Dragon Fae Prophecy Read online

  Dragon Fae Prophecy

  The Elustria Chronicles: Dragon Fae - Book 1

  Caethes Faron

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Thank you!

  Author’s Note

  Also by Caethes Faron

  About the Author

  1

  My black cocktail dress slid up my thigh, threatening to reveal my dagger, as I straddled Gregory on the hard hotel-room sofa. Far removed from the luxurious hotels on the Vegas strip, this place catered to the traveling professional with utilitarian one-bedroom suites. Sasha, my partner, sat to my left, flicking our mark’s earlobe with her tongue, her long blonde hair falling to one side. The clock behind the sofa read five-oh-three in the morning. Shit. We were behind schedule. I had wanted to get home in time to fall asleep before sunrise, but Gregory had been harder to find than we’d anticipated.

  “Why don’t we take this into the bedroom?” Sasha whispered into Gregory’s ear, her voice thick with lust. I marveled at her acting skills as she pulled back to smirk at the paunchy mage with her full ruby lips. Her expression said greasy brown hair and a thick mustache with remnants of last night’s meal dangling in it was her idea of male perfection.

  “Sure.” Gregory’s eyes dilated at the thought of having two women at once. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was his first threesome. He should have been trained to be on the lookout for this, and I half expected our cover to be blown at any moment, but he gleefully led us to the bedroom where Sasha and I pushed him onto the bed.

  “Now, now, ladies, there’s enough of me to go around.” Gregory smirked as he propped himself up on his elbows, unaware of what an unattractive offering he made in his rumpled suit.

  “Oh, we know,” Sasha said as she unzipped her dress. “I’m just not sure you’re ready to handle us.”

  It was times like these that I appreciated having Sasha as my partner. While I was as adept at deception, I didn’t relish it the way she did. Lying was part of my job, not part of my character—even when the target deserved it as Gregory did.

  Sasha took his right side and I the left, lying half on top of him and half on the questionable hotel bedspread. As Sasha kissed his lips, she felt her way down his body then flashed the hand signal indicating that he had nothing in his pockets or concealed under his clothing. With her still kissing him above me, I latched onto his neck and did a similar search that turned up nothing. I repeated the hand signal back to Sasha to let her know to prepare. If possible, she increased her enthusiasm, keeping Gregory distracted as I lifted my skirt and slid my cursed dagger from the holster on my thigh. I positioned my blade between his ribs and thrust upward, piercing the heart muscle. The curse would turn Gregory into a void, stripping the mage of his magic. As a void, Gregory would have no defense against the power Sasha and I wielded as sorceresses, but I preferred to get a clean kill with the dagger when I could. It made things simpler.

  Sasha swallowed his screams with her mouth and pinned him to the bed, her timing so perfect that an observer would be hard pressed to see that Gregory was in distress. I adjusted my position to avoid the blood leaking out of him, but I left the blade in to block the bulk of the hemorrhaging. When he’d taken his last breath, we rose from the bed.

  “Clean kill, as always.” Admiration rang in Sasha’s voice.

  “We all have to excel at something.” Sasha’s talent was deception, mine was killing. “Let’s find the rune and get out of here.”

  We’d tracked this mage since his arrival Earthside from Elustria. The Circle of Sorcerers, my employers, had sent us to kill him and retrieve a rune in his possession. Sasha and I tossed his bedroom, looking as quickly and carefully as possible. Mages were known to set traps for us.

  Knock, knock, knock. “Room service. I have your breakfast order.”

  “Shit. We need to leave,” I said as I continued to look through a dresser drawer. Mages may sacrifice humans as collateral damage, but we didn’t.

  “I think I found it,” Sasha said. She leaned closer to something in the closet.

  The door to the living room opened, and a man entered. “Room service. Is anyone here?”

  If we didn’t get out of here, we might need to break the “don’t involve humans” rule. I moved to Sasha’s side, already pulling the tellenium box that was designed precisely for this purpose from my purse.

  “Take your time, Sasha. I can distract him if I have to,” I said leaning over her.

  “There’s a dead body on the bed surrounded by blood. You can’t distract him from that.”

  Footsteps approached the bedroom door, and I saw the panic in Sasha’s eyes a split second before it happened. She reached out with her hand, and the rune floated an inch into the air before releasing an energy burst at Sasha, throwing her against the wall. Her eyes stared lifelessly ahead.

  The waiter yelled at the sound, “Is everything all right?”

  My training kicked in, and I focused on the task at hand. I collected my magic into a ball in the pit of my stomach. If even an ounce of it made its way into my fingertips and touched the rune, I’d suffer the same fate as Sasha. I took a deep breath and shook my hand even though that would do nothing to suppress the magic running through my veins. A quick check assured me that pure blood ran to my fingers, and I reached for the rune, not allowing myself to relax as my fingers curled around it. A single moment of celebration could be my undoing. With my other hand, I opened the little box forged out of tellenium mined from the Spineback Mountains of Elustria. I placed the rune carefully inside and slammed the lid shut. The tellenium would nullify the magic inside the box, preventing it from being tracked and from causing harm until I delivered it to my handler.

  “Are you all right?” The waiter knocked on the door. The handle turned. I grabbed my dagger, wiping it quickly on the sheets, and ran to the balcony. Gregory’s room was on the third floor, too high to jump. Sheathing my dagger, I climbed over the railing and lowered myself down the bars until I dangled by my fingers. My feet were just a few inches above the next balcony’s railing.

  “Oh my God.” The waiter had found the two bodies. A radio clicked on. “I need an ambulance for room three-zero-two-five. Oh my God.” The door clicked shut behind him. I needed to get away befo
re cops showed up and people noticed me dangling from the building.

  I swung my legs and let go of the ledge. My arms banged on the railing as I landed on the balcony below. Only one more to go. The sound of my landing woke the guest whose balcony I trespassed. He sat up, groggy, looking around the room confused. I flattened myself against the wall and watched. As long as I kept quiet, he shouldn’t notice me. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, facing the balcony. He got to his feet and took a step toward me. My mind raced through the options. I couldn’t let him get a good look at me. If he opened the balcony door, I’d throw the curtains in his face to blind him then use a sedation spell, but I hoped it didn’t come to that. Not only would performing the spell hurt like hell, but I hated using magic on humans. The man took one more wobbly step in my direction then turned and headed to the bathroom. I exhaled in relief. Before he could finish and re-enter the bedroom, I descended the railing and dropped the last few feet, landing upright in my heels. Without looking around, I strode toward my car. No one would notice me.

  Cruising down the freeway with the top of my red Corvette down, I looked over at the box sitting in the passenger seat where Sasha should’ve been. I could have saved her. As soon as she found the rune, I should have insisted on retrieving it myself. My employers would think the rune was worth the price paid. I doubted I would.

  2

  My sunglasses provided little protection from the bright Arizona sun as I pulled into my parking space. Guilt for the empty passenger seat had kept me awake for the four-hour drive from Vegas to Phoenix. Normally the trip would take longer, but the speeding ticket I’d gotten before crossing into Arizona was a small price to pay to get home sooner. Alistair, my handler, would be waiting for me, and I didn’t want him to worry. Our scheduled meet time was nine o’clock, enough time for me to have gotten some sleep had Sasha and I not been late.

  I grabbed my purse with the tellenium box and walked across the parking lot to my apartment building. All I had to do was explain to Alistair how I’d gotten my partner killed by not retrieving the rune myself and then I could sleep.

  Ha, as if my conscience would let me sleep.

  “Good morning, Nadiya.” Harry Harmon, my elderly neighbor, tipped his straw hat to me as I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Each apartment building had six apartments, three on each floor, and I occupied the middle unit. Mr. Harmon, a retiree in his seventies, flanked me on the right.

  “Good morning, Mr. Harmon.”

  “Late night?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Mr. A is waiting for you. Saw him go in about an hour ago.” Mr. Harmon spent most of his time sitting on a little lawn chair outside his door surrounded by the potted plants he tended and a garden gnome that stood faithfully by his side. The deep wrinkles in his tanned skin spoke of a life spent in the sun. Now this little garden was all he had left of his outdoorsman life.

  “Thanks.” I fumbled for my keys. In my exhaustion, I’d thrown them back in my purse instead of keeping them ready.

  “Seems to me your night woulda gone better had you spent it with him.” Mr. Harmon wagged his bushy white eyebrows.

  Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t help smiling. Mr. Harmon had a cute little fantasy of me and Alistair being romantic. While I was close with my handler, he was more of an older brother than a potential lover.

  “You’re probably right about that, Mr. Harmon.”

  A painter came up the stairs carrying a roller and two cans of paint. As he passed by Mr. Harmon’s mini-garden, he knocked over some lavender and his roller hit a hanging pot of lantanas, sending it swinging. I covered the few feet of space and steadied the lavender with one stiletto-ed foot and grabbed the pot of lantanas before it could crash into the wall. If these plants were ruined, Mr. Harmon would be devastated, and I’d have to take time out of my morning to teach this painter how to be careful.

  “Oh, sorry,” the man said as he kept walking into Ms. Guerrero’s apartment.

  “Bastard almost ruined my plants! Thank goodness you were here. Are they all right?” Mr. Harmon hoisted himself up with his cane and examined the lavender and lantanas with care.

  “I think so,” I said, even though I didn’t know anything about plants. I wouldn’t even know their names if Mr. Harmon hadn’t spoken to me about them so often.

  “Don’t know how you young’uns can move that fast.”

  For a split second I worried that I’d given myself away. Mr. Harmon didn’t know I wasn’t human. I pushed the worry from my mind. My speed was purely physical, not magical. “Just practice. That’s what the gym is for.” I yawned. “Now, I really have to go get some sleep, Mr. Harmon.”

  “Yeah, yeah, go ahead. You’ve done more than enough.” He didn’t look up from the plants. “I’ll come get you for TV night later.”

  TV night. I’d completely forgotten. I’d have to deal with that when the time came. For now, I had a concerned handler waiting for me.

  Alistair stood when I opened the door, but he didn’t speak until I shut it behind me. “Where’s Sasha?”

  “Where do you think?” I kicked off my heels and poured myself a whiskey. I hadn’t slept yet, so this didn’t really count as drinking in the morning. “She’s dead.”

  Alistair waited until I joined him in the living room to respond. “Did you get it?”

  I sighed in obvious disgust and tossed him the little tellenium box. “Yeah, I got it.”

  “I’m sorry about Sasha. I know you liked her. What happened?” Alistair didn’t bother opening the box. We both had a job to do, but I loved him for trusting that the rune was there and focusing instead on Sasha. He pocketed the box and sat, a lock of his wavy brown hair falling in his eyes when he leaned forward.

  “Room service, that’s what happened. Gregory had a breakfast order. The waiter showed up right after we made the kill but before we located the rune. Sasha found it, panicked, and tried to levitate it.” I didn’t need to say more. Mages were known to booby-trap their devices. It was an amateur mistake, made by a rookie who had been put into the field way too soon.

  “That’s a shame.” Alistair had been Sasha’s handler as well, but we both knew better than to make attachments in this business.

  “Sure is. Maybe the Circle could take some time training recruits before they send them off into the field.”

  “Recruits aren’t exactly easy to find, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the mages aren’t slowing down. If we waited around until every sorcerer we sent Earthside was perfectly ready, the mages would’ve taken over Elustria and exploited half the human population by the time we had anyone ready.”

  “Stop exaggerating; it belittles your argument.” I made light of it, but we both knew it wasn’t much of an exaggeration. Not all mages were bad, but the problem was that the good mages weren’t doing much to stop those who wanted to abuse their power.

  “When I pass along the rune, I’ll be sure to let the Circle know to send you a new partner.” He stood, expecting this to be the end of it. Normally, it would be. I was tired, and he had a report to make.

  I took a sip of my whiskey and steeled myself for a fight. This wouldn’t be easy, but during the hours of driving this morning, I’d come to a decision. “No, I don’t need a new partner. The last one almost got me killed.”

  “I thought you liked working with Sasha.” Alistair’s gray eyes saw through me, but that didn’t keep me from pretending like they didn’t.

  “I did, right up until she got herself killed and almost got me killed right along with her. Partners are a distraction.” And they had a way of making me care for them when nothing good would come of it. “You should be more concerned about the Circle retrieving her body. She’s not like me; she has a family back home. I’m sure they’d like some closure.”

  “The Circle of Sorcerers always takes care of our own. Her family will want for nothing.”

  “Only a daughter.” I knocked back the rest of my d
rink. Sasha had loved her family. She worked for the Circle to bring honor to her name and provide for her parents and siblings. Honor and money wouldn’t fill the hole she left behind. “The Circle needs to stop sending people like Sasha into the field. There have to be plenty of orphans like me they can draw from. It didn’t need to be her, someone with family. If Sasha and I hadn’t done this job, someone else would’ve. We’re all just cogs in the operation. Might as well use cogs that won’t be missed.”

  Alistair brushed right by my comment. This wasn’t his first death on the job, and it wouldn’t be the last. It all came with the territory when you worked for the Circle. Someday my time would come, and I planned to take out as many corrupt mages between now and then as possible.

  “You know the Circle’s not going to let you work alone. This is the reason we have you work in twos. Had Sasha been alone on this mission, we would’ve missed out on this intelligence.” Sensing that this wouldn’t be the end of the discussion, he sat on the arm of the sofa.

  “They would have just sent someone else. There’s always more intelligence to gather, more mages to kill. We were there last night because someone else had failed to get the intelligence before now. What’s on the rune that made it worth Sasha’s life?” The work we did was important, but sometimes I wondered if the price we paid was too high for what we got in return.