2024 COVERS

2024 covers

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We are writers mainly from Australia and New Zealand who write speculative fiction with romantic elements. Be it fantasy, paranormal, dark urban fantasy, futuristic and everything in between.

Wednesday 7 May 2014

A Bite Of...The Changeling Soldier

This fortnight it is my pleasure to welcome my good friend Shona Husk with A Bite Of... The Changeling Soldier



Her time in the mortal world is running out…

After fleeing Annwyn three centuries ago, Ella built a life in the mortal world making gowns for European royalty and playing in mortal intrigues. Now those Courts are long gone, and she dresses Hollywood starlets. Mortals come and go, but Ella always ends up alone. She longs for the home she left behind.

He’s been dreaming of the coming battle all his life…

Isaac Norton is a returned soldier. Now home, he’s restless and his recurring dream is becoming more frequent: he’s fighting on a snow-covered field stained with blue blood. When he sees Ella, he knows she isn’t human. And she knows what he is, a changeling. Ella can give Isaac the answers he needs, but there will be a price to pay: his soul.

Can you, in less than five words describe your book The Changeling Soldier?
Psychic falls for a fairy

Who is your favourite character in this book?

I really like Ella. She’s spent a lot of time in our world so she isn’t as conniving as many fairies…I guess you could say she’s developed a conscience :). It was fun to have a more human fairy while the human villain is the one scheming and making power plays.

What inspired you to write it?

Without giving away spoilers for the third book in the Annwyn series (To Love a King, October 2014) I wanted to write something about how the fairies living in our world were affected by the changes in Annwyn. But I also wanted to look at changelings again. While the hero of book 1 The Outcast Prince is a changeling he belongs in the mortal world. Isaac, the hero of The Changeling Soldier, doesn’t belong and he knows it. He’s been looking for something all his life and seeing glimpses but only Ella can open the door to the otherworld for him.

And here is the excerpt...


He’d known before he’d gone to sleep that he would dream of Annwyn. It was only logical after seeing a fairy and having her offer to keep his soul safe. Not that her offer made any sense at all.

The battle was over. The snow had stopped falling. The sword in his hand was heavy and familiar. He sheathed it and turned. There were bodies all around him. Did the battle happen before or after he lost his soul?

After. If he was in Annwyn, Ella had already taken it.

He drew in a breath that cut at his lungs. His heart still beat in his chest and the wound on his arm dripped red into the snow. That was new. He watched the drips land. Crimson stars on white. The brilliant red was at odds with the blue of the other blood on the snow.

His clothes were wet and cold, the chill soaking into his bones as though it would never leave, and his shoulders ached. He was tired. If he was dead would he still hurt? He had to be alive to be feeling this, just soulless. He frowned.

A woman ran toward him. This time he knew it was Ella from the curve of her lips. The hood of her cloak fell back as she threw her arms around him. He held her close and lowered his lips to hers.

Before their lips could touch, his body jolted and he woke up.

For a moment it was like he was still there. The adrenaline from fighting for his life was pumping in his blood and the ache was in his muscles. Yet heat from Ella’s touch had roused his dick. His body didn’t know what it was doing, but he should definitely not be aroused by a fairy who wanted his soul. That was fucked up.

He got up, turned off the damn air conditioning and washed his face. Part of him wished this was some kind of weird PTSD. He rested his hands on the vanity. He was losing it. Reality was sliding through his fingers. He blinked and saw the battle as crisp and clear as his memories of Afghanistan. Both felt real to him. Only one haunted his sleep, three nights in a row now. That had never happened before.

Isaac opened his eyes and stared at himself. He didn’t look like the dead fairies. Even the men had been beautiful, model beautiful, yet obviously male. He was comfortable enough with his sexuality to admit that. It was their pale, unseeing eyes he wouldn’t forget easily. Eyes in colors no human could have, as well as green and blue.

Pale blue eyes exactly like his.

No one else in his family had eyes like his. They all had brown. Had he got them from his father? He shook his head. Plenty of people had pale eyes.

His father didn’t even have a real name. His mother had apparently hooked up with a travelling musician for a while, but he’d lied about his name. Or his mother had, as Robin Goodfellow didn’t exist—he’d searched for him. He had his mother’s surname, the only one of her five children to have a different name. Yet another reason his mother’s boyfriend hated him. His mother had never stood up to the man either.

Perhaps Robin Goodfellow didn’t exist here, but he existed in Annwyn.

He couldn’t be seriously thinking what he was thinking. It made no sense. Or did it?

If his father was fairy it explained a lot, like how he could see fairies when none of his siblings could and why his eyes were so freakishly pale. It also raised more questions.

He looked at his hands. He’d never swung a sword in his life and yet in that dream he was alive and exhausted from fighting. From the cupboard under the sink he pulled out a razor. Fairies bled blue. He’d always bled red. He looked at the razor for a moment then ran it across the tip of his finger—he needed to check. Red immediately welled in the cut. He breathed a sigh of relief.

He was human, no doubt about it.

Was he really, when iron burned him like it burned a fairy and he saw the future?

When he could see through a fairy illusion and recognize Ella for what she was?

Ella was the woman in his dream; the one to take his soul and the one to throw her arms around him after the battle. He washed the blood away from the cut and pressed toilet paper to the wound to stop the bleeding. Whatever the dream meant, it was drawing closer and Ella was part of it. And his body’s reaction to her was anything but fear.

He closed his eyes as the memory of her lips almost touching his surged through him, washing away the lingering cold with heat. He wanted to know what she tasted like. Typical, he dreamed of the battle and then woke up before the good part started.

He checked the cut and pressed the paper back down. He’d cut too deep, but he didn’t care. He was looking forward to seeing Ella again. Hopefully Mel would forget about fairies over the next week. But he doubted it. There was a tension in the air like a thunderstorm was building. As his blood seeped through the paper he hoped he was ready for what was coming.



If you would like to read more of Shona's books...
or 
Find out what she's up to next... check out the links below. 




2 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed this story, Shona. Can't wait until the next installment.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Terrific story, Shona. I want to read the rest.

    ReplyDelete

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