by Laila Blake
If you enjoyed going on this journey with Emily, Aaron and Song, we have good news for you. Their story is not over. In the coming months, we will first release After Life Lessons - The Interlude, a short collection of stories and accounts of their lives at Annika’s farm and after that, their story will continue a few years in the future in After Life Lessons, Book Two.
If you would like to stay updated on release news, please consider signing up for our newsletter. We promise never to spam you or send you any advertising, except for a short reminder of new releases once every couple of months. In fact, we will send a free copy of the upcoming After Life Lessons: The Interlude to all subscribers.
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Thank you so much for supporting independent publishing!
yours,
Laila & Lorrie
About the Authors
L.C. and Laila met in 2010 on an online forum and have been inseparable ever since. Having supported each other in their individual writing projects for years, they finally decided to work more closely together and fuse their friendship into a cross-continental cooperative writing partnership. Together, they host the podcast Lilt and started their micropublishing venture Lilt Literary in 2013.
L.C. (generally known as Lorrie) lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband, kids, and too many pets. Laila is a nerdy German translator, living in Cologne with her kitten and a lot of sparkly lights.
Lilt Literary: Lilt Literary | Facebook | Twitter | Podcast
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Other Books by the Authors
More by Laila Blake
The Breaking in Waves Series (Erotic Romance)
- Driftwood Deeds
- Trading Tides (Coming Summer 2014)
- Saltwater Skin (Coming Winter 2014)
The Lakeside Series (Romantic Fantasy)
- By the Light of the Moon
- A Taste of Winter (Coming Fall 2014)
Escaping the Day (Three Erotic Short Stories)
Anthologies Featuring Laila Blake's Stories
Best Women's Erotica 2014, Violet Blue, Cleis Press
Best Erotic Romance 2014, Kristina Wright, Cleis Press
Book Lovers: Sexy Stories from Under the Covers, Shawna Kenney, Seal Press
A Princess Bound: Naughty Fairy Tales for Women, Kristina Wright, Cleis Press
Bound For Trouble, Alison Tyler, Cleis Press
The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Cleis Press
Anything She Wants, Harper Bliss, Ladylit Publishing
Sweat, Harper Bliss, Ladylit Publishing
A Christmas to Remember, Harper Bliss, Ladylit Publishing
Shameless Behavior, Lana Fox, Go Deeper Press
Shakespearotica: Queering the Bard, Salome Wilde, Storm Moon Press
Anthologies + Publications Featuring L.C. Spoering's Stories
The Dying Goose: Volume 1, Issue 3, Fall 2013.
Best Bondage Erotica 2014, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Cleis Press
Book Lovers: Sexy Stories from Under the Covers, Shawna Kenney, Seal Press
A Princess Bound: Naughty Fairy Tales for Women, Kristina Wright, Cleis Press
The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Cleis Press
Anything She Wants, Harper Bliss, LadyLit
Exclusive Preview
By the Light of the Moon
a Lakeside novel
by Laila Blake
Chapter One
It was too late to hide. She could hear them coming: horns and shouts in the distance, the hard drumming of iron-clad hoofs tearing into the damp morning earth. A robin, perched on a piece of driftwood, interrupted its song and fluttered off towards the castle orchards. Fog rose from the lake, fresh and white, and only just reaching the shore. It wafted over the shiny gravel to the first tufts of grass and reed, where dew had turned spider webs into intricate gossamer jewelry.
Moira stood at the water's edge and looked down at the waves lapping at her naked feet. Her hands shivered, but she turned them outward in an open, embracing gesture. Then she closed her eyes, pushed the approaching hoof-beats out of her mind and breathed the pre-dawn air deep into her lungs. Damp and crisp, it had left infinitesimal drops of water in her messy red hair and she could imagine herself soaking it up, drawing it inside of her -- air, water, mist and the lake itself -- as though she could store freedom, like others stored food or drink or knowledge.
She did not move, not a muscle, as the horses drew closer. Sounds were jarring in this early hour, invaders from the daylight world, too substantial for the ephemeral sense of morning silence. Moira listened to it shatter around her, like glass, like a thin sheet of ice over the lake. A shiver ran up her spine, pulsed uncomfortably in the back of her head.
The shouting ceased when the horses came to steep halt behind her; their hoofs flung flecks of dirt through the air. They formed a vague crescent shape, arranging themselves in formation.
Moira lifted her hand to her cheek to wipe the mud away. One last time, she looked out over the lake. At this end, far away from the harbor and the fishing boats, it was eerily still - a silence that possessed power and gravity, that had worked its pull on her for as long as she could remember.
Only when the last horse stilled, did she turn around. She focused on the captain of the guard as he swung himself off the saddle. Gravel crunched under his boots.
"Milady," he uttered, and bowed as low as his stiff, aging back allowed. He took in the sight of her white nightgown, its hem stained with dirt and dew, her dirty pink toes peeking out from under the ruined fabric. There was a totemic presence about her that morning, a streak of mud on her face and the mist in her back, curling around her like a caress from a different world.
"I don't remember inviting you to my morning walk, Sir Clifton." Moira was calm, unsurprised, as she gestured the man to stand up straight. Then she wrapped her white arms around her chest in an effort to establish a hint of decorum. The autumn crisp cut through the air, now that it was laced with voices, the smell of horses, the sight of men in coats; even her feet finally felt cold. A night alone, completely alone, in the tame wilderness outside the castle had grounded her, but the crawling feeling under her skin, the desire to run reclaimed her body with every passing moment, every glance, every sound.
"Milady was not in her chambers when my Lord Rochmond noticed her absence," the captain explained, his voice involuntarily rougher to fight the onset of embarrassment. She was hardly dressed to receive a gentleman, much less to be standing surrounded by six rough-and-tumble men of his guard.
"And he sent you to slap me in irons?" she asked, the corner of her mouth twitching slightly.
The captain could not hold her gaze. It would have been shockingly impertinent, especially in her state of undress. But more so, she had the dark innocence of a hurt child that shone through any bitter and condescending superiority she might throw between the strong man and her feeble woman's body. It was disconcerting and in the rising mist, between bird-song and the murmuring waves, she held an eerie quality that wasn't quite as noticeable when hair was braided and coiled, when she was dressed in heavy, embroidered fabrics, walking the warren of passages and hallways of her father's castle.
If a woman was to talk back, the captain pictured haggling fishermen's wives and shrieking old hags. The collected and quiet irony of the girl in front of him touched him like a cold hand in the back of his neck, with her witch's hair and piercingly calm eyes that contrasted so strangely with her shaking hands. She tried to hide it, but Frederick Clifton had seen it many times. He was no stranger to her ways.
"His lordship was worried for milady's safety," he fi
nally said. Stiffly, he tore open the fastings of his coat, slipped it off and held it out to her. When she took it, it was more for the sake of his discomfort than her own and she swung it over her shoulder with a carefully trained careless gesture. It hung down over her knees; the grotesque image made her look even more like a child; a wrong child, somehow, before the backdrop of a lake littered with bones.
It was a game to her, he thought, a game in which she held no stake but that might leave him whipped or expelled from his Lord's service. A child still, precious and indulged, proof of a theory long held by men: that a woman needed to be married young, for her own sake as much as anyone else's.
"Lenner, ready your horse for Lady Rochmond."
As if on cue, the youngest member of the guard led his brown stallion into the semicircle and unfastened his saddle. The men were pointedly not staring at the girl, who looked so little like their lady with the muddy green algae that squished out between her toes in the morning's first light, that the deep trench between their classes blurred uncomfortably. The horse, picking up on the tension, perked up its ears, trying to move until a second member of the guard closed a strong hand around its reins.
Sir Clifton cleared his throat, and the young woman looked up again. She didn't fight them, nor did she deign them with another comment until the sidesaddle they had carried along was in place.
She uttered a careless "Thank you," to the boy who offered her his interlocked palms as a mounting block. He would have to walk home along the lake shore and up the serpentine path of Bramble Hill.
She hoisted herself up onto the horse, leaving a dark smudge of mud on the boy's hands and didn't look at him again. Her eyes might have betrayed how much she longed to trade places with him, but she had been found. Walking back in peace was no longer an option, and it all felt too familiar, like a play staged too many times by the same troupe of actors, to relish being told what to do by an aging soldier when she resisted. She had endured enough humiliation for one morning.
Clicking her tongue, she fastened her hold on the reins, turned the horse and then rode ahead of the men back toward the castle. The hoofs were still much too noisy in the misty morning air and she could feel her chest aching again already.
***
"You promised, Moira."
Lord Rochmond stood in the drafty entrance hall of the castle. While his short salt-and-pepper hair still showed signs of sleep, his eyes were alert and angry. He had folded his arms across his chest as he took her in; her muddy nightgown, the rough coat that certainly didn't belong to her, the dirty feet and the way she stepped from one to another on the cold stone floor. She smelled of earth and horse, like a peasant.
"Thank you, Sir Clifton. That will be all."
Once the captain was dismissed, Moira's unclasped her hands and the coat fell open. She shivered a little. Her face still carried traces of that lush childlike roundness, but she didn't look like one at all, with the dark circles under her eyes and the almost translucent pallor of her skin. Neither did she look embarrassed or apologetic, just tired.
"I did not promise," she said, meeting her father's eyes with the kind of calm that could only come from repetition. He was an intimidating man, broad and tall, strands of grey in his dark hair and his bushy eyebrows, but Moira took little notice of his stance or his narrowed eyed. "I agreed to try and limit my walks to the confines of the castle."
He raised his brows, and Moira exhaled a breath; she almost expected it to be white mist as though she could have carried the lake in her lungs all the way into the castle.
"I did try. But there were guards in the courtyard." Her voice petered out when she finished. She knew it was the kind of explanation that only made sense to her -- the idea that sometimes, just the infinitesimal sound of someone breathing too close, the creak of a leather boot, the metallic clack of a sword being moved in its sheath, could make her skin feel like it was attacked by a swarm of little insects, crawling and tickling until she wanted to scream. How could that make sense to anyone?
As expected, the aging lord uttered an audible sigh and held out his arm to gesture her inside. The discussion was not over, but it was cold and she needed to get dressed. The entry foyer was no place to chastise a lady.
"Try harder," he grunted as he followed her into the hall and up a narrow staircase toward her chambers.
Moira was his only child. Girl or no girl, unusual or not, in the end he tended to prove unsuccessful in denying her anything. He reminded himself often, that it wasn't wrong to dote upon one's daughter, but when he tried to pinpoint the cause of her strange behavior, he didn't often find anyone to blame but himself.
Moira's feet landed on the stone with loud slapping noises as she dragged them up the stairs. She hadn't slept, and the men and horses intruding upon her hazy morning had left her body in a state of uneasy tension. It made her twitch her shoulders a little now and then, as though trying to rid herself of a fly on her back or in her hair.
"I'm sorry, Father," she finally said, glancing sideways at the aging lord.
"At least wake someone to go with you." His voice sounded more exhausted now, almost like hers.
Moira didn't answer. How could she? She knew his suggestion was made out of kindness, out of an attempt to understand, but it also showed just how little he really did.
"It is dangerous out there, you know that. There are wild animals in the forests and do you have any idea how valuable you would be to someone... how much money or influence they would be able to extort for your safe return?" He huffed out a breath, stopping at the top of the stairs and leaning against the wall to catch his breath. "And people are talking; they love talking about the eccentricities of their betters, you know that."
All Moira had to offer in return was contrite silence, her head lowered towards her muddy feet. They were even pinker now and she could hardly feel them anymore. It struck her as strange that she had been barefoot most of the night, since her boots had started to feel heavy and pointless and her feet had ached for the touch of grass and lake-water, but it was only now that it caused her any pain, now that she was back inside the castle.
"You are forcing my hand, Moira." Lord Rochmond exhaled a deep breath and waited for her to turn around to him. "I have made some inquiries. And this, this settles it. I am employing a new guard for you."
Her brows twitched but barely rose.
"I am to be a prisoner in my own home?" she asked, but for once couldn't withstand the force behind her father's angry glare. Lord Rochmond ruled over a large fief rich in history and resources, and when he spoke people obeyed. They did it easily, or so it seemed, without questions or sidelong loathing glances. They obeyed because he was their lord and that was enough of a reason. It should have been enough for her too, and she had pondered many a night why she had such a hard time following her father's wishes. Why it was so much easier for her to question every decision made for her, every order she was given; and why did she slip out from under people's eyes any chance she got to do what felt more natural to her? To be free, to be outside, and alone.
"Are you suggesting you left me any other choice?" he asked her, his bushy eyebrows rising. "I have sent for a Blaidyn."
There was a gravity in that statement that lingered in the air for several seconds. Even the echo of their steps seemed dulled by it. A shiver ran down Moira's spine. She let out a measured breath and finally turned her gaze on him, eyes wide and glinting in the dull light that fell into the corridor.
"But they are... they are vicious. And traitors. And... not human."
Usually employed as mercenaries in guards or armies, Blaidyn were eerie creatures, known turncoats and remainders of the fabled Fae wars who lived on the margins of society. There had never been a Blaidyn at the Bramble Keep, though; the mere idea made her skin crawl. Rochmond Fief did not require a standing army, nor mercenaries to guard its borders, with the snow-capped mountain range that lined the western shore of Lynne, and its deep, wild forests in the no
rth. It was a peaceful backwater fief ruled by a lord who had no ambitions to increase his wealth by warfare.
"I am sure most of that is prejudice, dear." He sounded calmer now, more steadfast in his decision. "As I said, I had someone ask around. Old Brock is just one man; I assume he told you those stories? It has been a long time since they betrayed anyone. They have a good reputation in armies now. I need to know you are safe. And you won't help me with that. A Blaidyn will find you wherever you are, whoever took you or whatever happened to you."