Dark Hunter's Touch: Court of the Steel-Born Fae, #1

DARK HUNTER’S TOUCH

Elsa Jade

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Once upon a time, iron kept the fae from wandering the world.

But over the millennia, iron gave way to steel, and now the fae are unbound…

Yearning to be free, Olette has fled the idleness and illusions of the fae court to hide in the sunlit realm of humans. When the dark warriors of the Wild Hunt find her—and they will, because the black-winged shadows always find their prey—she will face the fae queen's wrath. But until the hunters come and clip her sylfana wings, she will seize this moment to indulge the real emotions of world beyond the walls she’s always known.

After a chance encounter with a seductively handsome stranger, Olette longs to embrace the earthly passions within her, if only for one night. Vaile’s dark eyes might see through her disguise and his tantalizing touch could make her forget her vow to keep running as long as she can.

Because it seems there are deeper dangers than she knew. In the ages since the end of the Iron Wars, the Court of the Steel-Born Fae has grown restless, the queen’s power to hold them within wearing thin, and the sunlit realm has forgotten the old charms that once kept the oblivious human folk safe from the shadows.

Olette might risk even her freedom for Vaile’s love, but when the Wild Hunt closes in, she has to wonder: has she fallen for a man—or beautiful lie?

* Originally published as DARK HUNTER’S TOUCH by Jessa Slade. Copyright © 2012

Copyright © 2022 by Elsa Jade

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

Prologue

The old Lord of the Hunt had finally unleashed his passion, and the faedrealii—the court of the steel-born fae folk—ran black with blood.

The hunter whelp, who was still very much leashed and would be until he had full control of his magics, crawled between the thin, grubby bodies of his young brethren, chained near him. They should have snapped and growled at him for such impunity, and he would have growled and snapped back.

Now, a few groaned, but most of them lay silent and unmoving.

The steel-spiked collar dragged at his neck, but the deadweight of his half-severed wing was heavier, though he tried to ignore the twisted burden.

The agony and dread were heaviest though he tried not to feel that either.

He edged toward the full-fledged hunter, fallen just moments ago, minus his head, hands still raised defensively. The hunter had not believed he would be slain by his lord and master. Biting back a whimper that would mean his own death, the whelp avoided the head with its open-mouthed expression of shock.

The old lord paced. The blood of his rampage was invisible on his widespread ebony wings, but the rusty-sweet scent swirled around him. The violent agitation in every boot step thudded through the ground and made the whelp quake as if his bones were cracking inside him from the tightly bound terror.

You have brought this upon us, Queen of the Steel-Born, Queen of Lies! The cry shivered the very walls. Mad he might be, but the Dark Lord of the Wild Hunt had magics to rival the queen herself.

And now he had turned his might against the faedrealii.

Too late, the whelp understood why the courtiers who had passed through the compound in the quietest hours had even more quietly sought the hunters’ assurances that their lord was not suffering from the Undoing. An Undone fae let his sentiments run amok, a lack of restraint forbidden since the queen had ascended to the Steel Throne centuries ago. The hunters had scoffed at the courtiers’ fretting. No fae had come Undone since the Hunt began enforcing the queen’s edict upon pain of death.

But death had come for the hunters instead, and the whelp knew the unabated gush of blood over his shoulder meant he was on the same path.

He froze as the old lord swept past. His seeping blood crystallized in jet-black beads from the force of the ancient hunter’s wrath when the fae bellowed, "Ankha, you wicked beguiler. You were my Undoing! Do you hear me?"

Lord Hunter, every being in the faedrealii, and the sunlit world too, has heard you.

At the soft rejoinder, the old lord turned to face his queen. His fuming breath frosted the suddenly icy air.

The whelp shivered helplessly and reached for the ring clenched on the dead hunter’s hand. The steel band froze his skin as he tugged, but the pain of his ripping fingertips was nothing compared to his wing, and the amber stone nestled in the metal was still faintly warm. He clenched it in his palm and dragged his hand to his chest. The stone—the likes of which would have been his one day had he become a hunter full fledged—returned him a small measure of strength.

The queen glided forward. With her white gown and her hair in a white corona, she glowed softly in the whelp’s fading vision. Her voice was softer yet, so the whelp doubted any of the fae courtiers gathering in the shadows heard her, aside from himself and the old lord. I will not let you do this, Lord Hunter.

Call me by my name, Ankha.

I told you I would not. This is why.

The old lord’s face twisted. Lies. All lies.

And the blood? She lifted the hem of her pure white skirts—spattered now with black and crimson—to point the toe of her gore-stained slipper. Also a lie?

The tangled lines of his face deepened. The price of true passion. Mine and yours, the fae’s…

The first never was, and the last cannot be.

"Without the hunters to enforce your ruthless edict, it will be."

No, the whelp whispered. Not that anyone heard him.

But the queen also said, No.

She raised her hands, and the glow around her edges expanded like crystals of hoarfrost. Behind her, the gathered courtiers exhaled as she drew her power through them.

But the old lord also raised his hand. Though the triangular glass sword clutched in his grasp did not gleam through the blood, its bone handle was as white as the his knuckles. It sang the hunger of the Undoing, and the song was sharp as steel, sweet as blood, bright as starlight in the deepest veil of night.

The whelp ducked his head down into his shoulders to block the seductive sound. The motion wrenched his wing into fresh agony, and he cried out just as the old lord charged the queen.

The whelp smashed the amber stone against his spiked collar. Light, shining like the sun he had heard stories of, burst asunder.

He cowered as the old lord whirled back with a surprised shout. The queen only smiled and loosed her power at the lord’s back in a boom of thunder.

Half blinded, half deafened, half dead, the whelp drifted for a heartbeat…

Until a gentle touch on his cheek roused him.

Here now, you mustn’t cry.

He cracked open his swollen eyes. At first he thought the queen, pale and beautiful, had deigned to speak to a hunter’s whelp. But no, it was just a silly little sylfana, younger and smaller than him. Her short white wing buds, not yet unfurled, stuck out awkwardly from her shoulders, bared by her palest pink shift. Even at the peak of their power, sylfaniia could barely fly. They mostly danced and sang and flitted around the court, their laughter as shiny and empty as mirrored bells. When she came into her knack, she would be nothing but a reflection of the idle whims and