A Silver Court, a Royal Love

By Elle Driver

It is social season in fae society and the usually rivaling kingdoms, the Seelie and the Unseelie, are brought together for their yearly festivities.

Lady Aanya of House Bloodborn, a royal member of the Unseelie, wants nothing more than to heal the rift of the two courts. Now that she has come of age, the beautiful fae lady, gifted with shadow magic and moonlight skin, must choose a suitable match — a strategic marriage to a Seelie lord or duke could be just the thing to gain political favor. But Aanya, ever the adventurer, senses imminent danger and has other plans….

Will she sacrifice true love for the future of her people? Or dash off on a quest for mythical items promising peace. Can she really face these looming dark forces on her own?

This exciting story weaves magic with the modern world. A fae realm existing alongside ours, utilizing both shadow magic and cellphones; where teleportation and train rides are both everyday forms of travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Oct 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094427775

Elle Driver

Elle Driver is a mild-mannered civil servant who adores her husband and kid, and loves writing different romance tales to share with others when she can.

Book preview

Chapter One: A Researching Royal

It was a beautiful day in Makhamali, the capital of the Unseelie lands.

Soft beams of light flittered through thick, cumulus clouds. The sky was a purple hue, radiating its most vibrant violet color toward the heart of the city, where the illusion originated. Purple meant the mood at the High Court of the Unseelie was nothing short of delightful. Razor-edged bronze spires pierced the sky, contrasting the cotton-candy clouds; the gnarled steeples were dotted with amber windows that looked to always be aglow with warm light, even at midday; all of it a testament to traditional, dark fae architecture.

Beneath the sky-stabbing steeples, a more modern approach had grown: biomimetic architecture unfurling around magical forests. Literally. A magical forest stood smack dab in the middle of the capital, and they had built—around, through, above and beneath it—organically winding corridors and twisted courtyards, sprawling like ground-covering vines. And the air was filled with hundreds of Viceroys, their orange and black wings like stained glass: a sign that the Queen was in town. Whenever Amelia of Bone was in town, so were the butterflies, filling the air with living confetti. If the high courts had anything, they had flair.

Not that Aanya was able to enjoy the mild weather and sky alight with butterflies. She could see a few through the library windows, however. And a few of the sun’s rays had penetrated the amber windows. The beams only seemed to highlight the fact that Aanya should be elsewhere, but as stuffy as the Royal Library felt, it was invaluable.

The Royal Library was immense; it had four separate wings, all with dozens of overfilled stacks, shelves to the ceiling, and specific chambers of specialized books and media. It had taken Aanya thirty odd years to get the Royal Library and Knowledge Association to add the media part into the library. The association wasn’t exactly hip to recent history.

But when your world ran on magic and nightmares, including disc technology didn’t seem that important.

Case in point: what Aanya was researching that day was found in huge, old ledgers, some of which she wasn’t even allowed to touch. And she was only two stations away from being queen herself!

Okay, but Adi, Aanya said, leaning onto the black marble counter, hands splayed flat. You won’t even let me touch the book. There’s nowhere else for me to get that information. So if you want me to get out of your face, you’re going to have to help me out. Who was the last person who requested access to the maps regarding talismans of the late 1400s? Specifically near Chile. She figured she could specifically tell him the sceptre she was looking for, but she didn’t want to let anyone know too much about her search or her plans…which she was still developing.

The elven scholar pushed his glasses up. His skin was the color of aged pages, yellowed and tanned with time—and dirt. Sometimes Aanya was sure she saw lettering, sigils and symbols, in his skin.

I’m busy, Miss Bloodborn.

Aanya closed her eyes and counted down from ten, then opened them again and smiled. Are you missing something here in the Royal Library that I can help you get? A specific tome, or ink, or… She noticed he was using a golden quill. He was kind of like a mummy: ancient, relegated to the past, and quite luxurious. Or quill? Quills? Maybe something with gold, or dragon’s bone, or phoenix hair?

He stopped writing and looked up for longer than a blink this time. We… always appreciate any support we get from the royal family.

The royal family loves philanthropy! And you know I love this library, and appreciate it, and you, so much. You’re practically a living library, Adi.

His lip twitched like he’d smile and she could swear the tips of his ears grew darker. What were you looking for again, Miss Bloodborn?

Who was the last person to ask for access to the Chilean maps regarding the Andes Mountains? Should be between 1940 and 1990.

Adi’s eyes rolled into the back of his head for a moment and Aanya definitely saw lettering fly across his wrist. Lord Cadmus of Bone. 1987.

1987. Right under my nose!

Adi’s eyes returned. Lord Cadmus has been missing for a couple of decades.

Aanya dropped her chin into her hand. Yes, he has. He sure has.

Miss Bloodborn, not to put my nose where it doesn’t belong, but didn’t you say you have to meet your mother somewhere today?

Yes, at noon, she said absently, picking at lint on her blazer sleeve. Lots of royals went missing for years. They called it the regal going to ground. But it was peculiar that he was the last one to have requested access—and hadn’t been seen since.

It’s fifteen past, Adi said, adjusting his glasses.

Past what?

Noon, Miss Bloodborn, he said, his lip twitching again. Aanya could swear she heard warmth in his voice.

Master Adi, how could you let time pass without me noticing?

My apologies, Miss Bloodborn.

Would you happen to know where the closest portal is?

His eyes disappeared for a millisecond. Take the west wing exit. Make a left once you’re outside. Run up the block. On the corner before Subterranean Entrance 37F.

Aanya started to back away and bowed, quickly. Honestly, you’re indispensable, Adi. Send an itemized list to my assistant Alexei and we will see what we can do.

Alexei was really a lot more than just her assistant. Especially since they’d had a hot and heavy make-out session, but he wasn’t so easily labeled. He was an integral part of her life, and there was no just firing him if things got too hairy. Because it wasn’t only about what he meant to her or what they meant to each other. As a working member of the royal class, Alexei had been sworn into her family; that meant he’d been bespelled—linked to her for as long as they both lived. He was connected to her in a way that was unlike any other. Many court members had linked humans in their families. It made navigating the human world easier; they were bound to be helpful, to accommodate. She could even call for him without any device or spell. If she was in danger, he would hear her and could identify exactly where she was. It wasn’t a bond many agreed to in modern history, but after her father’s assassination the Bloodborn household did not lack in safety measures or security.

In most cases, the humans who worked for a family were akin to a witch’s familiar. But for Aanya and Alexei, a much more intimate relationship had grown between them.

It was an issue she couldn’t help pondering every time she thought of him; it was also an issue she couldn’t quite put to bed. Not that she was trying to get Alexei in bed! She had to focus.

Adi nodded his head at her and she took off. The musty smell of old books and even older magic wafted past her as she ran. She had to bound up a flight of stairs to reach the west wing exit. She could hear someone in the aisle before she got to them, so she slid around a book stack to the next dim alley.

She burst out of the huge, bronze door and onto the sidewalk, relieved there was no one to knock over. She ran as fast as she could to the end of the block, careful not to trip on the cobblestone.And being fae—Unseelie, as were both of her parents—fast she was. She could move faster than anything else on the planet, besides other fae—and cheetahs. Cheetahs could still run about ten to fifteen miles per hour faster.

The portal was a doorway, really just a doorframe, bronze patina, with an ornate braiding of metal flora. Inside the frame there was a greenish-golden static. She could make out faint shapes in the static; the shapes weren’t on the other side of the doorframe physically, but where the portal would spit her back out. She stepped through it and the magic breathed across her skin, a tiny vacuum suck happening. When she cleared the portal, she was several blocks north and only a few doors down from the goblin boutique where she was meeting her mother. One wouldn’t think goblins to be the top of high-fashion, but one would be wrong.

The Duchess of Bloodborn, or the Blood Duchess, or even the Bloodborn Duchess depending on which circle you traveled in, was waiting in the foyer, arms crossed.

You never take anything seriously, her mother said as a greeting.

That is not true, she said. Just because I’m not timely doesn’t mean I’m not taking it seriously. I know how important it is to look the part.

Then why are you seventeen minutes late?

I lost track of time. No one at the ball will know I was fifteen minutes late to a fitting.

Seventeen minutes late. And your seamstress will know. And please don’t forget that you aren’t just looking or playing a part, Aanya. You are the Lady Aanya of Bloodborn, daughter of the Duchess of Blood. You very easily could end up Queen of the Unseelie. Act like it.

Aanya had to curb a few immature responses that were clawing to escape her in the form of rolling eyes or sucking her teeth. That wouldn’t improve her standing at all. So instead, she simply nodded and said, Yes, Mother. Of course.

Her mother, standing all 6’3" of her height (two inches shorter than Aanya herself), narrowed her eyes at her daughter. The two were very similar, height difference considered: they were both golden in hue, their skin carrying a red undertone, they both had jet-black hair, though Aanya wore hers cut in a dramatic bob, while the Duchess wore hers long, to her hips or in elaborate styles, and they both had breathtaking silver eyes, which never went unnoticed.

Their eyes were extraordinary: medallions, moons, bright animalistic reflections in the dark. When they were in human company, in human spaces, they needed illusions or contacts. They already smacked of otherworldliness considering their skin and height—the fae were all too tall, too long, whimsical and strange colors. The Blood Duchess and her only child had medallion eyes and moonlight for skin. In darkness, there almost seemed a glow to them, but in the sun, they were like ash, like the paleness of the moon up too late during the day. Aanya was darker than her mother: a younger ember, just burned, simmering, where her mother had been through the fire, bright grey and white and silvery.

The fae were very strange looking by human standards. And very beautiful by fae standards. It never mattered what room they walked into—they stood out. But there was also a pressure change when they entered a room, a presence. Not just the Duchess and her daughter, but all fae. It was hard to quantify.

But one could feel when the fae were afoot.

It was smart to play down how different humans and the fae were in reality, at least as far as the fae were concerned: humans historically, categorically, had a hard time with things that were different, however similar. Humans didn’t know how to leave well enough alone.

So for the most part, the fae tended to leave out all of the differences that really mattered. And they didn’t just look different. They were intrinsically different: The fae were faster, stronger, aged slower, and some, many, had powers, depending on their families.

The Bloodborn family was rife with shadowmancy, which was exactly what it sounded like: the art and study of control over the shadows.

Something like that, which was not unusual but lauded among the fae, was dangerous knowledge in human hands. The fae tried their best to remain entirely off the radar. Simply celeb-utants (celebrity-debutants) who spent all of their time traveling.

Honestly, their cover wasn’t far off from reality. But it hid a reality that was so much bigger and more complex than human culture could accept.