The Faded Sky

By Celia McKinley

THE FADED SKY: THE FALLEN SKY #4

A five-part Dreadful Desires erotic fantasy series revolving around a post-apocalyptic war between humans and angels as royal Nephilim twins Zoe and Mahla contend with the vengeful Seraphim and seductive Watchers.

The Fallen Sky series of post-apocalyptic fantasy erotica builds to its conclusion in this parallel story to "Heavenly Days." While Almaladh continues its search for the missing Queen Mahla, Hiro's timid assistant Greta wrestles with a secret of her own and faces a dark temptation that will both reveal the truth about Heaven's centuries-long war against Earth and mark the beginning of its end...

Includes a sneak preview of "Heavenly Days" and "Babylon is Falling."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia McKinley
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005405045

Celia McKinley

Celia McKinley is an evocative writer of erotica and romantic fiction centered around themes of forceful seductions, sexual awakenings, and dark supernatural desire. Explicit but never crude, taboo but never degrading, her stories of sensual abandon and surrender strive to celebrate the irresistible allure of the forbidden and the beauty of sexual fantasy.

Book preview

The Faded Sky

Dreadful Desires #14

Copyright 2022 Celia McKinley

Published by Celia McKinley at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All depicted characters are 18 years or older. This book contains explicit, taboo sex scenes that some readers may find offensive.

Table of Contents

Part I: A Night Like This

Chapter 1: The Last City

Chapter 2: Invisible Girl

Chapter 3: One Night Out

Chapter 4: Fragile Creatures

Part II: Dust and Shadow

Chapter 1: Sons of Heaven

Chapter 2: Everybody’s Secret

Chapter 3: Childish Things

Part III: A Day Like Today

Chapter 1: Shame the Devil

Chapter 2: Big Empty

Chapter 3: Light the Sky

Chapter 4: Perfect Hatred

Chapter 5: Moon Child

Sneak Preview: Babylon Is Falling

Teaser Chapter

About Celia McKinley

Other Books by Celia McKinley

Connect with Celia McKinley

Part I: A Night Like This

Chapter 1: The Last City

With an area of fifty square miles and almost fifty million inhabitants, the kingdom of Almaladh was undoubtedly the world’s most populous city. It was also the world’s only city.

Gray tower blocks filled the walled metropolis that spanned the basin below Mount Hermon, clustered together so tight that, from the vantage point of the four great watchtowers marking the ordinal points of Almaladh, their flat roofs formed an unbroken plateau of canopied foliage stretching almost all the way to the central palace. Each ten-story building spanned four acres and formed its own enclosed community: schools, shops, hospitals, police and fire brigades, and, most importantly, countless miles of aeroponic crop fields that transformed the rooftops into enclosed sweet-potato and soy jungles beneath a polycarbonate-tinted sky.

Other crops – fruit trees, green vegetables, cotton – grew in the irrigated farmlands beyond the walls of Januub, the southernmost district, along with the grazing fields. Meat was a wasteful extravagance the citizens of Almaladh couldn’t afford, but wool and leather could last a lifetime. Despite the crowds, few who volunteered to tend the open fields stayed for long: being outside the wall meant being exposed and vulnerable, and, after two hundred years, the throngs and ceaseless hubbub had become part of the daily routine, a constant reassurance that life endured. After a while, the silence of the world beyond began to resemble the silence of the grave.

The city’s understory, its shadowy skein of shaded terrace parks, winding sky bridges and dark crumbling alleyways, sank lower and lower through the tenement foundations and into the subterrane with nothing to mark the gradual transition save for a few warning signs and locked portcullis gates. If Almaladh’s rooftops resembled a garden and its alleys the forest floor, then the tunnels formed its roots, a jumbled network of aqueducts, desalination plants and fusion reactors all fed by the waters of the western sea and hidden deep beneath the desert bedrock.

At the center of Almaladh rose the royal palace, surrounded by the empty marble plaza that formed the roof of the municipal tower block. The plaza offered an unobstructed view of the city in every direction, from the historic Shamal district north of the palace to the sprawling edifices of Sharq and Gharb districts, each dawn and dusk streaming crimson light between their towers, to the southern Januub district and the farmlands beyond. A naive observer might have assumed that the palace occupied such a privileged position within the city to honor its rulers, but in truth, the city had grown around the palace, and the reason for its vantage point was precisely the same as the reason that Almaladh’s ever-swelling population remained within its walls. Line of sight mattered when fighting the exos: the royal family couldn’t defend what it couldn’t see.

The logistics of the square-cube law and rectangular dormitories that housed thousands of people apiece, almost all of them surrounded on every side by identical structures, meant that none of their living quarters had windows. The light that blazed across Greta’s bedroom came from a yellow LED panel set into an ornate frame, and it heralded the sunrise only insofar as it operated on a daily timer. All the same, she rolled over with a groan and buried her head beneath the pillow. The alarm clock on the bedstand began to beep, a high-pitched chirrup that grew louder and louder each time it repeated: she sighed and threw the pillow away.

Fine, Greta muttered, and she slapped the alarm button with her palm. Fine!

The girl in the bathroom mirror stared back at her through the glass, all wide blue eyes and pale chipmunk cheeks covered in brown freckles. A short messy mop of straw-colored hair framed a winsome face that’d never stopped looking like she should be wearing a school uniform and a faraway look that’d never entirely stopped daydreaming by the window. She was older than Queen Mahla and Princess Zoe by at least six months, but that hardly mattered. She’d been the teacher’s pet for as many years as she’d remained in school, until she graduated and became Hiro’s assistant. The highest praise that could be offered in her world was indispensable.

Showers operated on a five-minute timer in Khamsin Tower: Greta searched the cabinets for a fresh towel and washcloth, stepped into