Hellish Fae: A Forbidden Fated Mates Reverse Harem Series (The Monsters and Miseries Series Book 1)

by A. K. Koonce

  Damien picks up his pace, and I’m left gaping at him. Until the vines clear and sunlight washes over my face as we step into a small clearing cut away in the thick forest.

  And there stands a single house built among the branches and leaves. It’s built between the trees, boards and wood extending across branches, rooms and windows drifting higher and higher among the towering treetops.

  What is this place?

  Zaviar opens the small front door, his shoulders filling the space as he disappears inside. I lean in a bit more to Damien now. Trepidation is finally a beating thing within my heart. He’s quiet as he brings me to the house. He walks in with as much authority as Zaviar, but when we enter, a larger, more terrifying man is just at the entry.

  Stark black wings shadow over him, taloned at the ends with sharp, shining metal. His green eyes shift over my face, my shirt, my long legs, and then make their way slowly back up.

  “You found her,” he whispers.

  I straighten my pitiful posture the best I can and give him my harshest glare.

  It’s not much, but it’s all I have against the men who are really starting to outnumber me.

  I was an idiot for feeling safe with Damien. He’s a stranger.

  They all are.

  And I have no idea what they want with me.

  Inky black smoke wafts across the floor, drifting into the room in a way I remember. In a way that’s terrifyingly familiar.

  A figure enters. Smoke drifts around her sharp features like mystical hair, transparent and weightless. Big black eyes settle on me as a smile cuts into her face.

  My heart calms when I see her eerie features.

  “Sister!” Corva says with a proud smile on her thin lips, and the sight of her alone makes happiness swells inside me, as well as uneasy apprehension.

  It really is good to be home.

  4

  Bond of Sisters

  “Thanks so much for sending the welcoming committee to get me,” I tell her, my arms still flat at my side thanks to my bindings, but I flash her a charming smile as if I’m quite the comfortable guest in her home.

  “They are the brutish type, aren’t they?” Her smoky hair drifts around her face as she stares at me with frighteningly excited attention.

  She wants something.

  Corva always wants something. But I think exile does that to a person. She was exiled from our family centuries before I was. I used to think she was whiny and selfish for always sending whisper winds to our father, begging him for forgiveness. Now I see the green grass for what it truly is on the other side.

  Dog shit. The green grass where my father lives is total dog shit.

  The three brooding, but distractingly shirtless, men looming around us watch us like snakes about to strike . . . What do they have to do with my cruel sister?

  Dark fae are dangerous. But Corva, she’s a silent killer. The kind you have to play games with if you want to keep your life.

  So I tread carefully.

  “What is this place, Corva? Last father knew, you were living with a group of angry pixies along the Iris River.” My hand lifts in the least casual way from where it’s pinned at my side, and I skim my fingers along the carved wooden table that’s built right out of the floorboards.

  She scoffs, but her smile is still wide. “Pixies are hardly any fun at all. Fallen angels, now those are fun.” Her haunting voice sends a shiver down my spine, and it seems to do the same to the tense men surrounding us.

  “Seraphs,” Damien corrects. Because angels like titles. Even if he’s no longer a seraph. “She’s using us as well as helping us,” Damien answers without the mischievousness of my sister.

  He gives away answers too freely.

  He’s too trusting. Which must be why he and his friends are mixed up with a dangerous fae like Corva.

  Because dark fae, they don’t give anything away for nothing.

  “How is she helping you?” I turn to him and his sweet honey-colored eyes.

  I’m already mourning him in a way.

  Damien the Fallen. He was a good man. A kind man.

  A stupid, stupid man.

  It’s then that Damien’s sharing suddenly dries up. He glances to the woman behind me before shifting his gaze to Zav.

  Neither of them answers me.

  “She helps slow the demon process. Her magic and runes prevent us from fully becoming demons.” The rumbling words of mystery man number three throw me off guard. For a moment, I stare dumbfounded at him.

  He’s massive. All rolling muscles and smooth planes. Intimidating, but something about him isn’t frightening. Not the scarring runes that line the center of his chest, nor the darkness that clouds his pale green eyes, nor even the stark leathery wings that shadow him from his wide shoulders.

  Perhaps it’s because of that sinful smirk that’s tilting his lips as he studies me the way I’m studying him.

  “You do realize, you look like something a demon shit out the morning after a hellacious hangover?” I say.

  Like you’re one to talk, Catherine whispers.

  The cunt.

  “Yes, I look like a demon,” says the big one. “But I’ve been a fallen for a hundred years, and look at me. Thanks to Corva’s help, the process has slowed.”

  A hundred years.

  My eyebrows lift slowly and that taunting sexy smirk of his only intensifies.

  “You’re almost cute when you shut up for longer than a second, Crow,” he says to me.

  My lips suddenly curl at the demon shit.

  “Crow?” I snarl.

  In two big steps he’s in front of me, stealing all the light behind him with his massive stature. When his lips part with quiet words, his dark tone strums through me like a song that touches me in all the right places.

  “Call me demon shit, and you’re bound to get the favor returned. ‘Crow’ is much more affectionate than what I wanted to say to you, I promise,” he whispers, his big fingers flicking the inky feathers at the tip of my right wing.

  The candlelight glints against something on the back of his arm, and I barely catch sight of jagged metal slicing right from his skin. The weapon startles me, but in an instant, he’s slashed it down the front of me.

  The slamming sound of my heart fills my ears. But it calms as the tightness around my arms loosens. The metal bindings around my body fall and burn out like embers in the night, fading away to literal ash before my eyes.

  Nothing but powerful dark fae magic could have done something like that.

  My breathing calms, and my big eyes stare at the odd onyx metal that lines his forearms like fish fins.

  “She cursed you,” I whisper. A sinister giggle follows my words. “She cursed you with iron blood.”

  “I didn’t curse him. It sounds dirty when you say it that way. It’s just a test,” Corva says innocently.

  The massive man in front of me is staring blankly down at me, his lips so thin, I can tell he’s biting back all the things he wants to scream at my sister.

  “He’s a demon who’s hated by the fae world. So you gave him the one thing fae can’t stand. The one thing that’s like poison to us: iron. Iron magic, to be exact. He’ll be an outcast among us for the rest of his life. He’ll be more hated than any other demon.” He truly will be a monster. My mouth drops as I finish that thought. “You . . . you wanted to know what they’d do to him, didn’t you?”

  “Do to him? Don’t be silly. I gave him a gift. Something to protect himself. Fae can’t even so much as lay a hand on him without feeling the singe of his blood.” She shrugs her small shoulders at me.

  And it’s just like all of her whisper wind pleas with my father. All careless recklessness that doesn’t make a single ounce of sense.

  I shake my head at her, and I know I should just shut up. It’s not safe to be on her bad side. And I need an ally here, now that I’m back.

  I need a friend more than anything in this realm. And Corva is a powerful friend. So pow
erful, she broke my father’s barrier magic preventing me from returning . . .

  “She sent us to capture you,” the iron blood demon confirms, laying it all out there with a contemptuous sort of rage hidden beneath his handsome features.

  My head turns slowly until I’m looking at her big black eyes once more. When I was a little girl, her unnaturally large eyes used to scare me. She still secretly scares me, but for more realistic reasons.

  “That’s all you wanted from them?”

  She wanted me?

  Why?

  To join her in her misery?

  “Because you and I need each other, sweet sister.” Everything she says drips with contained maliciousness.

  “I don’t need anyone.” My shoulders square, but I’ll admit they’re sore from being pressed into the bindings she made for me.

  “Maybe,” she says in that eerie singsong way of hers. “Imagine if all of the children that father exiled joined together. Imagine if we didn’t do as we were told and lie down to die?”

  She is so dramatic.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I say. “I’m living my best life in the Bin.”

  Everyone in the room takes a disdainful moment to slide their gaze down my three-day-old dirty shirt and hot pink panties that are feeling smaller by the minute.

  I roll my eyes. As if they’re so much better than me. Half the room isn’t even wearing shirts, for faefuck’s sake. Is there some sort of shirt shortage I don’t know about happening in the fae realm?

  “Anyway,” I say cautiously, “what exactly would we do together while joining forces? Play house here in your tree fort?” I glance from the wooden cup on the table to the wooden chairs and the vines tying everything together.

  “We’d go back, Ari,” she says. “We’d go back to court where we belong. We’d have a life. The life we were meant to live.”

  I swallow. It hurts my chest so badly to realize no one’s called me Ari in a long, long time.

  Her words and the sting of that sentimental name my mother used to call me hits me all at once.

  She wants to go back. I do, too. Just being a tiny distance inside the fae realm makes my heart pound to life with happiness that I’d forgotten about.

  I guess . . . I guess I forgot what happiness felt like.

  It’s all great and wonderful and let’s just close the book of my life right now and say the fairytale is done, and we all lived happily ever after.

  Except I don’t trust Corva. No one should. These three fallen are so fucking obtuse for thinking she’s helping them.

  Poisoning them is what she’s really doing.

  She’ll do it to me, too

  And I’m about to let her.

  5

  A Crow’s Nest

  I’ve agreed to stay.

  For now.

  It’s late in the day. The dim evening sunlight sweeps through the carved windows, and the more stairs I climb in this place, the more elaborate it all becomes. There’s a damn training room on the sixth floor. When I peer nervously out the window, I recognize the large room and the dozens of wooden practice swords on a rack. Three real swords hang near the door. Two glitter with golden magic like it’s blessed by the gods. They’re the swords Zav and Damien wore today. The third… it’s black and ashen. My stomach twists as I look at the three odd blades and their similarities but also their harsh differences to the third.

  I don’t understand it.

  Forcing myself to look away, I find the room to be very large with a soft blue mat spread across it. Armory is piled in the corner. Balance beams and padded mats are all around, teetering on the thin branches in the top of a tree. The space literally sways when the leaves outside rustle in the breeze.

  The mortal realm and their housing inspectors would have a heart attack over the layout of this house. It’s completely ridiculous.

  And I love it.

  I travel higher up, and soon the smooth carved walls fall away entirely, but the stairs beneath my feet keep circling the tree trunk high into the bleeding evening sky. I can feel the faint sunlight on my face, and the cool wind against my lips is exhilarating.

  Until I reach the top step.

  I stop dead in my tracks. Three men as carved as this house are stripping down to just their tight black underwear. The thin material hugs their lean waists as they talk quietly among themselves on the platform. At its center, is a circular platform with wooden floorboards. It’s a standing area among so much netting casting out from it at all sides, attaching to other branches of nearby trees. A dresser with drawers on all sides, rests there on the little standing space. Everywhere around it is just thin strings. Nearly unseen threads slice from the center circle out to the branches of the surrounding trees. It’s like a web of sorts. The ties here and there holding it all together can be seen if you study it hard enough.

  It’s just another bizarre creation in this mysterious house my sister built for herself.

  And her demons, it seems.

  “She must be powerful. Why else would someone like Corva want a bratty little girl like her?” Zav whispers with a growl.

  Excuse me?

  Bratty little girl? I’m twenty-three fucking years old! And, furthermore, I’ve found some of Corva’s pants to wear, so I’m no longer showing my ass, if everyone could please take notice!

  I bite my tongue hard and keep listening from beneath the array of big green leaves.

  “She’s had us searching for this girl every Friday for years without telling us she isn’t a fallen but a fae. Corva isn’t an idiot set out for sisterly bonding. She’s planning something.” The large man with the scars says in a hushed tone.

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing Corva does matters for us. She’ll figure something out to help Damien permanently, and then we’ll leave.”

  At that, the demon man cocks a dark brow at Zaviar. His odd bladed weapons along the back of his forearms scrap lightly against his skin as his arms cross over his chest.

  “I’ve been here a long time. I’m happy to stay. I’m happy to be Corva’s little bitch boy in exchange for what she gives me. Fae tolerate demons. But not the ones like me. Men like me, we’d be sent right to the demon land without hesitation. And I’m not fucking going to the Torch. So, make your little plans all you like, but that’s between you two. It’s always been you two brothers and me. Not us.”

  He’s right. He’s straightforward and doesn’t dance around topics it seems. A little bit brutish but painfully honest. His bluntness makes sadness slide through my stomach. It’s hard to hear the truth spoken out loud sometimes.

  The three of them stand there, quietness falling across them.

  I should leave.

  Before they shed anymore secrets about themselves.

  I twist quickly. My feet tangle around literally my own stupidity, and that cool wind I was cherishing so damn much does nothing to catch me as I fall. My wings splay out but land against the sleek netting. My fingers reach for one of the thin threads, but I can’t get a grip.

  Over and over and over again, I roll across the beautiful delicate net. Until my shoulder jars into wood. And I find I’ve hit the center platform.

  My eyes open, and I stare up at three glaring fallen.

  They definitely look like demons from this angle.

  Zaviar lowers himself, his strong thighs supporting his arms as he tilts his head this way and that like I’m a fly caught in his deadly web. His sharp jawline tightens and I can feel his cruelty before he even opens his big mouth.

  “Were you spying on us, Little Crow?”

  That fucking name.

  “No,” I say, my breath rushing. “I just . . . thought this place looked like fun and wanted to roll on over to see what the cool kids were gossiping about.” My hands fold over my stomach like I’m totally relaxed and not at all awkward in this strange situation.

  Damien’s full lips twitch at the corner, and I love the way his eyes are shining. He doesn’t look like a tra
gic angel right now.

  He looks like a sinful demon about to devour his prey. He almost reminds me of his brother for once.

  “Anyway, I’ll just,” I push myself up and try to stand, but I can’t find my balance in this death trap of a net. My knees give out. I push myself up. My hand flies right between a few invisible threads, and I lie there face-down, awkwardly. “What is this space, anyway?” I nearly shriek with frustration.

  Big hands grip my hips from behind. As I’m heaving and thrashing in the netting, I’m pulled out. His body holds mine.

  “It’s our bed, Pretty Crow,” Damien whispers into my ear. His big arms hold me against his chest to stop me from face-planting once again.

  My body thrums to life. I’m suddenly aware of how warm his smooth skin is against mine, how every breath of his heats my flesh, how every pounding beat of his heart pulses into me and spirals right down to my clit.

  Annnd that’s enough getting to know my captors turned roommates.

  I kick off from the wooden platform he’s sitting on and roll away from him until my back hits solid flooring. I lie there pathetically at their feet, before Zav’s glaring gaze and the demon’s interested look.

  The soft white feathers of Zaviar’s wings and the stark leather of the other man’s are opposite in appearance, and yet, they don’t seem that different.

  “What’s your name?” I finally ask the big one.

  The man smiles slowly. It’s an eerie but charming look that has me questioning my sanity.

  “Ryke.”

  One small word. One word that sounds exactly like his dark, rasping tone.

  “You sleeping up here tonight?” His tongue slides slowly across his lips. If I could somehow manage to stand up and not look like fallen prey, that might really help my ego right now.

  I push to my feet, but I’m still so much smaller than the two hulking men in front of me. I square my shoulders and try to find my full five-foot three height.

  My attention sweeps over the death netting slowly.

  “No, I’ll probably sleep on the couch,” I say with so much uncertainty.