The Perilous Choice

By Chelsea Gaither

Leythorne has survived war and the loss of his entire world. Absent from his king’s service, he’s freed the Gray Isles and begun the long process of rebuilding both its city and its people. Finally, the Isles have a chance to prosper.

But his heart is forever longing to be home.

Now, an artifact from a pirate ship bears the seal of Ambercross. The pirates could know the way back to Leythorne’s family and King...or they could bait in a dark trap. The body Leythorne lives in is not his own. It belongs to the Dark Prince of Ambercross, a dark wizard of great power. The power is Leythorne’s now, but so are the enemies. Countless forces would tear apart the world to see that body dead—or else make it theirs.
Leythorne will go to meet them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chelsea Gaither
• Release date: Jan 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311238566

Chelsea Gaither

Chelsea Gaither grew up in her parents' foster home for teenaged boys. She got over it. These days she lives in South Texas. She reads, writes, spins (yarn, not bikes) and knits really obscure lacy things. She also really hates this part of the book info.

Book preview

The Perilous Choice

(Tales of the Gray Prince part 3)

By Chelsea Gaither

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2014 Chelsea Gaither

Please respect my hard work. Don’t steal my books. If you didn’t get this copy from Smashwords.com or one of its affiliate retailers, please go back and get it legit.

Thanks. You rock.

Discover other books by Chelsea!

Exiles

Silver Bullet (book one)

Blue Ghosts(book two)

Gray Fox (book three)

Black Hounds (book four)

Silver Bullet, Black Hounds (omnibus)

Tales of the Gray Prince

This Found Thing (book one)

Our Daily Bread (book two)

The Perilous Choice (book three)

Starbleached:

Starbleached (book one)

 Planet Bob (book two)

Overseer’s Own (book three)

Valkyrie (book four)

Starbleached (omnibus)

Dragonbreath:

Part One: Pawns

Part Two: Knights

Part Three: Queens

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Chapter One

The dream broke with a jagged edge and threw Leythorne back to wakefulness. His heart raced in his chest, its unfamiliar rhythm banging like a drum in the garden’s silence. One month of labor could not accustom him to wearing another man’s bones. Mercifully, he had not kept Jennal Faer’s memories…but it did appear he had taken the other man's dreams.

Alys stirred beside him, her sleep untroubled. The garden whispered around them. When Leythorne had planted the tree, he had simply wished to cleanse the Keep of fouled magic; in the process, he had created a thing almost alive. He leaned against the central tree trunk, already the size of a strong man's waist, and watched a garden path slowly curve itself straight. A pattern in the ceiling overhead shifted with it. His Sidhe-eyes traced lines of power as they tightened and grew with each new curve. Benign, for now.

For now. He swallowed, throat tense. Magic was too easily tainted by action, by will, deed and intent. It'd be too easy to change all this stillness into something dark and vile. The Gray Isles had too few mages to safeguard it...and he knew too little about magic to count himself as one of them. Bennatus was one. Mailen Graymane had been the other. Now they had lost her, and her son Logen was very young to assume Mailen’s role.

Just another endless worry. He had enough of them. Did the worry bring the dreams? Or was that just a coward’s escape? Did Faer’s history burble up through the cracks like pitch? The dim glow before dawn filtered through the glass ceiling, golden light. He shifted, easing Alys into the soft loam. She stirred in her sleep, a small lion curled in dappled shade.

The comfort he’d found with her was real, but small. Echoes of that forgotten nightmare passed through him, and that comfort faded as if it never existed.

He touched the ring about his neck, a simple golden band held on a chain. His marriage-band. It had fit his human hands; it would never fit the pair he had now. Faer’s hands. Faer’s blasted body and tainted magic. He could taste the power all around him. It flowed through the garden, through the walls, the shifting paths and the gleaming celling, and most of all it flowed through the tree. It purified there, a dancing silver flow that pulsed back through the garden and then to the Keep, clean and bright and pure. That clarity showed him that his own magic was rotted out. Jennal Faer had poisoned this body before he’d left it.

In the dream, he had been Faer.

He drew away from Alys, drawing knees up to chest, closing his eyes. He could not shut out the images. He had been Faer, standing at the edge of a great ocean. The blood-guilt of a father, a wife, a son, all lay against his soul like a brand. Without a magician's vocabulary, Leythorne had no way to explain past that. The magic within his body had been nearly non-existent. That had been the dream's true terror. Not that he was Faer, or the blood-guilt’s weight. It was the absence of magic. The Sidhe, like all great Faerie, were less creatures of matter with magic, but more creatures of magic in possession of matter. To be powerless was to be without a soul. Faer had not known what to do.

So you knew terror once. You knew mortal fear. The taste of the grave. He clenched his fists, lacerating his palms with the talon-like nails of the Sidhe. Good.

It had been Faer's own doing. His power was undermined by blood and broken oaths, by obscenity writ red in the hollows of silken sheets. The magic that could heal, that made crops flourish, that brought the good and right hero when all else seemed lost, this could only prosper in the face of good work done well. Dark magic required the opposite. Murder and illness, blood-sacrifice at the end of a terror-stricken death. It took time to build that kind of power, to empty yourself of light. That sort of blackness called out for healing. Most dark mages in Ambercross were discovered long before their power waxed full.

Faer’s evil should have been the work of centuries. If he were still emptied when he murdered his father and family…Leythorne had been barely a grown man then. Faer’s power shouldn’t have returned so full in so little time.

He had help, Leythorne thought, and the answer was in the dream. There had been salt water on his lips, and he had called to the waves and sky. Long words. Old words. Dark words that no lips so nearly human should ever say. The ocean had darkened further, and mist danced upon the waves.

Mistlord. Leythorne shivered, let his pale hands drop to the garden soil. I wonder how long Faer lived. Well, one thing was sure: as a mortal, Faer would have perished long before he could regain power. The Dark Prince was too proud to become a wizard, to contract with other powers for aid when he could not taste that power himself. No mortal could use strong magic without killing themselves in the process. Leythorne had been among the lucky few who could use power at all, and he’d come near to killing his mortal body escaping Faer at Ravensfel. And if Faer had tried to regain power, Leythorne doubted that the crafty, murderous Faerie Prince could have hidden his inner venom very long.

And whatever happened, it was far too late to do anything about it now.

The first rays of dawn reached him. Footsteps echoed in the halls beyond and he felt, perhaps, his time of peace was at an end. He shook Alys awake. She sat up, bits of the Tree caught in her hair. He picked leaves out of her golden curls. Not the nicest place for us, I think.

Her smile was muted, but he hoped it was genuine. It is better than our other options. I am glad to serve my Lord…but I would rather not have it be in the old places.

Alys and many of the other women in his service had been the Duskin Lord’s harem. Leythorne would not have traded them for twice their number in men. They all deserved to be happy. He would have spent his own blood then and there, if he could erase the sudden shadow in Alys’s eyes.

But then, it is Faer’s blood. You would spill it all to save a field mouse. Sacrifice has little value when you price survival so low.

Is it only service? he asked.

Would you want more? The shadow grew.

No. Point of fact, I would rather have less, if you see sleeping with me as your duty. You serve me with your labor. I have no right to demand even that. Do as you wish, Alys, and I’ll find pleasure enough in that. He paused.

She nodded. I have never gone to men for comfort. I did not believe they could offer it. Perhaps pleasure, but... she trailed off. I came to you last night because I needed comfort, and I found it. Now, I do not know what to do.

You need do nothing.

And if sharing a bed with you makes me miserable, you would find another favorite? She dropped her gaze to the ground. Forgive me. That isn’t fair. But…that is how it works, after all. I have never done this before. How do you manage it? How do you manage being in love, and being free, without going mad?

Leythorne struggled to find something to say to her. Nothing came. Finally, hopelessly, he began to laugh.

What is it? she asked, sharp-edged.

A wise person once said that you cannot have an equal relationship between unequal partners. I used to call that nonsense. But I suppose it is right after all. He paused. The footsteps stopped just outside the garden, and the doors leading to the rest of the Keep opened. And now we are wanted. Yes, gentlemen? He said it as if he were clean and well-garbed, and not still in last night’s leathers, covered in bits of leaves and healthy dirt.

A brief smile crossed Pardal’s lips. Bennatus stayed serious as he stepped forward.