was not the monster of her nightmares.

  In truth, she had never seen anything so beautiful.

  He was tall, this winged creature, and large, almost twice her size. The morning sun shone behind him, radiating through his dark chestnut hair, highlighting the strands of gold and red. It hung past his shoulders, but was tied back at the nape of his neck. A few stray pieces fell into his eyes.

  His eyes… A brown so dark they were almost black. Copper flecks gave them surprising warmth. Thick dark lashes made them sultry. She found herself trapped in his gaze.

  Intense. Piercing.

  Hungry.

  She gulped back her fear. You’ve survived worse.

  “I do not wish to eat you, Sirena.” His voice, rich and deep, captured her in his spell. His accent was exotic. She had never heard anyone speak the way he did, though he spoke in Olympian—the lingua franca, or common language, used by the gods of Olympus and their descendants.

  “You don’t?”

  “No.” His robust chuckle rippled just below the surface of her skin. “I’m afraid I already ate two of your kind yesterday. Young and tender they were.”

  Relief rose in her at his jest. Whatever the rumors were, at least that one wasn’t true.

  She sat up straighter, her tail flicking in the breeze as she examined her enemy. His keen eyes and the fine aquiline point of his nose revealed a hint of his ancestry. His face was angular and his sensuous lips were tightly drawn as he studied her in turn.

  What must I look like to him? She grimaced and combed her fingers through her wind-swept hair. Finding a tangle, she clawed at it in vain, as she continued her perusal from beneath her lashes.

  Two snow-white wings tucked in close on either side of his body and his golden skin shimmered in the sunlight. His chest bare, he wore a pair of pale leather breeches and sandals on his feet. A long sword hung at his side.

  He was powerfully built, his arms thrice the thickness of hers. His shoulders were broad, his muscles chiseled, making her own body feel insignificant, and oddly, feminine. She shook her head at such an irrational thought. Enemy. He’ll strangle you with those enormous hands and never think twice. That was what her aunt would say.

  Her gaze drifted back up to his face, where a hint of amusement now lay in his eyes. She started to smile back at him, but his sword glinted and caught her eye. The flash of the dawn’s rays was proof. She was the bait, and he was the mark she’d been dangled in front of.

  Right. Enemy. Time to play the damsel. “Why have you brought me here?”

  He frowned and crossed his arms. “You might begin by showing your appreciation, Sirena, considering I saved you from—”

  Essa bit her cheek against a smile and forced a scowl on her lips. “I had no need of rescuing, or,” she swept her arm across her surroundings, “abduction.”

  ***

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