Wicked Enchantment (40 page)

Danu
The primary goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, both Seelie and Unseelie. Also followed by some other fae races. Danu is accompanied by a small pantheon of lesser gods.

Furious Host
Those who follow the Lord of the Wild Hunt every night to collect the souls of the fae who have died and help to ferry them to the Netherworld.

Goblin Town
The area of Piefferburg City where the goblins, a fae race with customs that differ greatly from the other types of fae, live.

Great Sweep
When the Phaendir, allied with the human race, hunted down, trapped, and imprisoned all known fae and contained them in Piefferburg.

Humans for the Freedom of the Fae (HFF)
An organization of humans working for equal fae rights and the destruction of Piefferburg.

iron sickness
The illness that occurs when charmed iron is pressed against the flesh of a fae for an extended period of time, eventually fatal.

Joining Vows
Ancient, magick-laced vows that twine two souls together. Not often used in modern fae society because of the commitment involved.

Jules Piefferburg
Original human architect of Piefferburg. The statue honoring him in Piefferburg Square is made of charmed iron and can’t be taken down, so the fae constantly dishonor it in other ways, like dressing it up disrespectfully or throwing food at it.

Labrai
The god the Phaendir follow.

Netherworld
Where the fae go after they die.

Old Maejian
The original tongue of the fae. It’s a dead language to all except those who are serious about practicing magick.

Orna
The primary goddess of the goblins. Accompanied by many lesser gods.

Phaendir (“fane-dear”)
A race of druids whose origins remain murky. The common belief of the fae is that their own genetic line sprang from the Phaendir. The Phaendir believe they’ve always been a separate—superior—race. Once allied with the fae, the Phaendir are now their mortal enemies.

Piefferburg (“fife-er-berg”) Square
Large cobblestone square with a statue of Jules Piefferburg in the center and the Rose and Black towers on either end.

Rose Tower
Made of rose quartz, this building sits at one end of Piefferburg Square and houses the Seelie Court.

Seelie (“seal-ee”)
A highly selective fae ruling class, the Seelie allow only the Tuatha Dé Danann Sídhe into their ranks. Members must have a direct bloodline to the original ruling Seelie of ancient Ireland and their magick must be light and pretty.

Shadow Amulet
The one who wears the amulet holds the Shadow Throne, though the amulet might reject someone without the proper bloodline. It sinks into the wearer’s body, imbuing him or her with power and immortality, leaving only a tattoo on the skin to mark its physical presence.

Shadow Royal
Holder of the Unseelie Throne.

 

Sídhe (“shee”)
Another name for the Tuatha Dé Danann (Irish) fae, both Seelie and Unseelie.

Summer Ring
Like the Shadow Amulet of the Unseelie Royal, this piece of jewelry imbues the wearer with great power and immortality. It also sinks into the skin, leaving only a tattoo, and may reject the wearer at will. This ring determines who holds the Seelie Throne.

Summer Royal
Holder of the Seelie Throne.
trooping fae
Also called the troop, those fae who are not a part of either court and are not wilding or water fae.

Tuatha Dé Danann (“thoo-a-haw day dah-nawn”)
The most ancient of all races on earth, the fae. They were evolved and sophisticated when humans still lived in caves. Came to Ireland in the ancient times and overthrew the native people. The Seelie Tuatha Dé ruled the other fae races. When the Milesians (a tribe of humans in ancient Ireland) allied with the Phaendir and defeated the fae, the fae had to agree to go underground. They disappeared from all human knowledge, becoming myth.

Twyleth Teg (“till-eg tay”)
Welsh faeries. They’re rare and live across the social spectrum.

Unseelie (“UN-seal-ee”)
A fae ruling class, the Unseelie will take anyone who comes to them with dark magick, but the true definition of an Unseelie fae is one whose magick can draw blood or kill.

water fae
Those fae who live in the large water areas of Piefferburg. They stay out of the city of Piefferburg and out of court politics and life.

Watt syndrome
Illness that befell all the fae races during the height of the race wars. The sickness decimated the fae population, outed them to the humans, and ultimately caused their downfall, weakening them to the point that the Phaendir could gather and trap them in Piefferburg. Some think the syndrome was biological warfare perpetrated by the Phaendir.

Wild Hunt
Comprising mystic horses and hounds and a small group of fae known as the Furious Host, led by the Lord of the Wild Hunt, the hunt gathers the souls of all the fae who have died every night and ferries them to the Netherworld. The identities of the Unseelie fae who make up the Wild Hunt are kept secret.

wilding fae
Nature fae. Like the water fae, they stay away from Piefferburg proper, choosing to live in the Boundary Lands.

Worshipful Observers
Steadfast human supporters of the work the Phaendir does to keep the fae races separate from the rest of the world.

Turn the page for a preview of the next paranormal romance from Anya Bast

 

CRUEL ENCHANTMENT

 

Coming September 2010 from Berkley Sensation!

Clang. Clang. Clang.
The shock of hammer to hot iron reverberated up his arm and through his shoulders. As Aeric shaped the hunk of iron into a charmed blade, her name beat a staccato rhythm in his mind.

He glanced up at the portrait of Aileen, the one he kept in his forge as a reminder, and his hammer came down harder. It wasn’t every night the fire of vengeance burned so hot and so hard in him. Over three hundred and sixty years had passed since the Summer Queen’s assassin had murdered his love.

He’d had plenty of time to move past his loss. Yet his rage burned bright tonight, as if it had happened three days ago instead of three hundred years. It was almost as if the object of his vengeance was close by, or thinking about him. Perhaps, as he’d imagined for so many years, he shared a psychic connection with her.

One born of cruel and violent intention.

He was certain that if the power of his thoughts truly did penetrate her mind, she had nightmares about him. If she ever thought his name, it was with a shudder and a chill.

If Aeric knew what she really looked like, he would envision her face with every impact of his hammer. Instead, he only brought her essence to mind while forging weapons others would wield to kill, maim, and bring misery. If he could name them all, he would call them
Emmaline
.

It was the least he could do, but he wanted to do so much more. Maybe one day he would get the chance, though odds were against him. He was stuck in Piefferburg while she roamed free outside its barriers. Aileen was far from him, too, lost to the shadowy Netherworld.

He tossed the hammer aside. Sweat trickling down his bare chest and into his belly button, he turned with the red-hot length of charmed iron in a pair of tongs and dunked it into a tub of cold water, making the iron spit and steam. As he worked the metal, his magick pulled out of him in a long, thin thread, imbuing the weapon with the ability to extract a fae’s power and cause illness.

Aeric O’Malley was the Blacksmith, the only fae in the world who could create weapons of charmed iron. His father had once also possessed the same magick, but he’d been badly affected by Watt syndrome at the time of the Great Sweep. These days he wasn’t fit for the forge, leaving the family tradition to Aeric.

Creating these weapons every night was his ritual, one he had kept secret from all who knew him. His forge was hidden in the back of his apartment, deep at the base of the Black Tower. The former Shadow King, Aodh Críostóir Ruadhán O’Dubhuir, had been the only one who’d known about his illicit work; he’d been the one to set him up in it.

Now the Unseelie had a shadow queen instead of a king. She was a good queen, but one who was still finding her footing in the Black Tower. Queen Aislinn might not look kindly on the fact the Blacksmith was still producing weapons that could be used on his own people. Queen Aislinn wasn’t as . . .
practical
as her foul biological father had been.

He pulled off his thick gloves and, with a groan of fatigue, wiped the back of his arm across his sweat-soaked forehead. The iron called to him at all hours of the day and night. Even after he had done his sacred duty riding in the Wild Hunt every night, the forge summoned him before dawn. He spent most nights fulfilling orders for illegal weaponry, or sometimes just making it because he had to, because his fae blood called him to do it. As long as his magick held out, he created.

The walls of his iron world glinted silver and deadly with the products of his labor, and in the middle of it all hung Aileen’s portrait, the one he’d painted with his own hands so he never forgot what she looked like.

So he never forgot.

Despite the heat and grime of the room, her portrait was still pristine. Angel-pale and golden-beautiful, she hung on the wall and gazed down at him with eyes of green—green as the grass of the country she’d died in.

His fingers curled, remembering the softness of her skin and how her silky hair had slipped over his palms and mouth. His gaze caught and lingered on the shape of her mouth. Not that he needed to commit the way she looked to memory. He remembered Aileen Arabella Edmé McIlvernock. His fiancée had looked like an angel, walked like one, thought like one . . . and made love like one. Maybe she hadn’t been an angel in all ways—no, definitely not—but his memory never snagged on those jagged places. There was no point in remembering the dark, only the light. And there was no forgetting her. He never would.

Nor would he ever forget her murderer.

Emmaline had managed to escape the Great Sweep and probably Watt syndrome, too. He couldn’t know for sure; he just suspected. His gut simply told him she was out there in the world somewhere and he lived for the day he would find her. She’d taken his soul apart the day she’d killed Aileen and he’d never been able to put it completely back together again.

It was only fair he should be able to take Emmaline’s soul apart in return. Slowly. Piece by bloody piece.

The chances she’d walk through the gates of Piefferburg and into the web of pain that awaited her was infinitesimal, but tonight, as Aeric gazed at the portrait of Aileen, he hoped for a miracle.

Danu help Emmaline if she ever did cross that threshold into Piefferburg. He’d be waiting.

 

 

THE
fae checked in, but they never checked out. It was a fae roach motel. Did she really want to cross that threshold and possibly end up a squashed bug? No, of course not. Problem was, she had no choice.

Emmaline Siobhan Keara Gallagher stared at the outer gates of Piefferburg. Was she really ready to take this risk? After all she’d done, all the years and energy she’d committed to the cause, she still shuddered at the thought of going in there for fear she may never come out.

She stared at the hazy warding that guarded the fae from the human world, set a few inches out from a tall, thick brick wall. The wall didn’t go all the way around Piefferburg, since the detention compound—
resettlement area
was the more PC term—was enormous and the borders included not only marshlands, where a wall could not be built, but the ocean, too. It was the Phaendir’s warding that kept the fae imprisoned, not that thick wall. That was there only for the eyes of humans. An almost organic thing, the warding existed in a subconscious, hive portion of the Phaendir’s collective mind—fueled by their breath, thoughts, magick, and, most of all, by their very strong belief system.

That warding was unbreakable.

“Emily?”

She jumped, startled. Emmaline turned at the name the Phaendir knew her by, something close enough to her real name to make it comfortable. Well, as comfortable as she could be while undercover in a nest of her mortal enemies. That didn’t exactly make every day a picnic.

Schooling her expression and double-checking her glamour—she was paranoid about keeping it in place—she turned with a forced smile. “Brother Gideon, you frightened me.”

His thin lips pursed and he smoothed his thinning brown hair over his head, favoring her with a glance that anyone who didn’t know him would call nervous. Emmaline, of all people, knew better. Gideon was confident, dangerous. The face he presented to the world was one calculated to make people underestimate him.