Faetal Surrender

Faetal Surrender - Book 3 of the Blood Crown Series

While her sisters have made their homes among the mortals, Lea has always been content to stay in the realm of the Fae, serving as their Oracle and tending to her dragons. However, the Reckoning has turned her once quiet life upside down. Her powers are erratic, unstable, and potentially deadly. Her connection to the divine has grown stronger, but her prophecies make no sense, though she's afraid they may foretell her demise. The dragons she'd sworn to protect are at risk, being hunted again after centuries of hiding in safety. And as if that wasn't enough on her plate, the secrets of her past have been revealed, making her question everything she's ever believed.

But there's no time for personal issues, because war is coming. Lea's half sister, who happens to the be the rightful heir to the crown, is still missing. They'll have to go to war with the Maigere to get her back, and reclaiming the throne will mean civil war among the Fae. While Lea is happy that her sisters are back in her life, ready to put their kingdom back to rights, there is one among their allies that could completely shatter her world as she knows it forever.

Dain is arrogant and dominating, and he infuriates Lea to no end. He also makes her feel things that no one ever has before. He wants her, and though she hates to admit it, she wants him just as much. There's just one small problem- as Oracle, Lea has taken a vow of purity, which means that Dain is off limits. Unfortunately, she suspects that he's her soul mate, and that kind of connection doesn't care about vows. Is she willing to give up all that she is for a man she barely knows?

Life has always been predictable and certain, and now it's anything but. Lea doesn't know if she can withstand the coming storm, or if she'll surrender to the chaos threatening to consume her.

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CHAPTER ONE

Lea watched the woman on stage dowse herself with gasoline. "She's not really going to light herself on fire, is she?"
Mae shrugged. "Apparently."
"She knows she's combustible, right?" Lea asked, shaking her head.
Sure enough, the woman produced a lighter and proceeded to set herself ablaze. What an idiot, Lea thought... not only the woman- who was now rolling around on the ground while the crowd cheered- but the spectators who had paid actual coin to witness such an insipid event. Lea hated to sound prejudice, but most humans really were stupid.
"Tell me again," Tori demanded, "why we are tromping around a human carnival in Louisiana?"
Mae turned from the smoldering woman to face her sisters. "We're looking for someone," she said cryptically.
Lea sighed heavily. Mae had connections, but they were always bizarre connections.
"Well, let's get on with it," Tori barked, stomping across the fairgrounds. Lea doubted her sister had a clue where she was going, but that had never stopped Tori from taking the lead before.
Mae darted off after Tori, leaving Lea standing by herself amid the dispersing crowd. She took one last look at the woman on stage. Not a hair was out of place, let alone singed, and there was a familiar, yet undefinable, smell in the air. Shaking herself, Lea jogged after her sisters.
As the girls made their way across the midway, Lea caught a whiff of the strange smell again and again, but couldn't recall where she'd smelled it before.
Mae finally overtook Tori, reclaiming the lead and then coming to a halt in front of another small stage.
"Oh, good," Tori said sarcastically, "another freak show."
Mae ignored the comment as she scanned the immediate area. After a moment, a short, pot bellied man waddled onto the stage. Against her better judgment, Lea took a step closer.
The man folded his hands in front of him as he addressed the gathering crowd. "Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls..." Lea shook her head at the lack of creativity, but it just kept coming. "Tonight, you are going to witness something miraculous."
"An honest carnie?" Tori mumbled, so only her sisters could hear. Lea snickered and Mae smacked Tori in the arm.
"Folks, would you believe me if I told you that I could defy the laws of gravity? That I could rise up from this very stage, and float in the air before your very eyes?"
As the crowd murmured in disbelief, the plump little man threw his arms out wide and promptly rose a good five inches off the stage. The crowd gasped as one. As Tori began grumbling about parlor tricks, the mysterious smell rose up once again. Lea inhaled deeply, desperate to place its origin. Tori's words echoed in her head, finally connecting the dots, and she knew exactly what she was smelling.
"It is a parlor trick," she said in disbelief. "The human is using a glamour."
"Of course he is," Mae replied, rolling her eyes. "And he's not human; he's a witch."
Lea could have slapped herself in the forehead- how could she have missed such a thing? Okay, the smell had thrown her off- mortal magick wasn't quite the same as tribal magick- but she should have known these performers weren't human.
Tori stared at Mae, as if she were talking herself out of throttling the girl. "You brought us into witch country without a heads-up? Well done, Mae. Bravo."
Mae slugged her sister in the arm once more. "It's no biggie... our magick's stronger than theirs. No way they think we're anything but human."
Lea hoped Mae was right. Yes, tribal magick was much stronger than any mortal magick, but they were seriously outnumbered here.
From seemingly out of nowhere, a very large and burly man appeared behind them. "Sedrich said he'll see you in his camper."
Lea studied the man for a moment. His ridiculously large arms were covered in tattoos. Skulls, birds, guns, names, hula girls... interesting, but not near as elaborate and beautiful as Dain's head...
Whoa! Enough thinking about that man! Between his physical presence, the non-stop thoughts of him, and the explicit- and very detailed- dreams of him at night, Lea never got away from the man. She needed some peace of mind, already.
The girls followed the tattooed giant to a dilapidated camper attached to a run down pickup truck. As the three of them looked at each other, Lea knew they were all on the same page- they were not going in there.
As if he read their minds, the big man said, "If you want to talk to Sedrich, you'll go inside. If not, you can find the exit on your own." The man sort of smiled- a rather evil looking expression- and then gave each of them a very creepy once-over. After another sickening smirk, he turned and lumbered away, leaving them standing outside of the camper with a decision to make.
As Lea had no idea why they were there, she turned to Mae. Tori obviously felt the same way, because she was already glaring at their sister.
"I can go in alone if you want," Mae offered with a smile. Lea sighed once more, certain that Tori was going to actually kill their sister this time.
"You bitch," Tori snarled. "You know we're not going to let you go in there alone."
Mae's smile brightened as she rapped on the camper door, not bothering to wait for an answer before yanking it open. As she stepped inside, she paused to look back at Lea and Tori. "Oh, I know," she all but giggled, then disappeared inside the metal shell.
Tori growled something under her breath and followed Mae. This should be entertaining, Lea thought to herself as she stepped up and into the small space.
The inside of the camper was surprisingly roomy. There was a couch on one end, and a table and benches on the other. Between the two was a small cabinet and a miniature fridge. It was kind of quaint... almost cozy.
The levitating man from the stage lounged on the couch. Lea figured this had to be Sedrich. He made no move to offer them a seat, but Lea doubted any of them wanted to sit anyway. She sure the hell didn't.
"You're here about Elaisa?" he said, almost accusingly. "How do you know my daughter?"
Tori turned to Mae. "This is about Laisa? You could have said that, you know."
Lea knew Laisa was one of the girls who lived with Mae and that she was missing. Beyond that, she was clueless.
Mae ignored Tori, focusing instead on Sedrich. "She lives with me."
"You're lying. She'd never align herself with normals."
Mae simply smiled, then snapped her fingers- she was such a drama queen- and her glamour fell away. As Sedrich registered the changes in Mae- the multicolored eyes, the pointed ears, the not quite luminous skin tone- he began to smile.
"Fae," he all but whispered. Now the man was listening.
"Yep," Mae replied. "Have you talked to her lately?"
Sedrich sat up straight, his hands clenched at his sides. "What has she done this time?" he demanded. Shaking his head, he leaned over and grabbed a bottle of something off of the floor. He downed a good portion of it in one long pull, then slid the back of his hand across his mouth. "That girl was always trouble. I can't tell you how many times we had the cops out here. I punished her, I pleaded with her... Do you know what kind of jeopardy attention like that could put us in?"
"All too well," Mae said, but the man wasn't wanting an answer.
"That little hellion of mine put us all in danger time and time again. Then she went and ran away." He took another long drink then burped loudly. Lea wrinkled up her nose in disgust. "Maybe I'm a bad father- hell, I know I am- but I never even tried going after her. I think we all agreed that we were better off with her gone."
Lea wanted to throttle the man for his harsh honesty. As one who'd been all but abandoned by her own father, she couldn't bear to hear such things. Even if Laisa had been a nightmare child, she was still his child.
Mae, ever the diplomat, carried on cordially, though Lea could tell by the change in her tone that she wasn't happy with his rhetoric either. "Bottom line? She's missing. As much as I'd like to say that she took off on her own, it looks like she's been kidnapped."
"Who would take my little girl?" Sedrich cried. The sisters all exchanged confused glances. Wasn't this man just going on about how great things were without his little hellion around? And now he's going to cry over her kidnapping? Talk about your mood swings.
"Okay, that's enough bullshit," Tori barked. Mae jabbed their sister in the side, but Tori wasn't having it. "Laisa had a stalker. She also had a guard, but she went and bang... uhh... fired him, and so we don't really know what happened. We also don't know what her stalker looks like. And now we also know that you're a shit and you know nothing." She jammed her thumb toward the door. "Let's go."
"Wait," Sedrich all but yelled. "I might be able to help. Does she still have her car? The Volkswagen?"
"Yeah," Mae answered, "but it's missing too."
At that, Sedrich smiled. What in the name of the Seed, Lea thought to herself, was this man smiling about? He was a strange and creepy little guy, confirming her suspicions that witches were weirdos.
"It's bugged," Sedrich said. He tapped his temple with a fingertip. "I knew it would come in handy one day."
"You low-jacked Laisa? That's awesome!" Mae said, clapping her hands together.
"Well," Sedrich sighed, shaking his head slowly, "the equipment we used to track those devices was destroyed long ago. Getting a signal will be almost impossible."
Tori held up her hand. "No, it won't. I know just the nerd for the job."
Lea laughed, wondering if Mitch would be offended or flattered by Tori's description.
While Sedrich gave Tori and Mae as much information as he could on the tracking device in Laisa's car, Lea stepped outside in order to breathe properly again. She was in no way claustrophobic, but that camper was just entirely too small for her liking, and she could no longer stomach that awful man.
The masses had trickled down to just a few fun lovers who didn't know when to let a good thing die. Lea watched them as they talked and laughed, sauntering slowly toward the exit. Just as she was falling into a lovely little daydream about a night at the fair with Dain, an unfamiliar male voice jolted her back to reality.
"Where are your friends?"
Lea turned toward the voice, unnerved to see that it was the inked up behemoth from earlier. Something about the guy gave her the willies, and she didn't think it was his stinky mortal magick perfume either.
"They're inside... just finishing up."
The man looked her up and down... she could practically feel him undressing her with his eyes. With as much will as she could manage, she tried to reach out to her sisters, silently telling them to hurry.
"We have a little time then," he said, stalking toward her.
Lea put her hand out in front of her as a deterrent. "Stop right there," she demanded.
The giant threw back his head and laughed. "Or what?" he said. "Oh, you silly little human... you have no idea what you're dealing with."
With less than an actual thought, Lea dropped her glamour. The man stopped in his tracks, probably from shock. With as much menace as she could muster, she warned, "Neither do you, mortal."
"Holy shit," the man cried, "a fuckin' fairie!" He rubbed his hands together eagerly. "I've never had me a fairie before."
Lea took a step back, feeling the metal step of the camper digging into her calves. "I'm not joking," she warned. "Come any closer and you'll regret it. I don't want to harm you."
"Harm me?" he asked, chuckling. "You may be a fairie, but you're still a girl." Without warning, he lunged toward her.
Lea was suddenly blinded by white light. All sound faded away as the sound of her own heartbeat drummed in her ears. The hand she held in front of her felt like it was on fire, pulsing with heat. From somewhere far away, Lea heard herself screaming, the behemoth chiming in, and then... there was nothing but peace.

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