The dogs began to bay, and Tomas gave a shout.
Suddenly, they were surrounded by the pack, streaming into the hall, snarling and biting, and Ava remembered the time when they had been after her, and was very grateful they were now on her side.
The men dropped her, and the dogs swarmed her, some even standing on her, as they growled and bared their teeth at the interlopers.
“All right, all right.” The messenger backed away, arms raised.
Ava was pleased to see more than a few bites and tears on those arms.
The other man joined him, bleeding from his face and arms.
Tomas stood behind them, a shovel in his hand, and both men started when they realized he was there and edged around him.
Velda bent beside her and undid the gag, and Ava gave her a look of gratitude before rolling to her feet, her arms still tied to her side. “You can tell the speaker that he has now ensured I will never come to his court. And he has made an enemy of me.”
“Why?” Velda asked. “She is an Yngstra. She is the lifeblood of this country. Why would you do this?”
Neither men replied. They turned and ran, and Ava ran after them, the dogs jostling for place beside her. She stopped when she reached the bottom of the stairs, watching as they swung up onto horses and galloped away.
Tomas stood beside her, and then tugged the knots on the ropes around her arms loose.
Her legs gave way, so she landed on the stone steps, and the dogs were suddenly licking her and yipping, and she cried and laughed as she rubbed them and kissed them back.
Then she stood and gave Velda a hug. “You are formidable. Thank you.”
Velda wiped away tears. “I don't understand why.”
“Perhaps the same reason I was taken by Herron. The same reason my mother was taken before I was born. The same reason the Yngstras live quietly in the country.”
Velda opened her mouth to object, to say that would never be done by one of her own countrymen, and then snapped it closed. Nodded.
“Whatever the reason,” Ava said, “the time has come for me to leave. Because those men will be back. Probably with others to help them.” She looked at Tomas and Velda. “Is there somewhere you can go for a while? Where you'll be safe?”
Tomas nodded. “I know a place.” He bent down to rub the dogs’ heads. “Can take the dogs, too.”
“Thank you. If I go now, as soon as I've packed, can you still give the shirts to your friend tomorrow?”
Tomas nodded.
Velda didn't say anything more. She came to help Ava pack, but she said nothing, not until Ava tightened the strap on her saddlebags and turned for a final farewell.
Velda grabbed her in a tight hug. “Where are you going to go?”
“Somewhere safe, I promise.” Ava thought of Luc, drawing the soldiers into the woods to save her. “To someone who puts my life before his own.”
Velda gasped and drew back. “A lover?”
“A lover,” Ava agreed. “I'll be back when I can.”
“You better be, girl. The dogs'll miss you. We'll miss you.” Tomas wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
Ava swung into the saddle and rode up the hill, the way she'd come only three weeks before.
The hounds bayed behind her, but it was in sorrow this time, not excitement.
She felt excitement, though.
She was heading for the Rising Wave.
She was headed for Luc.
The Rising Wave series continues on January 12, 2021 with The Turncoat King, which is now available for pre-order.
More Rising Wave
The Rising Wave is the start of a fantasy romance series of the same title. The first full-length novel in the series, The Turncoat King, will be released on 12 January 2021. The second book, The Threadbare Queen, will be released at the end of 2021.
Also by Michelle Diener
Science Fiction Novels
Sky Raiders series:
Intended (Short Story Prequel)
Sky Raiders
Calling the Change
Shadow Warrior
Class 5 series:
Dark Horse
Dark Deeds
Dark Minds
Dark Matters
Verdant String series:
Interference & Insurgency Box Set
Breakaway
Breakeven
Trailblazer
High Flyer
Historical Fiction Novels
Susanna Horenbout and John Parker series:
In a Treacherous Court
Keeper of the King’s Secrets
In Defense of the Queen
Regency London series:
The Emperor’s Conspiracy
Banquet of Lies
A Dangerous Madness
Other historical novels:
Daughter of the Sky
Fantasy Novels by Michelle Diener
Mistress of the Wind
The Rising Wave series:
The Rising Wave (Novella included in Warlords, Witches & Wolves: A Fantasy Realms Anthology)
The Turncoat King
The Threadbare Queen
The Dark Forest series:
The Golden Apple
The Silver Pear
Short Paranormal Fiction
Breaking Out: Part I (Short story)
Breaking Out: Part II (Novella)
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About the Author
Michelle Diener is an award winning author of historical fiction, science fiction and fantasy.
Michelle was born in London and currently lives in Australia with her husband and children.
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Of Kisses & Wishes
A Fae Guardians Novella by Lana Pecherczyk
About Of Kisses & Wishes
Anise has always been teased for being a lesser fae of Elphyne. With no magic, no ability to shift, she’s left with little faith in herself. Two things she wishes for: the kisses of a long time friend who never dates outside his shifter community; and to find the elusive Ice-Witch, a dark fae who promises to give her everything she needs to feel whole—magic, and the ability to shift.
Caraway left his pacifist family to join the Guardians and became a ruthless protector of Elphyne. He wanted to prove his breed could be more than docile prey, but two years ago, he failed at protecting the most important fae in his life—his best-friend Anise.
When a new mission forces them together on a quest, secrets and desires are revealed. But have they been revealed too late? Even if Caraway can stop Anise from making the worst mistake of her life, no one walks away from the Ice-Witch with their soul in tact.
Chapter 1
Glass coin tinkled as it landed in Anise’s hand. She counted, and then checked down the length of the bar to see if her coworkers watched. Once sure she was unobserved, she pocketed the amount instead of adding it to the Birdcage’s nightly takings. She reached beneath the bar and pulled out a small vial of red glowing liquid. Forcing a smile on her face, she handed it to the waiting female wolf-shifter with wide, earnest eyes.
“You get caught with this outside of Cornucopia, you didn’t get it from me. Understood?” Anise warned.
The female smiled tightly, looked down at the tail swishing behind Anise, and struggled to hide her disgust. “I know the deal.”
Anise scowled back, immediately on the defensive. Any fae who stared at her tail like it was mo
nstrous classed themselves superior to those lesser fae, those like Anise who appeared different to humans, but held no mana from the Well, and thus couldn’t shift or use magic. Lesser fae were considered only one step away from animals.
The shouts of cruel children surfaced from Anise’s memories.
“Without your tail and ears, you’re basically human!”
“Take that back!”
“You can’t shift. You can’t hunt. You can’t even protect your own kind.”
“Shut up!”
Sing-song taunts. “Human. Dirty, dirty human!”
“If you don’t stop, I’ll tell on you.”
“Who will save you? You have no friends.”
“Are you going to give me what I paid for, or what?”
Anise’s gaze returned to the white-haired female shifter. Like all wolf-shifters, her fur-tipped, pointed ears gave her away. She also had an unremarkable body squeezed into a straight dress that hugged her skinny frame. And she smelled like wolf beneath all that perfume. There was nothing special about her, yet she clearly thought so. Probably the daughter or a distant cousin of some high fae Summer Court lord.
“What are you dumb as well as less?” The female snatched the vial from Anise’s hand, unstoppered the cork, and downed the contents in one hit.
“Easy there.” Anise flinched. “You didn’t even wait for the right dose.”
“I didn’t come to Cornucopia for the right dose. Just like you didn’t come here to feel like the second-rate citizen you are. I’ve taken Scarlixir before. I have plenty of elves as friends. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Anise had to bite her lip to avoid scoffing. Elves may have been the original fae who’d concocted the elixir, but they had no idea how the magical and inebriating mana-infused mixture had been cut and diluted with other chemicals to save coin in production. Anise didn’t even know. She had to go by what the dealer had told her. They didn’t call it Scarlixir for the scarlet color. No. It was because if you overdosed on the euphoric inducing drug, it made you want to claw your skin until it bled. Hence, the scars.
“Suit yourself.” Anise smirked and watched the wolf sashay away to the dance floor. “Ooh, you’re going to be paying for that later, too.”
She glanced up. The three-story verdant nightclub overflowed with greenery. The central column reached all the way to the ceiling where a hole revealed the night sky. The crescent moon had crossed to the other side of the observatory. If she’d looked five minutes later, she’d have missed it, and the signal that her shift was over.
Elation lifted her soul. Finally. She’d been waiting for this moment for five years. Time to go on vacation. She patted the coin in her pocket. There was enough for where she needed to go, but that last sale was the icing on the cake.
Bidding adieu to her co-workers, Anise collected her jacket from the staffroom and checked her bone dagger was safely strapped to her belt before heading home. Not only was the dagger reinforced with mana to make it stronger, but she’d paid extra to spell it to always hit its mark. It cost a fortune, but after she was attacked two years ago and held hostage, she liked to feel secure.
The walk home to her modest apartment was not a safe one, but there were no safe parts of town. Cornucopia was not ruled by any fae kingdom, neither Seelie nor Unseelie. It existed as a neutral territory where all fae-kind could come together. No rules applied. Well, not many. Those rules were enforced by the Order of the Well, who were more like the magic police in terms of offenses to the integrity of the Well. If you were like Anise and held no mana with which to pervert, or held no forbidden metals or plastics, you weren’t even a fly in their swamp. The only other law was that of The Ring, a gladiator-style pit where you solved your differences.
Lucky for Anise, she’d kept to herself during her stay. She’d only left her home town of Crescent Hollow because it was no longer safe there either. As the closest fae settlement to the humans in the wasteland, she’d met the unfortunate fate of being kidnapped and tortured two years earlier. The ringleader of this torture was the Alpha of Crescent Hollow at the time, Lord Thaddeus Nightstalk. He’d been secretly working with humans to bargain for metal cages and weapons so he could control Guardians—the mana-enhanced warriors who worked for the Order of the Well. As part of the deal, Thaddeus had also tortured many of the lesser fae residents of Crescent Hollow, Anise included.
It was pure cowardice. Not only had Thaddeus picked those fae who were more vulnerable, but he also sucked dry what little mana they had so he could give it to the humans for their own nefarious purposes. It was Anise’s only blessing to have no mana to give.
Shivering with reasons nothing to do with the cold, Anise kept her hand poised over her dagger and her eyes wary. Every shadow and insect scuttle made her jolt. By the time she made it to her place, she was a bag of raw nerves. Once inside the one-room apartment, she double bolted the door and lit a candle. Not only did she check every dark crevice of the room, but also beneath the bed. Once satisfied, she crossed to the window, tweaked the drapes, and peeped outside into the dark alley street. Her room was on the second floor, and there was no other way to get into the room other than the front door.
After she washed her face, she pulled the pillows from her bed and stuffed them under the covers so it looked like someone slept there. Then she unsheathed her dagger, got to her knees, and crawled beneath the bed. There she had set up her own little den. A woolen blanket, another pillow, and a collection of her most precious items. A box with her saved coins, a dried flower her friend Caraway had once given her, and a secret invitation addressed to Anise from the Ice-Witch. Her salvation.
Clutching her dagger, she settled and tried not to let the darkness bring the wails and screams from her nightmares. The memories of being trapped in a cage, elevated from the ground, starved, and emaciated.
Two weeks.
She’d been held hostage for two weeks. Little food. Little water. And no one came to save her. Not even the one friend she thought she had.
“Who will save you? You have no friends.”
Anise sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Cradling it to her chest, she clutched the Ice-Witch’s invitation until she fell asleep.
Chapter 2
Caraway always fancied himself a big fae. As a muskox shifter, he towered above most others at an inch over seven-feet tall. Taller than even the legendary Guardians in the Cadre of Twelve. Caraway’s big bones and large frame were stacked with slabs of hard muscle honed from decades of heavy training under the tutelage of the Order’s ruthless preceptors.
All manner of fae shrunk when he arrived in his black leather Guardian uniform. And most looked in fear at his sharp, curved horns as they flowed from the top of his head, then down and out to end at his cheeks. But it was truly the giant metal broadsword strapped to his back that incited the most knee-knocking terror. One cleave of his mighty blade, Justice, and any creature in Elphyne would be cut in half. Metal had the ability to not only halt magic in its tracks but pierce almost any manner of surface. Apart from the Guardians, who’d earned their endorsement through a painstaking ceremony, no other fae was sanctioned to carry metal. Touching the forbidden substance would cut their magic supply from the Well and cause a painful headache.
But not Caraway. Not the Guardians. They could decimate the enemy and use the full force of the gifts the Well had given them. This dual power made them nigh unstoppable in Elphyne.
So he should feel tall. He should feel big. Invincible. But standing where he was, on the Guardian training field at the Order, with the sun blinding him, and facing one of the Twelve, he felt like a four-foot-tall dwarf.
Facing him from about ten feet away was Rush, a wolf-shifter who’d recently mated with Clarke, a human who inexplicably had, and could use, mana. She’d been exposed to the Well over a two-thousand-year sleep, frozen in ice. She thawed a few years ago and brought with her news of an evil human who’d caused the destruction of the old world
and had awoken in this time with the intent to reclaim Elphyne’s resources for himself.
Because Clarke was Rush’s Well-blessed mate, the silver-haired shifter in front of Caraway was not only lethal because he could rip Caraway to shreds with sharp teeth, or slice Caraway with his sword, but also blast him with endless offensive magic without running out of power. If his stores of mana were low, all he needed to do was siphon some from his powerful mate. Rush was indestructible.
How was Caraway going to fight that?
“You’re a disgrace to the herd,” Caraway’s mother’s voice filtered from his memories. “Us muskox don’t fight. We don’t spill blood. We live in harmony with the Well.”
And when a human raiding party had invaded his family’s territory, their pacifist ways could do nothing to protect their kind. Half their herd had been wiped out. But did losing so many lives make Caraway’s mother change her mind? No. She still looked on in disgust as he left on his way to submit to the Guardian initiation.
“Are you going to stand there all day staring into space, or spar with me?” Rush laughed, scratching his gray beard.
The Guardian hadn’t yet released his sword. The handle poked over his shoulder, taunting Caraway.
Caraway’s grip tightened on his own sword, Justice. He narrowed his eyes and then charged. Heavy feet thudded across the grass.
Rush pushed his palm out, the blue Well-blessed markings on his hand glowed brightly, and a gust of sharp, cold wind came at Caraway. Like a wall, the element hit and knocked him backward. He landed hard on his rear, jarring the senses out of him.
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