Falling Into Faerie After

by Mercedes Jade

  Falling Into Faerie After

  Faerie Series, Volume 2

  Mercedes Jade

  Published by Mercedes Jade, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  FALLING INTO FAERIE AFTER

  First edition. February 2, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Mercedes Jade.

  Written by Mercedes Jade.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1:

  Chapter 2:

  Chapter 3:

  Chapter 4:

  Chapter 5:

  Chapter 6:

  Chapter 7:

  Chapter 8:

  Chapter 9:

  Chapter 10:

  Chapter 11:

  Chapter 12:

  Chapter 13:

  Chapter 14:

  Chapter 15:

  Chapter 16:

  Chapter 17:

  Chapter 18:

  Chapter 19:

  Acknowledgements and Endnotes:

  Every Witch Demon but Mine (Book 1 of Maeren Series)

  About the Author

  To Sara, the nicest dick I know, and Kate, the one that can tell you all the books with the best dicks.

  Jutta, you get your own line.

  Paula, too.

  Chapter 1:

  I was a poor loser.

  It had been a few weeks since Dain had declared checkmate. If there had been an actual chess board in front of me at the time he claimed a preemptive victory, I would have smashed it over his head and fed him the game pieces, starting with the black king. My life had been at risk and Dain made it sound like a twisted Faerie game that he won.

  None of the Fae had even thought to tell me we were playing until Kheelan helped his estranged father kidnap me and Orin explained the rules of engagement. They couldn’t lie, but to the Fae, manipulation and bargains accomplished more than the simple truth. Everyone had come tumbling down against each other in Faerie during the battle, knocking us over one-by-one like dominoes as Kheelan planned. I could have refused to fall, escaped from Faerie without completing the Claim the Fae Marked onto me and left Kheelan open to attack for his part in setting us all up.

  I made a decisive move in the end and what that would cost me was unknown.

  The game the Fae had played on me wasn’t the first I had lost my temper over. My family knew about my inability to lose gracefully. Monopoly made me want to shove that metal boot piece into the nearest player’s throat, or more painfully, into the smallest nook and cranny I could bury it to never be seen again.

  My oldest stepbrother, Matthew, swore he still felt phantom fullness in his left nostril whenever he passed the Monopoly box, where it had been banished to the top shelf of our library at home. His twin, Jackson, actually tried to bury the game in our yard and I went out in the rain to dig it up, trailing mud all over the carpets as I hauled the grimy box back into the house like something pulled out of the grave and placed it on its top shelf.

  Nobody played games with me that knew better. It wasn’t really a need to win so much as a desperate fear of losing something precious to me. My mother called me hard-headed, or even rock-brained on some occasions, well aware that I had inherited the stubbornness gene from her side of the family.

  At least, I assumed it was from her side as I never met my Faerie father. I didn’t even know about him until a few weeks ago and my mother seemed as clueless to his inhuman heritage from the few sly questions I had snuck into our conversation since I found out. Believe me, asking if your dad came out of a fairytale isn’t easy unless you’re willing to look crazy.

  My mother had enough worries. I wasn’t going to add to them. No, I was done letting fate push me around.

  Checkmate. Ha. I loosed an arrow at the skinny birch tree just peeking behind a big oak where I had slapped a golf ball sized spot of yellow paint, taking a slow, deep breath in as the arrow thunked dead center. Practice had perfected what my Faerie father gave me, which was why I was out here in the wooded conservation area all alone. If the release was as good as I had been training to achieve, there would be a long nick on the big oak tree in front where the arrow had glanced by it to hit my target.

  Aeric would have been surprised at how I had progressed from the first lesson he had given me in archery. I flexed my stiff fingers in the leather, three-finger glove Jackson had bought me and pulled another arrow from my quiver to shoot the target once more. The narrow wood shafts felt so natural in my fingers now, my preference for plain shafts without paint and simple metal arrowheads, and I fletched them myself in feathers of every colour of the rainbow. No black or white for me.

  Thunk was music to my ears. The wood made a clean echo of a solid hit, nothing like the meaty sound of a cat-o-nine-tails thudding into Kheelan as it ripped the flesh from his back and me awake into a nightmare.

  Another arrow, bow pointed down, load and nock, up and aim, release...

  I missed the entire tree, cursing. If there was one thing my weeks of grueling practice had taught me, it was to take my time, seconds rushed leading to wasted arrows. Distraction ate more arrows now than my weak arm and shaky aim of the first week. I strengthened up quick enough, power bleeding through my glamoured form, whether due to my training or the weaker magic outside of Faerie to hide my true body.

  A glamoured disguise was essential if I wanted to keep pretending to be human enough to stay with my family. The twins knew the truth about my Halfling heritage, but they would never do anything that would result in me having to leave. Ever since I moved back home, both of them had been strangely quiet, as if they were afraid of saying something wrong. I suppose I had been a bit sensitive whenever one of them had mentioned the Fae to me, especially Dain.

  Truth was I didn’t have the answers to their questions so I pushed the twins away in the best way I knew, growling at them and playing the grouchy older sister.

  I closed my eyes and nocked another arrow blind, bringing it up and aiming at the unique glow of life from my target tree, thousands of shades distinguishable to my magic like the subtle scent and taste that my mother’s chocolate chip cookies had from every other chocolate chip cookie in the world. My lashes opened and I released the arrow, feeling the beautiful flight before I saw the arrow slice right through the middle of my first shot, splintering the shaft.

  I cursed again. That was another wasted arrow, although for better reason. I was still going to have to rip it from the tree and dispose of the evidence of my skills before anyone else in the family found out that I had developed into Robin Hood with only a few weeks and plenty of arrows.

  It was getting too dark to shoot much longer. My human vision was already struggling as twilight settled over the wooded ravine surrounding my parents’ home. I might be able to get a few more arrows into the target by closing my eyes and following my magic, but finding my way home would be like walking blindfolded. Even memorizing the path by treading it every afternoon wouldn’t stop me from tripping over stray roots and rocks.

  My mother would worry if I wasn’t back by dark and send the twins out after me. I was avoiding my brothers without being obvious about it, so I couldn’t give them an excuse to get me alone.

  Jackson had been the most vocal about what happened. He wanted to know where Orin was when I returned to the clearing to pick them up. This was after the magical little pony knocked the twins out with a sleeping spell that Orin lied about so he could hook up with me in a nearby lagoon. I didn’t explain any of it, telling Jackson to grab his bow and stuff it, except I used foul language and kicked his quiver of arrows over when he told me h
e wasn’t going anywhere without that perverted pony.

  Matthew got one good look at my face and had packed the weapons for himself and his brother, convincing Jackson that I had been through enough and needed their help. I had been willing to accept any excuse to get out of there before Dain came back, even if it made me look like a weak-kneed damsel in distress. Speed had been of the essence after my spectacular exit from the lagoon in which I had put six arrows in Dain’s chest.

  I only managed to get the arrows into Dain because he had been at point blank range and he didn’t move until the last arrow sent him tumbling into the lake. Now, I had better aim but also regrets that would stop me from doing it all over again if I had another chance.

  My temper had gotten the better of me. Reason had abandoned my normally sensible side when fear fed my insecurities and I had thought Dain might kill me for betraying him with Kheelan. I hadn’t actually betrayed Dain. He might look at it differently, especially since I had attacked him in what may have been a misunderstanding.

  Yes, it looked really bad in retrospect. It wasn’t as if I could take the arrows back or that an apology could fix what I had done wrong. It couldn’t erase my memory of Dain’s arrogant stare when he found me fucking Orin.

  That saying about being caught red-handed pretty much applied except it had been my face that turned red, first with modesty because it had been my virginity I gave up and then with embarrassment as I felt unfairly judged. Dain had been curt and not in the mood for explanations.

  I had three arrows left for my difficult target behind the oak. Trying to push aside my worries about Dain, I made myself take a deep breath and nock another arrow. There was a peace to be found in the simple exercise.

  It was more than a way for me to find my center, as important as that was after my unintended trip to Faerie. I had to prepare myself. The Fae had found me once and I was sure they would find me again. Even if it wasn’t the Light Fae that had kidnapped me for their crazy, evil King, I had other Marks that knew where my parents lived.

  Lucky for me when I ran from Faerie, Eloden and Loren were missing from the spot I found the twins sleeping alone in the woods. Orin had promised that they were watching over my brothers, but I had been too relieved to care about another lie. Nobody was around to interfere with my exit. Eloden had turned especially bossy after seeing Loren trying to get in my pants and I knew he would have made me wait for Dain if he had been there.

  Falin was burning down the woods around our ears for all I knew at the time, but I was really, really grateful that he wasn’t with the twins when I had gotten to them. His massive dragon form was in my nightmares, dark wings and body wrapped in the night until he had opened his snout and razed the area the Light Fae had held me at after capture to ash with bright, orange fire.

  How quickly things had changed. Falin and Aeric introduced me to archery. We had laughed and joked that day and my mother called them my friends. I hadn’t even seen a glimpse of Aeric during the Faerie battle but his magic had made me want to drop to my knees and beg mercy even from a distance.

  I missed my target again. Today was especially bad. I had been having trouble at work ever since I returned and it was affecting my focus as much as my bad memories. Of course, I was fired for walking off the job when the Light Fae had found me at one of the restaurants I worked, but it was my volunteer position at the lab doing genetics research that bothered me.

  My boss found little things to pick on for the last week, and yesterday, he accused me of giving a rival lab confidential data. I had been in Faerie when the alleged data breach happened, but it wasn’t as if I could provide an alibi. It was particularly bad timing for my boss to be giving me difficulty because I needed time off, and now I was afraid to ask. He was hinting that he wanted me on payroll, which I suspected was so he could get me better under his thumb, but I didn’t want to commit to anything. I had other plans to consider.

  Deciding not to bother with my last two arrows, I walked over to the target to get rid of the evidence of my good aim. I grasped the wooden shaft of the second arrow that had split the first one, hitting bullseye, gripping close to the base with two hands and pulled, hard and steady. It didn’t give a millimeter, firmly wedged with splints of the first arrow still trimming the sides of it.

  Giving a quick glance around at the rapidly darkening woods and seeing nobody and nothing unusual, I closed my eyes and felt for the snowflake of my Fae magic. It was milder here, more of a frost around my heart instead of an icy center like in Faerie, but the magic still responded the same, a quick nursery rhyme from my lips and the thought of my ice melting allowing me to peel my glamour off.

  My true form was bigger, taller and most important of all, much stronger. I only needed one hand to pull the last arrow from the tree and then my thumb and forefinger to grasp and yank out the splintered remains of the first arrow. The arrowhead was buried deep, but it was dull enough to blend in with the tree from a distance.

  “Well, kitten, I see your aim has improved.”

  Chapter 2:

  There was no way I could claim that I hadn’t been given enough time to prepare for the inevitable. It had nearly been a month. One of my Marks was going to come for me eventually, although I expected any of them over Loren since I had barely given him an accidental nip. Even if Dain had shown up, I would have been less surprised.

  Of course, Dain was also the least likely to give me a warning if he did show. More likely, I would get a knock to the back of my head when I turned some dark corner and I would wake to Dain’s vengeful face. He was still dripping blood from a chest full of arrows in my nightmares, two twisting horns protruding from his skull that my imagination made up and the bat wings from the first time he claimed to show me his true form.

  I always woke screaming.

  For the first week after I left Faerie with the twins, I was a panicky, anxious mess, checking over my shoulder and wearing my bow or keeping it very close at hand. I no longer had a charm to hide it from sight and it wasn’t a typical accessory for a twenty-one year old human girl. Only after another week passed by without a hint of magic or my dangerous Fae stalkers following me had I believed myself truly free.

  That was when I started preparing. My plan had everything in place already and I had decided the first hint I got that one of the Fae were still around, then I would disappear. The old me might have hidden in my apartment, only going out with my hoodie armour on as I avoided doing anything that would draw attention to me. I would have cowered like the mouse I had been called by Kheelan.

  Halfling Eve was full of new strengths.

  I yanked an arrow from the quiver on my back, loading and nocking my bow with practiced speed made inhumanly fast in my Dark Elf form. Loren caught me from behind before I could even half turn, shoving me up hard against my target tree face first and yanking the bow from my fingers so easily that I may as well stayed glamoured human.

  Well, crap.

  It wasn’t the first time Loren had taken my weapon from me. Of course, he had a lot more experience with fighting, having grown up in a Light Fae army as a healer and possessing the body of a soldier. He also had the advantage of surprise.

  I spat out bark, tasting blood on my lips. “Unhand me, asshole,” I muttered at Loren, voice still a bit gravelly from the change.

  The scent of fresh-cut grass and pears teased my nose, masking the metallic taste of blood in my mouth as Loren leaned over close to my ear. I wiggled against the tight grip he had wrapped around the wrist of my bow hand, but he quickly grabbed my other wrist and circled it behind me to join its pair, manacling them both with one overgrown paw. At least he didn’t bind me with magic. I was helpless against it.

  Blood trickled down my chin and a few drops went flying as I whipped my head to the side, almost getting Loren in the face with the motion. I was going to make a mess of my shirt any moment now. My mother might not mind me getting my knees skinned but I’m sure she would draw the line at coming back dri
pping blood.

  “Are you deaf?” I bit out, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth to lick the stinging abrasion. “Or are you just desperate for me to hurt you?” I asked, using my deeper voice to add menace.

  Inside, I was shaking. I barely knew Loren. He was dangerous until proven otherwise. Last time, I had Eloden to keep him in place and for a moment, I wished for my protective Mark to be here. He was experienced at guarding me.

  Loren gave the shell of my ear closest to him a lick and then blew cold air on it. I shivered, already feeling the cool touch of his Light magic everywhere he held and pushed up against me.

  “Naughty kitties don’t get to play,” he whispered.

  “I thought you told me they get their cream taken away last time,” I retorted, rolling my eyes at his continued use of kitten metaphors. “You better be careful, boy, or I’m liable to get riled up and scratch,” I warned, except I didn’t bother with a metaphor.

  He groaned behind me, a faint but unmistakable sound of male suffering. “You better make it hurt good after all the trouble I went through to track you down,” he said against my neck, giving me another lick.

  This time I really fought to get free, knowing better than to let a Fae that had asked to Mark me before near my neck. I may be hard-headed but I could learn. Hoping Loren was wearing soft shoes, I stomped my heel down on his instep, following quickly with a head butt backwards when he took a tiny step to avoid my heel again.

  He still had my wrists in his steely grip but instead of groaning he was cursing and he had pulled my front side off the tree as he took another step back to keep his feet out of stomping range. I think he was trying to keep from hurting me much, which was to his disadvantage. I had no such gentlemanly inclinations.

  I kicked backwards, aiming for a knee and getting his shin instead. I stomped the toes of his other foot. Then, I dropped my weight onto his arms, leaning forward in a dead drop that he hadn’t been expecting by another creative curse and how rapidly the ground was coming up towards my face.