The Castle of Earth and Embers (Briarwood Reverse Harem Book 1)

by Steffanie Holmes

  I told myself over and over again how sad it was, how much I’d miss them. But my body refused to cooperate. My tears didn’t come. None of it seemed real.

  The vise-like grip on my chest hadn’t eased. I felt like I was waiting for something to happen, for some sign to tell me what to do next. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to live, no plan for the future. Kelly at least had an aunt she could live with this year while she finished her senior year at high school. (My aunt too, technically, although they never really acknowledged me).

  I, on the other hand, was completely untethered.

  What the hell am I going to do?

  On the raised stage at the end of the vast church hall (our denomination didn’t believe in grand buildings like the Catholics, so there was no interesting architecture to distract me) the newly minted Pastor Tim finished the opening prayers, and my parents’ friends stood to deliver eulogy after eulogy, talking endlessly about Matthew and Louise’s charity work, their mission trips, their contributions to the community.

  Then Kelly got up, her whole body trembling as she folded and unfolded the paper containing her own eulogy. I raised an eyebrow at her, asking in sister-code if she wanted me to be up there beside her. But she didn’t even see me.

  Behind the lectern from which we’d heard Dad deliver sermons every Sunday since I could remember, Kelly cleared her throat. She spoke in one long sentence, her words ragged from grief. She pushed them out in a rush – of our parents’ surprise when they found out they were pregnant with her (Mom wasn’t supposed to be able to have children, hence me), memories of our childhood, a rambling story about Dad’s obsession with The Beatles – eager to have it over with. In front of her, two closed coffins sagged under the weight of the floral arrangements Pastor Tim donated.

  I stared at Pastor Tim in his formal black suit, my chest so tight I struggled to breathe, not even able to work up a righteous anger that he was taking away our home. They were very nice arrangements.

  At the cemetery, Kelly and I hung back behind the crowd, our fingers laced together. The bright Arizona sun beat down on us and beads of sweat rolled down my back, sticking my dress to my skin. Black clothing may be de rigueur for funerals, but now I knew why we didn’t ever see any goths in Coopersville. The pallbearers moved past us as they made their way down the path toward the family plot. The vise tightened around my heart. I gasped for breath. Kelly rested her head on my shoulder and smeared tears and snot all over the sleeve of my dress.

  “You’re not crying,” she sniffed.

  My stomach flipped. I was hoping she hadn’t noticed. “Not now. I was before. During your eulogy. You did a great job, by the way.”

  “Oh.” A pause. “Hey, did you ever open that other letter?”

  “Letter?”

  “That one from the lawyer in England that came for you the other day.”

  It took me a moment to remember what letter she was talking about. With all the preparations for the funeral, and the whole losing the house and my scholarship and burying my dead parents thing, I’d completely forgotten about the second letter, which I’d shoved in my purse at some point during the week to remind myself to open it.

  I fished around in my purse and pulled out the crumpled envelope. “It’s right here.”

  I stared down at the envelope as though it might contain a bomb. Which it probably did. Everything I touched turned into bad news.

  Kelly ran her black-tipped fingers over the logo in the corner. “Go on, open it. I could seriously use the distraction right now.”

  Fine. If it made Kelly feel better, I’d open the damn thing. I flipped the envelope over. Weirdly, it was sealed with a proper wax seal, including a monogrammed shield containing the letter “B” pressed into the wax. I slid my finger under the wax and broke it, pulling the flap open and sliding out several sheets of paper.

  On top was a letter, written on the same letterhead as the envelope.

  Dear Ms. Crawford,

  I trust this letter finds you well. As lawyer for her estate, your mother – Aline Moore – entrusted our office with the articles in her will. Her will included a stipulation that as her only living offspring, at the age of twenty-one you were to inherit her estate that has been held in trust until the time you could claim legal ownership.

  This estate incorporates Briarwood House, the surrounding acreage, and the outbuildings and chattels contained therein. The house is currently occupied by four tenants, who wish to continue to reside in the property if you will allow them to do so.

  I’ve enclosed a copy of the deed to the Briarwood Estate. In order to take up ownership of the property officially, you will need to visit our offices to sign the papers, or arrange a signing with a local lawyer.

  Should you wish to inspect the estate in person, the tenants informed me that they would welcome your presence in Briarwood House. There are many available rooms and you would be able to take up residency for as long as you wished without breaking the tenancy contract.

  Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

  Sincerely,

  Emily Lawson, LLB.

  A second, smaller note fluttered between my fingers. It was handwritten in a messy scrawl that took me a few moments to decipher.

  Hi Maeve,

  Happy Birthday! I bet this letter has come as a shock! Emily mentioned that you’re welcome at the house any time. I just wanted to tell you in non-lawyer speak that we (your tenants) would be chuffed to have you. We’re all about your age, and we’d love to turn on the British charm for our new landlord.

  My family has lived at Briarwood for the last twenty-one years. My parents were good friends of your mother’s.

  Briarwood is pretty special. I think you should come see for yourself. Shoot me an email and let me know.

  Cheers,

  Corbin

  I stared at the letters, unable to process what they were saying. “This is some kind of joke. It’s like those emails from Nigeria promising millions of dollars if I send them a check for fifty bucks.” I turned the first page of the deed. “I’m surprised there’s not a voucher for a penis enlargement.”

  “Um… Maeve?” Kelly tapped her mobile phone. “I just searched Briarwood House. It’s… um, well… see for yourself.”

  She thrust her phone under my nose. I gasped, the first real reaction I’d had to anything since I got the news about my parents.

  Briarwood wasn’t a house. It was a full-on castle. The square keep jutted out of a rolling hill, flanked by two turrets and an outer curtain wall with a gatehouse. A crisp green lawn punctuated with box hedges and water fountains and beds of wildflowers spread out around it. Off to the side, I could see a later addition and a couple of outbuildings.

  Holy shit.

  I shook my head. “The letter’s not real, Kelly. It’s some dumb joke.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kelly tapped her phone screen. “That lawyer is legit, at least according to the English Bar Association. And look, this page says that the castle is currently held in trust for the Moore family, with four tenants living on site. Moore is your birth mother’s last name!”

  “It’s a pretty common name. It doesn’t mean—”

  “You own a castle, Maeve,” Kelly squealed. “A castle.”

  Several members of the congregation spun around, tutting at Kelly under their breaths.

  I grabbed Kelly’s arm and dragged her back from the edge of the crowd. We sat on a bench between two large family mausoleums, and I handed the letter over to Kelly while I scrolled through the Briarwood website on her phone, my chest fluttering with something like excitement crossed with nerves.

  “What’s this?” I jabbed my finger at the small logo in the corner of the screen, declaring the castle an “English Heritage” site.

  “Duh. Weren’t you paying attention? This isn’t some roadside curiosity like the Winchester Mystery House. Briarwood House is a legit castle, in England.”

  “England?”

  �
�Yeah, you know, land of Queens and crumpets. That’s genuine Lords and Ladies shit right there, and it’s all yours.”

  “My mother lived in a castle. Now I own a castle.” Nope, saying it out loud didn’t make it any less crazy. “But… what do I even do with it?”

  “You live there, Your Majesty.” Kelly punched me in the arm. “Which is convenient, since you’ve recently become homeless. Geez, and I thought you were the smart one.”

  “I can’t live there! It’s in England! How would I go to college and—” I remembered with a start that I wouldn’t be going to college now.

  Unless I somehow managed to sell this castle, which I may or may not even own. I don’t know how much medieval real estate fetches these days, but I’m guessing it would be enough to pay for my tuition.

  “Now she’s getting it.” Kelly squeezed my arm. “You’ve got nothing tying you here. You could go over, sign the papers, sell your castle, and live off the proceeds for probably the rest of your life.”

  “Inflation and taxes would take a chunk,” I said. My hand trembled as I read the letter again. If my birth-mother used to live at Briarwood, then I’d be losing the one link to her that I’ve had in the last twenty-one years. I’d never had anything of hers, not even a photograph. Just my name and a story Mom told me about the nuns in the orphanage, who crossed themselves furtively whenever the name Aline Moore was brought up, as if they thought she was a witch or something ridiculous like that.

  To see where she lived, to touch the things that she had touched, to maybe find a diary or her letters or photographs…

  “I don’t know if I should sell it,” I said. “It belonged to my birth-mother. She wanted me to have it.”

  “Then do what the letter says. Go and visit it. Walk the ancient halls. Jump on the tiny medieval beds. And maybe you will find a way to make some money off it without selling it. The website says they run tours. And doesn’t it come with a bunch of land? With all the proceeds, you could live in your castle and go to a school over there, like Oxley—”

  “Oxford,” I corrected her, my mind whirring. I’d never even considered a foreign university. I knew the Crawfords would never have had the money to help me with that, even if I could get a scholarship, and international student fees were insane. But Kelly was right. With my own castle, maybe I didn’t have to worry about that. I could do whatever I wanted…

  The problem was, the only thing I wanted was the one thing I couldn’t have: for the Crawfords to be alive again.

  The idea of leaving Arizona made the nervous butterflies in my stomach crash into each other. Apart from the summer I spent at space camp in Alabama, I’d never even been out of Arizona. Going back to England… to a house – sorry, castle – that belonged to a mother I’d never met…

  Kelly patted my shoulder. “Don’t look so horrified; you don’t have to decide right now. Just think about it. You’re always Miss play-it-safe, but I don’t want you to miss out on this just because you’re scared of a change.”

  “I’m not scared…” I stared down at a map on the tenth page of the deed. It showed the location of the castle in a county called Loamshire, nestled between two towns called Crookshollow and Crooks Worthy. The map was old – not printed off Google but clearly a photocopy of hand-drawn cartography. I admired the intricate border and strange notations dotting the landscape. England looked like an entirely different world.

  “You’re totally scared. You never do anything exciting or rebellious. Remember when Bobby Kennedy gave us that joint and you made me throw it in the trash and the Hunters’ dog ate it?”

  I blushed at the memory of having to confess to Mr. and Mrs. Hunter that their dog was stoned. We would’ve got into far less trouble if we’d just smoked the damn thing. I shot back. “I had premarital sex. That was pretty rebellious.”

  The sex was with Andrew, this sort-of geeky boy from my community college physics class who was obsessed with science fiction books. We were the two youngest members of the local astronomy club, which meant Andrew and I spent several warm Arizona nights tracking lunar phenomenon from the middle of deserted fields. One thing led to another and we spend most of last year getting funky until he moved away for grad school. The sex itself was underwhelming – the best thing about it had been the thrill of knowing I was breaking the Crawford’s cardinal rule, and the fact that Kelly was spitting with jealousy that she hadn’t done it first.

  Yeah, the teenage rebellion was strong in me.

  “So mediocre sex with a physics nerd is the most wild and crazy thing you’re ever going to do in your entire life?” Kelly snorted. “Excuse me while I yawn.”

  I jabbed her in the arm, but her words stung. Kelly was right. I didn’t exactly take a lot of risks. I was saving all my risk-taking for the space program. But maybe that was the wrong attitude. Leaving the country to go live in a castle so soon after my parents’ deaths seemed like the stupidest idea in the world, but then, so did doing anything except crawling into bed and sleeping until it felt okay again, which it never would.

  I ran my finger along an illustration in the corner of the map; three small mounds in the middle of a field behind the castle, marked with a weird series of lines and dashes. What did it mean? Did I really want to find out?

  I could defer my place at MIT for a semester. It wasn’t a big deal. Maybe this was just what I needed. Maybe if I went to England for a little while, I could find the peace I needed to mourn, to cry for what I’d lost, and then I could move on.

  “You know what?” I folded the letter and stuffed it into the cup of my bra, the paper rustling against my naked breast. “I might just do it.”

  5

  BLAKE

  What you ask is ludicrous, Daigh.” Queen Morgana took a delicate sip from her nectar wine and placed the glass daintily back on the table. One of her sprites darted forward and refilled the cup, flitting back to the wall of the sidhe and pressing her back hard against the earthen walls, her dark brown skin camouflaged perfectly against the dark dirt. “Seelie and Unseelie will never be united.”

  My gaze swept from the Seelie Queen’s attendants (a brownie winked at me. I’d be chatting to her later) to the Lady of Summer herself. From my place at my adoptive father’s right hand, I had to turn my head to glance upon her. But Queen Morgana was used to captivating every eye in the room. Her green cloak shimmered with emerald light, casting a warm glow around the gloomy space. A waterfall of golden hair flowed down her back, wreathed in a crown of wildflowers and elder branches. If she was frightened of my father, she did not show it. Her features remained serene, although I noticed her gaze never wavered from his face.

  Daigh – my adoptive father and the King of the Unseelie Court – raised his own cup and took a deep swig. We did not usually have nectar wine in our court – the Seelie brewed it, and they limited our supply, for they knew it set off our dark revels. I usually had to content myself with the horrific Unseelie beer brewed from mushrooms, which tasted about as good as it sounded and sometimes made my vision disappear for hours at a time, giving a new meaning to the term ‘blind drunk.’

  Everything in the fae realm made me sick. The beer made me blind, the honey cakes made my stomach swell up, the berries made me lose complete control of my limbs and other aspects of my body I won’t mention in polite company. Daigh had food brought back for me whenever he sent one of his fae to the human realm, but there was never enough to fully satisfy. The Unseelie thought it was the best fun to mix their fae food into my human supplies and watch as I fought for control of my body. Haha, yeah, hilarious. With friends like these…

  It was recorded in our annals that one of the human witches – the red-headed one – once said that all fairies were wankers. He wasn’t wrong.

  There hadn’t been a food delivery for me in a couple of days. We could only send one fae at a time into the human realm, and then only for a few hours at most. Each one came back weakened, many without completing their assignment. My stomach growled with hun
ger, but there was nothing on the feast table that I could eat. That may have been on purpose. Daigh could’ve procured enough food for me to eat like a prince, but near-starvation was an ideal way to make sure I’d never grow strong enough to usurp his throne or run away back to the human realm. You can’t run very fast when you’re too weak to lift your head.

  Say what you like about my father (and there is quite a lot to say), but he treated me as if I was his true, biological son – ie. with mistrust and disdain. Weirdly, he’d shown me a great honor tonight be allowing me a place at the table for this unique meeting.

  I turned my attention away from the delicious food I couldn’t eat and focused on the conversation. My father said this would be an historic day for the fae. I had no inkling what he was planning, but as his words registered, a coldness seeped into my veins.

  “An alliance is not so ridiculous,” my father was saying. “For years we have let this feud between our courts divide us, keeping our power and our focus inward. But now, the High Priestess of Briarwood is coming to England. This changes everything.”

  The fae – a bean-sidhe, or banshee – who was tending to the table whisked my untouched plate away and replaced it with another platter. This one was filled with various dried fruits rolled in honey and seeds. They smelled like happiness, but I knew from past experience that eating one of them would have me out of action for a week.

  What I wouldn’t give to try a curry. My adoptive brother, the prince Kalen, told me about how humans lined up for the chunks of slow-cooked meat drowning in greasy brown sauce. That sounded amazing, like the dogs bollocks, to quote a phrase the fairies had stolen from the witches.

  But curry wasn’t an option as long as I stayed in this realm. Fae didn’t eat meat. They also couldn’t deep fry anything. Bread was forbidden, as it symbolized the agriculture that had destroyed England’s forests and wild places and led to our imprisonment. It was fruit and vegetables in berry sauces or slathered in honey, three times a day every day, and if you couldn’t eat that, you got bruised apples that fell over the orchard wall from Briarwood and occasionally half-eaten pork pies the giant blond witch hurled into the meadow for a laugh.