by Leigh Kelsey
Heir of Ruin
Fae of The Saintlands: Book One
Leigh Kelsey
Fae of the Saintlands is RH, which means Maia doesn’t have to choose between her many lovers. This series contains mature scenes intended for adult readers.
This book was written, produced, and edited in the UK where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
Copyright © Leigh Kelsey 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the author
The right of Leigh Kelsey to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
www.leighkelsey.co.uk
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Contents
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
About the Author
Find these other books by Leigh Kelsey!
Blurb
A brand new reverse harem fae romance series inspired by Hades and Persephone that fans of Truthwitch and Throne of Glass will devour.
A princess with untold power…
Maia Delakore is the tool of her aunt, the queen of the Vassal Empire. With her snaresong magic, Maia moulds the minds of the court, and eradicates any resistance to the queen’s reign. But when her aunt commands her to kill a prince, she refuses. And flees into the arms of the crown’s worst enemy—the Sapphire Knight.
A fae lord with a secret…
Azrail and his sister are all that’s left of a family framed for treason. As the Sapphire Knight, he and a small band of friends wreak havoc on the queen’s plans, sparing those sentenced to death, and sneaking the hunted beastkind—humans with an animal form—out of the city. But when they save a young girl with a rare, powerful magic, Azrail and his friends are drawn into a plot laid by the saints themselves.
A plot that will draw Azrail and Maia together, sparking a love that will become legend.
Fantasy romance readers will adore this fated mates, enemies to lovers series, with a kickass princess, a snarky fae lord, a seductive prince, and a sweet male courtesan. Sizzling romance meets dangerous magic in this epic, sweeping story of fate and darkness.
This book is slow burn, but hot in later books, and has multiple love interests added throughout the series. 50,000 words.
For the Reverse Harem Readers and Authors Facebook group.
This book is all your fault.
Note
The Saintlands series is slow burn romance with multiple love interests. The romance will develop over the series, but I promise it’ll be worth the wait—and steamy enough to melt your kindle from book two.
I hope you love Azrail, Kheir, and Jaro!
Chapter One
The Delakore family pennant flapped violently in the breeze off the Luvasa River as Azrail slipped through the crowd. His sister and their two friends wove through the gathering at equal points of the compass, all of them converging, in secret, around the guillotine set up in the center of the Salt King’s Square. It was a rare overcast day in Vassalaer, the City of Skies covered with dark clouds that threatened to ruin the jubilation and spectacle, and the scent of a storm clung to Az’s nostrils as he took a calming breath.
Days like these made Azrail sick, and not just because his innocent parents had been hung as traitors in this square while onlookers exactly like those around him watched with wide mouths and delightfully scandalised gasps. It was the hunger that made him nauseated, the eagerness of the crowd as they clamoured forward with greedy eyes, hungry for any glimpse of the green-clad hangman or the criminal whose life was about to be cut short. People even hung out of the windows of bright coloured houses that lined the river, eager for the spectacle.
Half the criminals executed here had committed minor crimes. A lot of them weren’t even guilty. Some rare criminals, Az could admit, were worthy of the sentence, but all of them? If every executed person was guilty, then Azrail was a welcomed, upstanding member of court.
He snorted softly at the idea. He and his sister had been forgotten at best and reviled at worst since their parents’ executions when he was sixteen and Evrille was a baby. They’d only managed to live because their parents had caused a big enough magical distraction for Az to flee with his baby sister when they were arrested.
The crowd jeered, and Azrail honed his attention on the wooden platform built several feet above them—so everyone would be afforded a clear view of the killing. And today’s killing … it was bad. Worse than bad. Unforgivable.
Az and his band of secret insurgents had received a short message last night from a guard ally in the palace, just six words long.
Execution. Tomorrow. She’s eight years old.
It had been enough for Az, his sister Evrille, and their two friends Zamanya and Jaromir to begin planning immediately, staying up all night as they hammered their plan into shape, smoothing out the cracks and holes until they had something that could work.
It would work. If it didn’t, a girl would be killed. A girl who, like her late mother, was accused of being a traitor, and who was completely undeserving of murder. There was no justifiable reason the crown would condemn an eight-year-old to death.
Grey sunlight glinted off a pocket watch to Azrail’s right, a completely ordinary occurrence but one he’d been watching for. Jaromir was in place. Az adjusted his costume glasses until a flash of watery light bounced off them, waiting for Zamanya’s and Evrille’s signals. The flashes came quickly; they were all ready. And as the hangman shoved the sobbing girl towards the wooden block on the stage, stained dark after years of executions, Az sent his awareness tunnelling down into the earth, threads of subtle green magic streaming from his fingers.
The stones beneath his feet reached up to him, the dirt far below them shivering with eagerness, and the big oak trees planted on the edges of the riverside square rustled their leaves and pulsed with old, old power. Power Azrail had always been able to access as one of Vassalaer’s five hundred fae residents. He wasn’t as powerful as some of the long-lived fae, nor as knowledgeable as those who’d studied at the universities in Sainsa Empire, but he had a natural ability he’d always been able to draw upon, and he yanked on it now, asking the earth to aid him.
The stones responded first, shuddering beneath his feet. Ripples went through the crowd, a call of alarm. Their last earthquake had caved in the Allsaints Temple, reducing it to ruins, so the people were rightly wary. Not that Azrail would let this quake destroy any buildings—just the people responsible for sentencing an eight-year-old girl to death. The same people who’d sentenced his parents to death.
The girl stood on the stage, staring with wide eyes as the hangman paused, her pa
le lilac dress dirty with grime and her fair hair in a ratty ponytail, her face as smeared with dirt as the rest of her.
But as Az moved through the crowd, pulling a mask of panic over his predatory concentration, the girl’s eyes caught his gaze: bright and shining, a lone spot of colour in a sea of grey features. They were a rare violet, so deep and vibrant that he’d never seen eyes like it before. And they were full of terror—and defiance. She had spark, and Az smiled just as the girl threw her elbow into the hangman’s gut and fled for the edge of the platform. The need for revenge pounded in his blood, a roar between his ears, a constant need to make those who’d killed his parents pay—and he recognised the same vengeance and defiance in the girl.
Those closest to her screamed in fright, and one word spread through the crowd, making Az’s pursuit falter.
Saintslight…
That was impossible. No one had wielded saintslight in a hundred years, not since the last Ghathanian Queen had been murdered in her sleep, a Delekore rival taking her place. That queen was said to have been blessed by the saints themselves, and able to commune with them, to draw on their purest light to heal … and to destroy.
Their guard ally hadn’t mentioned what magic the girl had, or even what her crimes were, but this…
The guards must not have known. No way in the Wolven Lord’s dark chasm would the queen and crown let a girl with saintslight be executed in public. No, they’d keep that private to stop word spreading to other empires—empires that might shelter and revere the girl instead of despise and fear her.
Azrail pocketed his costume glasses and abandoned all pretense of being a panicked onlooker, begging the cobbles to speed him across the square as he sprinted, a tightness cinching his chest. It couldn’t be saintslight. It had to be a different fae magic that looked like saintslight. But the fear that infected the crowd was sharp and unwavering, the kind of fear that came from seeing, not just hearing rumours.
A flash came from his left, Evrille signalling something, but they had planned for this kind of chaos, and Azrail intended to take advantage of it. The executioner had recovered and now he dove for the girl just as she leapt off the wooden platform into the crowd with a cry. Az’s heart stuttered, but he didn’t stop running, the stones beneath his feet carrying him at a swift pace.
He aimed for a gap in the crowd, as if they’d all backed away to create a ring of emptiness around the girl, and this time he asked the dirt for help, sketching a streak of bright green power in the air with a quick gesture. His blood thrummed as a wall of earth and rocks shot up from the ground to push back the few men looking to confront the girl—or to subdue her so she could be executed as planned.
At the show of his earth magic, the girl spun, and a searching power slid along his own magic like the cold breath of moonlight. She scanned the crowd, and fixed her eyes on Azrail as he shoved through the last few people, holding out a deep gold hand.
“Come with me,” he urged, breathless. The woman he’d pushed aside to reach the girl walloped him with her leather bag, and Az snorted, turning to pin the aging woman with a dark look as his ribs throbbed.
The woman squeaked, backing up at the warning she read in his face, and Az returned his gaze to the girl with fading amusement. “Fast now, or they’re going to catch you.”
“Hey!” someone shouted, a gravelly male voice. Not the executioner, but likely a concerned citizen who’d come here to see justice done, a traitor to the empire killed, and the city made safe. Safe from a little girl. Az didn’t bother looking at the man; he just sent an image at the nearest tree and heard its roots creak and snap out. He didn’t watch them snag around his ankle as the man yelled, “What do you think you’re—what the saints?”
The girl’s violet eyes jumped past Azrail, watching the man dangle in the air. It was effortless, a small enough magic that he didn’t even feel a pull on his reserves. The girl laughed, her violet eyes crinkling and her dirty face splitting in a grin. That grin was as good as spitting in the face of the queen and crown. That grin was the reason Az risked his life to save people like her, why he never gave up.
“What’s your name?” Azrail asked her, exhaling in relief as he spotted Zamanya breaking through the crowd in her dark burgundy leathers, snapping obscenities at onlookers’ shocked faces and throwing fists into their ribs if they lingered too long for her liking. She’d been a warrior in the Vassalaer army once, and now she was general of Azrail’s ranks, few and sparse though they were.
“Siofra,” the girl replied, her expression guarded as she scanned the people watching, restless on her feet. Surrounded and caged; Az hated the feeling, too. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Azrail,” he replied so only she heard, keeping an eye on the people around them. “Come on, you look like you could use a bath.”
Her eyes brightened, her whole demeanour changing. “With hot water?
“As hot as you can stand it,” he promised, keeping his hand held out to her until she slipped her small palm into it. “See that big woman over there? That’s my friend Zamanya. And just there, that woman in the brown leather jacket, that’s my sister Evrille.”
“The one who looks mean and angry?”
Az snorted. “Yeah, that one. And that man there, with the red ponytail, that’s my best friend Jaromir. We’re here to save you, Siofra.”
Her eyes narrowed, her brows pushing together, crinkling her grimy face. “Why?”
The question shot into his heart like an arrow. So much confusion, as if she never considered that anyone might save her. What had she thought, locked in her cell awaiting execution? Had she had no hope of rescue, no one at all she’d dreamt would break her out? Az wanted to gather her into his arms, paternal instincts riding him hard.
“Have you heard of the Sapphire Knight?” he asked softly, but apparently not softly enough, for the people who’d been pressing curiously around them gasped and shrank back, fleeing entirely. His mouth curved. His reputation really did precede him these days.
Siofra still watched him warily, but she nodded. “He blew up the palace gardens.”
Az tried not to smile too smugly. That had screwed up a trade deal that would have brought more silk into the city and taken more indentured beastkind—humans with an animal form they could shift into at will—out of it.
“Well, you’re looking at him.” Az winked. “The Sapphire Knight, at your service.” He swept a little bow, watching the crowd from the corner of his eye, his earth magic keeping them at bay so they couldn’t make out his features—for now. “You’ll be safer with me and my friends than on your own. And we’ve got a hot fire, as many baths as you desire, and a chicken roasting at home.”
Her violet eyes went as wide as the moon. “Okay. Okay, I’m coming.”
“For the baths or the chicken?” he asked, squeezing her hand. He created a path, shoving people aside with a wall of tree roots, leading Siofra through the square as his friends converged around them, a reassuring unit at his back.
“Both,” Siofra replied, giving him a tentative smile.
“As if.” Zamanya snorted at something beyond their sight. She flicked her dark hand, bright gold magic streaking through the air and sending the executioner soaring back onto his platform. He hit it hard enough to break bones, gold threads keeping him there.
“Woah,” Siofra breathed, staring at the fae general in awe. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
Zamanya guffawed, scanning the crowd with both her eyes and tendrils of power, her powerful body on high alert. “In a few years, little hellion. In a few years.”
“Aw,” Jaromir laughed, batting long red hair from his face to give Siofra a conspiratorial look. “She’s given you a nickname. I think that means she likes you.”
Zamanya ignored him, sweeping her arm out and clearing them a wider path to the Luvasa where a boat waited for them, its red sails punching the sky.
“That was easy,” Evrille remarked gruffly, coming up beside Az, her dark b
raid slapping her shoulder with every step and her green eyes blunt and irritated. But that was her usual expression, so Az wasn’t sure if she was in a good mood or a bad one.
As if the saints had heard her remark, a resounding boom went through the Salt King’s Square, shoving onlookers aside as a score of guards—Foxes in Delakore orange wielding magic-tipped spears—appeared from a plume of gold.
“Son of a bitch,” Evrille growled.
“You really shouldn’t tempt fate,” Jaromir said, a wince on his elegant face. “Or swear—you know, children present.”
“I knew I should have killed that executioner,” Zamanya muttered, magic building around her in crackling gold. “He must have called for help.”
“Either way,” Az said, pulling Siofra closer as they all paused, searching for a way around the Foxes standing between them and the river. These bastards had taken enough people; he wouldn’t let them touch a single hair on Siofra’s head. “We’re going to have to fight our way through that lot. Any ideas?”
“I’ve got one,” Jaro said, tugging his hood closer over his face, no doubt spotting one of his clients in the group of soldiers marching towards them. “Run!”
