Read By the Light of the Moon Online
Authors: Laila Blake
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Paranormal
By the Light of the Moon
Laila Blake
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2013 by Laila Balke
ISBN 10: 1-4405-6664-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-664-6
eISBN 10: 1-4405-6665-8
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6665-3
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com/Peter Kirschner, Anna Yakimova, Denis Aglichev
For Lorrie.
A Sneak Peek from Crimson Romance
I owe my deepest and most heart-felt gratitude to my best friend Lorrie, without whom this book could not have been written. She is not only a constant positive presence in my life, my cheer-leader and writing role-model, she also has played a major part in developing my ideas and finding the confidence to finish them. I love her dearly and need her to know that I am forever in her debt — and that sounds pretty good to me.
I further want to thank my little brother Robert not only for being the best brother a sister could have but also for his constant support and faith. Once, he told me with his best little brother smile, that he couldn’t wait to tell people his big sister is a writer and secretly that has always fuelled me to make it come true.
Thanks also go to my beta readers and avid supporters Chele and Cris — wonderful people by anyone’s standards!
I owe my parents more than the deepest gratitude for their support, their love, acceptance and tolerance. I also owe them an apology. One day, I will write a book in German or one will get translated and until then, I vow to retell and reenact them all — hand-gestures and voice imitations included. Pinky-promise!
“Taking a mortal life is not murder, my love,” a gentle voice whispered. Volume traded for closeness, lips against her ear, warm and full. “It is not even theft. If you pluck a leaf from a tree, is that theft? Is that murder? Come autumn, the leaves will turn brown, fall off, wither and rot all by themselves. New leaves grow faster than you can count. Taking a mortal life is like recalling a debt. It might be prudent to let the innocent keep it where possible, but it isn’t a crime, it is not an abomination. Do you understand, my love?”
Devali opened her eyes; her gray-green irises shimmered in the gentle light of Niamh’s glow. She was curled up against the Fae; their interwoven fingers followed a path up Devali’s naked stomach and over her breast.
“What if they have children?” she asked quietly. “Or someone who loves them?”
“They don’t love the same way we do, sweetling. Their hearts are changeable, even their children’s hearts. Their eyes may cry but come the next season, they take off their black mourning gown and they dance again. They’re mortals. Like moths, they circle the flame. They can’t help themselves.”
• • •
Devali stretched against Niamh’s body, rubbed her cheek against her collarbone; placed a little kiss on the sharp ridge of bone under glowing flesh. Devali didn’t glow, was too young and entirely not pure enough but her mistress shone golden and warm and illuminated their little spot in the velvety warm moss under an enchanted tree.
“But you love me … ” she finally offered in a warm, soft breath as the Fae’s hand slipped along her thigh.
“You’re special. You’ve always been special. And you are no longer mortal, you’re nothing like them.”
There was a smile on the woman’s face, small and knowing. Her fingers wandered over her mistress’ skin, like little feet, the small, hard tip of her nails providing careful purchase against the expanse of living silk. Even now after all this time, Devali was still taken by the sheer flawless beauty Niamh’s kind all had in such abundance.
She had been a child on the road, a whore’s bastard to be sold somewhere else, a beautiful child, who no doubt would have fetched a good price. But the trade caravan was attacked, the men interrogated under force of magic and either killed or sent back with false information. The child, Devali, was left, wide-eyed at the unfamiliar people who had killed her captors. Even then, she had stood and stared in innocent and precocious admiration. They had looked human to her — with the same number of arms and legs, the same way of walking on two feet and holding objects in their hands, except they also hadn’t been like any human she had ever seen. They’d been finer and more graceful than any of the ladies of court she spied from afar, voices more warm and velvet than any singer or poet; just as though all the people she had ever met were nothing but drab shadows of these ideal ones and she couldn’t stop watching them and the way every step, every motion, looked like dance.
Then night had fallen and they revealed themselves as more, far more and far older than any human. The sun had dipped beneath the horizon and their skin started to glow, their chests at first, then their necks and shoulders; as though inside instead of flesh and blood, they had light flowing from their cores through their veins — as though instead of a heart, they had a star encased in their ribcages. They seemed to float as they walked and Devali loved them even then, loved their grace and their beauty and loved their fierce violence, too.
• • •
“You look sad, my love,” Niamh whispered. She twined a strand of Devali’s dark curls around her finger, tugging slightly. Like a brush, she brought the ends back to her little face, over the bridge of her button nose and her full lips.
“Maybe a little,” the Halla answered and gave her mistress a wan smile. “In the morning I will leave you and I shall miss you. So much. I shall be among humans again.”
“My little dove. You will be careful, and before we know it, you will be back. Remember, you are immortal now. My beautiful girl, I made you my Halla; distance and time have no meaning to us.”
Devali smiled and tipped up her chin, like a kitten reaching for her mistress’ touch. There was an honor not in the title alone but passing the trials and tests, the rituals and deprivations that came with earning it. She was proud of it, her smile showed it every time, proud of proving herself to the woman she loved and lived for. She breathed her in deeply and closed her eyes. Knowingly, Niamh moved her finger along the delicate silver band around her neck.
“You won’t disappoint me, pet, will you?”
“No, never.” A delicate whisper on the exhale of a sigh.
“That’s my girl. Trust no one, and stick to humans — they so are so deaf, dumb and blind they wouldn’t recognize you for what you are if you wrote it in bloody letters on your naked body. Play to their vanity and their pride. You have been taught well. You
will
find her for me.”
Devali all but purred at that and nodded, basking in the warm glow of her mistress’ skin, soaking her up while she still could. A grumbling sound came from somewhere to the right, a soft sleeping bark that made the two women exchange an amused glance.
“Wolf dreams,” Devali whispered and sat up high enough to look past Niamh’s shoulder at the young Blaidyn passed out somewhere to their left on the expansive mossy ground. “They look cute when they’re asleep, like puppies.” She grinned and lay back down.
“You should stay away from them, too, love,” Niamh cautioned. She hadn’t turned around to check on the adolescent; instead she kept her eyes intensely trained on Devali. “They are different out in the human world, wilder, more dangerous. They interbred with humans, inherited so many of their more unfortunate traits. They might smell something on you, or see something on you. They are stronger and have keener senses.”
Devali nodded. They had gone over this before but she understood Niamh’s need to repeat it. She was worried and as calm, graceful and self-possessed as she was, this was her way of showing it.
“But humans … humans are so …
dull
.” She had to chuckle and shook her head almost apologetically until Niamh hooked her little finger onto the silver band around her neck and pulled her back, momentarily cutting off her breathing.
“Good thing you are not going there for the entertainment, isn’t it, little one?”
Devali croaked softly before she adjusted and made her body stop fighting the choking metal around her neck just as she had been taught. Finally, though, she pushed her bottom lip out from the upper before she allowed the corner of her mouth to rise in a crooked little smile. Niamh let go, and Devali’s fingers traced the silver before she nodded.
“You just want me to miss you … terribly.”
“Such a cheeky little pet,” Niamh commented approvingly and watched Devali inhale a sharp breath as she pulled her back by her hair; such a beautiful little face, heart-shaped with wide gray-green eyes, like mist over morning meadows, a button nose and Cupid’s bow lips. She had the kind of beauty that was still inherently human, cute and volatile, the blossoming flower already dying at the point of its greatest splendor. It was nothing like Fae beauty. But Devali wouldn’t die, Niamh had made sure of that; she wouldn’t age or fade, she would stay her little flower for all time.
“Close your eyes.”
Devali did as she was bid, her mouth still slightly open, head bent back in Niamh’s grasp. Her lips tingled with anticipation, but she let out another surprised moan when instead of a kiss, she suddenly felt Niamh’s fingers between her legs, parting her, invading and making her whimper.
“Of course I want you to miss me.” A warm voice whispered in her ear as the woman’s fingers found their way deep inside of her. The young Blaidyn was perking up a little, lifted his nose in the air, sniffed once or twice and then shook his head in a gesture characteristic to his kind before he sat up and watched the women.
He had been invited in their play just a little while ago, but he understood his mistress well enough to know that the best he could hope for now was a spectator’s position. The air was filled with the smell of the Halla; it differed from the Fae’s fragrance or that of his own kind, one he did so enjoy to bury himself in.
“You will find ways to entertain yourself, sweetling, even Lakeside with dull and repressed humans,” she whispered. “You can teach them some things, bring some fire, some chaos. You are allowed some fun, you know? I wouldn’t know my little bird at all if I sent you on a mission without any fun now, would I? And I …
know
… my little bird.”
Devali’s whimpers and sighs of pleasure provided a fitting background to the Fae’s words; she was playing her like an instrument for no other reason than to accompany her with her favorite soundscape.
“I will find her for you, I will find her, I promise,” Devali pressed out between high-pitched squeaks and raw, drawn out vowels. Her heart was slamming her blood through her veins, her eyes wide and dark.
“I know,” Niamh breathed, her fingers hitting that place that made her squirm and wriggle, over and over again, forcing her Halla to yield her body to her mistress’ control. Her pet, her beautiful, glorious plaything.
And finally she kissed her, only then, when even her mouth tasted of pure abandon.
The sun was falling low over the capital, dipping its flaming corona into the western sea. A collection of milky orange hues, the sky bathed the city in the eerie reddish half-light of pre-dusk; the golden city in its namesake glow. Lauryl, glorious and vast, was the pride of Lynne and heart of many stories. Once a burned-out and rubble-crusted ruin, it now stood resplendent in the special sandstone of the south where the millennia had deposited fine glimmer particles in the ground. Worthless metals, true, but a building block of legends now.
At almost nightfall, people went hastily about their business. There were hurried hammer beats from the smithy; the baker cried out his bread at half price and the poor scurried toward him from all directions. Pigeons were chased by the more adventurous seagulls from closing market stall cuts and almost more ferociously by little boys in torn and grimy garb, hoping their stone sling might secure their family some meat that night. It was dangerous work, requiring thievishly quick fingers and — on account of the many shattered windows of the rich and important that fell casualty to the bloody work — the clumsy were punished quite harshly when caught. Others employed their nimble fingers to trip a pyramid of oranges and fill their pockets with apples and potatoes while pretending to help. It was a loud and lively hour at the one place in the city where the classes clashed with expectant regularity. Guardsmen shouted commands; buyers haggled over wilted greens and above everything, always the call of the sea gulls, like the city’s melody and heartbeat.