CRUEL ENCHANTMENT
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preview of the next paranormal romance from Anya Bast
Coming September 2010
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EMMALINE Siobhan Keara Gallagher.
Clang. Clang. Clang. The shock of hammer to hot
iron reverberated up his arm and through his shoulders. As Aeric
shaped the hunk of iron into a charmed blade, her name beat a
staccato rhythm in his mind.
He glanced up at the
portrait of Aileen, the one he kept in his forge as a reminder, and
his hammer came down harder. It wasn’t every night the fire of
vengeance burned so hot and so hard in him. Over three hundred and
sixty years had passed since the Summer Queen’s assassin had
murdered his love.
Emmaline Siobhan
Keara Gallagher.
He’d had plenty of
time to move past his loss. Yet his rage burned bright tonight, as
if it had happened three days ago instead of three hundred years.
It was almost as if the object of his vengeance was close by, or
thinking about him. Perhaps, as he’d imagined for so many years, he
shared a psychic connection with her.
One born of cruel and
violent intention.
He was certain that
if the power of his thoughts truly did penetrate her mind, she had
nightmares about him. If she ever thought his name, it was with a
shudder and a chill.
If Aeric knew what
she really looked like, he would envision her face with every
impact of his hammer. Instead, he only brought her essence to mind
while forging weapons others would wield to kill, maim, and bring
misery. If he could name them all, he would call them Emmaline.
It was the least he
could do, but he wanted to do so much more. Maybe one day he would
get the chance, though odds were against him. He was stuck in
Piefferburg while she roamed free outside its barriers. Aileen was
far from him, too, lost to the shadowy Netherworld.
He tossed the hammer
aside. Sweat trickling down his bare chest and into his belly
button, he turned with the red-hot length of charmed iron in a pair
of tongs and dunked it into a tub of cold water, making the iron
spit and steam. As he worked the metal, his magick pulled out of
him in a long, thin thread, imbuing the weapon with the ability to
extract a fae’s power and cause illness.
Aeric O’Malley was
the Blacksmith, the only fae in the world who could create weapons
of charmed iron. His father had once also possessed the same
magick, but he’d been badly affected by Watt syndrome at the time
of the Great Sweep. These days he wasn’t fit for the forge, leaving
the family tradition to Aeric.
Creating these
weapons every night was his ritual, one he had kept secret from all
who knew him. His forge was hidden in the back of his apartment,
deep at the base of the Black Tower. The former Shadow King, Aodh
Críostóir Ruadhán O’Dubhuir, had been the only one who’d known
about his illicit work; he’d been the one to set him up in
it.
Now the Unseelie had
a shadow queen instead of a king. She was a good queen, but one who
was still finding her footing in the Black Tower. Queen Aislinn
might not look kindly on the fact the Blacksmith was still
producing weapons that could be used on his own people. Queen
Aislinn wasn’t as . . . practical as
her foul biological father had been.
He pulled off his
thick gloves and, with a groan of fatigue, wiped the back of his
arm across his sweat-soaked forehead. The iron called to him at all
hours of the day and night. Even after he had done his sacred duty
riding in the Wild Hunt every night, the forge summoned him before
dawn. He spent most nights fulfilling orders for illegal weaponry,
or sometimes just making it because he had to, because his fae
blood called him to do it. As long as his magick held out, he
created.
The walls of his iron
world glinted silver and deadly with the products of his labor, and
in the middle of it all hung Aileen’s portrait, the one he’d
painted with his own hands so he never forgot what she looked
like.
So he never
forgot.
Despite the heat and
grime of the room, her portrait was still pristine. Angel-pale and
golden-beautiful, she hung on the wall and gazed down at him with
eyes of green—green as the grass of the country she’d died
in.
His fingers curled,
remembering the softness of her skin and how her silky hair had
slipped over his palms and mouth. His gaze caught and lingered on
the shape of her mouth. Not that he needed to commit the way she
looked to memory. He remembered Aileen Arabella Edmé McIlvernock.
His fiancée had looked like an angel, walked like one, thought like
one . . . and made love like one. Maybe she hadn’t been an angel in
all ways—no, definitely not—but his memory never snagged on those
jagged places. There was no point in remembering the dark, only the
light. And there was no forgetting her. He never
would.
Nor would he ever
forget her murderer.
Emmaline had managed
to escape the Great Sweep and probably Watt syndrome, too. He
couldn’t know for sure; he just suspected. His gut simply told him
she was out there in the world somewhere and he lived for the day
he would find her. She’d taken his soul apart the day she’d killed
Aileen and he’d never been able to put it completely back together
again.
It was only fair he
should be able to take Emmaline’s soul apart in return. Slowly.
Piece by bloody piece.
The chances she’d
walk through the gates of Piefferburg and into the web of pain that
awaited her was infinitesimal, but tonight, as Aeric gazed at the
portrait of Aileen, he hoped for a miracle.
Danu help Emmaline if
she ever did cross that threshold into Piefferburg. He’d be
waiting.
THE fae checked in, but they never checked out. It
was a fae roach motel. Did she really want to cross that threshold
and possibly end up a squashed bug? No, of course not. Problem was,
she had no choice.
Emmaline Siobhan
Keara Gallagher stared at the outer gates of Piefferburg. Was she
really ready to take this risk? After all she’d done, all the years
and energy she’d committed to the cause, she still shuddered at the
thought of going in there for fear she may never come
out.
She stared at the
hazy warding that guarded the fae from the human world, set a few
inches out from a tall, thick brick wall. The wall didn’t go all
the way around Piefferburg, since the detention
compound—resettlement area was the more
PC term—was enormous and the borders included not only marshlands,
where a wall could not be built, but the ocean, too. It was the
Phaendir’s warding that kept the fae imprisoned, not that thick
wall. That was there only for the eyes of humans. An almost organic
thing, the warding existed in a subconscious, hive portion of the
Phaendir’s collective mind—fueled by their breath, thoughts,
magick, and, most of all, by their very strong belief
system.
That warding was
unbreakable.
“Emily?”
She jumped, startled.
Emmaline turned at the name the Phaendir knew her by, something
close enough to her real name to make it comfortable. Well, as
comfortable as she could be while undercover in a nest of her
mortal enemies. That didn’t exactly make every day a
picnic.
Schooling her
expression and double-checking her glamour—she was paranoid about
keeping it in place—she turned with a forced smile. “Brother
Gideon, you frightened me.”
His thin lips pursed
and he smoothed his thinning brown hair over his head, favoring her
with a glance that anyone who didn’t know him would call nervous.
Emmaline, of all people, knew better. Gideon was confident,
dangerous. The face he presented to the world was one calculated to
make people underestimate him.
Brother Gideon was
average in every way possible—medium brown hair, average height and
build, unremarkable brown eyes, weak chin, receding hairline. A
person walking by him on the street would glance at him and
immediately dismiss him as nonthreatening. In reality, Brother
Gideon was the most menacing of all the Phaendir, a black mamba in
a cave filled with rattlers. While you were busy overlooking and
underestimating him, he’d be busy killing you. That’s what made him
extradangerous.
It was no secret that
Gideon was nursing a crush on her. She’d been carefully fostering
that crush for quite some time now, using it as an effective tool.
It wasn’t a pleasant or easy thing, having a man as vicious as
Brother Gideon admiring her. It was, however, a useful thing.
Useful to the HFF—Humans for the Freedom of the Fae—an organization
to which she’d dedicated her life.
“I’m sorry, Emily,”
he replied in his very average light tenor of a voice. “I didn’t
mean to startle you. I just saw you standing out here and wanted to
see you off.”
A little over a year
ago, Brother Gideon had attempted a coup. He’d tried to obtain the
Book of Bindings before Brother Maddoc, the leader of the Phaendir,
could do it. Emmaline speculated it had been a move to take over
Maddoc’s place. Brother Gideon strove very hard to implement his
much bloodier agenda for dealing with the fae.
Luckily Brother
Gideon had been caught and punished by being demoted four places in
the Phaendir power structure. But Maddoc should have killed Gideon.
During the last year, two of the Phaendir who occupied spots above
Gideon had met their ends in freak, horrific accidents. Not one
being could prove Gideon had anything to do with the
deaths.
But Emmaline had no
doubt that Gideon wasn’t done yet. Maddoc needed to watch his
back.
The prospect of
having Gideon leading the Phaendir made her mission more critical.
It even made her fingers itch for her old crossbow, and it took a
hell of a lot for that to happen. If anyone needed a quarrel
through the throat, it was Brother Gideon.
She forced a smile.
“And I’m so glad you did.”
“Are you sure you’re
ready for this?”
“I may be human, but
in my heart, I’m Phaendir. I live to serve.”
Gideon smiled and she
fought the urge to vomit on her hiking boots.
She looked away from
him, up at the hazy warding. Gideon thought she was human and a
human wouldn’t be able to see the warding, so she motioned to the
wall. “It’s immense and so . . . strong.” She made sure she glanced
at Gideon with a shy smile as she said the last. “It’s a beautiful
thing, this place the Phaendir have created to keep us safe.” She
used the reverent tone of the Worshipful Observer that Gideon
believed she was.
Gideon came to stand
near her and clasped his thin, pale hands in front of him. “Labrai
wills it so.” He paused. “As he wills your entry into Piefferburg
and your eventual success. You’re a woman with a strong, stable
character. It can be no other way.”
She wanted to laugh.
A strong, stable character. Right. Her
characters were so layered even she had trouble parsing them. She
was a fae HFF member currently undercover as a human Worshipful
Observer who was soon going undercover as a member of the
Faemous film crew in order to mine
information for the Phaendir while actually working a mission for
the HFF.
Yeah. Not confusing
at all.
It was an event that
would ironically blow all her covers,
bringing her back to what she really was. A free fae.
As if she wasn’t
already bewildered enough.
Danu and all the
gods, why was she going into Piefferburg of her own free will? She
swallowed hard. The Blacksmith was in
there. She had nightmares about coming face-to-face with him often
enough to warrant a prescription for Xanax.
And hell, she was
seeking him out. He was the only one
who could help the HFF at this point. How crazy was that? He wanted
to kill her . . . maybe. Probably.
Maybe.
It had been so
long—over three hundred and sixty years—since the night she’d
killed Aileen Arabella Edmé McIlvernock. She didn’t even know if
Aeric had survived Watt syndrome, though she hoped he had. If he
hadn’t survived, and if there was no other fae who could forge a
charmed iron key, they were all doomed. She knew Aeric’s father
also had the talent, but he’d been one of the first fae to come
down with Watt syndrome. At the time she’d left Ireland, he’d been
very ill and was not expected to live.
But she felt it in
her blood that Aeric O’Malley had survived. She could feel him in
there, within the boundaries of Piefferburg. Almost as if he was
waiting for her. She shivered. That couldn’t be possible of course;
it was only her vivid imagination.
And he wasn’t the
only one who might be thirsting for her blood. Once upon a time,
when she’d been the Summer Queen’s greatest weapon in the Seelie
war against the Unseelie, she’d burned some bridges. Many, many
bridges. There were those in the Black Tower who would love to
cross the charred ruins of those bridges . . . to strangle
her.
Danu, she hoped her glamour was strong enough to
fool the Blacksmith. If the illusion slipped, if he found out who
she really was, her life was as good as gone. If any of the Unseelie found out who she was . .
.
Or if the Summer
Queen found out . . .
Or Lars, the Summer
Queen’s barely leashed pit bull . . .
Emmaline shuddered.
Once she was in Piefferburg, she didn’t plan to go to the Rose
Tower at all. It was straight to the Black in heavy glamour. There
was no way she was going anywhere near the woman who’d screwed up
her life so much and, via Lars, planted nightmares in her
subconscious that put the ones she had about the Blacksmith to
shame.
Gods, why was she
doing this again? Oh, right, because she was the only one who
could. Damn it.
“Emily? Are you
nervous?”
She blinked and
glanced at Gideon, pulling herself back from the muck of her
thoughts. For a moment, she groped for something plausible to
respond with. “Well, a little. I’ve heard the stories about the
goblins.” Humans were terrified of goblins, though, as a fae she
didn’t swallow the boogyman tales. There were other races that were
much more terrifying. “I saw the bodies of the Phaendir you sent in
after the Book—”
He waved his hand,
not wanting to take that conversational road. The men he’d sent
into Piefferburg after the Book of Bindings had come out gnawed on.
“You’ll be fine. You’re going to the Seelie Court, to the Rose
Tower. They’re much more hospitable to humans than the Unseelie. No
goblins there, only the tamer breed of hobgoblin. They’re servants,
mostly.”
She smiled. “I know
I’ll be fine. You would never let me come to harm, would you,
Brother Gideon?”
He smiled at her and
she suppressed another shudder. There was lust in his eyes—a thing
no woman wanted directed at her. “Never.”
“Anyway, like I said,
I’m ready to sacrifice my life for the cause of the
Phaendir.”
“Emily.” Gideon took
her hands in his. His skin was papery-feeling, dry. On his wrists,
she could feel the start of the scars that marked his arms, chest,
and back. Brother Gideon flagellated himself every day in name of
Labrai, though Emmaline had long suspected he enjoyed the floggings
with his wicked cat-o’-nine-tails. “But I am not willing to
sacrifice your life, Emily. Not for anything.” He blinked watery
brown eyes.
“Oh, Gideon,” she
said in a practiced, slightly breathy voice. “Your piousness is
already so attractive and to know you actually care about me as a
person is so . . . moving.” She didn’t melt against him or bat her
eyelashes, but she did stare adoringly into his eyes.
“Shhh, I understand.
I only hope that one day—”
“Brother Gideon?
Emily?”
Gideon gritted his
teeth for a moment. His face—just for a heartbeat—made the
transformation from medium to monster. Veins stood out in his
forehead and neck. His skin went pale and his eyes bulged. He
dropped her hands and moved away from her, his natural, unassuming
visage back in place in a matter of seconds. Just the glimpse of
Gideon’s true self was enough to leave Emmaline shaky, a reaction
that luckily worked for this particular situation.
The tension in the
air ratcheted upward between the two men. Power struggles within
the structure of the group seemed to permeate all their
interactions. Then, of course, there was the carefully orchestrated
charade she’d been performing for Gideon to make things
worse—making Gideon believe she was sleeping with his arch
enemy.
As undercover HFF, it
was her job to throw wrenches into the best of the Phaendir’s
machines and she was good at her job.
“Are you ready?”
asked Brother Maddoc with a warm smile. Brother Maddoc was
annoyingly likable considering he was Phaendir. With him, you got
what you saw on the surface. Trouble was, he hated the fae. Not as
much as Gideon hated the fae, but enough to want to keep them
imprisoned forever.
Her smile flickered.
“No.”
Maddoc laughed and
pulled her against him for a hug. “Don’t worry, you’re all set up.
They’re expecting you at the Rose Tower as the newest addition to
the Faemous crew. Just go in like
you’re a real anchor and start snooping around for information
about the bosca fadbh. I don’t think I
need to impress upon you how important a job this is,
Emily.”
Except it wasn’t her
real job. She wasn’t going to step foot in the Rose
Tower.
She knew all about
the bosca fadbh and information about
the valuable puzzle key would be found nowhere near the Seelie
Court. The HFF had found clues to the second piece in records
buried in a room of an ancient castle in Ireland. The piece she was
trying to get was halfway around the world, off the coast of Atlit,
Israel. It sucked that the only man capable of helping the HFF get
that piece was stuck in Piefferburg.
She laid her head on
Maddoc’s shoulder, an action that made Gideon shuffle his feet and
cough as he tried to conceal his irritation and jealousy. “I won’t
let you down, Brother Maddoc.”
“I know.” He smiled
and kissed her temple. “Now go. They’re ready to let you
in.”
She turned toward the
heavy wrought iron gates that separated Piefferburg and most of the
world’s fae from the fragile human world. The huge doors opened
with a groan and all the heavy protocol that went with the
admission of individuals began. On this side of the gate things
were monitored by the Phaendir. On the other side of the gate, all
deliveries or people passing through were carefully inspected by
the fae and all arrivals reported to both towers.
Of course neither
side trusted the other. The fae exerted what little control they
had by checking to make sure no Phaendir entered—some had tried,
all had been brutally killed. The Phaendir, of course, would not
allow any fae to leave. Humans could come and go at their own
peril. Not many did. Only the very brave and the very stupid dared
cross into the land of the fae.
Or the very
desperate. That would be her.
Glancing back at
Gideon and Maddoc and shooting them a look of uncertainty she
didn’t have to feign, she stepped past the gates.
Surely the Blacksmith
wouldn’t recognize her under her powerful glamour. Surely she would
be safe from his wrath. If she could fool all of the Phaendir, she
could fool one fae. Even if somehow he did recognize her, hundreds
of years had passed since that unfortunate day and her errand was
of monumental importance to the fae.
Surely this would
turn out all right.