“I will worry about that when we get there.”
“As you wish, my queen.”
Chapter 17
Lilith listened as the ceremony droned on. It was insane how much shit went into a crowning. Once she’d been handed the staff, and knelt for her crown, the crowd knelt, including the Horde, who had witnessed the entire event without commenting. Only Ryder and Synthia hadn’t knelt, but then they were High Fae royalty and above her.
“I give the Court their Queen, Lilith of the Houses of Night and Shadows. Queen of the Night Court and heir of the Shadow Court,” the priestess said, smiling at her as she continued. “Who do you choose to claim as your King?”
“I have a King already,” she whispered thickly. “I have Asrian, Prince of the Horde, born son of Alazander the Murderous King, and brother of ruling Horde King Ryder, King of the Beast. If he’ll reign at my side,” she finished, not bothering to lift her eyes in case he rejected her claim.
“Beast King?” Ryder whispered in a hushed tone.
“Beast mode sounds interesting,” Synthia uttered beneath her breath.
“Does he reject it?” someone in the audience whispered, and Lilith’s face flamed with embarrassment. “I think he rejected her.”
“I don’t accept one year and a day,” he growled beside her. “I accept you and your people, but not the timeline.”
“Choosing a king is forever; eternity until death steals you from this world,” the priestess whispered as if she was trying to keep the confusion down from the audience.
“You want me forever?” he asked, his hand forcing her chin to lift, to meet his stare. “And my children?”
“They’ll create monsters, this is insane!” someone from the audience screamed.
“I’d cease your tongue before I remind you why I am King of the Horde, creature,” Ryder hissed, and the audience went silent.
“My children will be your children, protected by the Horde. I have the Horde King’s word on it; anyone who challenges or questions any child we produce will be given the option to accept my child, or leave Faery and enter the fires that burn in the next realm. That is why I asked it. That was what I needed to know so that when I took my throne, you’d be at my side, Asrian. Do you accept me?” Her eyes begged him, unable to put into words what she needed to because of the eyes on them. Weaknesses were used against those who exposed them. She’d rip the throat out of anyone who tried to harm him, but he’d rip her heart out if he rejected her.
“I accept you, Lilith. I accept this court and the people. I will provide for them where the last king failed, and I will give you strong sons to defend this court with. I have the strength of the Horde at my back, which will also defend this court in the way it has since the first tithe was made to my grandfather and the Horde. I accept you forever.”
“This isn’t a wedding,” Sinjinn hissed from the crowd. “Fucking kiss her already and let’s get these guys some food. They’re starving and starting to look at us like we’re the food.”
“It is done then. I give you your King and Queen of the Night Court. The Horde and the Court of Night have prepared a feast fit for kings. Join us, toast to a new court, and a new rule.”
Once the people had begun to rush towards the great hall for a seat, Lilith worried her bottom lip with her teeth as Asrian stared at her.
“You chose me,” he said.
“I like you in my bed,” she shrugged as a smile tugged at her lips.
“Is that so?”
She smiled and looked up at him. “I know you don’t love me, and I’m not sure if what I feel is love or not yet. I also know the higher courts don’t marry for love, only bloodlines and alliances. But I want you, and when you walked away from me in the bedroom, it left an ache I never want to feel again. I want to see where this goes; I want to know you and have a chance to make this work. If it doesn’t work out, well, the Horde King is your brother, so you’ll have an out. Isn’t that what you called what you offered me? For the record, I can hear the whispers in every shadow of every court. I am the Shadow Queen’s heir.”
“I don’t know about love, but I know you’re mine. I don’t want anyone else. But this thing, I want this with you. I want to be in your bed too, even if I am your heathen king.”
“I’d like you there, heathen king. I think we may need to borrow your brother’s title tonight,” she laughed as they started towards the hall where the feast was in full effect. Lilith paused on the stairs, looking to where her mother and sister served the starving members of the court as the higher lords watched them in horror.
It was surreal standing in the hallway where the Horde King had so long ago beaten her mother. Now, the new king stood beside his queen who spoke to the kids as she waved her hand and plates laden with food would appear before them. The laughter was contagious as she stared at her people.
“You will be amazing because if not, I’ll be the first to tell you just how much you suck,” Asrian said with a chuckle beside her as he slipped his hand into hers. “Sometimes bad things happen, and after enough time has passed, good things take their place and the bad is a little easier to deal with. You lost a parent tonight, but you gained one back. You gained someone who thinks you hung the moon and stars, with a little anger as you hung them, but for me, you hung them in that sky.”
“Who taught you to talk like that?” she laughed as she turned and placed her hands into his.
“I watched Ryder grovel to get his queen, and when you want something as much as I want you, a little wooing is needed.”
“This is going to be quite an adventure with you, isn’t it?”
“I promise to keep you on your toes, wife.”
“And I promise to keep you happy and well-fed, my sweet heathen king.”
“Promise?” he asked as he pulled her against his body.
“I promise.”
The End
About Amelia Hutchins
Amelia lives in the great Pacific Northwest with her family. When not writing, she can be found on her author page, hanging out with fans, or dreaming up new twisting plots. She's an avid reader of everything Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy.
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Suggested Reading Order for Series
Chapter 1 - End
Short Story (#1.5)
Blue
Mother Ocean can be cruel, tearing lives asunder, devouring ships, leaving not a trace behind. She can be kind, her gentle swells urging travelers on and gifting bounties upon the shores. On the Night of Bleeding Hearts, to the man I was destined to kill, she was both.
A living, snarling beast of a storm fell upon our archipelago that night. Its fury swept across the ocean, churning enormous swells to foam and unleashing its wrath upon any who dared to sail near its fringes. At its center, an eye as dark as the men’s hearts my sisters and I would soon feast on saw all. With that single eye, the storm watched as the crew of a stricken ship tried to pull in the rigging and stow the sails. And together with Mother Ocean, the storm consumed them all.
From below, I watched debris sink into the depths. Broken barrels, splintered timbers, guns and men. The land-fleshlings thrashed their finless arms, and down they sank to where we waited in the dark, eyes bright and teeth sharp. But we did not kill these men, for the Night of Bleeding Hearts was a day away and this gift from Mother was surely meant for then, when we would sing to them songs of their doomed kin, lure these men into our arms, and snip their mortal stri
ngs. So, we took these drowning men and their broken ship and delivered them to the shallows where Mother’s waves rolled them safely to shore.
As we saved them, my sisters told the sailors of how the storm had come and fled again in moments, and they twittered about how the storm had been a union between Mother Ocean and Father Sky, just like the storm that had long ago spawned my sisters and me. This time, however, as quiet fell and Mother calmed, it was not sirens the union produced, but a feast of souls.
When daybreak came and my sisters withdrew to the depths, I rose to the surface. Men stirred awake on the debris-strewn beach, their voices carrying on the light breeze. A miracle, they called it, as there, among them on the sand, sat their enormous vessel, listing heavily to one side like a beached whale.
A smile crawled across my lips.
These men proclaimed their survival a miracle now, but they did not know we had gifted them this day, and it would be their last.
Curtis Vance
If I hadn’t sworn off the swill the crew had been drinking, I’d have dismissed last night as a drunken dream. But sitting in the wet sand, soaked through, crusted salt itching in places salt should never be, I couldn’t deny the nightmare had been real. We were alive, so not all was lost. I had a knack for surviving the impossible, it seemed.
“Well, shit.” Captain Darius Tassen’s drawl lifted above the men’s murmuring and the sound of lapping surf. Miraculously, he’d found his wide-brimmed hat, or maybe he’d clung to that hat as the Lady Jane went down the way the rest of us had clung to our lives. He thrashed the hat against his thigh, smacking it back into shape, ran a hand through his jaw-length dark hair, dislodging sand, and put the hat back on. If only his ship were that easy to fix.
He scanned the shore, lips pinched. His crew was busy gathering supplies strewn for a mile down the beach. Shielding my eyes, I spotted an outcropping jutting out into the bay like jagged shark’s teeth. More debris was likely scattered among those rocks. Tassen’s livelihood. With nothing left to lose, I’d traveled light. Everything I owned I’d left back in Brea. Well, almost everything.
Digging deep into my coat pocket, my fingertips brushed cool metal. The dagger was still with me. The memories too. No ungodly storm could take those from me.
“Vance, you goin’ to sit there all day?” Tassen stomped over, boots sinking in the sand. “All the men are accounted for. Lady Jane might take some patching up, but her hull is intact. With any luck, we should have her afloat and be back on our way to Lanskewly on the high tide.”
All the men had survived? Luck really was on our side. “Molly?”
Tassen offered his hand and hauled me to my feet. My wet clothes chafed against my smattering of bruises and cuts.
The captain smirked crookedly. I’d threatened to punch that smile off his face more times than I cared to count. “You didn’t think a little storm would best Molly, did yah? She’s fine. Spitting mad, but fine. Reckon she’s threatening to dismember half the crew if they don’t find all her galley silverware.”
That sounded like Molly.
“You call what happened a little storm?” I’d been on deck when the wall of water hit. A white squall, Tassen had hollered, and then the ocean had turned itself upside down, dumping me and the crew into a maelstrom. That anyone had survived was a damn miracle. After everything I’d witnessed in Brea—monsters, mages, dragons and magic—he couldn’t tell me that storm had been little or normal. And then, in the water… the things I’d dreamed as the ocean took me. Trying to recall how I’d gotten on the beach produced nothing more tangible than mist.
Tassen arched an eyebrow. “I wonder if you might not be cursed, Vance.”
Him and me both. Death had once followed me like a shadow, but I’d left all that behind.
I smiled. “If I were cursed, you’d all be dead.”
He scratched his whiskered cheek. “That don’t ease my concerns none.” Turning, he regarded the line of leaning palms and the jungle beyond. The hat’s brim cast a shadow over his eyes. “It’s a long few hours till nightfall. Plenty a time for good men to die if this island ain’t kind.”
“What about the bad ones?”
He chuckled. “Ain’t no bad men on my crew, Vance.” With that, he whacked me on the back so hard I almost swallowed my tongue, and then he set off down the beach toward the Lady Jane. “How about you make yourself useful and go scour those rocks for the rest of my cargo?” he called. “I’ll have a perimeter and camp set up by the time you get back.” I was glaring at those sharp-looking rocks when he yelled for the benefit of all who listened, “Ain’t no freeloaders on my crew either! Get to it!”
Blue
Little trinkets lay scattered among the rocks and trapped in tidal pools. Strange contraptions. I picked them up, examined each, and tossed them away again. The swell lifted me, funneling a path between steep rock walls, and delivered me to more pools with more strange human detritus. Much of it was not meant for Mother Ocean, so it had wilted, fallen to pieces, shattered, or merely come undone. I imagined what these things might do or what purpose they might serve on the fleshlings’ land.
A man appeared, stumbling over limpet-scarred rocks and skidding on seaweed. Slowly, carefully, I sank below the surface, leaving only my eyes above the waterline. He would not see me. Men did not know to look for my kind among the pools. Their limited minds were blind to creatures they could not fathom. Until it was too late.
He seemed to be searching for something, this lost one, and when he crested a rock wall and disappeared over, I rode the swell through gullies until I was back among the pools farther down the bay. He was crouched on an outcropping, scowling as he watched floating debris drift and bump in the water. Dark hair, the color of wood that had soaked too long in the ocean, and keen, searching eyes. There was something else about him too, a sense of yearning for something he had let slip away like the tide steals things from the shore. I sensed in him something akin to myself. His song, a bright, strong pull, told me he was a thief, a taker of things… but that was only the surface. Deeper, where the melody hinted at something more, his notes entwined, luring me in. This one had a powerful song in him, one of darkness and death, but of life and survival too. He had experienced much, and recently. I had never sensed a song like his. The thought of having his heart in my hands, my teeth in his neck, with his life bleeding into me so I might own his song forever…
My sisters could not have him. This one was mine.
Curtis Vance
Tassen’s broken crates and damaged cargo made up much of the campfire. It burned well enough, drying clothes and belongings that hadn’t yet baked in the sun.
Hammering and clanging rang from inside the Lady Jane. Tassen seemed convinced the ship would sail again once the tide lifted her off the sand, but what nobody had mentioned was how the ocean was as far away now as it had been that morning. As I could count my ocean-faring knowledge on the fingers of one hand, I kept my observations to myself and stuck with what I knew—lookout duty.
Below my rocky perch, the entire half-moon bay stretched for several miles, forming a natural harbor that kept the waters calm, though the darkness a few hundred yards offshore indicated a steep drop-off. I stood watch for a few hours as the sun arced through the sky and saw no sign of any other vessels.
Returning to the camp, I spotted Tassen climbing down a rope-ladder dangling from the ship’s deck. He waved me over.
“Follow me into the tree line.” He nodded over my shoulder to where Molly had gathered the crew and was serving soup she’d likely rustled up from leftover supplies. She returned Tassen’s firm nod with understanding, her mop of red hair matted from dried sea salt. Slim as a reed, she didn’t look like much, and while I’d never gotten on her wrong side, my gut told me she knew how to turn her cutlery into weapons. She knew enough to holler at Tassen’s brutes and get them moving.
“What is it?” I asked Tassen, his face growing grimmer with every step toward the trees.
“A crewman found something. Don’t wanna spook ‘em all, so you’ve just volunteered to scout the jungle with me.”
“Found what, exactly?”
Tassen strode on, ignoring my question, and asked, “What did you see from the rocks?”
“A whole lot of ocean and jungle with us in between. Do you know where we are?”
His lips twisted as though he’d tasted something bitter. “The storm turned us around. We shouldn’t be far from where we left off near Wreckers Coast, sou’west Brea.”
All right. Then why did he sound as though that wasn’t the worst of the news? “But…?”
“But… this is all wrong.” He gestured at the leaning palms. The fronds hissed in the breeze, rippling like fingers. “When have you ever seen palm trees in Brea?”
I laughed. He had to be joking. “I’ve only seen trees like these in the books Molly took from Fullford’s library. This place is too hot and green to be anywhere near Brea.”
Tassen’s face hardened.
He had no idea where we were.
“Can’t you look at the stars or something?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you seafaring people do?”
“Do you see any stars, Vance?” the captain grumbled.
“Not now, but last night? Tonight even? Isn’t that how you navigate?”
Tassen’s right eye twitched. I got the impression there was more wrong here than a small navigation issue we could resolve in a few hours.
He pushed into dense undergrowth where the sand gave way to leaf litter and soft soil. “We may not have that long.”
Had I heard him right? “What do you mean?”
Love Potion: A Valentine's Day Charity Anthology Page 18
