Captured by the Fae (Fate of the Fae Book 1) Read online

  CAPTURED BY THE FAE

  Fate of the Fae

  VERA RIVERS

  Captured by the Fae:

  Fate of the Fae - Book One

  Text Copyright © 2022 by Vera Rivers

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing, 2022

  Publisher

  Vera Rivers

  [email protected]

  VeraRiversAuthor.com

  Cover art by: miblart

  CONTENTS

  Vera Rivers Books

  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

  Vera Rivers Books

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  1

  “Get your hands off me!” I slapped a meaty hand off my ass, glaring at the offender.

  He grinned yellow teeth at me. “What’s holding up that beer, honey?”

  “Touch me again, and you’ll regret it.”

  “I don’t think so. A sweet thing like you…” He continued touching me.

  I’d had enough.

  I moved fast. My elbow connected with his nose, and I felt a satisfying crunch. Blood poured from his nose and dripped onto his shirt while he howled.

  “Let me get you that beer,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I would have asked him to leave, but it wasn’t my call.

  When I walked away, another male tried to grab me. I dodged the hand.

  I wanted to spin around and punch him in the face, too. I hated it when drunk males slobbered all over me. I wasn’t a piece of meat they could manhandle whenever they wanted just because I worked at the tavern.

  I collected empty beer mugs and stayed clear of the really drunk guys.

  “Do you want to tell me what the hell that was?” Craig demanded when I walked back to the bar to refill pint glasses with the bitter ale he sold on tap. His enormous, doughy belly strained against his stained shirt, in plain sight because of the two missing buttons, and his eyes were black, shifting in their little sockets.

  He was in a mood today. I’d angered him since I’d come down from my room on top of the tavern at dawn this morning. I didn’t know why.

  He leaned on the bar, talking to some patrons while I ran around, running the show for nothing but the tips a few of them left, and a room with a daily meal I didn’t have to pay for.

  “He’s groping me, Craig,” I said and slammed the tray down so that the glass pints trembled. “He always gropes me, and you do nothing about it.”

  “No harm, no foul. He pays good money as a regular.”

  Yeah, I knew that. He was a regular offender.

  “And if you’re a sourpuss about it, you chase away my customers. One of these days, he’s going to find somewhere else to spend his coin, and then? What happens if they all leave?”

  “I’d be better off,” I grumbled.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  I’d been in a lot of fights, fending for myself when Craig refused to protect me. A tavern wasn’t the type of place women worked when they wanted to be seen as respectable ladies.

  Then again, Fae never saw human women as respectable. We were the slaves, the help, the bottom of the food chain.

  Jasfin was Fae country. I’d heard that humans lived freely in the Uprain Mountains to the north, but it wasn’t like I had the means to leave. On foot, it was more than a week’s travel, and I couldn’t afford it without my job here.

  Even if I made it, what if I got there and they wouldn’t have me?

  I’d grown up being unwanted. My parents had gotten rid of me, my foster parents had used and abused me, and when I’d run away, this was the only place where I’d been able to take care of myself.

  Besides, I’d lived my whole life—my spectacular twenty-one years—in Steepholde. It was a tiny town at the very south of the country bordered by a forest, with rolling fields and sunshine and the illusion of happiness. It was home. Whatever the hell that meant.

  “If I catch you causing trouble with the patrons again, you’re out,” Craig threatened. “I mean it, Ellie. I can find someone to replace you tonight if I have to.”

  I stared at him, shocked. He’d taken away my meals, he’d forced me to work double shifts, he’d made me scrub the kitchen after hours. He’d never threatened my job. Craig didn’t threaten.

  When he said something, he meant it. That was why he was so terrifying.

  “You can’t do that to me!” If it was just a job, that would have been one thing, but it was my room, too. I wasn’t going back onto the streets. I needed a roof over my head and food in my belly.

  “It’s my tavern. I can do whatever the hell I want. You humans think you can do whatever you want now that King Arnott is dead.”

  I bit back the snarky remark I wanted to throw at him. I clapped back often, but he was in a foul mood, and I couldn’t risk my job. Not tonight. He was going to use the King’s death on me for a while to come, still.

  I’d read about the King’s death, but the event didn’t impact either one of us. A day of mourning had followed, where everyone was mandated to wear black and act like we were sad about a Fae no one knew personally.

  The King was dead. Flyers of the murderer ruled every bulletin board, advertisement, and news bulletin. Blond hair, stern features, a face that looked like it was more comfortable with a snarl than a smile.

  None of that affected us. It hadn’t changed my life in the slightest.

  Life was still tough all around. Rumors circulated that the new Fae King—Rainier, King Arnott’s only son and next in line to rule—had plans to end slavery for the humans. The Fae complained about slavery being abolished, as if that would ever happen.

  “You’re treading on thin ice, Ellie,” Craig warned.

  I shook my head and filled the pints before carrying them back to the booths.

  “Finally,” Ham-Hands sneered and grabbed the pint from my tray before I handed it to him. He’d stopped the bleeding, but his teeth had blood on them when he grinned, and his eyes were filled with menace. He wanted to finish what he’d started now. It was a matter
of pride.

  He grabbed for me with his other hand, but I bounced back. I wanted to retaliate, put him in his place. I was small against his bulky size, but that meant speed would be on my side, and I was a decent fighter. Years of warding off assholes in the tavern did that.

  But Craig was watching, and Ham-Hands was a regular customer. We couldn’t risk those—or Craig’s reputation—now, could we?

  The last pint on my tray fell when I avoided his touch, and it shattered on the floor. Beer splashed everywhere.

  “That’s it,” Craig said, standing.

  I fell to my knees and started picking up the glass pieces, not caring that the glass cut my hands or that beer soaked my only pair of pants. I felt Craig’s anger coming toward me as he stomped through the tall tables.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder and yanked me back, planting me on my ass.

  “You’re not getting anything to eat tonight, you hear me? Do you have any idea what these cost me?”

  Of course I knew. I was the one that always called in the orders.

  “So, I have to feed everyone else, but I go to bed hungry?”

  “You’re not feeding them. I am. You’re lucky you still have a place to sleep,” Craig snarled and shoved me toward the kitchen behind the bar.

  I shook my head and dumped the glass pieces into a bin on the way to the kitchen. When I was alone, I ran cold water over my hands, washing away the blood that seeped from the cuts created by the glass. I fought back my anger and blew the strands of auburn hair out of my face that had come loose from my ponytail. I tried not to think about the fact that I would not eat.

  My stomach growled in protest.

  I stayed in the kitchen, listening to the chatter and laughter die down as Craig greeted his patrons and closed up the front of the tavern. When he finally came into the kitchen, he ignored me. He opened the pantry and took out a loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a bowl of salted butter. He added turkey to it from the fridge and locked it all up before he left so that I couldn’t get anything for myself.

  When he switched off the lights, I crept out of the kitchen in the dark and climbed the ladder to my room above the kitchen.

  It wasn’t much of a home, but it was better than sleeping on the street. I’d experienced a life of being homeless, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do to avoid it. I slept on a pile of rags in the corner, on slivered wooden floors, but it was more comfortable than it looked. Aside from tonight’s punishment, I usually went to bed with a full belly.

  I twisted the ring that I always wore on my middle finger. It was the only thing I had from my mother—or at least that’s what the woman who ran the orphanage told me. Maybe I twisted it hoping for some guidance, but really, I just twisted it out of habit. I took it off and placed it in my small box of personal possessions for safekeeping for the night.

  I walked to the window and looked out.

  Steepholde was a lot like the rest of Jasfin, from what I heard from travelers passing through the tavern. Everything was a combination of old buildings and traditions that stood the test of time and the latest technology. The digital lights, hologram advertisements, combined with the weathered bricks, slivered wood, and printed flyers was where the past and the future came together.

  I sat down and put my arms up on the windowsill, looking out at the night. I tried to ignore how hungry I was. I tried to focus on the lights and the life teeming below—the push and pull between the Fae and humans living together. I wanted so much more. I’d always wanted more. I just didn’t know what. I simply couldn’t believe that this was it. This was what the rest of my life would be like. How was it possible that I, at twenty-one, had reached the pinnacle of my potential?

  I didn’t know how I would change my life, though—how I would get out of here. Being human in a world where we were nothing was a curse, and I had no way of changing my fate.

  I wouldn’t die of hunger tonight, but if I had to keep trudging through this mundane existence, I didn’t know how I would keep on living. My soul yearned for more, yet it was never fed what it needed.

  A sound from below snapped my attention back to the present. What was that? It had sounded like someone was in the kitchen, but…

  I strained my ears for the sound again. This time, it was loud and clear. Someone was down there.

  An icy finger trailed down my spine, and fear crept up from my core.

  If someone broke in and stole something—anything—from Craig, I would get the blame—no matter what I did or said. I’d clapped back at him often enough. I’d put my foot down. I’d made life harder for him than I’d needed to because I hated being pushed into a corner. But he would take all this—pathetic as it was—away from me if something happened now.

  I crept across my room, careful not to let the wooden floorboards creak, and climbed down the ladder. When I crept into the kitchen, the lights were off. I poked my head around the corner, tasting my heart in my throat.

  Nothing.

  I straightened and frowned. I could have sworn…

  A scratching sound came from the storage room next to the kitchen. I spun around.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded.

  Silence.

  I took a step closer, and another. Again, the scratching sounded. I took a step into the storage room.

  The whooshing sound of a large object swinging through the air came fast. An object hit my head. Hard. I swirled, but my vision was already blurry, and I barely made out a figure in the dark before everything went black.

  2

  I didn’t kill the Fae King of Jasfin, but that was the first thing someone screamed at me the moment I woke up.

  I opened my eyes, and nothing around me was familiar. I was lying on the ground, and the cold concrete seeped through my clothing and was frigid against my skin. My whole body involuntarily shivered. All four walls were metal bars, like a cage. Was I in a prison cell? Yes, I definitely was, and I had no idea why.

  The same guard who had yelled at me from outside of the cell stormed in and forced me to my feet. My arms were chained, and the cold metal dug into my skin when the guard grabbed my wrist to force me forward.

  “Move,” he growled, and I obeyed.

  The hallways and stairways he led me through were dark and cold, and the air was damp and smelled like mildew. A door opened, and there I was, in chains and standing in an arena of sorts. The stands rose like an amphitheater, and the crowds all around me were losing their minds with excitement. The electric atmosphere crackled on my skin.

  Despite the sun beating down on the sand in the arena, a chill ran through me. The weight of the chains dragged me down. The magic of the spelled metal hummed against my skin. I would not work my way out of these chains. I had seen cuffs like this before—the magic was impossible to break unless whoever had cast it recalled it.

  I tasted bile at the back of my throat. Blood rushed in my ears, and despite shivering with cold, sweat broke out on my skin, dampening my hair. I cleared my throat, and my voice was thick and…different. When I looked down at myself, I wasn’t me. My body was enormous, muscular, the body of a man.

  What in the seven realms of hell?

  I wore a battle outfit, not my own clothes. But nothing here was my own—not even my body.

  “Next!” a guard boomed.

  Another guard pushed me forward, a spear at my back. The sand kicked up beneath my feet, and I tasted dust in my mouth.

  Rainier, the Fae Prince, sat on the throne, his face stony, eyes filled with rage. I was just as confused as I was terrified. I was in the presence of the Fae Prince of Jasfin. He was a sight to behold, his pitch-black hair in stark contrast to his marble skin, and his eyes the color of ice. His gaze chilled me to the bone.

  “Zander, I have charged you with the murder of the King.”

  Zander? I’d seen the flyers. I’d heard the name. But that wasn’t me.

  “I didn’t do it,” I said. My voice wasn’t my own—it was deep and distinctly male
. “You have the wrong person!” I fought against my restraints, but the spear dug into my back, and I stopped fighting. “I’m not—”

  “I don’t think so,” Prince Rainier—or King, now that his father was dead—snapped. He would not let me finish. And why would he? I looked like this…like Zander.

  His rage increased when he talked to me. His anger rushed toward me in hot and heavy pulses, laced with the sorrow of losing his father. It flowed through me like a cancerous ache, taking root. I felt the sadness buried at my core, threatening to drown me.

  What the hell was going on? I’d felt nothing before but my own emotions. My own fear or rage. This was…wrong.

  I glanced around, and no humans were in sight. I was in the middle of the Fae court.

  I wasn’t Fae, but I was being tried as one.

  “You will fight the beast,” Rainier said with all the power and grace of a king.

  The guards marched me away and tossed me into the arena. The crowds cried out, the excitement electric in the air. All eyes were on me.

  I spun around, looking for the beast, but I was still alone. I started searching for a way out, but there was no way I would get out of here without the guards stopping me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the metal cladding that finished the sides of the arena. Tall, well-built, a shock of blond hair. A man.