Page 30 of A Kiss from the Fae (Mistress of Magic #2)

Excerpt from Grainne Morgan’s diary

My new magic grows stronger as the spring edges at the winter. The snowdrops have started to appear as the new sun begins to warm the frozen ground.

Marian has birthed her child and is well. But the baby has to be given to the fae kingdom before Midwinter. She has known this all along, but now that she sees the child, she wants to keep it.

‘No!’ Faye screamed, and stepped away from the faerie king in shock.

She’d seen him in her dreams, but she hadn’t expected to see Finn Beatha in person, in the ordinary world, ever again.

Her heartbeat accelerated until it seemed to thrum in her chest with the frantic rhythm of a bird’s.

She was sweating – her forehead, her chest, behind her knees.

His physical presence was overwhelming. He was tall and rangy, muscular without being bulky; he was fair, though his hair was a dirty blonde when he appeared in the ordinary world, she noticed, and more golden when he was in his own realm.

Tonight, when of all nights he could have worn his faerie robes without attracting any more notice than a very attractive man might, he wore a black tuxedo with a sharp white shirt underneath like Gabriel’s.

Yet, while Gabriel managed to look like a reasonably attractive civil servant in his smart clothes, Finn Beatha had the effortless and otherworldly beauty of a film star.

His longish dark blonde hair was tied up, Faye noticed, in the kind of bun that hipster boys in London favoured, and he was clean-shaven.

Finn was always overwhelming to Faye because of his sheer beauty, but also because of the bond they had.

It began, as always, when her eyes met his dark blue gaze.

She felt the energy of their connection overcome her immediately, as if they were the only two people in the room.

Finn’s gaze never left hers, and everything else – the club, the dancers, the band – melted away.

In fact, as she fought to break their eye contact, she looked around her and noticed that they stood still in the club, but apart from it.

They stood as if beyond a hazy sepia screen.

Everything moved around them, but slowly, as if on pause, and only she and Finn were real and in colour.

Everything else was the colour of a vintage photograph – momentarily unreal, already a memory, already a dream.

‘What have you done?’ she demanded, although she knew.

Finn could move between Murias and the ordinary world as he chose to, and he could manipulate time in the human world.

She remembered that it was Samhain, the night when the veil between the worlds was thinnest. Tonight, it was easier than ever for him to cross over.

And, she supposed, it was the same for the other fae creatures she’d glimpsed.

‘I wanted to dance with my sidhe-leth . Surely that is no crime.’ He smiled and kissed her cheek again. Despite herself, she felt the heat in his lips and yearned for more; she fought the rising tide of desire he always prompted in her. ‘For old times’ sake,’ he added, a twinkle in his eye.

‘You need to leave me alone. And release Aisha. I know you have her in a dungeon. I’m going to get her out.’

‘Indeed?’ He batted his eyelids at Faye, playful now.

‘I cannot stay angry for long. It’s boring.

’ He sighed and placed both his long-fingered hands on her waist, one on each side.

‘This dress is very appealing, I must say, Faye. You look as wicked as I remember you in Murias.’ He hadn’t replied to what she’d said about Aisha.

Instead, he brushed aside her hair and stroked her neck softly, and Faye felt herself melt under his touch.

No, no! She tried to tell herself not to give in to the pleasure that blanketed them both in its soft spell.

‘So…you just thought you could…reclaim me? Just like that?’ Faye mustered her self-control and removed his hands from her waist.

‘Haven’t I?’ he murmured against her ear, taking her hand and placing it on his heart. ‘You feel it, Faye, as I do. I love you. I miss you. In my heart. Not just my bed.’

‘You don’t love me,’ she shot back. ‘You don’t love anyone or anything. Your heart is as cold as the ocean, Finn Beatha. And I won’t be your lover.’

‘I know you love me, Faye. And I know you will come to me again before too long,’ he said, drawing her to him.

He kissed her then, deeply, and she lost all ability to rail against him.

It was a kind of return to her deepest self when she was in his kiss, as if he was a river she had forgotten she belonged to, a part of the tide that rushed against the stone bank.

Longing for him erupted in her, and she felt herself grow wet with desire for him and everything she knew he could give her.

‘See, you want me now,’ he whispered, and Faye knew that she’d be lost unless she acted fast. Reaching into the cross-body bag she was wearing, her fingers found the obsidian crystal. As she grasped it, she felt the crystal’s warm, zingy energy fill her like being plugged into a battery.

Every day now, Faye could feel her power growing. Since she had returned from Falias, she had felt energised, strong and purposeful. Unlike being in Murias, which had drained her and left her feeling as if she had the flu, Faye felt invincible.

She didn’t know if it was just the experience of having visited Falias or whether it was the wand, but right now, she didn’t care.

‘I do not want you,’ she replied. ‘Keep your distance. Be gone, back to your realm, unless you’ve come here to tell me that you’ve released my friend.’

‘Pah. I do not concern myself with such trivialities,’ Finn said. ‘I come because I can. Because a faerie king has needs.’ He cast a lascivious eye over the people dancing in the club. ‘I need a new concubine.’ He sighed theatrically. ‘Humans have such little resilience.’

‘If you think you’re taking someone tonight, you are very much mistaken.’ Faye held the crystal up high. As she did so, green and gold light beamed from it, lighting up the club.

Finn growled and took a step backwards.

‘I see that you have met your father,’ he said, visibly shrinking from the light coming from the wand.

‘Do not think just because he has given you a trinket that you can forget the bond that exists between us, sidhe-leth . You are mine, and you will come back to me. I have foreseen it,’ he said, taking another step backwards.

‘Tell your father that I look forward to seeing him and his ill-begotten son Luathas on the battlefield.’ His lips curled cruelly.

‘Tell him yourself,’ she retorted.

Faye held the crystal higher, standing firmly on the sticky floor of the club. She summoned up tendrils of flickering emerald, black and gold earth energy from the ground and breathed it up into her body.

‘Be gone! I banish you, back to your kingdom!’ she shouted.

I know you. I know you will come to me. His voice was in her mind, and she shook her head as if she could get rid of his influence like shaking water from her ear after swimming.

‘No.’ She said it out loud, firmly. She could resist Finn. She wasn’t the bewildered girl he could bewitch whenever he wanted any more.

Finn melted away, out of the crowd, along with the flickering figures of the other visiting fae. Colour and animation started to bleed back into the hazy sepia effect around her; life began to return to the club.

‘What just happened?’ Gabriel was standing next to her, blinking. Faye put the crystal back in her bag.

‘I have to end this,’ she said, feeling the power of the wand still coursing through her body like electricity. ‘Or Finn won’t stop. He’ll never stop kidnapping humans to die in the faerie reel just to please himself. There’s no one else. It has to be me.’