Shards of the Stars Read online

  Shards of the Stars

  A Lesbian Fantasy Fiction Novella

  M.T. Finnberg

  Wide Avenue Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by M.T. Finnberg

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover: Wide Avenue Publishing. Stock images: Depositphotos. Fonts: Pixelo.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  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

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  Also by M.T. Finnberg

  Chapter 1

  I crouched lower, watching as the arrows rained onto the castle wall outside. The window was narrow, merely a slit in the stone wall, designed for just this: trying to avoid enemy arrows flying in.

  A hideous scream carried over from the courtyard below, so I gripped the handle of my dagger with a shaky hand and tried to see over Princess Lyria’s shoulder down to the yard.

  From fifty yards below, the clamor and the glimpses I got told me the men of King Taramon were getting through the first guards and spreading out. The screams, yells, and the clang of weapons from below made my skin crawl.

  Discreetly, from the corner of my eye, I just as much kept glancing at Lyria, wondering how she could stay so calm. She was eighteen, the same as I, definitely no experienced soldier…and if the army slaughtering men in the yard right now managed to make their way up here, Lyria would have to beg for her life to be spared.

  Scratching at the door made us both turn.

  I whispered an incantation to prepare a spell, hearing my voice come out unsure. The lock crunched and clacked as a key turned in it, and my heart jumped to my throat, but I climbed up to my feet and stepped between the door and Lyria. I was nothing but a chambermaid, but I had trained at the armory with my cousins. I always carried spell-caster stones as well as a dagger hidden in my dresses.

  Lyria rose to her feet behind me and laid a hand on my shoulder as if to hold me back.

  A bewildered, flushed man’s face peeked in. I glimpsed a bloodied sword in his hand. The man was swaying, panting. Quickly taking in the room with a brief look, he slipped in and locked the door. Now I recognized him — the first commander of the king’s personal guard.

  Still trying to catch his breath, he put the bloodied sword away in its sheath and wiped off his face with a sleeve, then he knelt down on one knee and bowed his head down deep.

  “My queen…”

  Lyria gasped beside me and went to her knees in front of the man, too, mirroring him, but covered her mouth with her hands.

  “No…Andre?” The words were disbelieving, but full of held-back tears, already.

  The man nodded slowly, knowingly. His face was a display of dirt, blood, and gore, but somehow, he emanated a reassuring calm.

  “Oh, no,” Lyria muttered again through her palms, and I could tell by the way she started pulling her breaths, she was starting to sob.

  Andre dug around in the large pockets of his dark royal guard uniform jacket and produced a small, decorative scimitar and something wrapped in a piece of crimson silk. He unrolled the silk bundle and offered all of this for Lyria to take, the scimitar in the silk…and a crown.

  Lyria took them but didn’t seem to know what to do with them, and a muffled, short sob escaped her, as she looked around.

  “This is my inauguration? Oh, Andre…”

  I wasn’t sure what exactly she was referring to, but she waved her hand minutely around the room. It seemed that Andre wasn’t any more certain than I was, but his face turned concerned. I could easily imagine Lyria had dreamed her inauguration to be under different circumstances, not this, the end of the world.

  “There was no time,” Andre said. “I was everyone’s best bet, rushing these to you alone. I flew through the flights of stairs — it was all we could do — and there’s still no time to lose.”

  “Did my father suffer?” Lyria asked, her voice suddenly harsh, as if she was trying to hold back storms of emotions.

  Andre shook his head slowly, his mouth a stern line.

  Lyria didn’t say anything apart from a short sniffle as she began to raise the crown to her head. Andre winced and reached out to snatch it back. He pushed away some of Lyria’s striped, brown curls and carefully set the crown on her head.

  “There. May the gods bless,” Andre said. He pulled a long breath. “I’ve sent for my best men, you’ll have them soon. They were working their way back to the entrance to clear the way out, when I had to make the decision to run here, and I sent a trusted knight to get them the word. But they should know, now, and some should be here any minute. They can accompany you as you flee—“

  “Flee?” Lyria exclaimed.

  “What else will you do? As the head of the guards, I can tell you, we can’t hold the castle for long. King Taramon has somehow gathered too many men. They have spellcasters, too, good ones. I’m sorry, we weren’t prepared. Who could have guessed he was plotting this all along? We were supposed to unite our forces against the fae…You should go to the summer castle. I’ll give you my best men.”

  Just then, we heard people banging at the door, demanding and violent. Andre rushed up and called out to them.

  They answered, yet Andre still drew his sword and positioned himself in an odd angle to the door before he opened it. I sighed, as three men filed in, and Andre locked the door again and everything seemed to be all right.

  These soldiers were as worn and bloodied as Andre, if not worse. Their clothes were torn and they had blood all over, smudged on their faces, horrible wide stripes of it, as if smeared on their skins by claws.

  “You’re right, Andre, we’ll leave for the summer castle,” Lyria said, speaking fast, frantic. “But just me and my chambermaid. We won’t be needing these men.”

  I expected Andre to lash at her or to be taken aback — though he couldn’t defy her now — but Andre gave a tense smile.

  I had watched Lyria play out these power games at the court before. I’d spent a lot of time in Lyria’s presence as her chambermaid, though we didn’t speak all that much, and I doubted she recalled me among her chambermaids as anyone special, because I was simply one of many. But I hadn’t expected Lyria to get like this and wasn’t sure what to think of her…I’d always found that challenging gleam in her eyes intriguing. And already, minutes into her reign, she calls out commands as if she had been born a leader, destined to reign. All this in the midst of grief, pain, chaos, with flaming arrows nibbling at the castle corners.

  And oh, yes, the flames were rising from a corner in the yard…

  Andre seemed perplexed, but all things considered, he too handled himself well. I’d gathered he had always admired Lyria’s f
eistiness, but that too was only an impression — I did. There was never a boring day when I was working for her.

  “All right, Your Highness. I’ll keep the army fighting and I’ll do my best that when you return, you’ll have a court to come back to. But if I may be so bold and defy you, I’ll have you take one bodyguard. Just one. Take your chambermaid, by all means, but take one of these men as well. I’ve sworn to protect you on my life, promised your father that, so I can’t let you run to your death like it’s some kind of a child’s game to survive out there. King Taramon’s men are trained soldiers and they’re making quick, clean kills down there, no negotiation. I know you’re stricken with panic and grief, I understand that, but make wise choices now…As queen.”

  Andre quickly turned to let his gaze go over his men and nodded to one of them. The man stepped forward, but turned to look to Lyria, uncertain.

  “What, this one?” Lyria asked. “He’ll be a burden, he’ll only slow us down. He’s too noticeable! Doesn’t he look immediately threatening, don’t you think? He’ll aggravate any soldiers we pass, who’ll only try to target him…He’s just the kind of person enemy soldiers will keep an eye for in the crowds, too good. But Milla and I, we can slip away through the crowds in disguise, smooth like the wind. Not him, with his head above the crowds and wide shoulders?”

  “Perhaps, but all the better for you, if you do get stopped by soldiers—”

  “We won’t. That’s precisely the point.” Lyria quickly glanced around and began to herd people out of the way. “We’re leaving.”

  It slowly registered in my reluctant mind that we’d go alone through the blockades down at the entrances, through the throngs in the yard, through whatever clashes and fights were already taking place down there…and ultimately, through the lands and past the Gorge, and then all the way to Galandea. Just how, exactly? Her and me?

  I was a decent swords-master, and even more importantly than that, I was a spellcaster. Agreed, she had reasons for picking me from this crowd. But we were two young women. Had anyone ever heard of two young women winning against an army of trained soldiers? I had not.

  My thoughts were interrupted, as Lyria’s gentle hand grabbed mine to pull me along, and she whispered, in a confiding voice as if we were spies going against the world, “Come.”

  “Wait,” Andre said. “Your death would be on my honor, I can’t let that happen.”

  Lyria stopped to give Andre a long, still stare. Then she carefully reached for the key in Andre’s hand, so it loosened from his fingers, and Andre didn’t stop her. Lyria drew a long breath and cupped the key in her fist.

  “It’s only men of this world, Andre, not monsters…They won’t kill us, they’ll just capture us. It’s King Taramon of Rogaelle, after all. These are just humans, Andre, not fae.”

  “Not fae,” Andre repeated.

  He was a professional soldier with over a decade of experience from battle fields, the head of the king’s guard — now the head of Lyria’s royal guard, as Lyria was queen. I could only guess at what went on in his mind as he tried to calculate whether to listen to Lyria’s command and let us walk into that yard.

  “Fine, fine,” Lyria said. “I’ll take one guard. Give me your best archer. Send him to catch up with us. But it seems like fighting wars makes you see all men as monsters, Andre, and most men are not…You should speak with the fae, sometimes, and my god, you’d know the difference.”

  Lyria could talk. She was the only living person with Fae Eyes. She’d spent all her summers since six years old in the dark caverns of the Fae Kingdom under the desert, where ordinary humans couldn’t even breathe.

  Lyria turned, throwing her cascading hair to the back, and made that decision for all of us as she walked through the door, and I followed.

  Chapter 2

  As we stood by the balcony that gave to the gorge defining the castle premises in the north and north-east I told myself over and over to calm down, as Lyria fumbled with the rope. She had pulled it out from under the bench, by the side of the wall, and she didn’t need to explain it to me; obviously we were going to lower ourselves to the gorge and flee from this side of the castle. It was rough terrain, no paths, nothing welcoming there. Only rocky lands, crags, thorny plants, and for what I knew, lizards, snakes, and spiders…It made sense we’d sneak out through here but surely Taramon expected we would. I couldn’t see anyone moving down there yet, though.

  Someone crashed through the balcony door, slamming it open against the wall, and I jumped back and drawing my short sword, heart suddenly in my throat. My next thought was, his tunic and pants are a red I know, and his armor familiar…and only then my slow mind put things together and I got that this man was one of ours. He wasn’t from the castle guard, which was why it had taken me a moment, but from the hired mercenaries of the army. They were tough career-soldiers, and most looked just like this man, wired, muscular, and with tired, worn, scarred faces.

  “Your Highness.” His voice was loud and harsh. “By the honor of Andre Lartencourt, I’ll accompany you. I’ll warn you, if you don’t agree to that, I’ll stop you.”

  Lyria listened with a frown, until the mercenary’s last words made her brighten up to a sharp, brief laugh.

  “I’m sorry? You’ll stop us how? My dear man, that’s so amusing…but listen. Are you the decent archer Andre was supposed to send? We’ll take you with, but only until a suitable distance, where we’re safe, and where Andre won’t be breathing in our necks, all right? You’ll see that we are fine, Andre is happy, and everyone wins.”

  “Quick thinking,” I put in, but immediately regretted it, wondering if it was okay to speak to her like that. She’d always been kind and even asked me personal questions sometimes, but I was still just one chambermaid among many.

  She turned to give me a smile that surprised me, reassuring and full of the same camaraderie as when she had grabbed my hand, leaving. So far, she had been dragging me along like a pet, I’d thought, hardly taking notice of what I did, simply assuming that I’d follow, but apparently that might have been only because of the hurry we were in. She had seemed absent-minded and inconsiderate, but she was the queen, and we might have minutes to get down this wall before the men of King Taramon came round the corner.

  “Right…I’ll follow you,” the man said hesitantly, as if he couldn’t think through all the possible ramifications and consequences quite so fast, but couldn’t defy the queen so blatantly, either. Against his hardened looks and steel eyes, the words made him suddenly seem less intimidating to me.

  I was glad, when Lyria stepped over the rope and kicked it away from her feet out of the way. Then her slim arms tightened and she jumped over the rail. She ended up hanging on the other side, feet secured against the stones of the wall, sitting back against the hold of the rope.

  “Can you do this?” she asked me, her voice strained patient. “If I rappel down, will you be able to follow me?”

  I nodded, finding myself too nervous to easily speak.

  “Then see you down there,” she concluded as she let herself start sliding lower, faster than I’d seen most soldiers do it.

  I’d only tried this twice, myself, but I knew how to do this, thank goodness. I waited for the rope to be ready again, as Lyria freed herself down below, then I grabbed it quick and attached myself to it the way I recalled it was done.

  The mercenary grunted disapprovingly from beside me. I glanced his way, and his frown kept me quiet as he leaned in to check the way I’d tied myself in, loosened the knots and fixed it up all over again. Then he placed the rope in my hand and pressed my hand to my side, showing me how to hold it — I knew — and gave me a casual, dismissive gesture, and I guessed I was free to go.

  I climbed over the edge and looked down to see Lyria standing down there, hands on her hips, her hair catching the sun and cascading in never-ending lengths around her shoulders.

  Chapter 3

  Lyria reached out to the soldier with a loaf of brea
d in her hand. The moon offered ample lighting for our camp, rather unshielded, unguarded, a mere ring of blankets on the plain.

  It had turned out the soldier had brought supplies worthy of a queen — as it should be, I supposed, if Andre had sent him. His cross-body bag had been brimming with of all sorts of items that came in handy: blankets, water flasks, food, even throwing knives. It was a good thing Andre had insisted on sending him along. How they’d packed up so fast, I had no idea, but I figured it had to be an army thing.

  The soldier had a big scar across the left side of his face, from the cheek bone to all the way below his jawline. I wondered if it would be tactless to ask how he’d got it, as well. We had mostly sat in silence. I noted Lyria occasionally glancing at the soldier questioningly, too.

  The blanket I’d got from the man’s supplies was thin, but with the state I was in, it felt the softest mattress and promised sweet sleep. It was quality wool, and with it — and with my cloak tugged tightly under me — it wasn’t bad at all. The only thing worrying me was the open starry night, but that, too, lost its edge due to my drowsiness. I closed my eyes, pulling the hood of my cape over my head to cover my face an inch more.

  “What’s your name, soldier?” Lyria asked, making me open my eyes again.

  The soldier was offering Lyria the bread back, half of it now gone. Her carefree, relaxed air confounded me, as I couldn’t understand how she’d talk to this intimidating ruffian as if he were a harmless, new-found friend, this career soldier, with a scarred face, roughened hands, poorly color, and dark circles around his eyes. I was sure Lyria would see wolves as cute little puppies…! The soldier looked positively challenging with that grin, like a prowling carnivore, as he returned Lyria’s stare.