“Your Highnesses, lords and ladies,” a footman gasped, running up to them. “Her Majesty summons you. A most urgent matter.”
Zeph plucked the flute from Lena’s hand and drained it. “Happy Feast of Moranu, all.”
Heirs of Magic will continue in The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince.
Coming December 2020
Titles by Jeffe Kennedy
FANTASY ROMANCES
HEIRS OF MAGIC
The Long Night of the Crystalline Moon
(in Under a Winter Sky)
The Golden Gryphon and the Bear Prince
A COVENANT OF THORNS
Rogue’s Pawn
Rogue’s Possession
Rogue’s Paradise
THE TWELVE KINGDOMS
Negotiation
The Mark of the Tala
The Tears of the Rose
The Talon of the Hawk
Heart’s Blood
The Crown of the Queen
THE UNCHARTED REALMS
The Pages of the Mind
The Edge of the Blade
The Snows of Windroven
The Shift of the Tide
The Arrows of the Heart
The Dragons of Summer
The Fate of the Tala
The Lost Princess Returns
THE CHRONICLES OF DASNARIA
Prisoner of the Crown
Exile of the Seas
Warrior of the World
SORCEROUS MOONS
Lonen’s War
Oria’s Gambit
The Tides of Bára
The Forests of Dru
Oria’s Enchantment
Lonen’s Reign
THE FORGOTTEN EMPIRES
The Orchid Throne
The Fiery Crown
The Promised Queen
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES
Shooting Star
MISSED CONNECTIONS
Last Dance
With a Prince
Since Last Christmas
CONTEMPORARY EROTIC ROMANCES
Exact Warm Unholy
The Devil’s Doorbell
FACETS OF PASSION
Sapphire
Platinum
Ruby
Five Golden Rings
FALLING UNDER
Going Under
Under His Touch
Under Contract
EROTIC PARANORMAL
MASTER OF THE OPERA E-SERIAL
Master of the Opera, Act 1: Passionate Overture
Master of the Opera, Act 2: Ghost Aria
Master of the Opera, Act 3: Phantom Serenade
Master of the Opera, Act 4: Dark Interlude
Master of the Opera, Act 5: A Haunting Duet
Master of the Opera, Act 6: Crescendo
Master of the Opera
BLOOD CURRENCY
Blood Currency
BDSM FAIRYTALE ROMANCE
Petals and Thorns
OTHER WORKS
Birdwoman
Hopeful Monsters
Teeth, Long and Sharp
Thank you for reading!
About Jeffe Kennedy
Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, nonfiction, poetry, and short fiction. She has won the prestigious RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America (RWA), has been a finalist twice, been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) as a Director at Large.
Her award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms hit the shelves starting in May 2014. Book One, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review and was nominated for the RT Book of the Year, while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose, received a Top Pick Gold and was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014. The third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books followed in this world, beginning the spin-off series The Uncharted Realms. Book One in that series, The Pages of the Mind, was nominated for the RT Reviewer’s Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2016 and won RWA’s 2017 RITA Award. The second book, The Edge of the Blade, released December 27, 2016, and was a PRISM finalist, along with The Pages of the Mind. The final book in the series, The Fate of the Tala, released in February 2020. A high fantasy trilogy, The Chronicles of Dasnaria, taking place in The Twelve Kingdoms world, began releasing from Rebel Base books in 2018. The novella, The Dragons of Summer, first appearing in the Seasons of Sorcery anthology, finaled for the 2019 RITA Award.
Kennedy also introduced a new fantasy romance series, Sorcerous Moons, which includes Lonen’s War, Oria’s Gambit, The Tides of Bàra, The Forests of Dru, Oria’s Enchantment, and Lonen’s Reign. And she released a contemporary erotic romance series, Missed Connections, which started with Last Dance and continues in With a Prince and Since Last Christmas.
In September 2019, St. Martins Press released The Orchid Throne, the first book in a new romantic fantasy series, The Forgotten Empires. The sequel, The Fiery Crown, followed in May 2020, and culminates in The Promised Queen in 2021.
Kennedy’s other works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion; an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera; and the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, which includes Going Under, Under His Touch, and Under Contract.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards, and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.
Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.
jeffekennedy.com
facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy
twitter.com/jeffekennedy
goodreads.com/author/show/1014374.Jeffe_Kennedy
Sign up for her newsletter here.
Blood Martinis & Mistletoe: A Faery Bargains Novella
by
Melissa Marr
Half-dead witch Geneviève Crowe makes her living beheading the dead—and spends her free time trying not to get too attached to her business partner, Eli Stonecroft, a faery prince in self-imposed exile in New Orleans.
After a faery bargain gone wrong, a walking-dead relative and a deadly but well-paying job make juggling the holidays, romance, and work a lot more complicated than anyone needs.
With a killer at her throat and a blood martini in her hand, Geneviève accepts what seems like a straight-forward faery bargain. Eli’s terms might make the holidays a little more bearable, but if she can’t figure out a way to escape this faery bargain, she’ll be planning a wedding after the holidays.
Copyright © 2020 by Melissa Marr
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the rattlesnake. If you hadn’t rolled under my kayak with me, the series wouldn’t exist. Realizing you have a rattlesnake in your hair? Bad. Getting bitten when you shove it away from your face? Monkey Balls, Son of Weasel, ouch. (Seriously, it’s a special sort of pain.)
So these books are entirely the fault of a rattlesnake…and Molly Harper and Jeaniene Frost and Kelley Armstrong who thought my hillbilly accent and rural sass were fair game for a book. I grew
up barefoot country, and while a pistol isn’t offered at birth it’s sort of an implied I.O.U. So Gen and Eli are the characters I wanted to write for years. (Thank you to all of you for the love I’m getting on their first book, too!)
Thanks, Jeffe and Leslye, for inviting and welcoming me, and thank you, Kelley, for . . . more things than I have space to say. From organizing tours and conferences to standing at my side for a memorial, you are a once-in-a-million friend.
And thank you to the readers, the writers, and the booksellers and librarians who have recommended my books, cheered and wept with me, and made me feel so much love. I will continue to try not to let you down.
~ 1 ~
Giant aluminum balls hung around me even though I was standing in the cemetery not long before dawn. I didn’t know who hung the balls, but I wasn’t too bothered.
Winter in New Orleans was festive. We might have draugr and a higher than reasonable crime rate, but damn it, we had festivities for every possible occasion. Gold, silver, red, blue, purple, and green balls hung from the tree. Samhain had passed, and it was time to ramp up for the winter holidays.
November—the month after Samhain—was uncommonly active for necromancy calls. Unfortunately, a certain sort of person thought it was festive to summon the body and spirit of Dear Uncle Phil or Aunt Marie. Sometimes the relatives were maudlin, and sometimes they were thinking about the afterlife.
Now, the dead don’t tell tales about the things after death. They can’t. I warn folks, but they don’t believe me. They pay me a fair amount to summon their dead, so I always stress that the “what happens after we die” questions are forbidden. Few people believe me.
Tonight, I had summoned Alphard Cormier to speak to his widow and assorted relatives or friends who accompanied her. I didn’t ask who they were. One proven relation was all I needed. Family wasn’t always just the folks who shared your blood.
Case in point, the faery beside me. Eli of Stonecroft was one of the people I trusted most in this world—or in any other. I closed my eyes for a moment, which I could do because he was at my side. I was tired constantly, so much so that only willpower kept me upright.
“Bonbon,” Eli whispered. His worried tone made clear that a question or three hid in that absurd pet name.
Was I going to be able to control my magic? Did he need to brace for draugr inbound? Were we good on time?
“It’s good.” I opened my eyes, muffled a yawn, and met his gaze. “I’m still fine.”
Eli nodded, but he still scanned the graves. He was increasingly cautious since my near-brush-with-death a couple months ago.
My partner stood at my side as we waited in the cemetery while the widow, her daughter, and two men spoke to their reanimated relative. Mr. Alphard Cormier was wearing a suit that was in fashion sometime in the last thirty years.
Why rouse him now? I didn’t know and wasn’t asking.
“Twenty minutes,” I called out. I could feel the sun coming; I’d always been able to do so—call it in an internal sundial, or call it bad genes. Either way, my body was attuned to the rising and falling of the sun.
“When he is entombed, we could—”
“No.” I couldn’t force myself to glance at him again.
I was bone-tired, which made me more affectionate, and Eli was my weakness. Cut-glass features, bee-stung lips, and enough strength to fight at my side, even against draugar, Eli was built for fantasy. His ability to destroy my self-control was remarkable—and no, it wasn’t because he was fae.
That part was why I wasn’t going home with him. Trusting him, wanting him, caring for him, none of that was enough to overcome the complications of falling into his bed. Sleeping with a faery prince had a list of complications that no amount of lust or affection overcame.
“I won’t get married,” I reminded him.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mr. Cormier asked, voice carrying over the soft sobbing women.
The man with them handed Cormier something metallic.
I felt as much as saw the dead man look my way, and then his arm raised with a gun in hand. The relatives parted, and there was a dead man with a gun aimed at me.
“Fuck a duck. Move!” I darted to the side.
Eli was already beside me, hand holding his pretty bronze-coated sword that I hadn’t even known he owned until the last month. “Geneviève?”
“On it.” I jerked the magic away from Mr. Comier.
It was my magic that made him stand, so I wasn’t going to let him stand and shoot me.
REST, I ordered the dead man.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. They made me. Threatened my Suzette if I didn’t . . .” His words faded as my shove of magic sent him back to his tomb.
I could hear the widow, presumably Suzette, sobbing.
“I do not believe those gentlemen are Mr. Cormier’s relations.” Eli glared in the direction of the men who had hired me to raise a dead man to kill me. They’d grabbed the two women and ducked behind mausoleums.
“Why?”
“They seem to want you dead, buttercream,” Eli said. “If they were his family, that’s an odd response.”
A bullet hit the stone across from me. Shards of gravestone pelted me. Oddly the adrenaline surge was welcome, even if the bullets weren’t. Nothing like a shot of rage to get the sleepiness out.
“Not why that.” I nodded toward the men who were staying crouched behind graves. “Why go through the hassle? Why not simply shoot me themselves?”
“Dearest, can we ponder that after they are not shooting at you?”
I felt my eyes change. As my rage boiled over, my eyes reflected it. They were my father’s reptilian eyes, draugr eyes. The only useful thing he’d ever done was accidentally augment the magic I inherited from my mother. Unfortunately, the extra juice came with a foul temper—one that was even worse the last few weeks. After I’d been injected by venom, my moods were increasingly intense.
I wanted to rip limbs off.
I wanted to shove my thumbs into their eye sockets and keep going until I felt brain matter.
Before the urges were more than images, I was moving from one spot to the next.
I could flow like a draugr. I could move quickly enough that to the mortal eye it looked like teleportation. I flowed to the side of the shooter and grabbed his wrist.
Eli was not far behind. He didn’t flow, but he was used to my movements and impulses. He had his sword to the shooter’s throat a moment after I jerked the gun away from the man.
“Dearest?” Eli said, his voice tethering me sanity.
I concentrated on his voice, his calm, and I punched the other shooter rather than removing his eyes. Then I let out a scream of frustration and shoved my magic into the soil like a seismic force.
The dead answered.
Dozens of voices answered my call. Hands reknitted. Flesh was regrown from the magic that flowed from my body into the graves. Mouths reformed, as if I was a sculptor of man.
“You do not wake the dead without reason,” I growled at the now-unarmed man who dared to try to shoot me.
Here, of all places. He tried to spill my blood into these graves.
I stepped over the man I’d punched and ignored the cringing, sobbing widow and the other woman who was trying to convince her mother to leave.
And I stalked toward the shooter in Eli’s grip.
“Bonbon, you have a scratch.” Eli nodded toward my throat.
“Shit.” I felt my neck where Eli had indicated. Blood slid into my collar.
I stepped closer to the shooter. “What were you thinking, Weasel Nuts?”
“Would you mind covering the wound?” Eli asked, forcing me to focus again.
His voice was calm, but we both knew that I could not shed blood in a space where graves were so plentiful. I’d accidentally bound two draugr so far, and blood was a binding agent in necromancy. Unless I wanted to bring home a few reanimated servants, my blood couldn’t spill here.
&n
bsp; I had to focus. And I didn’t need an army of undead soldiers.
“Take this.” Eli pulled off his shirt with one hand, switching the hilt between hands to keep the sword to Weasel Nuts’ throat.
I stared. Not the time.
Eli’s lips quirked in a half-smile, and then he pressed the blade just a bit. “And, I believe you need to answer my lady.”
I shot Eli a look—his lady? What year did he think this was?—but I pressed his shirt against my throat. I did not, absolutely did not, take a deep breath because the shirt smelled like Eli.
Eli smiled as I took another quick extra breath.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Weasel Nuts spat in my direction. “Foul thing.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but Eli removed his sword blade and in a blink turned it so he could bash the pommel into the man’s mouth.
Weasel Nuts dropped to his knees, and this time when he spat, he spat out his own teeth and blood.
If I were the swooning sort, this would be such a moment. Something about defending me always did good things to my libido.
“Geneviève, would you be so kind as to call the police?” Eli motioned toward the women. “And escort the ladies away from this unpleasant man?”
It sounded chivalrous—or chauvinistic—but it was actually an excuse. I needed to get my ass outside the cemetery before I dripped blood. Eli had provided a way to do so gracefully.
“Ladies?” Eli said, louder now. “Ms. Crowe will walk you toward the street.”
The women came over, and the widow flinched when my gaze met hers. My draugr eyes unnerved people.
But then she straightened her shoulders and stared right into my reptilian eyes as if they were normal. “I do apologize, Ms. Crowe. They have an accomplice who is holding my grandson as a hostage. We had to cooperate.”
My simmering temper spiked, keeping my exhaustion away and my focus sharp.
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