Holding her to him with one firm arm, he smoothed out dishevelled strands of her intricately braided hair, piled atop her head, and ran his gaze down to her lips. He planted a gentle kiss there.
She returned it weakly.
But he didn’t pull away and, instead, lingered a moment before he breathed a whispered kiss of the soul over her lips; “I am sorry, Callie.”
Her brows shot up as she reeled back and stared at him.
Rain’s firm hold only allowed her an inch of space. He guided her back until their noses grazed at the tips.
Over ten years since the sentence, and she was no longer rigid in his arms. She didn’t stiffen at his touch, or recoil when he tried to show his affection in bed. She welcomed it—she returned it.
Things changed.
Time tells all, he once told her. And changes everything you think you know.
He wasn’t wrong then or now. But in all that time, he had never once apologised. Those words had never come from his deceitful lips.
“I am sorry for when I found you,” he murmured against her mouth. “I regret my actions every day. I am sorry for the Runaway Ritual.”
Callie turned her cheek to him.
Ahead, Affay pouted as Angus talked in his ear, undoubtedly telling him off for his actions so far that night. But Affay’s gaze caught Callie’s and she narrowed her eyes, as if to support Angus.
It was enough to get a stiff nod from her youngest, who then slumped in a chair, wearing a tilted mouth and a furrowed brow.
“You didn’t have a choice,” Callie eventually said. “The Runaway Ritual had to happen.”
It was their way. A simple reason—yet to the fae, it was the only reason needed. One that couldn’t be argued against.
And in the dance, it hadn’t been as terrible as the first time.
Affay danced with her every week, when Rain would allow him to visit. Angus had been sequestered for that year, and she’d missed him every minute of it, but Rain had danced with her often.
He’d fastened the choker around her neck on the first day of that dance, his magic kept her in a shadowy corner of the podium, where drapes and an alcove offered her relief from the ghastly sights in the dance, and she had still been his wife—he had not divorced her, and that had made her an untouchable.
Yet that was not what Rain was apologising for.
He apologised for the dance, for the cell, for the punishment—but most of all, his sorry was meant for what had happened in her house the day he found her, the day that his knights took her sons out from their school and kept them shackled to steeds on the street until Rain finally emerged with Callie—a bloody and unconscious sack—slung over his shoulder.
“I know you are sorry,” she said softly. “You can’t say it if it isn’t true. But I don’t give two shits if you’re sorry or not, if I’m still your wife and the mother of your heir, if I live with you forever—no matter what happens between us Rain, I will never forgive you for that day. I will never forget it.”
He wasn’t angry.
To Callie’s mild surprise, Rain averted his gaze to the side, and stared, almost sadly, at the running scar down her arm. A mark of his blade skills.
“Though I would like your forgiveness, I do not expect it,” he said. “So I offer you a gift.”
Callie rested her head on his chest, letting his arms slip around her completely.
“What’s my gift?”
“A divorce.”
Callie stilled.
A divorce was no good thing.
A divorce without a dowry was no good thing.
Rain eased her tense muscles with a kiss to her forehead, and whispered promises; “We will remarry. A wedding you will remember, a ceremony you desire. And in our second chance, you will be granted a second dowry.”
Callie’s hard face softened to a disbelieving smile. “Really?”
Rain gave a vicious smirk, sharp teeth and glittering eyes.
“Really,” he said.
“Ok.” Callie nodded. “Gift accepted.”
Marriage to the fae were of the highest importance. Weddings, not so much. And so, of all the things Callie had been robbed of, big or small, a wedding day was one of them.
But that was not the blanket of comfort Rain had wrapped her in.
A dowry meant protection.
A dowry meant that, if their marriage ever dissolved, or Rain decided he did not want her around anymore, she had a shield against his lethal nature—and a way to keep in touch with her children. She couldn’t be killed, banished, or kept from her children.
The dowry was everything a human needed to survive in the fae realm. Just like he’d tried to warn her when she used it on Meghan.
Rain’s smile soon stretched into a proud grin before he swept down for a kiss.
Their kiss was brief. Senah interrupted within seconds with a deep bow, and a warning—
“The High Queen has arrived.”
Callie instantly untangled herself from Rain, and, for no other reason than his mother, shot him a scathing look.
Rain merely titled his head at her, face unreadable.
“I’ll see you later,” Callie said. “And bring those two back in one piece.”
“One piece,” Rain mocked. “Would you have me smelt them into a singular body?”
Callie made a rude gesture that, once, used to ignite sparks of anger in Rain’s eyes, but now only brought a mocking smile to his cruelly pink lips.
He stole a final kiss before Callie rushed out the side door with Senah and some of her other preferred and trusted guards. Easton was not one of him. He was particularly untrusting of Callie. Even now, after years and years post-punishment, Callie wasn’t entirely trusted.
Not even by Rain.
Sure, the time was enough to sand down her fear of Rain to caution—but she came to know that there were eyes and ears all over.
Re-crowned, soon to be remarried, and Callie had accepted that she might forever have escorts wherever she went, not only to protect her, but to watch her. Stop her from running.
Not that she ever would.
Callie couldn’t leave them—not her sons. And even not Rain. Because while her love for him was uneasy, volatile, sometimes explosive, and always laced with pain, his love for her was as fierce as a blaze swallowing the whole world.
Rain truly loved Callie, and as he once told her, fae love is lethal ...
But Callie came to realise, it was only lethal to those who didn’t know how to play the game.
Finally, she knew how to play.
the end
Pestilence
†
FEARED FABLES
BOOK THREE
KLARISSA KING
Copyright © 2019 Klarissa King
Edition 1
All rights reserved.
Pestilence, Feared Fables Book3
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.
Imprint: Independently published.
Pestilence
†
FEARED FABLES
BOOK THREE
Chapter 1
The call of the Sirens wakes me.
I lie beneath the floor of the deep sea, beside my steed.
First to stir, I move my legs in a slow, lethargic motion. They ache, tired, much like the rest of my body. I work my legs like this until space gathers around me.
This is the gradual, subterranean dance I have known for thousands of years. Too many lifetimes. Yet, never enough.
It’s difficult to squeeze my way through the hard wings that shield me, my cocoon of sorts. But I force
my hands through the sharp edges of my white wings, blood searing down my arms in fresh wounds that knit shut quickly, and I scrape at the dirt encasing me.
This sleep was long.
How long? I won’t know until I reach land.
And only when my feet touch the shore will the Sirens stop calling me. I loathe their songs. Their voices are melancholic and dreary, but I hear the shrill shrieks buried beneath the beauty.
I loathe Sirens.
To vanish their haunting voices, I scrape at the dirt around me, making faster work of unearthing myself. Soon, droplets of the sea’s moisture drips down on me.
I’m close.
I turn and claw at the packed soil that coffins my steed, Shadow. He earned his name, not by shadowing me throughout my duties and being my constant companion, but by speaking my thoughts aloud at times, and the dark shadows that linger in his wise grey eyes.
Shadow works at the soil with me, writhing against it, pawing at it with his razor-sharp hooves.
We take our time.
It’s a long, tedious task, and once it’s done, we tunnel up to the seabed.
The sun must have risen and fallen many times before we emerge, soaked and sullied, crawling out from the wet soil until we stand at the bottom of the sea.
I look at Shadow.
The worst of our awakening is yet to come. But for it to come, we must reach land.
Neither of us can speak underwater, so he bobs his head. We’re ready to move again.
We push against the dense water, trek across the seabed. Like each time we woke before, the sea is dead around us. Aquatic life sensed us before we arose from our tombs. They sensed me. The disease I carry in my bones. The plague in my blood.
It’s me they fear.
Sometimes, as we trek along the seabed together, I spot movement ahead. Small glitters in the otherwise still water. Fish and sharks fleeing my path. I am the predator of the sea, now. But they are not my prey.
Humans are.
Shadow and I walk for some days and nights before familiar coral comes up ahead. We’re almost at the shore.
I grab onto my steed’s reins—woven silver threads, much like my armour-dress—and together, we climb over the reef. Sharp corals jab into my feet. But by the time we reach the shore, the wounds have healed.
Shadow’s head lifts above water first. He snorts and shivers his head—it’s the salt that gets him. He despises it, says it tickles the back of his nose.
My feet barely make it out of the foamy water when the worst comes—my wings erupt in flames.
My head throws back and a feral cry rips through my throat before the first flame even takes hold of a feather. But before my knees crack to the wet shore, a blaze has taken hold of my wings.
Like every time I’m woken by the songs of the Siren, agony shreds through me—a thousand hot blades cutting through flesh and bone, until all that’s left are two searing lines on my smoking back.
Crouched over on the shore, I shiver.
Water dances over my shaking hands that press deep into the sand. Shadow’s head is bowed, his nose at my cheek, and he gives gentle puffs of breath for comfort. But nothing comforts this pain. Not even as the last of my wings is taken by a ribbon of smoke do I feel anything other than fiery pain clawing at my back.
I have no use for the wings on land.
They shield me in the earth, but on the earth, I wear the scars—I wear my curse.
After a moment, I lift my head and gaze with watery eyes at the dreary beach ahead.
Shadow draws back. He senses the pain drifting away from me now.
Gritting my teeth, I push to my feet, and I walk on as though I haven’t just suffered more agony than I deserve.
My steed plods along at my side.
Weighed down by my sheer armour-dress, we wade to the shore in silence. The woven chains of my dress, so thin they appear to be threads to the naked eye, hang off my shoulders and part at my back to forever display the charred lines of where my wings should be.
I am always silver and grey. In my hair, my dress, my eyes, my steed, and my grey-tinted skin—I wear the kiss of sickness.
It is my curse. My eternity.
But it is who I am.
I am Disease.
I am Plague.
I am Pestilence.
But my friends call me Pessie.
Chapter 2
Shadow’s armour and reins are crumpled at my feet. The damp sand pushes between my toes as I stretch up and run my hands along his fine coat. I wash him clean of the dirt from our sleep-graves, then rinse out my own filth.
Shadow lifts his head up and looks to the sky.
“I dream of them,” he tells me. “The stars, those other worlds out there.” He looks at me. “I only dream what you dream.”
A small smile pulls at my pale lips. “I’ve always wondered what’s out there, beyond this world we’re chained to. But I’ll never know, so I let my dreams fill in the blanks.”
“It frightens me how much of your human side still lingers within you, Pessie.”
His voice is laced with a fond disappointment. I don’t respond.
“I don’t feel Death yet,” says Shadow. “Do you?”
The sound of his name is enough for the memories to punch my gut. I am crippled, for a fleeting second in time, and I tense.
Death. My death.
His onyx eyes, his skin sculpted from otherworldly marble, the way his obsidian hair curls at his ears.
Shadow is right. A piece of my human-self lingers within me. I know because at the thought of Death, my stomach flips and tingles run through my bones, the way they do when I am filled with disease.
It takes over me.
If I had to breathe, I would drop to the sand and clutch my tight throat. But I am immortal and indestructible, so I shrug on my armour-dress and fasten it at the front.
“He mustn’t be awake,” I say. “Famine will wake him in time.”
Famine is the first of us. The first of the Three Horseriders, our commander. It’s her command that brings about the Sirens, who then sing all over the world until their voices wake me and my steed.
I sense it within me that Famine has not yet woken Death. And this tells me that my task will be a weary one, drawn out and agonising.
Once we are both washed and I am dressed, I re-harness Shadow. As I fasten the buckle at his side, a high-pitched whine comes from behind me.
Shadow huffs; I turn to see who dares come near me.
A human.
She wears strange clothes. They are tight, like a second skin on her plump, healthy flesh. There are odd devices stuck into her ears and she jogs towards us.
But at her feet is an animal. A dog, unlike any I’ve seen before.
Its white coat is dotted with black spots, reminding me of a disease I once spawned for humanity.
The spotted dog stops suddenly and its human stumbles over it. She lands on the packed sand with a thud that reaches us.
She shouts obscenities at her frightened companion.
My hand lifts to scratch Shadow’s neck. “I shall never speak to you in such a way.”
In answer, he nudges me, his hot breath fanning through my hair.
Taking no interest in its irritated human, the dog growls at us.
I watch it, mildly interested.
Such a strange looking beast it is. Does the human paint its white coat with black dye? Perhaps. She seems the foolish type. It takes her too long to look at us—really, look at us. But when she does, the fear lights up her eyes and she yanks the white buds from her ears.
She scrambles to her feet.
For a moment, I watch her mouth open then close, open then close.
“That’s—uh…quite a costume.” Fear rattles her voice. She is shrewd enough to be wary of me and my steed. Suspicious enough to sense that we are not like her. “Is…that your horse?”
My head cocks to the side. The white buds now dangle from a white thread of sorts.<
br />
“He is my Shadow,” I tell her.
“This is Ollie.” Her gaze cuts to her shivering dog. “I guess he doesn’t like horses much. He ain’t ever seen one before. Probably just a bit spooked, you know?”
Spooked. Fear.
I shake my head. No, I do not know. I haven’t for some time.
“Well, uh…” She hooks her fingers through the dog’s collar. Then, she gives me a tight smile that wrinkles her eyes—I see more of a grimace on her face. With a nod of the head, she heaves the dog and jogs again. No. This time, she is running.
And it is away from me.
“Peculiar creature,” says Shadow, a bite to his wise voice.
My teeth show as I flash him a grin.
“The dog,” I say, “or the human?”
The last time I walked this land, it was much…landier.
Before I walked into the sea for my latest slumber, the village nearby had been smaller, and most of the human activity around had been smugglers and shipwreck-thieves. But now, as I hike up the sandy slope with Shadow by my side, I see strangeness.
When the sand slope turns into a brittle-grass path, we move toward the village in the distance. But ahead, off-path, is something utterly peculiar, catching the glint of the early-morn sun.
The ground seems grey there, in patches, paved and not unlike flattened stone. There are alien objects on the ground; they sit in rows.
From down the path, I make out what looks to be tents propped up around the other strange objects, and I wonder if it is a new settlement.
“Have you seen such things before?” I whisper to my steed.
As we draw nearer, my gaze stays on the settlement, where I catch sight of humans in the same sort of attire as the human from the beach. They shout and holler at each other.
“How much time has passed since we last wandered these parts?” I wonder aloud.
Shadow nudges his head into my silvery hair.
My hair muffles his words, but I hear him just fine; “I would say we have slept away histories. And as for those ghastly things ahead … I find they rather look like carriages.”
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 32