Wyvern Ways & Elven Magic by Bailey Bradford
Book 2 in the Fire & Flutter series
General Release Date: 18th May 2021
Word Count: 54,247
Book Length: NOVEL
Pages: 219
Genres:
CONTEMPORARY, EROTIC ROMANCE, FANTASY, GAY, GLBTQI, PARANORMAL
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Book Description
Take one magic-sensitive wyvern shifter, one horny royal-adjacent elf…and stand well back.
Brick’s a wyvern shifter, but he’s not wily or skilled in diplomacy like wyvern shifters should be. Instead, he’s big and brawny and slower than the rest of his family—the ruling family. Worse, he doesn’t fare well around magic, so being in the elf kingdom for the royal wedding celebrations is one big nosebleed. Literally.
Jagger’s an elf. A royal-adjacent one, whose family have been chancellors and councilors to the king for centuries. It must have skipped a generation, however, as Jagger’s more interested in drinking and seducing his way through the kingdom. Well, everyone wants to know if it’s true what they say about elves, right? Spoiler alert—it is.
When Brick discovers he’s being handed over as part of the wyvern-elf alliance treaty, he fumes and decides to cut ties with his family to make his own way in the world. But first, he has to find his way out of the elf kingdom. Asking at the tavern for an elf to be his guide, he’s taken to a room where a half-naked Jagger is lounging on a four-poster bed.
And that’s just the beginning of their dangerous, crazy and sexy adventure…
Whishhh! The ax flew through the air of the Hall. Tunnng! It landed in the barrel of beer on its stand beyond the far end of the long wooden table.
“Wait for it,” Mikel, the palace’s Great Hall steward and ax thrower, advised the eager onlookers, and sure enough, seconds later, the barrel split with a creeeak and, to loud cheers, the drink flowed from it. The guests stamped their feet in approval and the pages catching the stream of ale in goblets and passing them out were smiling.
“I hereby declare the first wedding celebration banquet open!” Mikel yelled, to louder applause. He lifted his cup and took the first swig, as he should, to test it was fit to drink—and not going to poison the Storm King—then held it aloft to signal that everyone could and should follow suit.
Not that they need any encouraging, down this end of the Great Hall. Jagger, one of the few councilors or officials there at the moment, took a cup and had a healthy gulp too. These long tables with their fixed benches were for the lower ranks. Jade and Grlind, when they arrived, would be in the thrones up there on the raised dais, not down here behind the open fire.
“Think it’s going to work?” he asked Mikel. “This more informal first feast plan?”
Mikel shrugged his vast upper body, slopping his beer, and gestured at the townsfolk who were marveling at the Great Hall’s vaulted ceiling and ouro-thread hanging tapestries. It hadn’t been his idea to ask the lowliest of the kingdom to arrive well before the highest, but he had to make the best of it. “Maybe. Yeah, the staggered invitations probably will make this lot feel they’ve rubbed elbows with their betters but be finished and out so they’re not gawking at them for too long while they eat.”
He would probably be too conscious of his place—and Jagger’s—in the hierarchy to ask if it had been his or the chancellor’s idea. Jagger couldn’t have cared less about who ate when and didn’t think the plan had come from his father. The chamberlain probably. He hadn’t been paying enough attention in all those boring planning meetings to recall. He wandered about, nodding at people he knew from the town—well, mostly male elves he knew from the tavern.
A couple of them gaped in amazement to see him here like this, one of the first in the Great Hall, his mahogany curls washed and bouncing, and him resplendent in his newest leather breeches. He’d polished his boots and sword. He had a dress uniform of course, and he’d wear it—if forced to—at the actual ceremony but not before. It had a triangular hat with a long, curled feather on it, that he wouldn’t put on his head for all the gold in the vaults, if he had his way. The last time he’d had to don the outfit, the stupid feather had bobbed around his face and tickled his nose and chin. He’d been that close to plucking the ridiculous thing off and turning it into a pen.
And virtue was its own reward, as they said—being here early got him first look…and first pick. There must be some possibilities among the arrivals. Weren’t the cabal of mages, from the seminary beyond the Crosswise Mountains, arriving today? He’d love to see if the rumors about what exactly the seminary’s curriculum consisted of were correct. The things mages were reputed to be able to do…
Jagger peered around the hall but couldn’t see any tall figures in deep indigo cloaks. There were only elves, arriving in droves now. That was the actual name for a group of them. Well, an adult group—the collective noun for young elves was a mischief. In his case, fitting. And hey, he was young!
“Son!” Jerrick beckoned him over, looking flustered. “You’ve been circulating down there, yes, as I suggested? And anything to report? Any new faces? Anyone stand out to you?”
“Huh?” Jagger pulled his wrist from Jerrick’s shaky grip on it. “Dad, I don’t need you prying into my affairs! I can find my own…entertainment, shall we say. And I’m sorry I have no intention of finding the one who stands out, or however you put it, but—”
“What? Son—” Jerrick glanced around and nudged Jagger behind a pillar. “I’m not referring to your…to anything like that. I meant the threats! Haven’t you been paying attention? Did you at least read the minutes of today’s meeting?”
Of course not. About to say, ‘What do you think, Dad?’ Jagger realized how serious and even flustered his father was. “Remind me?”
Jerrick tsked. “That not everyone is happy that the Storm King has chosen to marry someone outside his own kind! Some people are against interspecies mating. And not just people here, in the elf kingdom. Prejudice is universal.”
“Hatred, you mean. Bigotry.” Jagger paused. He’d heard murmurs, in the Cock and Balls, the local tavern where he spent most of his free time, but not actual conversation. Hust, the landlord, had a very strictly enforced no politics, no religion rule. “But there’s been nothing concrete?”
“There’ve been protests!” Jerrick wiped his forehead with a linen square. “You know how careful we had to be in choosing the routes the guests took through the town to the palace, to avoid certain areas. Certain neighborhoods. We’ve had to use a little magic to shield the processions from anyone not wishing the visitors well, those without joy in their hearts for the union.” He replaced his handkerchief in his pocket and accepted the cup of water Jagger took from a page’s tray for him.
“I have to admit, I never knew it was possible,” he admitted, waving a hand at the enormous portraits above the thrones. “Bonding, between different species.”
“Talking of different species, the ogres are late,” Joziah inched up to tell them. He lifted the seal on his chain of office. Bespelled, it changed into whatever the chamberlain might happen to need at any given time, and it was currently a big fat gold watch with a clear face and a loud tick.
“Oh, they can’t tell the time and no page wants to go to their rooms to call them!” Jodhi, the chief steward, wheezed at his own joke.
“Oh, not their fault…that they couldn’t read the itinerary!” Hareth replied.
Jagger expected the senior councilor to slap his thigh after that rib-tickler. “What were you just saying about prejudice, Father?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
His father, who’d been chortling a little at the pathetic jokes, had the grace to look ashamed. “Come. Let’s take our places,” he suggested, sweeping his fellow councilors along to their section of the table on the dais.
It was situated under the Councilors’ Gallery of portraits hanging on the wall, and as always when he was in the Great Hall, Jagger noted the resemblances between Jerrick and the painting of his father, Jacron. Grandfather Jacron had been chancellor too, the most trusted and loved advisor to the Storm Emperor, Jade’s parent. Jagger supposed Jerrick’s portrait would hang there too when he left the earth. Would they remove Jacron’s, then? And Jagger would sit where his father was now? Gods. The hall they were in was big enough, but Jagger felt it closing in on him.
Nah. I’m unlikely to make chancellor. It had to skip a generation at some point, even if their family had always served the high court. Through famines and feasts, insurrections and celebrations… He couldn’t remember the rest of the family creed and wasn’t that cut up about it. It didn’t even rhyme anyway. Or scan. He switched his focus to the servitors laying out their wares with practiced, swift movements.
The Great Hall was filling up before his eyes, the different groups entering to fanfare and polite ripples of applause with the fancier or more exotic guests provoking the occasional gasp. One group coming in the east door had everyone about them craning their necks to see.
“The Ruby Throne,” Jodhi leaned over to tell Jagger. “You’d be interested, hey?”
Why would I? Jodhi turned to the person on the other side of him before Jagger could ask him. He didn’t care much, anyway. The noise rose if not to the ceiling, then to the minstrel galleries on either side of the room. A trio of musicians was making their way to one, weaving their way through the streams of nobles, courtiers and burghers.
Jerrick had hardly sat before he tsked and stood, hurrying to the thrones to align them better. Jagger couldn’t see any difference when his father had finished and doubted the Storm King would either.
The place stilled, then everyone rose to their feet and broke into applause—Jade and Grlind had entered the hall. Jade, switched to his female form as the Storm Queen, waved the guests to their seats again, and the pages bustled up and down once more. Palace guards ringed the room, standing discreetly against the walls, and Jagger now understood why. Threats, his father had said. Why, for gods’ sake? All the Storm Queen had done was choose to be with the person she loved. Even if that brought no advantages to the kingdom. Even if it brings the opposite.
Jade suddenly looked at him and beckoned. Jagger considered pulling a ‘who me?’ act and looking behind him but got to his feet and approached the thrones. He gave a low bow.
“Your place is here with us.” Jade, now in male form, indicated the first chair that wasn’t a throne at this top table, to his left.
“It’s my honor,” Jagger responded, and sat. Did Jade have him confused with someone else? Unlikely—they knew each other. Oh, wait. Was he supposed to be delivering some speech or announcing something? He really should have paid attention in the meetings. Well, whatever it was, he’d pick up enough cues to wing it. He usually did. He took a huge gulp of litch wine in preparation.
“Mister Jagger…”
Jagger almost jumped. Grlind hadn’t spoken to him yet this evening but was now bending around Jade’s back to do so. “Sir?”
“Just Grlind. Look, the Storm King choosing an orc means you all gotta work hard at making better alliances to defend the kingdom against attacks from outside, right?”
Jagger knew that. Everyone was always on edge about trolls and ogres possibly joining forces, for instance. He gazed over at the latter. He hated ogres. As if sensing his thoughts, one stared back at him and made a cutthroat gesture. Charming. Not.
“Right?” Grlind repeated.
“Right. And, of course, I’ll do my best to help.”
“That’s real sweet o’ya to take it like that.” Grlind’s face stretched into a big green smile.
“It?”
“The prophecy, that says ya gotta marry one of the wyverns to cement their alliance with us!” The clap Grlind landed on Jagger’s shoulder nearly had him on the floor. “That’s what Jade’s announcing now, to start the wedding celebrations off with,” he continued, leaping up to pull out Jade’s chair for him, because Jade was getting to his feet.
“What?”
Jerrick stood, and Jagger tried but failed to interpret the look on his father’s face. “But…” he tried again, and anything he might have said was lost in the Storm King’s proclamation about a wyvern-royal adjacent pact, one that might have been saving the kingdom, but that was effectively ruining Jagger’s life.
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Bailey Bradford
A native Texan, Bailey spends her days spinning stories around in her head, which has contributed to more than one incident of tripping over her own feet. Evenings are reserved for pounding away at the keyboard, as are early morning hours. Sleep? Doesn’t happen much. Writing is too much fun, and there are too many characters bouncing about, tapping on Bailey’s brain demanding to be let out.
Caffeine and chocolate are permanent fixtures in Bailey’s office and are never far from hand at any given time. Removing either of those necessities from Bailey’s presence can result in what is known as A Very, Very Scary Bailey and is not advised under any circumstances.
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