Woe for a Faerie

by Bokerah Brumley

  Woe for a Faerie

  Keepers of New Haven Book 1

  Bokerah Brumley

  Contents

  1. The Choice

  2. Moonlight Whispers

  3. Rescue

  4. The Priest

  5. An Old Friend, A New Name

  6. Questioning

  7. Wake Up

  8. Overlook

  9. Gone Hunting

  10. Chess

  11. Psychic Vibes

  12. Attack

  13. Embrace

  14. Assemble

  15. Yesterday

  16. Next Steps

  17. Considerations

  18. A Plan

  19. Facades

  20. Bait

  21. Loss

  22. Foreplay

  23. No Quarter Given

  24. The Truth

  25. Objection

  26. Surrender

  27. Discovery

  28. Morning Glow

  29. Vacation Plans

  30. The Boss

  31. Stand Off

  32. Vacation Plan

  33. Brain Search

  34. Off to Eilean Ren

  35. Handcuffs

  36. The Shifter

  37. Arrival

  38. Culture Shock

  39. Refusal

  40. Surrender

  41. Honeymoon

  42. Somber

  43. Accounting

  44. The Moment Approaches

  45. Heartbreak

  46. Grief

  47. Funeral

  48. Return

  49. Resurrection

  50. After

  51. Questions

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  More Urban Fantasy from Silver Empire

  1

  The Choice

  Ailin

  New Haven City

  I couldn’t stop Hannah’s murder. Transforming took too long, and I already knew I wouldn’t arrive in time to save the little girl from her attacker.

  “Help me, Ailin,” she screeched, reaching across realms with her mind. “He’s killing me. I can’t breathe. His hands…”

  In a moment, a flash, through her eyes, I recognized the alley she was in, the one next to the orphanage. An ugly shadow that moved over her, the strangle of fat fingers around her neck, and the stream of shrieking thoughts that tore through her mind.

  When Hannah screamed, I froze. Every message, every mission faded from my mind. She needed me. I had to protect her. She didn’t have anyone else. No mother.

  I reached toward her, picturing her location. It took too long to cross from the supernatural to the mortal, but it was the only option. I hoped I would make it in time.

  A breeze that smelled of New Haven City, and the mortals that populated it, buffeted my face, and Hannah called for me again. The second time she called, her voice held no strength. She faded.

  I hadn’t been the angel assigned to guide her or protect her, but I had to go. Faster. I had to get there. I pushed through the separation, the sandpaper edges scraped against my skin. If only I could get there.

  I stretched toward her as I bled from my supernatural plane into hers, stepping down onto the edge of a four-story building. I peered into the alley that matched what I’d seen through her eyes. The loud hum of humans drowned out Hannah’s whimpers. People were a constant engine of chaos, running in the background, and I strained to hear her.

  But there was nothing. No warmth as her soul recognized me, no responding warmth echoing in my insides. I loved her.

  “Hannah?” I whisper-yelled, my voice hoarse with worry.

  Her silence destroyed my hope.

  A familiar flutter caught my attention on top of the skyscraper across the ally. Slowly a dark figure wrapped in robes, consolidated on the fire escape.

  No. No. No.

  The angel of death hovered nearby. He wouldn’t leave New Haven City without Hannah’s soul. I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep my scream from escaping. One final gurgling wail followed the rip of Hannah’s flesh.

  Hannah’s guardian was nowhere to be seen, and fury seethed inside my heart.

  I cried out, then. Hannah might not have been my divine purpose. Maybe she wasn’t my charge to protect, but I had flown as fast as I could. I meant to reach her before something happened that I couldn’t fix.

  My creators demanded obedience to the hierarchy. I could not move against the Death Angel. The laws of the supernatural assured it. I could only watch the end unfold.

  Longing curled my toes and weakened my ankles until I swayed and wished an avenging justice onto the world. I should have been sooner. I should have sacrificed myself to save her. I could have. As an angel, I existed inside the spiritual, hidden from the physical, and I remained to watch of the rest of the hideous scene play out.

  Helpless.

  A long sigh drifted toward me, intermingled with the low grunts of evil bent on finishing its task of destruction. He doused a bright light, the impact of that moment slammed me into a darkness so deep.

  I stepped over the edge and landed on the pavement behind the creature that dared harm my Hannah. I tucked my wings away.

  Her last heartbeat shuddered through me.

  My knees trembled, and I crept forward.

  She left her body. It was finished.

  Death gathered her in his arms, and the laws of my world meant I had to leave her in the arms of its mercy.

  Above us, tears streaked the gargoyles faces, weeping each time an innocent died. She made no more sounds. I arrived too late.

  My sweet Hannah.

  Each moment that ticked by, a resolve grew and hardened in my heart.

  Vengeance could still be mine.

  He dragged her lifeless body into the corner of the alley and covered her with dirt and trash. One foot shoeless, the other tied in a ballet slipped that her mother had given her as a reward for good grades.

  I grimaced at the row of gargoyles beside me, positioned every few feet along the parapet that surrounded the flat portion of the rooftop. Thunder interrupted the cacophony of prayers that the stone figures funneled upward from a thousand voices below.

  The clouds parted. Another brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the posh uptown. Fire escapes laced the sides of the old buildings. Each one crisscrossed the walls like jagged arrows, the ladder-tips pointing to the alleyway.

  Defeated, I turned toward the high-rise apartments behind me. From a window, another man watched the city, his finger tapping his chin. A helicopter whirred overhead.

  An empty train ran along its elevated tracks. The windows blinked like celluloid frames of a silent film, and the rhythmic clacking was the orchestral accompaniment. On this street, a woman wept at a bus stop, and a siren echoed like the memory of the cries of the condemned, burned at the hypocritical stake, hundreds of years ago.

  Obedience thwarted my intentions. I wasn’t supposed to step in. The One Rule was clear. Do only what you’re told when you’re told to do it. Nothing more, nothing less.

  I couldn’t help Hannah. I had been too late to rescue her.

  What useless wings.

  My lovely Hannah: guilty of childhood and sentenced to death by a predator.

  I leapt up into the darkness. My black feathered pinions opened wide, a futile benediction over the masses. I wanted to get away from the horror, but instead, my bare feet landed softly on the fire escape directly above the man that still studied his achievement.

  I wrapped myself in my feathers, looking between them like a child watching a scary movie. A bright flash accompanied the click of a camera shutter. The creature wanted to remember his filthy work. Then he slipped away without retribution, free of torment.

&
nbsp; I didn’t need pictures to remember the ugly. My fingernails tore the flesh of my palms as I screamed at the absence of miraculous intervention. I spent my grief, weeping in an alleyway that evil emptied of life.

  My tears were lost in a torrent of raindrops. Again, I’d been beaten from head to toe by a reality without the freedom of choice, a reality that forced me to watch an innocent die without intervening.

  Outrage billowed within me. I would find a way to balance the scales. I would no longer be constrained by any leading by my own.

  I stepped from the metal landing, weightless for a moment, my eyes closed to shield against the truth of an existence without her laughter.

  Hannah was dead.

  Angels weren’t saviors, and I refused to be Ailin anymore. I would remake myself as an arbiter of vengeance. I needed to feel something more than woe.

  A Few Days Later

  Congealed blood clung to my wingtips, and terror became my tailwind. Hard and fast, I flew. With each downstroke, I tried to fling the evidence away from me.

  The colorful dawn crested the horizon and chirruping songbirds flapped along beside me. Today’s breezes did not sing through my feathers like every day before, and joy did not come with the morning.

  I gasped and tried to still my shaking.

  If I could get away from the city, the consequences wouldn’t catch me. Sick of being told what to do, I’d veered from my purpose. Rage had poured through me, and, for a moment, Free Will had been my dearest companion.

  Fear set my teeth on edge. I knew what came next, even as I tried to outrun it. No face could hide forever from their reckoning.

  As I crossed over the reservoir, the sun disappeared.

  My world plunged into darkness.

  Birds screeched and scattered through the sky as I struggled against an invisible net.

  The tips of my iridescent feathers ignited in blue flames. The warm kiss of heat tingled along hundreds of feather shafts and swelled until I was engulfed in a searing, mid-air bonfire, and plummeting toward New Haven City Park.

  The white-hot blaze burned until it devoured my purpose and turned my beautiful wings to ash. That’s the trouble with real Justice. It doesn’t give out grace cards.

  At least The Fall would kill me.

  2

  Moonlight Whispers

  Arún

  New Haven City

  Flames engulfed the fallen angel’s wings and burned them away.

  That much I could tell, staring out of the window of the high-rise. Cast out, her arrival would fulfil the prophecy my grandmother had spoken in ages past.

  High above New Haven City, seated in front of the glass wall, I didn’t want to observe her demise, but it was as though the whole thing played out as a movie on a projector screen. Fate forgot to give me a choice.

  I didn’t know why the angel’s wings had been taken, only that they had been. The prophecy told me nothing about the time before her fall. Only that her life would be bound to mine from the moment her skin touched the Earth. No magic in any realm was strong enough to heal what had been taken from Woe, and no magic would be strong enough to break the bond between us.

  But I could ignore it.

  I came because of a promise I made to my twin sister, Ishka. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I would never marry the fallen creature. I stepped through the portal from Eilean Ren, the Fae Realm, into New Haven City, determined to find a cure for her blight. In the bustling metropolis, I had no identity. I had become unremarkable.

  At most, my presence was a shadow that occasionally earned notice, not the firstborn son of the Fae King and heir to the throne of the Realm. I remained among the mortals because of the freedom anonymity offered to me.

  I stiffened and turned my face away from the window, squeezing my eyes closed.

  What happened to Woe wasn’t my concern.

  Pain danced down my shoulder blades, two searing lines, and my own pale wings shuddered. I could hear Woe fall, sense her as mortality filled her. I clenched my fists until my knuckles popped.

  Moonbeams shimmered across the city scape, and my whole body jumped, every cell crying out for her as she slammed into the dirt. By all the laws of the physical, mortal world, she should be dead. I couldn’t care less if she was. I shouldn’t care. Her drama wasn’t my business.

  I jumped to my feet, driven to pace the apartment, but the window drew me. A thirsty man, drawn to a drink I vowed never take. I wouldn’t accept our bond, and, even if it meant never finding the way to heal my people, I would never lead the Fae Realm.

  Far below, my Fae eyesight could make out the bridges and ponds of the park at the heart of the city. She laid there, and I stared. I knew this truth as well as I knew that I would be the first prince of my kind to flout prophecy and plot my own course in the world of the mortals.

  I prowled through the kitchen. Into the fourth watch, only another hour remained until four thirty a.m. I needed a distraction until the gym on the first floor opened for the morning crowd. Not hungry, I decided to make an omelet anyway.

  I set a skillet to warm and dropped a pat of butter into it.

  Green bell peppers. Green onions. Parsley. And tomatoes.

  I began chopping the vegetables but gasped when a wave of dizziness washed over me. Shaking my head to clear the sensation, I kept on. The bond could be ignored. It had to be. If I didn’t allow the fallen angel into my life, then I would never lead the Fae Realm.

  Woe wasn’t allowed to summon me. Not like that. I wouldn’t allow it.

  If I gave in now, I wouldn’t ever be able to ignore her. My path would be set, and I didn’t want that path.

  The cord between us drew tight. The tug of her made my heart skip. My soul knew it, and light from the winter’s full moon spread over the window, whispering her name as though it was a courier. Yet there was more in the message.

  Woe had not merely fallen to Earth, she was in danger.

  The butter danced across the skillet, spinning and turning to the tune of the turmoil inside me. Onions. Parsley. It all sizzled as I tossed it into the melting fat.

  Arún, my brother. Ishka’s voice sighed through my mind. I can sense your unease from here.

  I flinched as though she slapped me, nearly slicing through my thumb.

  Sister. I gritted my teeth. I had been foolish to believe I could hide from her, but I didn’t have to give in.

  Do the moonbeams sing of the prophecy, tapping on your window?

  How well you know me. I swiped a spatula from the stainless-steel canister next to the stovetop and stirred the vegetables, thinking how much the realm of mortals was like the chaos in my skillet.

  Will you go?

  Cracking and whipping three eggs into a bowl, I pour them over the caramelized vegetables, hoping she would let the matter go. But Ishka had shared a womb with me, and, sometimes, she knew me better than I knew myself.

  You promised.

  Two words that seared my heart.

  I promised to come here to New Haven City. I did not promise to… to…

  Leaning on the counter, I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. It’s all or nothing. I could live my own life in New Haven City, or I could go find Woe and return to rule the Eilean Ren at the whim of our xenophobic father.

  Ishka didn’t answer for a long time.

  Woe needs you. You are all she has. She whispers the words, infusing them with all the weariness she holds after ages of loneliness. She doesn’t know if it’s true.

  And then Ishka abandoned my thoughts to me. The void she left behind is always as though I’m missing a part of myself. It’s always that way with Fae twins.

  I am dense. I should have known she would empathize keenly with the fallen angel, alone and vulnerable in New Haven City. Given that, and all the extenuating circumstances, of course she would be attuned to anything to do with the prophecy or with Woe.

  The threads of destiny between my heart and Woe’s pulled taught once more, com
pelling me to leave my place and find her. The back of my neck tingled, and my pulse thundered in my ear, drowning out the food as it sizzled in the pan.

  Turning off the fire beneath the omelet, I retrieved a small plate and placed it on the counter beside.

  Again. The tug came again.

  The savory egg pancake slid out of the hot pan easily.

  Pain and confusion clouded Woe’s mind.

  I turned toward the window. If something happened to Woe, Ishka would never forgive me. I dropped the pan into the sink, the clatter loud in the quiet of my life.

  Woe is in danger. Ishka’s words echoed in my head. I couldn’t tell if she’d sent them again or if they were just there.

  I crossed to the window. Like a lighthouse, a moth to a flame, my gaze is drawn to the city park far below. She was there, waiting to be found. Her life would be forfeit if I didn’t find her first.

  Conflict churned in my chest. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know how to keep what I wanted and accomplish what Ishka wanted—no, needed—me to do.

  Ishka’s disfigured face swam in my thoughts.

  The answer came in her scars. I would court Draegon Spawn and Hellfire, all for the sake of a sister and the closest bond I possessed. All before I would add to her pain with my actions. I had one choice.