Faery Forged

by Donna Joy Usher

  Also by Donna Joy Usher

  The Chanel Series

  Cocoa and Chanel

  Goons 'n' Roses

  Tess's Tale

  Billy

  Goons 'n' Roses PLUS Tess's Tale - Books Two and Three in The Chanel Series

  The Chanel Series: Books 1-3 (The Chanel Series Box Set One)

  Two Weddings and a Fugitive

  Two Weddings and a Fugitive (Book 4 in The Chanel Series) Plus The Seven Steps to Closure

  The War Faery Trilogy

  Faery Born

  Faery Forged

  Faery Revenge

  The War Faery Trilogy: Books 2-3

  The War Faery Trilogy: Books 1-3

  Standalone

  The Seven Steps to Closure

  Faery Forged

  Book Two in the War Faery Series

  Donna Joy Usher

  Lush Publications

  Perth

  Faery Forged Copyright © 2015 by Donna Joy Usher.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  Previously in Faery Born...

  1. The Bad News Is, There Is No Good News

  2. We’re Off To See The Wizard

  3. They Seek Us Here, They Seek Us There

  4. Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire

  5. On The Shoulders Of Giants

  6. The Rat Is In The Trap

  7. When Day Meets Night

  8. Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place

  9. Mirror Mirror On The Wall...

  10. All Hail The King

  11. Monsters, Monsters Everywhere

  12. Home Sweet Home

  13. Rise of the Dark Lord

  14. The Aftermath

  Thank You

  About Me

  What To Read Next...

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of my loyal fans for your emails, tweets and Facebook messages. Your kind words make the late nights and hard work worth it.

  Thanks also go to my editor, Felicity Kay, for her tireless work, her in-depth grammar lessons and her sparkling company, and to my cover designer, Derek Murphy, for another amazing cover.

  I also want to thank my Mum for always being there for me. I love you, Mum.

  Last but not least, I would like to thank you for buying Faery Forged. I truly hope you enjoy it.

  FREE BOOK OFFER

  As my thank you to you for entrusting me with your entertainment, I’d love to give you one of my books for free. Please find my free book offer at the end of Faery Forged.

  Previously in Faery Born...

  In Book One of the War Faery Trilogy, Isadora Scrumpleton (Izzy) is finally found by her familiar. The only problem is that he is a dog, an unprecedented event in the witching world. But even though his presence gives her access to her magic, she is unable to control her powers.

  When the Faery Queen, Eloise, comes knocking on her door, Izzy learns that not only is she half-witch, half-faery, but that she is a dream-walker who roams the dreamland Trillania while she sleeps. In Trillania, she has been dating the scrumptious Aethan, a Faery Prince, and son of Eloise.

  Unlike other faery dream-walkers, she has no memory of this because her witch-half, which is dominant in her waking hours, allows for no memory of these night-time dalliances.

  After goblins crash her eighteenth birthday party, she joins the faery Border Guard and starts officially courting Aethan. Galanta, the evil goblin Queen, takes a personal interest in her and her relationship with Aethan. Izzy eventually realises that Aethan has been trapped into courting her by his Border Guard binding, a spell that prevents them from talking to others about Trillania.

  Humiliated, Izzy runs away from him during an expedition into Trillania and calls Emerald, a dragon, to her. She rides Emerald into battle against the goblins, but is overcome and captured. Galanta tortures her, but an unexpected effect of the torture enables her to access her powers and escape.

  After she has healed, Aethan reveals his true feelings for her, but is immediately kidnapped by Galanta. Izzy rides with the Border Guard to the Black Mountains in their bid to save him. There, they encounter a barrier that only she and her arch-nemesis, Isgranelda, are able to pass.

  She and Isgranelda traverse the mountain and find Aethan unconscious, but alive. Isgranelda sheds her shape-shifting guise to reveal she has been Galanta all along. A vicious battle erupts between the two, but Galanta escapes before Izzy can kill her.

  Izzy drips blood onto the rock where Aethan sleeps, releasing him from Galanta’s spell. The rock splits in two and, as a strange wind blows around her, her two sides merge and her memories of Aethan return. He wakes as she kisses him, but when he opens his eyes and looks at her he has no memory of her.

  The rest of the Border Guard arrives as goblin drums begin beating. They all flee down the mountain and back to Isilvitania. Izzy returns to her home, quickly falling asleep so that she can access Trillania to see what Galanta is up to. She is horrified to see Galanta weaving a spell over the rock on which Aethan lay.

  While Izzy watches, Galanta sacrifices a little girl, releasing her blood onto the rock. A shape begins to emerge, flowing out of the rock until a man has formed. As the man speaks, Izzy is horrified to realise that Galanta has released Santanas Gabrielle, the mad War Faery, from the stone he was imprisoned in 12 years ago.

  Now… read on to find out what fate has in store for Izzy in Faery Forged.

  1

  The Bad News Is, There Is No Good News

  Silent screams sounded in my head as I struggled against the bed sheets. Wet with sweat, the material wrapped my legs like a cocoon. I tore and pulled until first one leg and then the other escaped their silky prison. Then I collapsed back on the bed, my breath coming in hoarse rasps and my heart thundering as if about to burst from my chest and race around the room.

  I stared at the ceiling without seeing it. Instead, what I had just witnessed played through my mind like a horror movie stuck on loop.

  Do something.

  I blinked until my vision returned and forcibly relaxed my hands. One-by-one my fingers released their death grip on my sheets.

  You have to do something.

  Scrubbing tears from my cheeks, I threw the covers back, clawing through my wardrobe for fresh jeans and a t-shirt.

  You have to tell Rako.

  I threw my clothes on and shoved my feet into sneakers, giving up on the laces the third time my shaking hands failed to tie a bow.

  He’ll know what to do.

  I took the stairs two at a time and burst into the kitchen. Grams sat at the kitchen table, a cup of tea in one hand and a spoon in the other. My familiar, Scruffy, sat at her feet, staring hopefully at her lunch.

  ‘Who died?’ she asked.

  I pawed through the contents of my bag searching for my car keys.

  She put her spoon down and peered at me. ‘Izzy, what’s going on?’

  I turned my bag upside down and shook it. The contents rained onto the floor. The keys were not amongst them.

  ‘Isadora Scrumpleton.’ Grams’ voice would normally have stopped me in my tracks.

  The fruit bowl!

  Throwing the bag on the floor, I pushed past her to the fruit bowl and snagged my keys out from under a bunch of bananas.

  I bent to retrieve the bag, whacking my head on the corner of the kitchen table. Black clouded my vision, but the pain was nothing; nothing compared to what I knew.

  Grams stopped me as I was shovelling my things back into my bag. ‘You can’t drive like that.’

  ‘Santanas is back.’ I wrenched open the front door and sprinted to th
e car. Scruffy jumped onto my lap and over to the passenger side while I fumbled with the keys.

  The third time I dropped them onto the floor I had to concede that perhaps she had a point. My hands were shaking too much to turn on the ignition, how was I going to drive safely?

  Grams wrenched open the car door. ‘Move over,’ she ordered. She waited while I slithered to the other side of the car and then slipped behind the wheel. Plucking the keys off the floor she deftly inserted one into the ignition.

  ‘Show off,’ I said as the car roared to life.

  ‘You know this for sure?’ She drove out the driveway and headed up the main road, her foot flat to the floor.

  ‘Yes.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘It’s all my fault.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for not being able to stop Galanta.’ Grams pulled into the other lane and raced around a car doing the legal speed limit.

  ‘Oh, yes I can.’ I shook my head vehemently, fighting the nausea that crawled up my throat. ‘Last night, while I was saving Aethan, I released Santanas’s soul.’

  We were silent for the rest of the drive to the Border Guard barracks.

  ***

  ‘You’re early.’ Rako looked as if he could do with another few hours’ sleep. ‘I said sixteen hundred.’

  ‘Galanta resurrected Santanas.’ I yanked the seat out from the other side of his desk and perched on the edge.

  All signs of weariness disappeared. ‘In Trillania?’

  I nodded my head. ‘She sacrificed a little girl.’

  He slumped back into his seat. ‘You actually saw him?’

  ‘I don’t know what he looks like but I’m pretty sure it was him.’

  He ran his fingertips down the long scar on his cheek while he stared at the space above my head. ‘But how?’

  I squirmed on the edge of the hard stool. ‘It’s my fault.’ I leant forward and put my head in my hands. ‘I released his soul from the stone.’

  ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Aethan was lying on it. I read the poem and gave blood.’

  ‘Do you remember the poem?’

  I looked up at him through my fingers. ‘Only blood can let me live. Only blood can set me free. Blood of my own one true love, or of a descendant born of me.’

  Air hissed through his teeth. ‘That’s the stone all right. But you shouldn’t have been able to activate that spell.’

  ‘I’m his niece.’

  He shook his head. ‘Had to be offspring from his loins. He didn’t have any. That’s why we chose that. His one true love was dead and he had no kids. It was a no-brainer.’

  ‘Why did you have to choose anything? Why couldn’t you have just locked him up in that rock forever?’ Petulance rode my voice like a bull rider.

  ‘A spell that powerful had to have an out. A relief valve of sorts. We knew he’d be fighting it from the inside so we couldn’t risk the pressure blowing the whole thing apart.’

  It made sense in a weird way. There was still a lot (nearly everything) I didn’t know about faery magic.

  ‘We all need to hear the whole story. Wait here.’ He hopped up.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. There was something I needed to know. ‘This thing with Aethan, is it the same as it was with me?’

  ‘His memory loss?’

  I nodded my head.

  The look on his face softened. ‘I would assume so.’

  ‘So if he gets told anything about me?’

  He nodded. ‘He may not get those memories back.’ He stared at me for a second longer before he turned and strode from the room. Ten minutes later he returned. ‘Not enough room in here,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  Scruffy and I followed him up the sandstone stairs to the top floor of the barracks. I’d never been into this part of the building before. Down the end of the corridor was a large conference room. Several of the Border Guard were there already. Wilfred grinned and gestured to the empty seat next to him.

  Aethan sat on the other side of Wilfred. He glanced at me as I sat, but returned to his conversation without even a smile. I did a valiant job of ignoring the knife stabbing into my chest.

  More men filed into the room over the next few minutes, but Rako didn’t close the door until Wolfgang, my one-time faery tutor, arrived. He gave me a small wave and took the seat at the opposite end from Rako.

  ‘Isadora has some disturbing news,’ Rako said. He waved a hand in my direction.

  I cleared my throat and told them about how Isgranelda had really been Galanta, the Goblin Queen. I told them about the stone, and how I had woken Aethan. And finally, I told them about what I had seen in Trillania.

  There was a deathly silence when I had finished. Even Wilfred seemed lost for words. And then Rako said, ‘A shape-shifter? Wolfgang, is that possible?’

  Wolfgang tapped his fingertips on the table. ‘Years ago I heard rumours that a shape-shifter had emerged in the west. I didn’t give them much credence.’ He sighed. ‘Looks like I should have.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Aethan said. ‘There hasn’t been a shape-shifter in a thousand years. Besides,’ he let out a laugh, ‘how can we believe this, this,’ he waved a hand in my direction, ‘girl about something this important.’

  The knife in my chest twisted painfully.

  ‘If Izzy said that’s what happened, then I believe her.’ At least I could still count on Wilfred.

  ‘As do I,’ Rako said.

  ‘And I,’ Wolfgang said.

  Aethan stared at me, distrust etched into the lines of his perfect face. Then he shrugged. ‘Seems like I’m outnumbered.’

  ‘It’s not a total disaster – yet,’ Wolfgang said.

  ‘How is this not a disaster?’ I wanted to scream with frustration. Why were we still sitting here? We needed to be doing something. Anything.

  ‘He still doesn’t have a body.’

  ‘But I saw him.’

  ‘You saw his spirit reforming. That’s why Galanta had to do it in Trillania. If she reforms him here, without a body ready, his soul will fragment. But a spirit can live in Trillania forever.’

  ‘So she still needs to join him to a body,’ Wilfred looked thoughtful. ‘Why wouldn’t she have put him into one of her warriors?’

  ‘She needs an empty shell with a beating heart,’ Wolfgang said. ‘So his spirit can enter uncontested. And it would have to be compatible with his spirit.’

  ‘A faery.’ Aethan leant back and put his hands behind his head. ‘She needs a faery. What can we do to stop her?’

  ‘Only she can join his soul to a body, so it’s very simple. We kill her.’

  I liked the sound of that a lot.

  ‘First we have to catch her,’ Rako said.

  From there the conversation turned to one on tactics. Emissaries would need to be sent to warn and unify the magical lands. The Heads of State and other Border Guard units would have to be notified of the threat. And a rotating roster of Border Guards would be organised so the hunt for Galanta was continuous.

  ‘You three,’ Rako pointed at Wilfred, Aethan and me, ‘why don’t you go in and look at the site. See if you can find anything useful.’

  Wilfred got an armband for himself and then the three of us trooped down to the sleep room. I tried not to notice the rippling of Aethan’s muscles as he vaulted onto the bed next to mine. Thoughts like that would just get me into trouble.

  The adrenaline rush I had been operating on had vanished, leaving only exhaustion in its wake. I needed no sleep spell to get to Trillania today.

  While I waited for Aethan and Wilfred to join me on the other side, I clothed myself in battle gear. Fitted leather pants with daggers strapped to my thighs and ankles, and a fur vest which left my arms free for movement. I added a dagger to the outside of my left bicep, a sword across my back, and a quiver and bow. Then I sent out a mental call to Emerald. There was no answer.

  Before I could start to worry, Wilfred and Aethan shimmered into view.

  ‘
The A Team is back in business.’ Wilfred held up his hand for a high five.

  I ignored it and cut my eyes to Aethan. He didn’t know we were any sort of team let alone the A team.

  ‘Oh yeah, right.’ Wilfred’s arm fell limply to his side.

  ‘So, umm, Isadora,’ Aethan said my name awkwardly, ‘where did the resurrection happen?’

  ‘Edge of the Black Forest. I’ll take you there.’ I reached out and grabbed Wilfred’s hand, leaving him to connect to Aethan, and then I pictured the thicket I had hidden in earlier that day.

  ‘Owwwwww.’ Wilfred let out a screech as I landed us inside the thicket I had crouched in. He vanished from my side and re-appeared standing on the other side of the bush. What I could see of his face through his bushy, orange beard was covered in little cuts.

  ‘Oops,’ I said, trying to suppress my grin. The big man had done far worse to me over the years.

  Aethan seemed oblivious to Wilfred and me as he combed the clearing for evidence. I think the broken stone covered in dark, dried blood was all the evidence he needed. The little girl was gone and I tried not to think of her parents’ grief when they found her lifeless body.

  I crawled out from the thicket.

  ‘So that’s where you hid?’ Aethan pointed at the bush.

  I nodded my head. ‘Galanta stood there.’ I pointed at the area next to the stone.

  ‘You were lucky not to be seen.’

  I moved to where he was standing and looked at my hiding spot. The side of the bush was patchy in places. I had been lucky.

  ‘Describe what happened.’

  Was he asking because he didn’t trust me? I took a deep breath and repeated what I had told them earlier.