The Mortal Prince and the Moon Etherium: The Fey-Touched, #2

By L. Rowyn

It would take a miracle for Eclipse to accept the role his parents believe he was born to take: that of a princess.

But the fey lands are strange and perilous, and the fey have their own ideas about what kind of miracle Eclipse needs.

Content notes

This 15,000 word novelette is a standalone story with no cliffhangers, but it will be more interesting to those who have read The Princess, Her Dragon, and Their Prince.

Story contains misgendering of a trans man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Delight in Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393053811

Book preview

The Mortal Prince and the Moon Etherium

Copyright © 2020 by L. Rowyn and Delight in Books. All rights reserved.

Visit the author online at www.ladyrowyn.com

Cover art by L. Rowyn. Reference photo courtesy of Musthaq Nazeer at Pixabay

Delight logo courtesy of Tod Willis.

Subscribe to L. Rowyn's mailing list at http://eepurl.com/cedZTb

First release 2020 (v1.00)

To Skylark Rogers: many thanks for the advice, and also for the squees.

A Mortal Prince

Just outside of fey territory, Prince Eclipse saw a monster for the first time.

The creature’s lower body was scaled and serpentine, while the upper body was that of a woman, save that her head and neck had a cobra’s hood and the long, pointed ears of a fey. The monster caught him staring, as he froze while stepping from the royal coach. Her mouth yawned open at him, revealing a viper’s fangs and a narrow forked tongue that flickered. When he looked away quickly, she laughed. He glanced back and gave her a hesitant smile and a polite half-bow, because it was dangerous to be rude to anything from the fey lands.

The guards with him were even more intimidated. The group had just arrived in Dufidavit, a human border town. Everyone had been briefed on what to expect, but the reality of it remained unsettling. Their retainers formed into an escort surrounding himself and his mother, their postures bristling with defensiveness. Queen Inspire commanded them all into the hotel where she’d ordered lodgings.

The architecture of Dufidavit was strange and beautiful, using materials and construction techniques Eclipse had never seen before. Buildings of white wood swirled with black grain that had no joints or seams, as if they’d grown in place. Windows were of a glass so clear they looked open, until Eclipse saw a small rock – kicked up from the road by a cantering horse – rebound off one. The window showed no sign of the impact.

In addition to bedrooms at the hotel, Queen Inspire had hired a private parlor, and she and Eclipse dined alone it. His mother was distracted during the meal, pushing her food about her plate and staring at the unlit hearth. At length, she said, I think we had best leave the guards here. I fear their training will be more of a liability than an aid among the fey themselves.

Eclipse nodded, slowly. The fey shall not care about our rank, and the guards…will not appreciate that. They spoke in the fey tongue, as they’d done almost exclusively during the journey.

Exactly. They can protect us from any human interlopers, but against monsters or fey, they will be as powerless as we are. Indeed, they are a hazard: people who might make a diplomatic error disastrous for all of us.

We should leave the servants, too, then, Eclipse said.

Queen Inspire grimaced. Perhaps so. I’ll make a last attempt to hire a local, but otherwise we will have to manage the horses on our own. In the months before they’d embarked on this journey, his mother had sought to hire someone with personal experience of the fey to travel with them. No one, not even the person who had tutored them in the fey tongue, had been willing to do so, not at any price. 

Of all the warning signs regarding this trip, Eclipse thought that was the most alarming.

***

Eclipse and his mother did not find a local to hire now, either. At the advice of the locals, they traded some of their horses for donkeys, because horses were too easily spooked by the strangeness of fey creatures and their territory. Two of the donkeys would serve as mounts, while three others were loaded with the goods they’d brought to trade with the fey. They left the rest of their luggage and horses behind with their retinue. They didn’t bring a coach, because the roads in fey territory were notoriously unreliable.

They did find a group to go with: two women and two men. One of the women, Hinakinami, had her own donkey train, and had been to the fey lands before. The other three were first-timers, like Eclipse and his mother, making the journey in the hopes of finding wealth or a miracle.

Before they set out, Hinakinami gave a short speech. "You’ve all heard of the fey. You’ve all learned something of their language. You all think you are prepared for this. You aren’t. The fey are not myths, and they are not gods. They are both more human and more alien than you can imagine. We’re going to a fey village called Try Again. We are not going to meet their leader, because they don’t have a leader. If we’re lucky, we’ll meet Lady Ardent Sojourner and negotiate with her. A few reminders: if the fey do something