Aaibhe Shee Queen

By Claudy Conn

I put together Aaibhe's story in response to mail I had received from my readers wanting to know more about the Queen in my Legend series. My editor kept me balanced and reminded me that it had to be stand alone so that everyone would enjoy and so I walked that fine line. Here is my Fae Queen's story and I do so hope you all enjoy.

Seventy thousand years is a long time to live without true love.

As queen of the Seelie Fae, Aaibhe led her people to a new world when their own had been destroyed by war. She accepted the responsibility of maintaining the magic-built walls that imprisoned the evil Dark Fae. She kept the Seelie Hallows safe. And though she enjoyed the companionship of an occasional Fae lover, she never took a royal Fae as her king or a non-royal as her consort.

Conall is a Druid high priest from the MacTalbots, one of the families chosen by Aaibhe centuries before to perform the rituals needed to strengthen the Unseelie prison walls. Though a skilled and loyal Druid priest, he is but a mortal human, not a fit match for a powerful, formidable, immortal ruler.

And yet... she wants him. In all her seventy thousand years, she has never been blasted with such desire—and need. She has never before laughed with total abandon, loved with all her essence.

In Conall’s arms, Aaibhe discovers she can be both a queen and a woman, but jealousy, pride, and bitterness threaten the love that is at last within her grasp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claudy Conn
• Release date: Dec 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466006027

Claudy Conn

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Claudy Conn is a multi published author who got her start with her bestselling historical/regency romances.She tells us that she fell in love with the fantasy/paranormal genre and created a world of paranormal.She hopes you will read and enjoy and join her on her facebook where she loves to interact with her readers.page.http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claudy-Conn-Paranormal-Romance-Author/135826686471445

Book preview

Even a queen must have her pleasures …

With a flick of a finger, she laid a blanket onto the damp grass, sat, and beckoned for him to join her.

He did, and as she looked into his blue eyes, she asked herself what she was doing.

She knew the answer. She absolutely knew what she was doing. She didn’t have cumbersome human scruples, but she did have a sense of what was owed to the office she possessed as queen. She told herself even a queen must have her pleasures…

Was it just that, a voice inside her head asked her, just a fleeting pleasure? Was it just a bit of romance, pretty words, and physical release? Pleasures where no one would get hurt? Or was it something else, that voice demanded of her, was this a link with destiny?

She knew a need to be in this human’s arms, and a sudden urge to get there made her feel weak with desire. She banished the wayward urge as she reminded herself she was a queen, but when he took her hand to his lips, she was nearly overcome with the rush of heat that sped through her veins.

Aaibhe—Shee Queen

By Claudy Conn

http://claudyconn.embarqspace.com/

Copyright © 2011 by Claudy Conn

Edited by: Karen Babcock

Cover Artist: Kendra Egert

All rights reserved

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

Names, characters, and events depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

Dedication

To love stories that take on a life of their own, and their need to be told.

~ Prelude ~

YOU MAY ALREADY know who I am, but if not, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Aaibhe, and although I am a Daoine Fae, which is the highest caste of Seelie Fae, I was appointed Queen of the Tuatha Dé when their good Queen Bridget was mortally wounded in the war with her consort and king and our world Danu was reduced to rubble.

Danu had fallen into chaos, and the different factions used all their varied might to bring one another down. They succeeded, but they also succeeded in destroying our beloved world. I watched in those final hours as it crumbled beneath our feet…

The king, whom we now call the Dark King, was not strictly evil, and therefore when he realized what his politics had wrought he sank into himself with remorse. He was sick with the full knowledge of what he had done, and he banished himself to a lifeless world of mist and darkness, created by his own hand years ago, which we now know as the Dark Realm.

His life in the Dark Realm was supremely lonely. He created a paradise for himself, but he was overcome with a feeling of ‘emptiness’. Thus, he began creating life without benefit of the Wheel of Being—and without the benefit of the Wheel of Being, those creations were abominations.

Our Queen Bridget was able, before she died of her wound, to imprison these abominations within the Dark Realm—Dark because his creations ate everything into bleakness.

She weaved a wall whose threads are made of magic knots—Seelie Magic that Unseelie Fae cannot penetrate.

However, although she tried to whisper the secret of that magic, Queen Bridget died before she was able to impart to me the exact wording and design of the magic threads that held the prison of the Dark Realm in place.

I still, after all these centuries, struggle with my Druids to forever keep that prison wall intact.

We, the Daoine, and the Tuatha Dé, with that gruesome Dark Realm attached to our atmosphere, had no choice but to look for a world that compared in essence to our own. We discovered Earth, and in particular Ireland and Scotland, and to the inhabitants appeared Godlike—indeed, I suppose we were.

You could say that as a whole we fell in love with the land.

Word of mouth whispered and spread, telling the tale of how we arrived on a cloud and in a mist, and that as we emerged we were seen as a tall, golden-haired, beautiful race. Later, it became the written word as your poets told of our exploits and our beauty. Some who got a glimpse of me in the early days told of my white-gold hair and iridescent eyes … and there was a great deal of truth to much of what was said about the magical Fae.

My race—the Fae of Danu—are certainly fair of looks (in varying degrees). Most of us are tall, and all of us are magical and very skilled in the sciences, arts, and music. We adore music. Those of us who are royals have immeasurable powers, and as