Faery Queen

Dedication

To my mother, a true queen who saves lives and makes the world a better place. For your strength of heart and bravery of soul. I love you.

Note from Author:

Though they can be read separately, author recommends reading Realm Immortal books in order of release. For details please visit her website
www.michellepillow.com

Prologue

Silver Palace of the Faeries, Kingdom of Feia, Immortal Realm 1407 AD

It was ill-advised to incur the wrath of a faery, but it was most foolish to do so of a faery queen. And if that wrath came from a disappointed heart, then all would have to pay the price.

Queen Tania of the Faeries felt herself slipping into the black abyss that had become her world. Her heart was broken and each day a small piece of it fell away into darkness. Faeries were not meant for darkness. They were meant to see only pretty things, to experience good and light. Tania, by her very nature, wasn't equipped to deal with the shadows of unpleasant emotions. She didn't understand them.

Many reasons were speculated to be the cause of the change in her. The most obvious was the war that raged outside the silver walls of her palace. It was a war fought between the blessed Kingdom of Tegwen and the unblessed Kingdom of Valdis, but more poignantly it was a war fought between two brothers—unblessed King Merrick and blessed King Ean. Merrick had once been destined for the Tegwen throne, but mysterious events had brought him to rule Valdis instead. Some claimed Merrick resented his brother for taking the kingdom that should have been his and, out of spite, had stolen away one of King Ean's blessed wards from the mortal realm. That human, Lady Juliana, was now Merrick's queen. But she was merely an excuse, not the full reason for the war.

Being a faery, Tania hated war and the destruction it brought to the land. But, as a lesser queen, she had no say in wars. If the higher King Ean called her to join in battle she would be compelled to do so. Luckily, the elves never called the faeries for such things. Faeries were useless in battle.

Light faeries,
her
faeries, believed in love and happy endings. They could only exist on good and pleasant thoughts, and their existence helped to balance the natural magic of both realms. The faeries woke the land after a harsh winter and tucked it in with the fall. Their magic gave the delicate flower strength to grow in the hard, impossible ground.

It wasn't the war that wrung all pleasure from her heart, but the event was tied to what had. When Merrick took Juliana, the noblewoman's brothers had come to the immortal realm to rescue her. There was one brother in particular, Hugh, Earl of Bellemare. He was valiant for a human, brave and strong, bold and decisive, if not a wee bit irritatingly set in his ways.

The story of Merrick kidnapping Juliana against all odds, against the workings of his very nature as the Unblessed King, had captured the attention of her faery court. Tania had wanted to be a part of that story, to be known as the queen who helped bring the lovers together. And she did, purposefully shoving Juliana through a portal to Merrick's bedchambers. Juliana had come to Feia with Hugh, their brother Sir Thomas and Sir Nicholas, the son of Juliana's dead fiancé. Tania had only meant to detain Lord Bellemare and his traveling companions so that King Merrick would have time to pursue his lover without their interference. However, in doing so, the faery queen had fallen in love with the mortal earl, and Lord Bellemare had fallen in love with her, or so she had thought.

His words were as clear as the day he said them.
“First, I rescue my sister. Then, I'll be back to settle with you.”

She waited, as he rode off to do battle on the side of the blessed army to win back his sister. The battle ended, Hugh survived, Juliana chose to be the Unblessed Queen and was safe for the time being, but the earl never came back to keep his promise to her. Nay, he went back to his home in the mortal realm, his beloved Bellemare.

Tania sat in the center of a round chamber with her legs crossed, waiting as she had done for over a year. Like the rest of her palace, the walls were carved with intricate silver designs, decorated with the ancient symbols of her people, concentrating all the powers of the faeries. Positioned on a stone island in the middle of a round divination pool, near the water's edge, she contemplated Hugh's fate.

Unfisting her hand she looked down at the two strands of hair, which she carried always on her person. They were dark, sinfully so against her paler skin. Thin lines had grown along her hand from where she often held the hairs, becoming permanent marks on her flesh. The lines wound along her arm and shoulder, curling like tiny dark brown vines up her neck and spreading over her chest until one side of her body was marred by the darkness. Even her wings, which had once been the most beautiful of transparent white with silver threading, had started to turn dark, the threading black.

Tania leaned forward to the pool to see the reflection of what her face had become. The tallest of the faeries, she still had her slender figure, though dark brown strands had begun to sprout down one side of her blonde hair. She kept the locks parted in the middle, held down by a silver and diamond crown. It created an odd contrast between the light and dark, revealing to all the torment inside her soul.

Some of her court whispered the change came about because she'd gone mad. Others said it was because of the war between the blessed and unblessed, because of the flowers trampled under soldier's feet and the trees burned and scarred by the breath of warrior dragons. The war was a good presumption and did depress her spirits some, but it was not her true reason.

Then others still claimed it was because she was dying, like the faery magic she carried. None of them suspected the truth, none knew that it was merely an outside reflection of the hate and anger she harbored deep inside.

Well, that wasn't necessarily true. Queen Tania had a feeling one person suspected her plight. King Lucien of the Damned. The weakness within her would be clear to a demon like him. He was one of the three high kings of the immortal realm, ruling on equal ground with King Ean and King Merrick.

Aye, Lucien knew what was happening to her. As she watched the earl, she'd seen signs that Lucien's demons were crossing between the realms near Bellemare. The Damned King was biding his time until she weakened enough to let her guard slip and Tania didn't know if she'd bother to stop him when the occasion came for her to act.

Her hand trembling, she took a single hair and lifted it. Why hadn't she stolen more from Hugh when he'd been in her home? There were only two strands left and that meant she could only see the earl two more times without going to him directly. Tania had thought of making the trip across worlds, but in truth the mortal realm frightened her. Her magic was lessened there and she'd never walked as a human or without her full powers.

A hairy fish with sharp teeth swam near the water's surface, disrupting her reflection. Tania dropped the hair in the small ripple the fish created. “What better thing does he do this day instead of keeping his word to me? Why is Bellemare so special when compared to my silver palace?”

Suddenly, a large wall of light formed before her, made up of small, colorful squares. In each box was a different scene of the mortal keep of Bellemare. Her eyes went to Hugh and she felt a deep pain shoot through her chest. She'd watched him often and though his smiles were rare, they were the most handsome thing she'd ever seen. Even a year later he could still make her wings flutter. A year wasn't a long time in a faery's life, but for Tania the days had been endless and it felt like an eternity.

She looked at Hugh, remembering his smell, his feel. Tiny lights erupted from her wings, pheromones attesting to her longing for him. Her magic showered over the pool, sitting like bright dots on the water's surface before sinking into the depths. For a briefest moment, the swarms of fish became illuminated, but then the inky obscurity consumed them again.

Tania's wings flapped and she lifted off the stone island, moving to float near Hugh's oversized face. By the appearance of everything, it was night in Bellemare and the keep was at rest. Why did he sit up?

Firelight caressed one of his stubbled cheeks. He appeared tired. She couldn't tell what he was doing, but suddenly, his eyes turned and it was as if he looked directly at her.

Reaching forward, she tried to touch his cheek, but her hand merely fell through the image of him. It was torture to be this close to him without being able to feel his skin against hers. Like his three siblings, he had dark brown hair that gleamed in the sunlight, high cheekbones and proud features. She ran her finger down the slope of his nose. Hugh, and the youngest of Bellemare's noble family, William, had brown eyes that could look as dark as the stone of the Black Palace. The others, Juliana and Thomas, had blue eyes the color of the night sky.

Lids lowered over her eyes as she leaned forward, her lips pursed to touch his. His dark gaze pierced through her, causing another ache, as her lips only met air. Twice he'd kissed her and she longed for the third. Her skin itched and she knew the black lines grew, stretching and vining their way up her neck to decorate her cheek. They encircled her navel and grew over a breast before stopping.

Movement in another square caught her eye. She frowned, drifting to the side to study a dim panel. A brownie slept, his mouth wide open as he snored. The two small holes of his nostrils expanded and contracted, vibrating with each breath. Straw stuck to the creature's tattered green and blue suit and she thought to detect more of it on his dirty face. He was Bellemare's household brownie, unseen by most of the humans in the mortal realm. Being magical, Tania had no problem seeing all creatures in the castle.

A shadow crossed over the brownie, giving Tania the barest peek of a leg. An overwhelming sense that the shadow did not belong in Bellemare struck her full force. It was hard to tell what manner of creature the intruder was, though it was much bigger than a brownie or spright. Her stomach tensed and she glanced over the small boxes, trying to see if she could catch another glimpse of the figure.

She passed several panels filled with Bellemare's empty halls, a garden gnome working in the courtyard, guards awake and posted along the castle battlements, a view of the entire castle from far away. The castle itself was beautiful and the family within it had been greatly blessed with fertile lands, good health, incredible luck and fine looks. The home sat atop a mound of earth and rock, towering a good fifty feet above the bailey, over a courtyard. The only way in and out of the yard was through the front gatehouse.

Tania searched more panels, looking over the inner courtyard for signs of an intrusion. A couple of mortals made love behind the stables, a man was passed out on the doorstep of the small brewery, workshops were empty except for the occasional magical creature hard at work during the night hours, helping the mortals that didn't know they existed. Stopping near the panel of the chapel, Tania frowned. Now that was something which should not have been there.

Chapter One

Bellemare Castle, England, Mortal Realm

“Accursed faery,” Lord Bellemare mumbled as he tried to push Queen Tania out of his mind. But as a year had proven, forgetting her wasn't so easily done. It wasn't unusual for the faery queen to enter his thoughts, plaguing him with questions of “what if” and filling him with renewed anger at what she'd done to him—or more to the point what she had not done. Yet there were times, like tonight, when the memory of her felt so real it was as if he could see her floating before him, sense her nearness, so close he could almost feel her in his arms. He imagined her hair rippling like linens in the wind, her body nearly as translucent as the breeze. Her delicate face blurred and shadowed, and her round blue eyes were deceitfully innocent. The color reminded him of a stormy sea, a description that fit her temperament as well—ever changing like the waves.

Running his hand through his hair, Hugh grabbed fistfuls only to pull hard as he growled in frustration. “Get out of my thoughts, wretched creature! I want to forget you. Leave me in peace.”

Leave me in peace.

Hugh needed his mind to focus on the matter at hand. His childhood home was slowly falling apart. He felt it in his bones. The signs were small, could be marked as merely bad luck or coincidence, but they were there. Ever since he came back from his journey into the Otherworld, he'd known his home was changing for the worse. One of his greatest fears was that he would not be able to stop whatever was happening.

At first, he contributed the feelings of impending despair to Juliana's absence. His sister was a bright spot in all their lives and when she left, so did the radiance of her presence. He lied to his people—another example of how things had changed—telling them she'd married a far off lord. It wasn't a complete lie, but he wouldn't make excuses for misleading them to think southern France when he knew she really resided in another realm.