Love, Blood and Fury
A Strings of Fate Novel: Book One
By Melissa J. Kincaid
Copyright 2021 Melissa J. Kincaid
ISBN (Paperback): 9780645054804
ISBN (Hardback): 9780645054828
ISBN (eBook): 9780645054811
Published by Lots of Love Creations.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
To my family, friends and all who encouraged me to pursue my dream.
Enjoy this piece of my heart, hold it close and know you helped make it become possible.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
From the Author
Chapter One
A hooded figure moved through the crowded street like a shadow.
Had anyone been paying attention, they would have noticed that the figure made no sound of footfalls, no reassuring tap of boots on the uneven pavement. They did not stop to look at any of the market stalls, piled high with taffeta and fine goods. The alleyway was cramped full of people, humans and elves alike, leisurely browsing the array of items on display.
Located on the western coast of Fythnar, Traders Bay was renowned for its after dark market stalls, offering everything from high quality silks and materials to meticulously crafted pieces such as vases and jewellery.
It was an unseasonably warm night, and the moon hung high in the midnight sky, the inky blackness sprinkled with winking stars.
The crowded alleyway sparkled with lanterns, strung from crumbling wall to wall across the alley, giving it an almost ethereal look - like glitter on shit. Traders Bay was not an attractive town, or the most well-kept. The air had a lingering stink of fish and salt, the lapping of waves against the moss riddled docks a constant melody. Many of the seamen who docked there came from far away lands, trading their goods for exorbitant prices, then moving on. The streets were filthy, the houses in shambles, but people did not come to Traders Bay for the sightseeing and real estate. The dark market also offered other things to sate the desires of more nefarious individuals, like prostitution and slavery.
These particular services were not so obvious, nor were they on display - they were only available to those who knew where to look and who to ask.
The hooded figure did not touch anyone as they moved, no accidental brushing of a shoulder, no gentle nudges to make their way through the crowd. They moved like water through gently parted fingers. The individual under the dark cloth hood was intent, unquestionably sure of where they were going.
Finally, pausing at a stall lined with crates of apples, the figure said nothing as they awaited the clerk’s attention. The man, stout and balding, paused while waxing an apple to add to the array of meticulously shining fruits to gaze at his silent customer.
“Wha’ can I get ye?” he drawled before looking up. The clerk, aged in his late forties, narrowed his eyes when the figure did not respond.
“If ye looking for cloth…” he trailed off, eyeing the figure’s clothing - a black hood hid their face, the cloak trailing to their feet and ending a hand’s length from the cobblestones. A leather corset was wrapped around their torso, adorned with gleaming buckles and hardened leather. Under the cloak, a belt flashed a hint of silver.
Daggers.
Boots to knee length encased their feet, intricate patterns pressed into the leather. This was no ordinary patron of the market, and the clerk felt heat begin to rise up his throat.
“Or if ye be after arms, there be an arms merchant two stalls down from ‘ere,” the clerk said quickly, placing the apple down on the others and proceeding to point down the market alley.
“I was told you would know where I could find ivory…”
The voice, undoubtedly female, slid like warm honey, a breathy cadence which caused ears to perk and legs to wobble. Mysterious, gentle, and deadly calm tinged with a promise of pain.
The clerk’s brows narrowed, sweat beading on his forehead.
Was it oddly warm tonight, or was it his new cotton tunic?
He swiftly swiped the beads away with the back of his hand.
“I-Ivory? N-no… Miss? Only apples ‘ere!” he choked out, throat bobbing, a cold sweat saturating the neckline of his tunic.
The figure, head ever so slightly inclined to the side, followed a tiny bead of sweat from the man’s lip, down his chin to his neck. It did not take a magician to see the man was nervous, and the smell his fear was emanating was acrid in the air. The figure’s nose wrinkled under the cloth.
“I’ll ask again…” said the woman, voice firm. “Ivory... or do you require a jog of your memory?” she said as long nailed fingers emerged from her cloak.
In a flash, a dagger was buried in an apple, a hair’s breadth from the clerk’s groin.
An alarmed squeak left the man’s lips and he inched back, eyes riveted to the dagger’s ruby-encrusted hilt. “S-Seems I’m remembering something... erm... Ivory you say? Yes... I-I know a man by that name. Be it him you are after? Mr Ivory... hard man to find he is,” the man spluttered, his words rushing from his lips in a torrent.
“Yes, he prefers crowded marketplaces where one cannot have a private word…” the figure drawled, retrieving the dagger from the apple and slipping it back into its sheath. The movement was fluid, swift, practiced.
“He needs to be given a message...”
As she spoke, she pulled a piece of golden string from the pouch at her hip. She held it out to the clerk, whose eyes widened as he absorbed what this meant. The string emanated a strange radiating light, as if it has been pulled from some sort of enchanted tapestry. It shimmered in the lanternlight.
Anyone who laid eyes on it knew that this was no ordinary string. It did not come from any of the stalls lined in the filthy, candlelit street. It did not come from a distant land, was not a rare piece of textile, nor did it come from a faraway place with an abundance of magic and wonder.
This string belonged to the Three Fates, woven from the Tapestry of Life, and this was a sign that someone’s life was about to end.
It was then the clerk - with a cry like a crazed animal – grabbed the table and launched the carefully arranged display of apples at the messenger of his doom. With surprising physical ability, the stocky, overweight man vaulted over the side of his stall and ran like ravenous hounds were on his heels, knocking over his neighbour’s array of hard cheeses in his craze to flee.
The hooded figure
dodged the assault of apples with a twist of her body and sprinted down the market alley, dodging patrons like fish through water. Using the lip of a stall as a boost, she climbed up the side of the nearest building, finding purchase using jutted-out stones and wooden window frames. The stall owner below gasped and cursed, checking their display to see if anything had been touched by the figure’s boots.
Not a single item had moved.
The apple stall clerk, in his frenzy to flee, pushed market patrons into the dirt and elbowed people out of the way. There were plenty of places to hide in this dark, dank town, but the man knew he would not get away easily. In a world of fight or flight, he was opting for flight. No-one stood against an assassin sent by the Three Fates, and he knew his chances were next to none if he were to fight.
The assassin flew across the rooftops, boots lightly thudding on thatched timbers as she leaped between buildings, keeping her target in sight. Below, the man’s strained gasps were audible over the hustle and bustle of the market, the stench of his fear like a trail of crumbs to his pursuer. People moved out of his way, and those who did not were shoved violently aside.
The assassin’s nose winkled as she launched herself from a roof just above where the man had begun to labour. The repugnant scent of the man’s fear was a lingering taint upon the air she breathed.
Her hand shot out, wrist flicking with a flourish, and suddenly a nearby display of fruit and vegetables beside the fleeing man exploded. Shouts of alarm pursued, and the assassin flicked her wrist again, causing the next display of bread to explode. Normally she would not resort to causing destruction with her magic, but she was not about to let her target escape.
She had waited too long to sink her blade into this one.
The man screamed as he ran, assaulted from all sides by flying food, but his retreat did not slow. With a frustrated grunt, the assassin shot from the rooftop, landing on the next building and rolling to soften the impact. Without pause, she continued to sprint, eyes flicking up to see a clothesline overladen with clothing, just ahead of the running clerk.
She shot out a hand and snapped her fingers together.
Magic sparked in the air, and the clothing on the line burst into flame with an audible crack, before the assassin twisted her hand again, making a downward swipe.
The flaming materials dropped, right into the path of the fleeing man.
He skidded to a stop, toppling back onto the cobblestones before staring at the flaming barricade before him in terror.
Covered in juices and ash, the clerk jumped to his feet and glanced behind him, expecting to see a hooded figure of death hot on his heels. His gaze flew over the rooftops around him in rapt terror, eyes bulging and jowls wobbling. When all he could see were angry faces of market patrons and stall owners, he blew out a breath and quickly limped into a branch alley to his right.
The alley was scarcely lit and reeked of piss - the clerk felt the adrenaline coursing through him like hot fire.
Had he lost his pursuer?
That was unlikely.
The Fury had used magic! In front of innocent people! Had the Fates slackened their training over at the school for assassins?
His nefarious dealings had finally caught up with him, it seemed.
The clerk paused to catch his breath, hands on knees and inhaling in long gasping wheezes. Sweat dripped from the tip of his pink nose.
Suddenly a figure emerged from the shadows, as if it were one with the darkness. A blade pressed against the man’s jugular, the steel to his skin so close to piercing. He cried out, but soon snapped his mouth shut for fear of his throat being opened to the night sky. Sweat cascaded down his forehead, breath hissing between clenched yellow teeth.
He was going to die, he knew that, and there was not a thing he could do about it. The Fates had finally drawn his string of life from the Tapestry, and his time was about to end in one of the worst ways possible.
By assassination.
“How did you find me?” the man hissed, sweat trickling into his eye. The assassin slowly smiled from beneath the hood of her cloak, a flash of white teeth behind red lips, canines slightly elongated. Her breath tickled his ear, lips brushing his lobe. Anyone looking into the alley may have mistaken the two entwined in an embrace, save for the dagger pressing against the trembling man’s throat.
He had been so careful! Every track, every sliver of evidence that could point to him and his dark dealings had been efficiently swept under every rug possible. Every person sold had their papers burned, their origins a secret.
How had this assassin - a woman no less - found him?
“Once your thread of life is spun and measured...” her blade pressed deeper, and the man let out a low groan of terror. Blood beaded on the blade edge, as the skin broke. The assassin’s voice was low, silky, like melted caramel over a decadent dessert.
A dark stain began to bloom on the man’s breaches as he pissed himself.
“There is no escaping your final fate.”
The line laced with a tone of finality that had been used hundreds of times before. This was the absolute truth, those who had dark dealings got what they deserved in the end, and it was her job to deliver this justice.
In a motion as quick as silver, the blade sliced through flesh, cleaving the man’s windpipe open to the air. Blood sprayed the dank wall with a glitter of scarlet, a mural of vermilion droplets glistening in the moonlight.
The clerk made a gurgling sound and dropped to his knees. With a thump, his body hit the uneven, wet stones of the alley, his lifeblood pooling around his body in a slow expanding puddle of crimson.
The assassin wiped her blade across her elbow, a hiss of disgust sliding from her lips as she eyed the body. Con Ivory was more than just an apple stall clerk. He dealt primarily in trafficking elven slaves to the local brothels. This was not uncommon in Fythnar, not by a long shot, but Ivory dealt primarily with elves who were far too young to know what was happening to them.
She had been waiting for his thread to be pulled for a long, long time…
Ariiaya Trillia knew that the evidence of her work would soon be wiped away by beings employed as a clean-up crew by The School of Fate, but any scrap of this filth being dashed from the face of the kingdom could not come soon enough.
With a long sigh, Arii bent over the cooling body with her blade and set to collect her trophy.
~~~
The head rolled across marble floor, stopping just shy of a pair of immaculate, diamond encrusted shoes. The man’s face, slack in death with eyes rolled back, stared up at the shoes’ wearer.
“Always one for theatrics, Ariiaya Trillia,” the woman said as she clapped her hands together with obvious admiration. Grinning, she shot a look back at her two sisters on the dais.
Behind them stood a large draping tapestry. It was a remarkable sight, an onslaught of imagery all tangled up in a detailed scene of unexplained history. Castles, people and animals, all entwined in stories. Arii swore she could see a dragon’s silhouette in there somewhere when she looked hard enough.
The Tapestry of Life glittered and glowed, enchanted with magic.
The room was lit with an array of haphazardly placed candles, wax littering the stone floor with puddles of white. The walls were dark stone, and some of the mortar had slowly began to flake away, green vines of ivy breaking through the weakest parts to splay across the stone. All around them were large stacks of books, ancient tomes with unreadable spines and discoloured pages that left a heady scent of old vanilla in the air. The School of Fate had a library, but the sisters kept their favourite and oldest tomes here in their weaving room, where they spent most of their time.
“That is why you are my favourite assassin!”
The red-headed woman clapped again with glee as the severed head seeped blood across the stone floo
r.
“Anyone else would provide a trinket as proof of their successful hunt, or perhaps a finger.”
She bent over, grabbing the head by what little hair it had and lifting it for all in the room to see. Con Ivory’s jaw wobbled in an eternal silent scream as Etropos shook the severed head.
“Brilliant work, my Violet Assassin,” she crooned, a grin splitting her lips.
Arii rose from her crouch before the dais, her head lifting. Slowly she removed her hood, striking violet eyes revealed - the reason for her moniker. She was still young for a Fae at twenty-eight, her skin pale and flawless, a face that disarmed even the hardest of men - disarmed them even as their heads were removed from their shoulders before they could blink.
Ariiaya was a Fury, one of the Fae blessed with magic, and taken into service by the Three Fates as a young girl. All Fae had magic lying dormant within them, but it took a considerable event to unlock the awakening – emotional or physical. Some Fae lived their entire lives without their magic manifesting, such a thing was not unheard of. All of the Furies in service of the Fates were taken in at a young age when their magic awoke, trained to control their power and forfeit their emotions, turning them into the deadliest assassins in the land - weapons wielded in the name of the Gods.
Once the land of Fythnar was teeming with Fae – delicately pointed eared beings with incredible strength, grace and magic unlike the other races they shared the land with.
Now, they were a dwindling species.
“I aim to please.” Arii drawled, not a flicker of remorse or emotion on her face. “His string was long overdue to be cut…” she said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. Her hair was unique, a biproduct of her magic. Dark, thick brown tresses reaching to her breasts, slowly lightening to honey at the ends. All Furies tended to have unique hair which was a result of their magic, matching their incredible beauty.
All the better to draw in their prey.
Etropos snickered and wiggled the head again, making Mr Ivory’s jaw waggle in time to her voice.
Love, Blood & Fury Page 1