Magick By Moonrise: A Fantasy Romance Novel

by Laura Navarre

Overview

Tudor England, 1556

A religious war is brewing. The Catholic Church relies on the ruthless reputation of Lord Beltran Nemesto, who tirelessly hunts down those who don't believe or who practice dark arts.

Half mortal, half Fae princess, Rhiannon le Fay is a healer trying to broker peace between the Faerie and mortal worlds. The Convergence is approaching, an occurrence every thousand years where the Veil that separates the two realms temporarily dissolves. Without her help, war between the two is inevitable.

After meeting Rhiannon, Beltran knows he must bring her to justice, but he's instantly attracted to the ethereal beauty. She forces him to confront his beliefs and introduces him to the Faerie world, and in the process he discovers a haunting truth about himself.

As the Convergence nears, Rhiannon and Beltran must decide where their loyalties lie as they fight to prevent a war that could destroy both of their worlds forever.

Book one of The Magick Trilogy.

88,000 words

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781426895197
Publisher:	Carina Press
Publication date:	03/11/2013
Series:	The Magick Trilogy , #1
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Pages:	359
File size:	884 KB

Read an Excerpt

Tudor England, April 1556

Torrential rains lashed the countryside with cataclysmic force, a mighty river pouring from angry clouds to punish the drowning lands. The deluge pounded the frost-nipped forest, stripped away pearl-gray daylight and churned the English soil into a sucking sea of mud. Through this treacherous mire, their valiant steeds galloped full out.

Rhiannon twisted to slant a desperate glance behind her, where the last of her defenders hammered at her heels. Faithful unto death, just as they'd sworn before the Goddess, no matter their hidden misgivings about this dangerous mission.

From the rear, a horse's whinny pierced her like an arrow—the familiar timbre of Nineve, the white mare she'd raised from a foal.

An angry growl of thunder muffled the rider's shout of despair as he tumbled from Nineve's saddle. Rhiannon felt the lightning crack of pain through her own tender flesh as his shoulder struck the ground with crushing force. Her heart nearly stopping, she cried out as though stricken herself.

"Halt!" Healer's instincts taking over, she struggled to slow her panicked mare.

"Nay, princess!" her foster-father shouted, pounding alongside. "Those brigands are but a breath behind. The devils ride as if hell-spawned."

"But Nineve and Cynyr—I will not abandon our friends." Violently she shook her head, damp tendrils of silver hair flying around her shoulders. "Halt, I command it!"

"Nay, child." Lord Ansgar Emrys gripped her bridle in his gauntlet and urged the mare on. "Your safety must be our paramount concern. Cynyr himself would be the first to say so."

As their flight opened distance between her and the fallen, the searing bolt of pain eased, until her own healer's bones no longer throbbed with Cynyr's agony. But she would hear Nineve trumpeting for help until the day she died.

Cynyr could save them both if he kept the presence of mind to summon the Veil, thicken the mist swirling among the ancient oaks and wish himself back to Faerie. But nothing could mend bones snapped like kindling, save time and her own healing touch.

Tears of sorrow stung her rain-washed eyes, because Rhiannon knew her foster-father was right. If they were overtaken by that howling band of brigands—the horde who'd come ravening down on them from nowhere the moment they cleared the Veil, and hunted them for three days as though bewitched—if they were captured, all her friends' precious lives would be lost in vain.

Only four of us left. A pang of grief and terror stabbed through her. Goddess, will they all fall—all those faithful souls who believed in me enough to follow me from Faerie? Every one of the stalwart seven she'd lost tore her heart anew.

But she would honor their sacrifice. Later she would grieve for them, those shining souls who should have lived forever, their immortal lives cut cruelly short by the sword. If she survived, she would never cease grieving them.

But they'd made their choices just as she made hers, sworn to preserve the fragile peace between the mortal realm and the Summer Lands behind the Veil where the Fae dwelled. She'd sworn to reach Catholic Queen Mary at the Tudor court, to deliver the precious treaty the Faerie Queene had crafted, to trigger the spell that would bind mortals and Fae to an enchanted peace. The desperate scheme had been Rhiannon's, the Faerie magick her royal mother's—and nearly every high noble at her court violently opposed the plan.