Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75457 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“There’s no rhyme or reason to these tears,” Truett says as he studies the opening. It’s only about five feet high and maybe three feet wide. Big enough for a sheep to slip through to the other side but also big enough for Dark Fae to squeeze into Faere.
Veils are tricky phenomena. It’s a term that means nothing more than the separation between dimensions, but there are no defined boundaries between such. I can open a veil right here to go into the Underworld, take one step to the right, and open another veil to go to the First Dimension. It’s all about intent on your destination.
Whoever is opening these passageways is doing it by design—someone from the Underworld wants into Faere.
“Why leave the openings?” Truett ponders as he studies it. “I mean, why not cover your tracks?”
I shrug as I stand beside him. “Unless someone is coming in for a quick in and out. Hell, maybe they just wanted sheep for dinner?”
Truett snorts. It’s a possibility, but both of us know this is more sinister. Travel out of the Underworld isn’t prohibited as long as Amell approves it. Light and Dark Fae do associate with one another. They sure don’t mind fucking and some even have lasting relationships and produce offspring called daemons.
These mysterious openings—done in secret and occurring at random times—lend to the credibility that there’s a plan behind it.
“Weren’t you given my missive to attend to me in the castle?” Truett and I turn to Deandra’s voice, but her eyes are on me.
“I attend to no one,” I say, my tone light to soften the rebuke.
The new queen of Faere isn’t flighty like her mother was and isn’t easy to offend. She hums as if she doesn’t believe my proclamation.
Deandra is dressed to seduce, and I’d like to say it’s only for me, but this is how she dresses all the time. Her sexual appetites are well known and she loves to inflame men’s passions.
Today she’s wearing a white gossamer gown that’s so transparent she might as well be naked. Her pebbled nipples poke against the thin fabric that covers her from neck to toe but does nothing to hide her body. It’s so diaphanous, Truett and I can tell that Deandra likes to wax, and well… we both look.
Who wouldn’t?
It’s also what Deandra wanted as she preens under our attention. Snapping her fingers, a large white tent without walls appears behind her with an enormous bed in the center that looks like it was built just for an orgy. She jerks her head that way and looks between the two of us. “Want to join me there to discuss things?”
“I’d be glad to discuss things there,” Truett says as he steps in that direction.
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t. Here’s just fine.”
Deandra pouts. “Party pooper.”
Not sure when I got so conservative and boring, but I say, “There are more important things than sex.”
Tipping her head back, Deandra laughs. She winks at Truett, then wags her finger at me. “That’s simply not true. But tell me what you’ve found so I can be done with this and take your stud of a Dark Fae friend to bed.”
Though in the same breath she wants to discuss business and fuck Truett, the expression on her face is hard and calculating. She’s a queen first looking to protect her land.
Deandra was the only daughter of Nimeyah and Callidan, angels expelled from heaven when they betrayed God. She had a brother, Pyke, but she killed him.
No tears were shed because he deserved it. Pyke was in collusion with Kymaris, and he helped capture and kill his own mother, Nimeyah. It was a ritual sacrifice to bolster the power of the Blood Stone and it would bring down the entire veil between Hell and the mortal Earth.
With apocalypse averted, Zora died to bring about Kymaris’s end, and Deandra ascended the throne. Or rather, she took it. There was an argument to be made that Callidan should inherit, but he’s too much of a spineless pushover. He was happy to let his daughter rule, and he’s living a quiet life in the country, or so I’ve heard.
“I’m not happy this continues to occur,” Deandra says as she walks closer to examine the tear. “Amell isn’t keeping his subjects in line.”
“King Amell has more important things to do than worry about sheep wandering into the Underworld,” Truett says in defense of his friend.
Of course, he just said that to the queen of the Light Fae, and anger flashes in her eyes. I’m sure she’s going to make him pay for that in bed.
“It’s more than just sheep,” she grits out, and then shockingly, I see sorrow feather across her face. “An entire family was murdered three days ago. One was a baby. All of them had been nailed to iron crosses with iron spikes through their brains to finish them off.”