by S. E. Smith
She gaped at me for a moment, then scrunched her freckled face. “That’s messed up.”
“I promised you two hundred years if you bonded with me. Regretting it already?” I asked teasingly.
“Hell no, my golden dragon. I love you,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.
“I love you, too, my Red. For eternity.”
THE END.
About Regine Abel
ABOUT REGINE
Regine Abel is a sci-fi and paranormal romance author. Hot alien warriors meeting no-nonsense, kick-ass heroine give her warm fuzzies. She is completely addicted to stories with aliens that look like aliens, strange shifters, magic or psychic powers, and the world building of fresh new alien worlds. But she’s also a sucker for demons, vampires and all the dark creatures that go bump in the night. Her perfect heroes are big, muscular males, brutal and ruthless to their enemies, jealous and possessive, but that turn into soft and cuddly teddy bears when it comes to their woman!
When not writing or reading, Regine surrenders to the other passion in her life: video games! As a professional Game Designer and Creative Director, her career has led her from her home in Canada to the US and various countries in Europe and Asia. Find out more on Regine’s website or subscribe to her newsletter.
Also by Regine Abel
Legion (Xian Warriors 1)
Raven (Xian Warriors 2)
Escaping Fate (Veredian Chronicles 1)
Anton’s Grace (Braxians 1)
The Mistwalker
Alexis Glynn Latner - Winter’s Prince
Starways Series
In the festive, frivolous Winterfair in the amusement park inside the interstellar city of Wendis, there are as many purposes as participants….
Kev Desler takes part in in ancient fighting arts to forget that he’s an expatriate scholar who can’t go home. Sara Tai intends to find a genetically engineered unicorn to prove a scientific point. But the unicorn has a mind of its own. Everyone at the Fair wants to win prizes in the Fair’s many games. But someone wants a certain prize enough to not only break the rules, but bones and laws for it.
Caught up in a dangerous Winterfair game, Sara and Kev will need courage, intelligence and allies to win the game and save their lives. Along the way they begin to realize that the most valuable prize of all might just be—each other.
One
The Door to Winter
Kev and his companion Jerad-Jon crouched behind a rock, breathing hard. They held their weapons—footsoldier’s spear and knight’s sword—with hands that trembled from exertion. Meanwhile the fight went on without them. The sounds of the fighting were ugly.
It was only mid-morning but this war game had stopped being fun. Kev had lost his shield and gained too many cuts and bruises to count. He’d had enough. “Still out for glory on the field of battle?”
Jerad grimaced. “No.”
Kev pulled the Wild Card out of his faux-leather belt. At the touch of his fingerprint, writing appeared on the Card.
Find the Door to Winter
Along with the words, electrons flowed to form a sketch of a pine bough with icicles.
“How?” Jerad looked baffled.
Kev knew the lay of this land because he’d played here before, just not in a fight this dirty. “Follow me. Stay low and weave from cover to cover. The Arabs won’t mind two Crusaders sneaking away, but the Crusaders will!”
Kev held his spear ready in case an enemy sprang in his way. His muscles complained about crouching while he ran. Rusty and overtaxed muscles hadn’t made the day any more fun. He stumbled against a rock. Being a fake rock, it shifted and turned over with an incriminating clatter.
A crossbow bolt whirred past Kev’s ear.
“This way!” He zig-zagged to be a harder target to hit. “There!” A stack of flat stones marked the entrance to a cave. Jerad stumbled into the cave after him.
Kev pushed the Wild Card into the illuminated slot in the wall of the cave.
The mouth of the cave vanished as a door slid closed. The cave rotated. Then the invisible hand of momentum pushed them against a wall. Soft lighting came on.
They were in a translating elevator, as though they’d gone from ancient history to the star age in a few seconds.
Kev rubbed his hand, badly bruised when he’d lost his shield. Jerad still had his sword only because he’d used it with a ferocity that would have astonished his friends at the university.
Jerad-Jon was from the upper crust of society on the planet Faxe—he had the hyphenated name, the physical perfection, and the naivete typical of such an origin—but he was fair-minded. “Sorry I picked that fight for us.”
“I like martial arts because the training sharpens my spingravity reflexes. That helps any of us who came from a planet.” Kev was from Faxe too, just not from the upper social crust. “But some of those fighters were out for blood and loot.” He had a sinking feeling he wasn’t going to see his shield again, and it had been an expensive, indestructible one.
Now the translator was going up. Kev visualized where they were: inside an artificial mountain, inside an amusement park, inside the interstellar city-state called Wendis. And Wendis was having its Winterfair, a celebration of ancient history on Earth. Or rather a gaudy, gauzy, gutsy misremembering of said history. Kev knew how much history Winterfair got wrong, and it tended to set his teeth on edge. That was why he stuck with the fighting games in the Zone called Warway. He stayed out of the heart of Winterfair—the Zone called the Fair Country.
Which was where they were heading now.
The translator slid to a stop. The cave spun again. The door opened. They stepped out into a woodland of dark green trees dusted with snow. A thin thread of a brook tumbled downhill. Birds sang.
Jerad looked around with amazement on his face.
“This a completely different Zone, with different ecology, climate, and games.” Kev removed his helmet, folding it in half and putting it into the pocket under his belt. Fresh air felt good on his face. “If you want to stick to the desert war rule set, maybe we died and went to Heaven.”
“Heaven?”
“An afterlife in paradise.” The Crusaders on Earth would have thought exactly that if they’d somehow found a short-cut out of their hot, bloody desert back to a place so like their European homeland—and so very unlike it. The broad mountain they stood on curled around the spin axis of Wendis. On the other side of the world, the sky was made of concave sea.
Kev and Jerad followed a path beside the tiny brook to a clear pool in a grassy glade. Kev knelt, rinsing his painful knuckles in the pool.
Jerad held back from the water’s edge.
Kev said, “This Zone of the Park recreates Earth, not Faxe. The water doesn’t have shockthreads.”
Jerad crouched down and gingerly touched the water.
Then Kev heard the sounds of someone or something approaching. He looked up sharply—combat adrenaline wasn’t left behind in a brief translator ride.
A slender, blonde young woman walked into the glade beside a slender, silver animal. The animal regarded Kev with large dark eyes then dipped its head to drink. A fluted horn gleamed on its forehead.
The Winterfair was full of holograms and props, but this wasn’t one of them. It was a real unicorn—a genetically engineered animal. Kev had heard about unicorns higher up on this mountain where there was less spingravity. This one wore a silver harness that closely fit its silver hide. That harness might just function like equine spingravity braces.
Jerad-Jon had eyes only for the girl. “Hi. I’m Jerad-Jon.”
“I’m Lin-Miri.” Her fingers were twined in the unicorn’s mane. She was another young upper-crust Faxen, Kev thought, probably a University student. She had flawless features and a gauzy lavender dress. She in turn saw a fair-haired and perfect-faced young knight. They looked at each other with equal amounts of amazement.
Jerad murmured to Kev, “You’re right about this being Heaven.”
The unicorn went alert. It lifted its head up with a sharp snort.
Kev heard heavy footfalls approaching.
The girl blurted, “It’s the Blood-red Baron! We’re pretending I’m his unwilling bride and I ran away into the woods and got lost and the unicorn found me but the Baron is after me!”
“We won’t let the Baron get you!” Jerad announced.
With a stamp of a forehoof, the unicorn started pushing the girl toward the far edge of the glade. She looked back at Jerad with wide eyes then threw something toward him. It flew in a spingravity-straight line, not quite in the right direction, but he leaped and caught it.
A big figure concealed from head to toe in a red suit of mail stepped into the glade. “There you are! I’ll take you for my wife yet!”
The girl turned and ran away with the unicorn. Jerad confronted her pursuer. The Baron had a sword. Jerad pulled out his own—smaller, lighter—sword. Kev stepped in front of the Baron to defend his companion.
The Baron had two retainers trailing behind him. They came at Jerad.
In the absence of his shield Kev blocked the first blow from the Baron’s sword by holding his spear in both hands. Jarred to the teeth, Kev found himself in another losing fight. He spared a shard of mental energy to wish he’d stayed in his office today working on tomorrow’s lecture.
Sara’s quarry had delicate hooves that made clear tracks in the snow. But now human footprints were interspersed with the unicorn’s tracks. The footprints were small, made by a child or, worse and most likely, a young woman. Sara cursed under her breath. She had important business with that unicorn and it wouldn’t work if a silly girl beat her to it.
Then she heard voices ahead. More people? A loud male voice said, “I’ll take you for my wife yet!” and then a commotion broke out. Sara ran to see what was going on.
A fighter in a cyborg shell designed to look like a coat of mail—Sara recognized Baron Bloodred—and two henchmen were outnumbering and outfighting two Crusaders. The fight had scared the unicorn away.
In angry frustration, Sara unsheathed her scimitar and darted at the Baron, who didn’t see her coming. She had the satisfaction of slicing the red shell on Baron Bloodred’s forearm. His henchmen threatened her. She danced away and threw some of her drone motes at them. The drones sparkled and danced around their eyes, impossible to swat or wave away.
With the fighting paused thanks to her, she positioned herself back to back with the sturdy brown-haired Crusader. He asked over his shoulder, “Aren’t we on opposite sides?”
“Not here!”
The younger Crusader got the idea, turning his back to both of them to form a three-sided, defensible fighting unit. Sara held her scimitar ready. The red-shelled Baron had to switch sword hands because that sliced arm of his wasn’t working so well.
Suddenly a trapdoor in the ground opened. A man wearing a black hat that trailed a long white feather stood up in the trapdoor. “Inauthentic role!” He pointed at Sara.
He was a Fair monitor. Just who she didn’t want to see. “I’m a Saracen mage!” she retorted.
“Inauthentic technology, too!”
“Arabic science was woven into the fabric of old European technology,” the brown-haired Crusader pointed out helpfully.
“Anyway it’s a game!” said the Baron.
The monitor waved a thin electronic notebook at them. “The list of approved roles doesn’t include a female Saracen mage.”
“You twit!”
“Varlet is an acceptable insult, but not twit. Two more points off!” He traced a note in his book.
“Moondust you!” Sara snarled.
The Baron held up a mailed hand. “Everybody shut up. What’s that?”
Faint cries for help were coming from farther downhill.
The brown-haired crusader lifted an eyebrow. “Now what?”
Sara shrugged.
“Come on,” the Baron ordered his retainers, and they ran that way. The monitor hurried after them. Sara and the Crusaders followed, ducking past evergreen branches that scattered snow on their shoulders. There was no sign of the unicorn.
In the bottom of the valley, where a road ran through it, two groups of people were engaged in an untidy all-out scuffle. “It’s the Highway Robbers attacking travelers,” Sara said. “This is part of the Baron’s realm and he has to maintain order.” The Baron had already weighed in with his retainers. “That isn’t just a coat of mail. It’s a cyborg shell. He’s one of the best fighters in the Fair.”
Gratifyingly, the brown-haired Crusader told her, “Nice how your move surprised him. Congratulations. By the way, I’m Kev Desler and this is Jerad-Jon Arnolt.”
“Serafina Tai. Call me Sara. I think I recognize you from Avend University. History professor?”
“Right. Jerad’s my teaching assistant. You?”
“Bioscience grad student.”
“Where did the girl with the unicorn go?” Jerad looked around.
Kev smiled at that. Sara had thought this professor distinctly attractive when she’d seen him walking across campus, serious of face and wrapped in thought. With a Crusader’s tabard and spear and fighting moves to match, yet possessed of a sweet smile under serious eyes, he was more attractive by approximately an order of magnitude.
Jerad asked, “What kind of Zone is Avalanche Zone?”
“What?” Sara asked. “What do you mean?”
“That sign.” Jerad pointed. It was a map with a red crosshatched region that included the meadow into which the fight was now spilling as the Baron, his retainers and the travelers routed the Robbers across it. The sign said, KEEP OUT OF AVALANCHE ZONE.
“Avalanches can happen where I grew up on Goya.” Sara scanned the slopes of the mountain above where they were. This was a weird mountain—one of the three inside Wendis, and the whole Strange Range were incredibly weird mountains—but there was a wide bowl full of snow that probably could avalanche if something disturbed it.
As she watched, someone walked across the bowl. He had a gaunt figure, a bony face, and angular, translucent wings held cocked to fly. With a shock, Sara recognized the Death Angel. The player nobody wanted to see, the one who’d send everybody else running for cover.
Triggered by the Angel’s tread, the snow in the bowl spilled. It flowed downhill like a white tide.
“Watch out!” Sara yelled.
The travelers, robbers, Baron and retainers were too far away—and too busy—to hear her. The monitor did. He backpedaled into the woods and frantically fingered his notebook.
The edges of the white tide lapped their legs as she, Kev and Jerad held onto trees to keep from being pulled down by it. But the meadow was a natural spillway for the snow. The Baron, retainers, Robbers and travelers all disappeared in the avalanching snow, except for one person who flailed like a swimmer and somehow stayed on top while being swept downhill.
Kev said heatedly, “This is absurd. What kind of—”
A loud whistle drowned him out.
“That’s the stop-game whistle. Meaning this wasn’t supposed to happen. Give me your spear.” Sara ran to the spilled snow and waded into it. Probing with the spear, she quickly found first one softer-than-cold-ground object and then another. “Dig!” She and Kev pulled a shivering traveler out. Jerad and the monitor pulled out a Robber shaken so far out of his role that he was crying.
From several directions, more monitors ran up. One of them had a small dog. It was a Wendisan dog, a Chivvier—a breed famous for finding lost things. Its delicate ears and pointed nose indicated more people under the snow so the rescuers knew where to dig.
Baron Bloodred got out by himself. He forced his way out of the avalanche and stood up. Caked with snow, he looked like a peppermint candy.
Two
Time Out
Electric lights, flickering like candles, illuminated faux-stone pillars under a dim, rough dome of a ceiling with a catwalk across it. People costumed as goblins and dwarves sat on the catwa
lk, watching the crowd below them. For the purpose of the Winterfair games, this was the Hall of the Mountain King. For right now, it was a place to accommodate everyone from the Avalanche Zone. Hot drinks, energy bars and blankets were being distributed by Winterfair workers. Kev took a bulb of hot tea to hand to Sara at her nod. He chose kavva for himself and hot chocolate for Jerad, whose teeth were chattering. Around them swirled excited conversations about the avalanche and its aftermath. Nobody was still missing, but two players had needed to be sent to the hospital.
As he gratefully sipped the hot kavva, Kev decided that the morning had finally gotten better than working on his next lecture. He felt well rid of the Crusaders and Arabs and glad he’d met Sara Tai. He recalled how she’d attacked the Baron, with fluid grace and a deftly wielded scimitar. She wore a hooded blue tunic over loose pants tucked into light boots, with a wide sash around her waist and a light rucksack on her back. The outfit made her look competently adventurous.
Jerad said, “I don’t see Lin-Miri. I guess she wasn’t caught in the avalanche.”
“What was it she threw to you?”
He opened his hand to show Kev a ring with a faceted stone.
Sara said, “It’s a tracer-finder. You can use it to locate her.”
Jerad looked delighted.
The chatter in the cavern went silent when a dark-skinned, sturdy woman ascended the throne platform. Her richly colored cloak swirled around her. She stood in front of the empty throne and radiated authority.
“Who’s that?” Kev asked Sara in a whisper.
“Elzebet Seller. She’s the Chair of the Fair.”
“Good Wendday to you all, or I should say, a better one! I’m glad to see all of you here, though sorry for the reason.” Elzebet had a resonant voice that commanded attention. “First of all, if any have need, the medical station is in that corner.” She gestured. “Now I would like to remind you all of our purpose here. This is the Winterfair of Wendis. Among other purposes—as many purposes as participants, as a matter of fact—it’s a warmup for a greater event—the Ascendance Fair that’s to be held next summer.”