The Starlit Crown: Queer Novellas, #2

By Elena Berrino

Never stray from the path.
Fitzwilliam Herne has the bad habit of not looking where he's going - which is how he lands himself and his beloved dog Pepper in trouble with the Fairy Queen. To earn back his and Pepper's freedome, Fitz strikes a deal: he will recover the Queen's lost Starlit Crown from ehr lost castle under the lake. But firsat, he has to find it. He needs help.
Tam Lin lives a quiet life as a swordsmaster in a small village. He's the only mortal man to have ever escaped the Fairy Queen, and he knows how hard it is to do so and live to tell the tale. When Fitz asks him for help, Tam Lin has no choice but to accept; he refuses to abandon another innocent creature to the Queen's machinations.
Together, Fitz and Tam Lin embark on a perilous journey filled with deceit, trickery and sabotage.They will have to rely on each other to survive - so the growing, fierce attraction between them is a little inconvenient.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elena Berrino
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739351502

Book preview

The Starlit Crown

Elena Berrino

Copyright @ 2021 Elena Berrino

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents and either a product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.

For permissions contact us through the form on www.elenaberrino.com

Cover illustration by Evelyn Rogers

www.evelynleerogers.com

ISBN 978-1-7393515-0-2 (ebook)

www.elenaberrino.com

Contents

Dedication

1.Thornton Salle

2.Field of Mists

3.The Ageless Swordsman

4.The Market

5.Prince’s Head Inn

6.The Seal

7.The Dark Forest

8.The Wild Hunt

9.The Covenant

10.Castle in the Mirror Lake

11.The Starlit Crown

12.The Task

13.Whole and Unharmed

14.A Promise Kept

15.A Covenant Sealed

16.Thornton Salle

17.Acknowledgments

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Dedication

This is for Janet, Tam Lin’s wife, who isn’t in this book but is introduced in the original poem by telling an old man that catcalls her what she thinks of his opinion, as seen below:

"Hauld your tongue, ye auld-faced knight,Some ill death may ye die!

Father my bairn on whom I will,

I’ll father nane on thee."

Icon behavior.

1

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Thornton Salle

THREE DAYS HAD PASSED by the time he arrived at Thornton Salle, and the delicate skin of his forearm grew more sensitive with every moment. At times, the cursed seal tingled; at times, it grew cold and numb. Once, when Fitz wandered too close to a wrought iron gate, it burned bad enough he had to scramble away.

He’d had to ride his horse bareback, to avoid the decorative iron rivets in the tack. Eventually, he’d decided he might as well walk; he could hardly afford to waste time or risk injury, and by then he’d been close enough to the village to justify it. However, he’d misjudged the distance; it had taken two hours of trudging rather miserably through the drizzle to find the salle. He was cold to the bone, exhausted, and really felt quite sorry for himself. He wasn’t as a rule given to melancholy, but he’d have dared any man not to feel at least a little sorry for themselves were they in his situation.

Alone, cursed, running out of time.

Thornton Salle had once been a handsome country villa for a wealthy family. Sober, built with clean lines of dark gray stone, it stood three stories tall in the center of a lush garden, where the vibrant colors of the flowers and fruit trees that surrounded it made it, by contrast, that much darker.

There was no front gate. That is, there was a gateway, and there was an outer wall, but the gates themselves were conspicuously missing. Deep gouges in the stone suggested they’d been removed with some force. Thornton House must have once had a black iron gate.

Fitz stepped up through the raised gateway and into the magnificent garden. The scent of it hit him like a slap to the face — lavender, roses, jasmine, greenery, rain-damp soil. It was the middle of winter, and everything lay dormant in wait for spring. But here in this garden, spring had already arrived — or else never left at all. It was wild and overgrown and all the more beautiful for it, resplendent with bright flowers and noisy with the calls of birds and wildlife.

The stone path from the gateway to the house was flanked by tall grass and criss-crossed with roots that had cracked the flagstones and raised them from their beds. The house looked more like an abandoned castle in a fairytale than an inhabited place of learning.

Then again, Fitz thought ruefully, he was in a fairytale.

The front door at least was surprisingly clean, but Fitz had been advised not to knock, and to instead round to the right of the house towards the back gardens. The path around was well-trodden; visitors clearly knew their way around.

Along the sides, far from the public view of the road, the house showed some more signs of decay and abandonment — the stones of its walls moss-covered and pockmarked, windowpanes cracked and distorting the view into darkened, dust-covered rooms.

Finally, he came to the edge of the building and emerged into the back gardens. If you could call them that; they had been flattened, vegetation and adornments removed to make room for a wide, circular arena covered in sand and bordered with a waist-high wooden fence. The training yard.

Most schools of swordsmanship these days gave their lessons indoors, but this was clearly an old-fashioned salle; the weapons must be stored in a safe and sheltered place, but the lessons and training were outdoors in the arena. People might have wondered why when the house could accommodate with some minor renovations — it was large enough for it — but Fitz thought it made sense when you considered that Thornton was not old fashioned, but rather simply old. Very old.

There was not a soul in sight, but the door to the conservatory at the back of house was wide open. Fitz scraped his muddy boots against the flagstones to the best of his ability — the iron boot-scraper was, naturally, nowhere to be seen — and stepped inside. It was a relief to be out of the frigid drizzle.

Hello? he called out, wondering further inside with some hesitation. The silence in the house was almost suffocating; heavy like the dust in the rooms he’s seen through the windows. The damp of the rain had gotten inside, and the house was freezing; Fitz could see his own breath escaping in twin columns from his nostrils like a dragon’s.

He flinched at a loud snapping noise. Heart racing, he turned around and ducked just in time to save his face from being torn apart by a raven, shooting through the open door and deeper into the house. He whirled around to follow it with his eyes, aghast; the bird clearly knew where it was going.

The salle is closed for the day, a soft voice said behind him.

Fitz turned around again, trying to calm his wild heartbeat, and managed not to gasp only because his breath caught instead.

The man standing in the doorway to the conservatory was lavishly beautiful; a masculine sort of beauty Fitz hadn’t previously thought existed in the world outside of books and fairytales. Features sharp like a blade, summer-green eyes, a rosebud-red generous mouth. A drop of cold rainwater was sliding slowly down the side of his face towards the sharp angle of his jaw, and Fitz’s eyes followed it like a puppy would its mother.

Sir, the man’s voice was low and deep, and one of those fine dark brows was arching up in amused inquiry.

Evidently Fitz was not keeping his indecorous ogling to himself.

Mister Thornton, Fitz managed at last, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth not without difficulty.

Mister Thornton had been caught in the rain, and his long dark hair was sticking to the fine features of his face. The cotton of his delicate white shirt clung to his chest in a way that made Fitz immediately flick his eyes away; part embarrassment, part politeness. He thought, rather wildly, that such beauty could hardly be natural—

But of course. Of course, it wasn’t; this man was no simple mortal.

It was easier to breathe if Fitz wasn’t looking at him directly.

We have no classes today, Mister Thornton offered, as if throwing Fitz a rope.

Fitz cleared his throat and straightened, rolling his shoulders and forcing himself to relax.

I’m not here for instruction in the sword, sir, he answered. His voice was a little hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. I was recommended — someone said you might be able to help me with directions, if you are willing.

Thornton’s eyes narrowed slightly, brows quirking close together. What directions do you need?

Fitz drew in a deep breath, bracing himself for — whatever came next. Rage, sorrow, rejection. He hoped not violence. He wasn’t good at fighting and he had poor reflexes to be dodging punches to the face. He’d have been bad at that on a god sunny day, but today he was frozen stiff and miserable. A broken nose would hardly make it better.

There was no easy way to ease into the conversation, however; dithering and circumventing would do him no favors.

I am looking for Queen Titania’s lost palace.

Thornton went so still that his inhumanity became evident and stark.

Why? his voice was low, slow.

Fitz thought of many ways to answer this — he’d been thinking of the right way to answer this since he had been told, by a kindly and sympathetic fairy when the Queen’s back was turned, who he could come to for help. Tell him not of your curse, she’d said, voice low and urgent, for old memories still pain him.

The skin of his forearm felt oddly warm, as if the seal branded into him was reacting to Thornton’s close presence.

I have struck a deal with her, he said evenly.

Thornton’s jaw worked, muscles tensing as he clenched his teeth. But whatever frustration or irritation had briefly overtaken him quickly passed. What remained once that had gone was quiet melancholy. He took in a deep breath and released it slowly through parted lips. His breath didn’t fog in the cold air.

Come, he said after a moment, striding past Fitz with a sinuous, languid sort of grace. He moved like a large cat, in absolute control of his limbs, like the famed swordsman he was. Let us have tea.

The offer felt abrupt, like it had come out of a dark well Fitz had not spotted on his way down a hill and had inadvertently tumbled into. But how to refuse? When he’d asked for direction, the villagers had told him, with the confidence of the small-town gossip monger, that Thornton was notoriously capricious. That he should expect to be turned out at once; that he should expect to be embraced like a sibling; that he should expect not to be seen at all, and for the house to stand wide-open and unguarded. That he should expect, in conclusion, nothing predictable.

Helpless, he followed Thornton’s tall form deeper into the house.

Oh, he said, remembering. There is a raven that’s come in.

She comes and goes at her leisure, Thornton said over his shoulder. The light of a single lamp caught on his handsome profile. His eyes flashed in the light like a cat’s. Did she hurt you?

I think she might have meant to, but I dodged in time.

Then she didn’t mean to.

Well. There was nothing to say to such calm assertion.

He followed Thornton down through the bowels of the big house, into the hidden hallways and areas servants would have once roamed. The kitchen was dark and ice-cold, the stove insufficient to spread the heat into the dark stones.

As discreetly as he knew how, Fitz sidled over to the stove, where the fire burnt healthy and bright. When Thornton glanced at him, Fitz busied himself with opening the stove and stoking the fire as if he had always meant to make himself useful. He might have been wrong, and wishing besides, but he thought Thornton’s full lips curled in a smile.

There was a bucket of ice-cold water on the sink, that Thornton used to fill the kettle.

Have a seat, he suggested, gesturing to the table with his chin. Fitz mourned the loss of the heat from the stove, but politeness demanded he comply with the house master’s wishes. He pulled out a chair and sat down, stiff-backed and tense. Thornton sat the kettle carefully on the stove, movements precise and practiced. He was in no visible rush as he hunted down delicate porcelain cups, a mismatched silver kettle, and a tin of tea leaves. Once that was done, he paused for a moment, letting his hands sit on the counter as he stared contemplatively down at the kettle, the leaves, the cups.

You’re a fool to trust her, he said finally, his voice still low. His head had also dipped down, shoulders tensing up.

Fitz smiled bitterly, safe out of Thornton’s eyesight.

I don’t, he admitted. But the deal has been struck, and I can’t weasel my way out of it now.

Thornton straightened and turned around, leaning his hip against the kitchen counter. He gripped the edges of the stone counter with both hands, knuckles quickly turning white. His face, lovely as it was, was creased with concern.

Tell me first your name, then, he said. He sounded resigned, tired.

Fitzwilliam Herne, Fitz replied, dipping his head slightly in politeness.

Fitzwiliam, Thornton started,