Page 1 of Crown of the Fae King

1

Revenge Is Best Served…Late

Hours before dawn, Wickham Muir stepped out of Place, willing himself to the Black Isle, to Muirsglen, where his enemy lay in wait.

The windows of the Grandfather's dark Tudor house came to life the moment Wickham’s feet touched the gravel of the driveway. The large front door slowly creaked open and the two weirding sisters stepped outside and closed it behind them, their faces hidden in the moon’s shadows beneath their draping gray hair.

One stepped forward while her sister blocked the entrance. "Come back later," she said, reaching out her pale hand in entreaty. "Far too early for a visit." When Wickham said nothing, she pulled back and lay her fingers across her lips as she tried with her weak talents to read his mind.

"Ye should never have toyed with my sisters." He didn't bother lifting his arm, but swiped his hand in a circle as if wiping at a stain hanging in the air. And just like that, it was done.

The sisters clutched at their bodies as if suddenly nude, searching for dresses no longer there. But it wasn't clothes they were missing. They bleated and whined, then turned to each other and screeched in outrage.

He motioned once more and the woman before the door moved aside, still groping herself, splitting her attention between her body and her sister. She stumbled out of the way, now blind to his presence and his manipulation.

The door swung open under its own power, and he stepped inside the house. In the black of night, two lit candles illuminated the large room well enough. He located the Grandfather immediately, an old man reclining on his wide bed near the cold hearth, his head raised on a mound of pillows like some aged Arabian prince.

Unlike the weak and gasping patient on death’s doorstep, as he’d presented himself to Wickham’s sisters five years ago, the Grandfather was hale and hearty beneath his skin of aged, tanned leather. His eyes flared ever so briefly—the surprise of a man rarely surprised. His tongue snaked out to wet his lips, then was caught between his teeth as he watched Wickham move slow and surely toward the bed. “Ye took their power. Why?”

“They toyed with my sisters.”

The man scoffed. “I wanted the message to reach ye.”

“It reached me, though likely not the message ye intended.”

“Aye, and five long, mean years ye’ve punished me for it.”

“Aye. Five years…and no end in sight…”

The man blinked rapidly, as if standing in a sudden rainstorm. Hope drained from his face—the very reaction Wickham had wished for, dreamed of. It had been five long years for him as well.

The Grandfather of the Muir Witch Clan dismissed the topic with a roll of his eyes and waved it away altogether. “Ye found the woman? The Uncast?”

“I did.” Wickham continued around the foot of the bed and stopped when only a meter separated him from his tormentor’s face. “Any new revelations ye intend to share?”

“Intend?Ye think I’d withhold things from yenow?”The bastard sneered and struggled to sit up, punching his pillows behind him. “I ken nothing more. But still ye hope, aye? Desperate for any reasonnotto end me and accept my mantle!” His voice rose, its volume unseemly for the early hour. “Cowar—”

The word hung unfinished in candlelight, cut off—along with the Grandfather’s head—by a basket-hilt claymore that had been gifted to Wickham by its original owner, a resurrected Highlander who had wielded the weapon at the Battle of Culloden.

The ancient body fell back, and Wickham used the robes to clean his blade before returning it to the sheath at his hip. He entertained no emotion as he watched the blood of the man he hated spurt and splash onto the pillows. He wouldn't have lingered over the sight...had he not been waiting.

He glanced down at the head that had rolled past him only to be stopped by the hearthstones. The eyes were still open, the face frozen in mid-sneer. "No one toys with my family."

The heart took a surprisingly long time to stop its beating, but Wickham felt that moment instantly, as if the ground shook to mark the occasion. A white mist unfurled from the body like a flag, exalting in its freedom for a breath or two, before rolling like a slow wave of sea water toward Wickham.

He took one step back, then another. He thought he was ready. He was not. But the time was at hand. He recalled another time, after his brother’s death, when the power of another was transferred to him whether he wanted it or not. Would it feel the same?

Instead of rising up and pouring down onto his head, as that green light had done years ago, this white mist took its time, regarded Wickham while it built into something opaque--something resembling a human with robes and thin strands billowing around it, moved by wind, floating through water. Headed one second, headless the next.

Without thinking, Wickham wished he had the protection of his ancestors with him. It was a protection he'd once summoned for his niece. And just as it had years ago, that green ring of security appeared just above the ground and began circling his knees. The spirits of his ancestors were with him.

The figure noticed. With its attention now drawn to the floor, it also noted the Grandfather's head as well. When that nebulous face lifted, it considered Wickham. Time froze while they stared at each other. Weighing. Measuring. In a blink, the entity stood before him, proving the circle of ancestors was no barrier at all.

Because it, too, was an ancestor?

Wickham narrowed his eyes, tried to slip into its thoughts, its memories, but there was nothing but…mist.

The figure slowly sank toward the floor, loosely holding its form. The swirling green mist mingled with it, streamed into it like fast-moving clouds, sucked in by a hundred straws, and was gone. A moment later, White One was white again. No trace of green.

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