Sea Fae Trilogy

by C. N. Crawford

  Catching my breath, I reached for a chunk of ice instead and hurled it at the witches.

  It struck one of them, and she whirled around, enough to pull her attention off Salem. All at once, his body glowed with red magic. And in the next moment, the encasing of ice shattered off him. Flames exploded from his body, igniting the witches around him.

  I covered my head as some of the heat from the blast reached me. It was melting the ice around me.

  When I looked up again, I saw the burning witches oddly suspended in the air, blazing like flaming moths in the night sky. One by one, their charred bodies fell into the sea.

  Salem swooped down toward me, his expression fierce. I reached up for him, and he grabbed me hard around the ribs. As he lifted me into the air, I pressed myself against his warm body.

  Heat beamed from him, and I melted into his embrace. But when I peered over his shoulder, through his beating wings, my heart stuttered. The witches weren’t done with us—not yet.

  The flames had snuffed out in the water, and they were still alive. Steam rose off their burned bodies as they flailed in the sea.

  Then one of them soared from the waves, foam rising around her as she lifted into the air. She was flying for us, and shards of ice sharpened at the ends of her fingertips. “We avenge your one true love!”

  Aenor

  The witch slammed into us hard, claws piercing Salem’s wings. Immediately, he dropped me, and I plummeted from his arms.

  I fell into the water, flat on my back. I grimaced, flailing in the water for a moment until I righted myself again. I blocked out the shock of the fall.

  From the water, I looked up at Salem. He circled the witch in the air, unsheathing his sword.

  “Give in now,” she hissed. “Or we will find you. We know your secret.”

  Salem’s body burned with fiery magic, and flames rose from his wings. He swung for the witch, sword arcing through the air, and his blade went through her throat. Her head dropped into the sea first, while her body stayed suspended in the sky for a disturbingly long moment.

  Then the torso plummeted, crashing into the sea.

  Gods, get me out of here.

  When I looked up again, Salem gleamed with the light of a star, wings blazing.

  His eyes were licks of flame. Slowly, the fire from his body died out, and he dusted the ash off himself. He cracked his neck, then slid Lightbringer back in his sheath.

  He dove for me and scooped me up from the water again, wrapping his strong arms around me. Moonlight sparked off the droplets of water on his sharp jaw line. As he pulled me in close, I shivered against him. He was lifting me into the air like a frozen bride from the sea.

  As we swept over the water, the waves crashed beneath us, sea spray dampening our bodies.

  I clenched my jaw. “So, Salem. What is this ‘one true love’ situation?”

  Silence fell, and he stared straight ahead. Something had changed in his expression, his composure slipping a little. In that moment, he looked… lost.

  At last, he said, “I can’t talk about it,” so quietly that I could hardly hear him.

  My gut tightened. So, this was the secret he was keeping, the one that was tearing him up inside. “Why? You typically just lay it all out there.”

  He opened his mouth, and his hands tightened where they held me. Uncharacteristic for him to be unable to get his words out.

  “So, you have a mate and a true love?” I pressed. “It would appear you have an embarrassment of women.”

  “True love.” His hand was tight on my thigh. “That’s not at all how I would describe it.”

  “So, how would you describe it?” I found myself unable to keep the irritation out of my voice.

  “I really can’t.”

  My arms were wrapped tight around his neck, body close to his, and I was sure he felt me tense with irritation. But what business was it of mine? We had no promises to each other. Our mate situation was a strange trick of fate, one we both regretted, and that was all there was to it.

  He let out a long sigh. “I would explain it if I could, Aenor, but I can’t. It’s part of…” He trailed off, looking up at the night sky. Then he met my gaze again, his expression fierce. “Listen, Aenor. Once, a great star burning like a torch fell from heaven. It landed on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star was Wormwood.”

  What in the world? “Why are we dealing with riddles?”

  “Because it’s the best I can do.”

  “For emotional reasons?”

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “For magical ones.”

  I nodded slowly. “Okay. So, you can’t tell me directly for some reason, and I’m supposed to figure it out with this riddle about Wormwood.”

  He nodded.

  I frowned, mulling over what he’d said. “Okay. The star falling from the heavens, that’s you, right? You were the evening star. You tend to burn, and you fell to Earth. But the rest of it… Wormwood…”

  Salem angled his wings a little, taking us higher. The left half of my body felt glacial, my wet clothes freezing in the autumn wind. My right half warmed against the steely furnace of his body. I nestled into his embrace, trying to work out the riddle.

  There was a Wormwood Street not far from where I’d lived in London, and it had turned into a street called London Wall—so named because it had once been part of the wall around the city. Wormwood must’ve been, too.

  So what did Wormwood mean? I thought it was mentioned in Hamlet as something negative. A plant or herb—bitter or poisonous, something to be avoided. Hard to swallow. And apparently it grew on or near the London Wall, hence the name of the street.

  “Wormwood is a star named after a bitter plant,” I said, “and it grew outside the city walls.”

  He kept his eyes on the heavens, and he seemed to be considering his words. “It’s a word sometimes used in English translations of ancient texts, but it was changed. It used to be something else.”

  In the ancient world, being outside the city gates sucked hard. Salem had been banished to the wild land outside Jerusalem; in London, they threw the bodies of executed criminals and dead dogs outside the walls. On the wrong side of the city gates, you’d find the lepers and the damned. The ones who couldn’t get to heaven. It was where the cursed lay to rot, fallen from grace—where Salem burned his victims, and where the bodies of the traitorous were thrown to be eaten by hounds.

  That was where wormwood grew. The cursed lands.

  “A curse,” I said at last. “The name of the star is cursed. You’re cursed.”

  At those words, a faint mark shone on his forehead, the pale glow of an eight-pointed star.

  And there it was—his curse. My heart sped up.

  When I followed his eyes to the sky, I thought I saw a distant star falling, a bright blue light trailing to the earth. Its path and distance struck me with a sense of infinite loneliness—just pure solitude, like I was in a void, robbed of all meaning. Isolation split my chest open for a second of pure, acute pain.

  “And part of your curse is that you can’t speak of it,” I said, “which is why you’re using riddles instead of just telling me.”

  His face beamed with pale light.

  I’d gotten it right.

  A gust of briny wind rushed over us. Even if I’d gotten down to the truth, that a curse plagued him, I still didn’t know the nature of it. And this one true love hung in the air like a curse of its own. Bitter as wormwood, stark as banishment.

  After a moment, Salem said, “You’re still freezing, Aenor.” His face was close to mine, and heat pulsed from his body.

  Slowly, the ice in my blood started to thaw, and I glanced at the sky again. We were flying over the ocean—just us, and the moonlight, and the waves.

  “What was it like in the heavens before you fell?” I asked finally. “If you can tell me?”

  “I was a warrior. Leader of the heavenly host, slayer of demons. I lived in pure virtue
. And yet, despite the battles, it was the last time I was at peace, my mind at rest. I sleep here, sometimes, but I never truly rest. As a god, I had infinite vision when I wanted. I saw the glory of the universe around me, the birth of distant stars. I felt the soul of my mother, my sister. Light surrounded me, and a sense of purpose.”

  He looked up to the skies, and he seemed to be taking us higher, where the air thinned a little.

  “Every evening at dusk, I was near the earth, in the clouds. I brought the day to a close. I was the vibrant light of the sunset, spreading out over the earth. And I could hear the music of the spheres, the divine song of the celestial bodies. So, when I fell, it was nothing but emptiness, a gnawing silence, the cold and the dark. It was terror, and a pit I could never fill. I became broken. Incomplete and corrupted. Devoid of meaning. It was like I died but my body kept living.”

  I felt it, a fraction of what he must have felt: warmth and love, and then a sharp, terrifying drop into a void. Just a whisper of his terror—falling, plummeting from the heavens as the known world was ripped away from me.

  I realized I was holding my breath. “Why did it happen?”

  “An angel gave the gift of language to the humans, and a civil war broke out between us. I was on the losing side.”

  “And ever since, you’ve wanted to get back to that state of perfection.”

  “Yes. When I first landed, I was completely alone. Everything felt empty. I was sure I’d arrived in hell. I’d cratered the earth with my fall and landed in a dark cave. I stayed in that cave, my bones broken. I was confused by the wild cravings of my new body, and the pain that tormented me. Everything baffled me. I wasn’t used to hunger or pain. I understood the concept of hunting, but I’d never done it before.

  “Eventually, I crawled from the cave, and instinct made me hunt. But I hated it. It was different than fighting in the celestial realm. The arrow through an animal’s neck, the wide-eyed look as it bled out. The creature’s frantic movements while it panicked during its last moments. At first, I loathed the world around me and the pain it entailed.”

  I blinked. “You felt guilty for hunting.”

  “At first. So, I spent a lot of time starving and barefoot.”

  “And how did you end up as king of Mag Mell?”

  “I had to become civilized. I had to understand the beauty alive around me. There was one morning when I rose early. Dawn—that was Shahar’s time of day. The chorus of birds had begun: warblers, wrens, tawny owls. I realized I’d come to love their song, and I loved the way the light looked from down here on Earth… like the heavens were blessing us with amber magic.”

  His eyes had taken on a distant look, a subtle smile on his lips.

  “For the first time, I saw the life around me as beautiful, and I knew I wasn’t dead. And I started to feel Shahar’s presence somewhere around me. I crawled from the dark cave, and I learned to truly live—the joys of music and dance, food cooked to perfection. I threw myself into the pleasures of the earth completely. I found that I enjoyed women, and they enjoyed me. I learned to like fighting again. I always had that emptiness inside me—but pleasure could mask it.”

  “Until you were cursed. And then it was back to a cave. Is that right?”

  “And now you know everything.”

  But I didn’t—not at all. Because I didn’t know who his true love was.

  And the miserable bitch wanted me dead.

  Aenor

  The speed of Salem’s flight had picked up since the attack, but I kept peering over his shoulder, looking for anyone else trying to kill me. “Do you think we’ll see more of those ice witches, then? They did seem very determined that you should end my life.”

  Salem glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t think they’re done with us, no. But when I leave this world, you won’t be in danger anymore.”

  My thoughts were still snagged on the woman who was waiting for him. Would she be joining him in the heavens? I wasn’t the jealous kind, but it all left a bitter taste in my mouth. I wanted to hunt her down and end her life myself.

  “Your one true love wants me to die, but when you’re gone, she won’t care anymore. Is that it?” The mystery of it kept whirling in my mind, a vortex of ice. “They said they’d find you and kill you if you don’t do it. Shatter you into pieces to trap you on the earth, so you wouldn’t get to return to your home.”

  He met my gaze. “You should believe every terrible thing about me—that I’m evil down to my bones.” His smooth voice slid over me like a seductive caress. “But I won’t hurt you, Aenor. I can’t. You have to have that faith in me, as certain as the sun sets every day. I don’t care what the witches want; I’m not going to kill you.”

  I felt my chest release, and I let out a long breath. I believed him. “Faith. Okay.”

  But something was still troubling him, his brow furrowed. “Do you still have the sea glass?”

  “Yes.”

  His eyebrow quirked. “Good. I like how you think. Always put self-preservation first.”

  “And why would I need it,” I said, “if you’d never hurt me?”

  “Because there are forces conspiring against us.” His low whisper warmed the shell of my ear. “And you might need to put me in my place. Get me on my knees before you, at your service.” He managed to deliver that last sentence with a deeply sensual tone that made my head swim with erotic thoughts.

  Even after all that—the whole bit about his one true love and how he had to leave here—he still wanted to seduce me? “Are we almost at Mag Mell?” I asked.

  “I like how your heart speeds up around me,” he purred.

  “The racing pulse is fear, Salem.”

  “It’s a difficult distinction,” he said, his voice husky. “Fear and lust, nearly identical in what they do to a body—the racing heart, the dilating pupils, the breath quickening. But it’s not exactly the same, is it? Not with your chest flushing.”

  Still, I felt acutely aware of each point where our bodies made contact: my hips pressed against his hard abs, his arms encircling me, fingertips curled just above my knees.

  Spending time around him was definitely dangerous.

  The sea air whispered over the tops of my thighs, and I was suddenly aware that the hem of my dress had slid up. I tugged it down again.

  But while his words were seductive, something dark hung between us now, like a dead star. It was the mystery woman waiting for him—an unknowable phantom. Someone from Mag Mell, I supposed, from long ago.

  “I lost my thermos,” I said, hoping to break the spell. Already, my throat was burning, and I was all out of tea.

  It was with relief that I glanced out over the sea and saw the rocky island come into view: a silhouette under the moon, mountainous and capped by a castle. I licked my lips, then tried to swallow to soothe my parched throat.

  We swept over the black sea, the wind whipping over me. He seemed to be taking a curving path around the outskirts of Mag Mell. After another minute, I could feel his path begin to descend.

  “We’re closing in on the Court of Silks.” His heart beat against my ribs, and his warmth pulsed around my body as we flew.

  In his arms, my wet dress had gone from ice-cold to warm. The white fabric was still damp enough to be see-through—a fact that Salem did not miss, given where his eyes kept straying.

  I regretted pulling my jacket off in the water.

  As we swept over the shoreline, I looked down at a rocky coast lined with ruined buildings. We were outside the gates of Mag Mell.

  Salem landed gently, not far from the waves crashing against the shore, and I slid down his body. Only ten feet away, stone ruins stood at the water’s edge. They looked like the remnants of a medieval abbey, but glistening with seawater in the moonlight. High above, the arches towered over us, tall as trees and piercing the skies.

  “It’s enchanted, I take it?” I asked. “The hidden realm is concealed by magic?”

  Salem’s eyes pierced the dark
ness, dusky hues that shifted from umber to periwinkle. “Yes. I just need to remember exactly how to pull the enchantment away.”

  “Is there anything I need to know before we go in?”

  He turned to me with an easy smile. “It’s the court of pleasure, so you could try to enjoy yourself.”

  I lifted my wrists. “The visible reminder of death coursing through my veins might put a bit of a damper on that, I think.”

  His smile faded fast. “Well, all I can tell you is that Lady Richelle, Maid of Night, can be manipulative in her own way. But she is a fae oracle, which means she cannot lie. It’s her own curse. So, whatever she tells us will be the truth. It’s been a long time since I’ve come here, so beyond that, I can’t tell you too much.”

  As I stepped closer, my eyes danced over carvings in the stones—seashells, tridents, curling waves. “So, this court—it’s a part of Mag Mell? You used to rule over them?”

  “In a way.” I watched as his feathered wings disappeared into the shadows. “They pay tribute to the king, and so they have his protection. But with the enchantment over the city, they can develop their own laws and customs. People mostly forget about them, unless coming here for a night of pleasure.”

  He pressed his hand against a stone carving of a mermaid and whispered something under his breath. Light radiated from his body, and the stone glowed red beneath his hand. Like molten lava spreading out, the magic slid over the ruined arch until it had overtaken all of it.

  “What’s this spell you’re using?” I asked.

  “A king is connected to his land. When I was first banished, the land itself shut me out. No doors would have opened. The trees would have wrapped their boughs around me to choke me if I’d set foot in this place. But with an ailing king, the land is welcoming me back.”

  I hugged myself, waiting to see a court spring up around me. A buried thought was churning in the depths of my mind, a little maelstrom of worry. But whatever it was, I pushed it back down under the surface.