Title: The Terrible
Author: Tessa Crowley
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 02/13/2024
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 96300
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy, fairy tale, fae, gay, magic/magic users, monster, spirit/wraith, royalty, soulmates, true love, violence, murder
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Description
Once upon a time in the kingdom of Leithbrochen, a king and queen in need of an heir went to seek the aid of a fairy who lived in a hut that was never in the same place twice. Many years later, in a small village along a river, a monster made of shadows begins to kill and devour people in the night.
Ness Catterick, the adviser on all matters magical to the Crown of Leithbrochen, is placed in charge of dealing with the monster. To his dismay, the attacks are occurring in the same village where he grew up as a homeless orphan, reviled and abused for being lethfae, half fairy.
But this monster, called the Terrible, is not what it seems. After all, Ness knows there’s no such thing as monsters, only men behaving monstrously. And Prince Cathair, with eyes like bottomless pits and a sadistic obsession with Ness, is proving to be more of a threat than the Terrible ever could be.
The Terrible
Tessa Crowley © 2024
All Rights Reserved
“I believe I remember her,” Cathair said.
The castellan had put us both up on the mezzanine overlooking the courthouse’s main room, normally used to store dry goods and various root vegetables throughout the winter. In what had obviously been a last-minute attempt to create lodgings worthy of the crown prince, they’d dragged two beautifully carved hawthorn beds with down-stuffed mattresses up, along with a few chests for our belongings and a desk to write at. I was already going through a list of places I used to sleep as an orphan and wondering if they were still there—old hunting lean-tos were preferable to sharing a room with Cathair.
“Who?” I asked, even though I knew exactly who.
“Mother Eivhlin. She was the priestess in charge of your orphanage.”
“It wasn’t my orphanage by the time you and your mother arrived.” The bitterness in my voice was sharp like a knife in my throat. I tossed my bag onto the foot of the bed and unbuckled it. “She’d thrown me out when I was a boy of eight.”
“Yes,” Cathair said, “I recall my mother’s explanation.”
I wasn’t surprised by his flat affect; in fact, I should have been used to it by now, but I doubted I ever would be. To me, his dispassion had always been his most unnerving quality.
I kept my back to him as I unpacked, though I could still feel his eyes on me like spiders on my skin.
“I was fourteen,” he said. “You were perhaps twelve. I saw you shy away from the royal procession as it went through town.”
I swallowed and looked over my shoulder at him. He sat on the edge of his bed, back straight, hands on his knees. He stared at me the way I stared at a clock when I wished time to go faster.
“Your hair and face were dirty. It made the blue of your eyes more prominent. I only saw you for a few moments through the carriage window, but in that time, I was unable to look anywhere else. I craned my neck and stared till you were out of sight.
“Mother asked me, ‘What are you looking at?’
“I answered, ‘There is a beautiful boy outside.’ She was startled and ordered the procession to stop.”
Cathair told the story with all the energy demanded of a eulogy, but still I stood transfixed. My own memories from back then were blurred and indistinct, clouded over with too much pain, hunger, and loneliness. I hadn’t even realized Cathair had seen me that day, when the Queen Regent came riding through Lockery-on-Ryme. I didn’t meet him until many weeks later.
I realized after a moment that these were perhaps the most words I’d ever heard Cathair say consecutively.
“We had not planned on stopping in this village.” He still stared at me, neutral, impassive, with a posture somehow both formal and disinterested at the same time. “But when I called you beautiful, we stopped. I later understood why. It was the first time I had ever called anything beautiful. My mother was eager to build upon it.”
At last, my curiosity won out, and I turned fully around to face him, folding my arms over my chest. “Build on it?”
“My mother is as aware as anyone who has met me that there is little passion in my soul. Even less empathy. All my life she has sought to bring it out in me. When I called you beautiful, she seized upon the mere possibility that I might one day fall in love with you. And that, in doing so, I would become a better version of myself.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re not in love with me.” It wasn’t a question.
“No.” Cathair stood slowly, the wood bed frame sighing as if in relief, and came toward me. “But you were beautiful. You still are.”
The closer he got, the faster my heart raced. His words were dangerously close to seductive. If they hadn’t been so dispassionate and cold, I might be able to forget all I knew about him and focus instead on the evening stubble showing on his chin, the fall of his hair, the width of his shoulders, and the well-constructed muscles straining against his riding leathers.
He lifted his hand and drew two fingers through my hair. A strange thrill ran through me. Was this the first time Cathair had touched me? I could recall instances in the past where he’d tried, but I’d always managed to dodge away before the contact came.
His hands were warm, warmer than I expected them to be, and roughened by calluses. The heat of him leached into my skin.
“So we stopped in this backwater nowhere of a town,” he said, “because I called you beautiful. You had run off, and the guards could not find you. Eventually, my mother asked around, and Sister Eivhlin gave us your name.
“She tried to warn us off you. She told us you were lethfae, that your father was Unseelie, that you had hurt others with your magic in the past. My mother would hear nothing of it. And in the morning, we found you.”
That was a moment I remembered with more clarity. I’d tried to run from the guards when they spotted me; I’d never been pursued by soldiers who were not trying to arrest me for something I’d stolen. But they were faster and caught me by the arm, and as I started to cry and twist and fight, the Queen Regent crouched in front of me and asked, smiling sweetly, as beautiful as a sunrise, Are you Ness Catterick?
“She never said as much,” Cathair continued, “but I am sure it was no mistake you ended up on the Small Council. She invested in your education and magical training so that you could stay close. So I would be near you in the castle. So I would not go a week without seeing you.”
Cathair twined my hair around his two fingers. For a moment, just a moment, something softened in the core of me. The way he spoke…a tiny voice wondered if maybe, just maybe…
Was I really so desperately lonely? Was I so starved for affection that I’d allow myself to be seduced by Prince Cathair, of all people, the second he touched me?
“And yet, all these years, you have resisted me,” Cathair said and suddenly pulled hard on my hair. My head snapped back at the force.
A shout of pain and alarm ripped out of me, and I pressed my hands against Cathair’s shoulders in a desperate, instinctual attempt to push him away. Of course, he held firm. The gesture, I realized with mounting terror, had exposed my throat, and like a predator, Cathair’s teeth were poised to bite. The heat of his breath pulsed past my neck. Whatever had melted in me a moment ago froze solid again, and I realized, terrified, that we were alone.
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Tessa was born and raised in Virginia and graduated with an English degree from VCU in Richmond before moving to Portland, Maine. She has a cat who runs her life and a day job as a 911 dispatcher (it’s not as exciting as it sounds). When she’s not writing, Tessa’s likely reading, playing tabletop RPGs with her friends, or spending time with her retired parents.
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