Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
“It feels full and true to me.” Shim stretches and looks down at the dog at his feet. “Lach, why is that dog’s guts on his outside?”
The dog sits and pants, his tail thumping.
“Don’t worry about the dog. Worry about the kings. They’ve brought the queen along.”
“Is it time then?” Shim asks, his tone getting serious.
Every muscle in my body clenches. It’s almost time. We will find our bondmate or die trying. And our plane will fall… “It’s time.”
It has to be.
Shim smiles, his whole face lighting up. “We’re going to find her. I know it deep down. I have all the clues we need. Surely the kings will know the place I keep seeing.”
Shim slaps Duffy on the back and hands him his axe.
“I bet the queen is going to be crying by now,” Duffy says, his chest puffing out. “I can’t imagine a sweet Seelie queen having to deal with us rough Unseelie. If she lasts the night, I’ll be shocked.”
“We have to be on our best behavior, Duff,” Shim says seriously. “And we might want to clear the goblins out. They could scare the queen. And the trolls. You know, we might want to clear the whole palace.”
Duffy and Shim start up the road, talking about all the things that might frighten the gentle Seelie queen.
I stop. The dog is dead again. His body lies across the rocks, a symbol of all that’s wrong with my life.
I should be as thrilled as my brother, but what will our own sweet Seelie wife think of me? What will happen when she sees my decimated face? What will she think when she learns of my power, the power she’ll make stronger by bonding the two parts of my soul together? Will she be able to live with herself knowing she’ll be responsible for unleashing a powerful necromancer?
I stare down at the dog who briefly flared back to existence. Shim can offer her life and fire and a perfect face. All I can offer is death.
And still I turn and follow my brother. It will be disastrous, but I can’t resist. After a lifetime of longing, I will see her.
Perhaps then and only then I can be free.
Chapter Two
Shim
I stare at the sweet Seelie queen and have to admit that I’m slightly afraid of her.
“Look, you little shit, I know you have coffee. I can smell it.” She’s small but she shows no fear of the goblin she’s currently railing at. I heard the rumor that she’s from some backwater plane called the Earth plane, but she looks sidhe to me. Short, though she’s curved in all the right places.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Your Highness. I have no idea what this thing called coffee is.” The goblin flashes a mouthful of sharp teeth before trying to hide a silvery flask behind his back.
A young woman dressed in simple but expensive clothes walks up behind the queen. She is pretty, a slender, innocent-looking thing. Then she starts sniffing the air. There’s something almost feral about her when she scents the world around her. “He is lying. He has the coffee.”
Queen Meg throws her an affectionate look. “Yes, I believe so, Kaja, since he’s drinking it right in front of me.”
She drinks goblin whiskey? Most sidhe avoid it, but I rather like the stuff. I prefer it the way the goblins prepare it. Hot and sweet. Someone—a gnome if I remember correctly—had cooled the liquor, but I think it vile in that form.
A Seelie queen who drinks goblin liquor? And whose handmaiden appears to be a bit feral? The slender woman is again scenting the air.
“The food here smells good. And the small ones look easy to catch.”
The queen sends her a pointed look. “Dante told you not to eat the brownies.”
Kaja wrinkles her nose. “Dante tells me not to eat anything. It’s sad. Don’t eat the brownies. Don’t eat the pixies. Don’t eat the trolls. He would not even allow me to eat our enemies.”
Queen Meg shrugs. “Well, he was definitely right about the troll. It smelled bad. You would have had a tummy ache for days.” Her eyes narrow, and she leans forward. “What did Dante say about eating selfish goblins who won’t even share a drop of their coffee?”
The goblin takes another drink. “I ain’t scared of no Seelie women. Seelie women are trophies, nothing more.”
Kaja growls, a low, menacing sound that seems to come from the back of her throat, and I could have sworn she suddenly has a mouth full of sharp teeth. “I am not Seelie.”
Damn, I’m going to lose a few goblins if I don’t start to fix this.
“Is that the queen?” Lach asks, walking up behind me.
At least I have an answer for this particular question. So often I don’t. So often I drift away, my mind seeking Bronwyn’s and melding in an odd way. I’m the plane’s worst peeper. I shake it off. It’s always there, that slight invisible tie that binds me to my wife. Well, the woman who doesn’t even know she’s my wife. Years passed since the single act that bound us together, and as far as I can tell, Bronwyn hasn’t gotten the message that she’s a married woman. Not that she’s playing around. I always manage to fix those problems. A nice fire bolt tends to make would-be suitors think twice about fucking around with my bride.