by Cate Corvin
Spin the Shadows
Dark and Wicked Fae Book 1
Cate Corvin
SPIN THE SHADOWS
CATE CORVIN
All Rights Reserved © 2020 Cate Corvin. First Printing: 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means with the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Author's Note: All characters in this story are 18 years of age and older, and all sexual acts are consensual. This book is a work of fiction and liberties may be taken with people, places, and historical events.
Cover by Luminescence Cover Design
Contents
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
About the Author
1
Maybe my priorities were all out of whack, but the first thing I noticed when I checked my phone was that my boyfriend hadn’t texted me good morning.
The second thing I noticed was that the screen of my ancient Dandelion+ was cracked. Somewhere between the dwarvish fire-ales and the thornberry cocktails, my poor phone had suffered the consequences of my inebriation.
Then I clicked on the scarlet headline topping the news in all caps: GHOSTHAND KILLER STRIKES AGAIN IN ACIONNA HARBOR.
Like I said. Priorities. Out of whack, not that they’d ever been in whack to begin with.
The victim was no one I knew, but I still felt a shudder of sympathy for the dead Fae. Last night my selkie roommates and I had hopped all the bars at the edge of Mothwing Falls, which bordered Acionna.
We could’ve walked right past the serial killer stalking the streets of Avilion and never known it.
Ioin, my human boyfriend, had been with us. The twin selkies, Clove and Tarragon, didn’t really like him, but I’d convinced them he should be there to celebrate their collective birthday.
I frowned at my busted phone. By now, news of the Ghosthand’s tenth kill would’ve spread all over Avilion like wildfire, but…
There were none of the usual texts from Ioin. Not a good morning, a good night, or even the usual reminder to meet at the bakery before work.
Another blurry memory came back to me.
Ioin sliding a glimmering thornberry cocktail to me, but his eyes were on the nereid bartender’s lightly scaled cleavage.
A frown had creased Clove’s brow before he pulled me into some gossip about the kelpie who’d just moved into the apartment next door, and then I’d forgotten all about Ioin’s wandering eyes.
I glanced at the headline about the latest murder one last time before shutting my phone with a decisive snap and heading to the bathroom. The Ghosthand never targeted humans. Ioin was probably just sleeping off his own hangover.
There was no way I could be late. First off, my boss would kill me, and second, I needed the job.
I had only six months left on my residency visa. If I wasn’t gainfully employed when the time came, the Seelie Court wouldn’t even bother considering me for a permanent residency.
I threw the phone on my bed and plunged into the shower, scrubbing up in record time and even taking a few seconds to apply mascara around my gold-tinged brown eyes.
There. Now I looked only half-dead instead of entirely dead.
Then it was time for the emergency stash in the back of my medicine cabinet.
Our downstairs neighbor was an elderly human hedgewitch named Carabosse, but she was Mothwing Falls’ secret treasure. I’d bet my ass she could whip up a hangover cure that could top anything the royal Seelie Court healers could do.
I uncorked one of the tiny purple bottles and threw back a shot of oily liquid that tasted like violets with a hint of earthy mushroom. Within seconds the tension in my neck had faded and the headache was a distant memory.
“I’m never drinking dwarven ale again,” I muttered. “Not even for their birthdays.”
I tied my mass of wet dark curls into a high bun and went looking for my work clothes.
Well, what passed for work clothes. For the girls working at Fairy Ferry, ‘work clothes’ meant shorts so short the creases of our asses showed, and little pink shirts embossed with the swirly FF logo tied up under our breasts.
Oh, and my least favorite part. The fake, glitter-covered pixie wings. Which were nowhere to be found in my bedroom.
I jammed my feet in white sneakers and went sneaking down the hall. The twins’ door was cracked, and I peered in to see Clove sprawled across his bed, his pants only halfway off and shoes still on.
Surprisingly, there were no muscle-bound kelpies or satyrs sprawled alongside him.
The twins had somehow left a trail of destruction behind them: damp sealskins thrown in a pile on the floor, one sock draped over a lamp, an empty bottle of pixie vodka upended in a houseplant.
I found Tarragon in the living room, face down on the couch, snoring loudly, and wearing my pink pixie wings. Silver glitter had wafted off the mesh and coated his dark skin.
“Hey,” I said, groaning as I rolled him over. The selkies were all lean muscle, but they were still heavy as hell. “You’re going to stretch out the straps, you jerk.”
Tarragon cracked one sea-blue eye open and managed a lopsided smile. “But it’s my birthday.” The poor guy was still slurring.
“Yesterday was your birthday.” I managed to wrestle the wings off him without popping the straps. “When you wake up, go help yourself to my medicine cabinet.”
He muttered something indecipherable, his eyes already closing again.
I pulled a blanket over him. “Sleep tight, Cinnamon.”
No response. He was truly conked out.
I looped the pixie wings around my shoulders, picked up their sealskins and hung them up neatly so they wouldn’t complain about wrinkles later, and locked the door behind me on the way out.
The sky over Avilion was flat and pearly gray. Genuine pixies darted back and forth over the buildings in Mothwing Falls, already delivering early-morning messages.
I stopped at the bottom of the stairs to scratch behind the pointed ears of Carabosse’s friendly little cat sìth.
There was something about today that made me feel… wary. Like the universe had an unpleasant surprise in store and all my mental hackles were up.
The fairy-cat purred and twined around my legs, following me to the back of the little whitewashed building where my Fairy Ferry bike was locked up. It was my own bike, but my boss Numa had required me to have it repainted in glittery pink to match my wings and shirt.
Carabosse was already outside, taking out a bag of trash.
Being human, her face was lined with wrinkles, and her long, steel-gray hair was always tied back in a braid. She liked to wear dresses with lots of glittering patchwork and fringe.
“Rain today,” she announced. That was Carabosse’s typical greeting: an assessment of the weather instead of a hello.
“Good morning!” I unchained my bike and wheeled it around. “Hopefully it holds off.”
She picked up her cat sìth and gave the sky a dirty glare. “Don’t count on it.”
I shrugged. “Optimism over realism?”
Carabosse leveled that glare on me.
I jumped on my bike and waved, speeding away into the street.
Twenty seconds later, the sky opened up and a torrent of rain poured over me.
Just a perfect day. A hangover, a cracked phone, and now a spring downpour.
The lights of Web and Peaseblossom Bakery were already lit in the distance. I wiped the rain out of my eyes, and pedaled forward, rolling the bike onto the sidewalk.
Then I caught sight of a familiar figure through the rain and raised my hand to wave. Ioin’s bright green coat was like a beacon. He was waiting outside by a low stone wall.
Maybe he’d broken his phone, too.
A pretty sylph floated out of the bakery, clutching a white paper bag.
He turned to the side, his lips quirked in a little half-smile as he spoke. His arms reached out and wrapped around the sylph. Her gold hair floated around her head like a cloud despite the rain, reaching out to caress Ioin’s cheek.
My bike slowed to a halt as my heart dropped somewhere near my stomach.
Ioin leaned down and kissed the sylph. No, not just kissing. He was trying to plunder her esophagus with his tongue like a pirate raider.
I took a deep breath, then another, my stomach churning.
That was definitely Ioin. My boyfriend.
Who’d been kissing me the night before.
Who hadn’t texted me good night or good morning.
I felt like I was made of stone, watching everything like I was outside my own body.
The sylph floated into the air, giggling, and dragged him away by the hand. Ioin followed without a fight, tugging at the short hem of her dress.
Without thinking, I got off my bike and let it drop against the stone wall. Ioin was slowly obscured by the rain, then he rounded a corner.
Walking out of my life without so much as a goodbye. Had he purposely met the sylph here so I’d see them?
I walked into Web and Peaseblossom mechanically, mentally replaying the image of Ioin shoving his tongue in the sylph’s mouth over and over again. Even when I accidentally bumped into the guy in front of me, a tall Gentry Fae with a long caramel ponytail, I mouthed, “Sorry,” without really hearing it.
Had I been that terrible a girlfriend?
Ioin and I had both known it wasn’t very serious. Fae-human relationships rarely worked out permanently, and I only had six months left to decide if I wanted permanent residency in Avilion, or if I was returning to my home isle, Emain Ablach, where humans were entirely unwelcome.
He knew I wasn’t keen on going home. That maybe our relationship had a chance to become more than just a summer fling.
But… he could’ve said something. Not met another nymph at our morning meeting place and kissed her in front of me.
I didn’t realize the Gentry Fae was talking to me until a hand tapped my shoulder.
“What?” I snapped, and looked up into a pair of irritable burgundy eyes.
They were some damn pretty eyes despite being narrowed in annoyance, the color of garnets and fringed in black lashes.
“You keep stepping on my foot,” he said. His voice was deep and dark, edged in a low growl.
Then I realized I was shaking. My arms were clamped around my chest and a shiver that just wouldn’t stop had me jittering in my shoes, even though I wasn’t cold at all.
“I’m sorry.” I backed up a step, hugging myself tighter.
Ioin hadn’t given any sign he was unhappy with me. At the very least he could’ve ended it in person.
How long had he been seeing the sylph? The twins had never liked him and had kept hinting that he wasn’t what I thought. Maybe I’d been pulling the wool over my own eyes.
The caramel-haired Gentry Fae was still looking at me, his lips moving, but I didn’t hear it. He finally shook his head and turned around, stepping up to the counter to order.
When he left with a white paper bag in hand, I tried to force a smile on my face for Sylvaine, the bakery owner’s daughter.
She had a look on her face that told me she’d seen exactly what Ioin had done, her teeth clenched in an uncertain smile of her own. “Hi, Briallen. What can I get you this morning?”
“Hi, Sylvaine.” I tried not to think about the fact that Sylvaine was also a sylph, her floating platinum hair bound into a tight braid to keep it from going everywhere. I kept seeing that cloud of floating blonde hair brushing Ioin’s face. “Lemon twist tart, please?”
She made an apologetic grimace. “We’re all out, but we still have honeycrisp apple fritters, apple pie tarts, apple blossom blondies… and hey, the guy who just left paid for yours. He said you looked like you needed something to cheer you up.”
For a moment the cold, numb feeling left my chest. I wasn’t one for mixing with Gentry Fae, being a lesser Fae myself, but… even though I’d stepped on his foot, he’d still tried to do something nice for me.
But the taste of apples right now would make me gag. I’d had a lifetime of apples; my time in Avilion was supposed to be for fun, freedom… everything but apples.
“Thanks, but I’ll wait until tomorrow. Pass it on to the one behind me.” I backed away as Sylvaine shrugged and brushed a rogue strand of hair back under her hairnet.
“Briallen, you don’t have to be so upset. He’s just a human…”
I grimaced for real, unable to keep the fake smile on. “Yeah. See you tomorrow, Sylvie.”
Then I fled Web and Peaseblossom, taking a gasping breath when I reached my bike. There was no sign of the Gentry who’d paid for the tart I wouldn’t eat.
Nobody would understand or care about the gaping hole of uncertainty in my chest. Fae simply didn’t have their feelings hurt over humans.
And Ioin was just a human, one with an inconstant heart. Avilion was a playground for them, a city with a thousand varieties of Fae for their picking and choosing.
Like the apples of Emain Ablach, I’d had a bite taken out of me, and the rest was tossed aside.
I picked up my bike and pedaled down the street to the Fairy Ferry office, no longer shivering quite as hard as I rationalized what the inevitable end of that relationship was.
Sylvaine was right. Ioin was just a human, and I was a dryad. Like the trees I came from, my heart was covered in a thick layer of bark.
It would take more than six months of a fling to burrow beneath it.
It was my pride that was wounded more than my feelings. I would’ve respected Ioin enough to tell him if I was ready to end our relationship, but I supposed I’d placed too much trust in his ability to return that respect.
I chained my bike next to six other bikes outside the Fairy Ferry office. Everything about Fairy Ferry was glittering and pink; from the paint around the windows to the boxes and baskets spilling over with pink primroses, down to the welcome mat outside.
I pushed the door open as the bell tinkled overhead.
My fellow couriers were all soaked to the bone as well, all of them looking some shade of gloomy. It was obvious why when my boss, Numa Purkiss, snarled at me from the other side of his desk.
He was a greasy little satyr wearing a violet waistcoat over his furry chest. Several horns curled out from his skull in all directions, and his cheeks were permanently reddened after a lifetime of drinking pixie vodka for dinner every night.
In other words, the complete opposite of the Fairy Ferry aesthetic. I’d always wondered what he was compensating for.
“You’re late, Appletree!” The satyr bounded up from his swiveling chair and uncapped a marker he kept tucked behind one of his horns. Numa kept a board of all the girls working for him, and my name, Briallen Appletree, was sandwiched between Nadiya Korova and Audra Brightbreeze. He drew a slash next to my name. “And you’re soaking wet.”
“That’s because it’s raining, Numa. We’re al
l going to be soaking wet.” The last of my sadness had finally mutated into anger and disappointment, and the last thing I needed was a handsy boss who made us wear short shorts giving me a lecture. That little slash was the only one next to my name. I’d never been late before. “You charmed our packages, right?”
My table was laden with that day’s delivery parcels. I leaned over, checking the tags and pretending that Numa was not looking at my butt creases.
Today’s deliveries would take me to Mothwing Falls, Acionna Harbor… and there was one small package marked to an address in Thornwood, the high-class district reserved for the Gentry Fae.
When I turned around, Numa was indeed looking at my ass. “Earth to Numa? Water-repellent charms?”
The satyr tore his eyes away after what looked like an epic internal struggle. “All packages are charmed. Get to work, ladies, I don’t have all day.”
His little cloven hooves clip-clopped over the polished wood floor as he rounded the desk. I swiftly gathered my packages and began carrying them out to the basket on the front of my bike.
The package for Thornwood went first, where it’d be most protected from the rain. The Gentry Fae were the least forgiving when the water-repellent charms failed.
“Don’t be late again, Appletree,” Numa called after me, but his heart was only halfway into berating me. It was hard for him to remain on-point with his grousing when he was at eye level with a rusalka’s ass. “Or you’ll be doing overtime in the office, scrubbing my floor. Got it?”
I suppressed a shudder. The last thing I wanted was overtime alone with Numa. “Got it.”
Nadiya, the rusalka whose behind was being lovingly caressed by Numa’s eyeballs, made a face and rolled her eyes at me.