Read The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3) Online
Authors: Jennifer Blackstream
Tags: #Robin Hood, #artistocrat, #magic, #angel, #werewolf, #god, #adventure, #demon, #vampire, #air elemental, #paranormal, #romance, #fantasy, #fairy tale, #loup garou, #rusalka, #action, #sidhe, #prince, #mermaid, #royal
The Archer (The Blood Realm Series Book 3)
THE ARCHER
Blood Realm Series: Book Three
"The hunter becomes the hunted… "
A master of lies seeking the truth…
Robin is a sidhe whose glamour is unrivaled. More than mere visual illusions, he creates phantasms that smell real, sound real, feel real. A notorious trickster with an attention span even shorter than his temper, he spends his time haunting the forests of the kingdom with his merry band of misfits, robbing anyone who enters the woods with more gold than good sense. Redistributing the wealth to the less fortunate has given him a hero’s reputation, a novelty that helps to stave off the boredom he detests so passionately. But now something—or, rather, someone—has snared his attention…
A huntress in hiding…
Marian wants to be left alone. Alone without the gardener’s constant nagging about her lack of care for her lands, alone without the company of the narcissistic men who won’t take no for an answer, and alone without the infuriating fey who’s harder to lose than a bad cold. She’d dispatch him herself if she wasn’t already under the weight of a four hundred pound eric for murder…
Gold changes hands, and Marian’s
eric
is paid with Robin’s gold, indebting her to him and roping her into his band of thieves. Will the sidhe discover her secret? Will he survive it if he does?
Bonus short story: The Unwanted Guest
Preview of ALL FOR A ROSE, book one in the BLOOD REALM series
Free Bonus Ebook
http://www.jenniferblackstream.com/free-copy/
Chapter One
Come on, you wee bugger. Just a little bit closer.
Marian held her breath and stared down the thin length of her arrow at the bushy red tail flicking around the base of a tree no more than thirty yards ahead. The white tip waved in a mockery of a flag of surrender, but the little beast remained stubbornly protected by the thick trunk of the rowan. She licked her lips in anticipation, willing the sly fox to put just an inch of its tender hindquarter a little farther to the right…
“Lady Marian!”
A deep female voice thundered through the trees, the sound reverberating down the shaft of Marian’s arrow. The bushy tail vanished, her vulpine prey becoming no more than a blurry red streak as it bolted across the forest floor and vanished into the brush.
“
Argh!
” Marian dropped her bow, arrow still nocked in a pathetic refusal to fully acknowledge the lost opportunity. Her finger itched, the indentation in the pad a reminder of how long she’d been holding that shot, how patiently she’d been waiting for her prey to make itself vulnerable. All ruined now.
She ground her teeth, sending a dull, throbbing pain through her jaw. “This is unacceptable.”
“Lady Marian, there you are!”
Sticks snapped under the steady, heavy gait of someone who had no business traipsing around the woods when there was hunting going on. Even if she hadn’t recognized the voice, she would have recognized those footsteps. Loud, confident, and completely oblivious to anyone else’s need for silence.
“Damn your eyes, Ermentrude, what is it now? The little blighter’s gotten away, so this had better be good.”
Ermentrude came to an abrupt stop, muddy brown eyes darkening as her ruddy face flushed an even darker shade of red. “Damn my eyes, is it? Well that’s a fine how do you do. And haven’t I come all this way down here to fetch you when by all rights you were supposed to meet me in the gardens more than an hour ago?” She huffed, cheeks bloating with the force of the expelled air. “Damn my eyes, indeed.”
Blast and drat. Is it that late already? What time was that meeting? Noon?
Marian pulled the arrow from her bow, tapping it impatiently against her thigh. “Ermentrude, I must remind you again about your tone, to say nothing of your volume. You’ve just cost me my prey—a fox that I have no doubt you’ll be complaining about come the morrow when you find your garden has once again been made into a series of food cubbies for our local red tails.”
Any other servant would have backed down, bowed her head and apologized immediately. Of course, any other servant wouldn’t have spoken to the lady of the house in that manner to begin with.
Ermentrude crossed her chubby arms as best she could, her coarse brown gardening vest crumpling under the duress. Her eyes narrowed until they looked like wizened almonds. “It’s not
my
garden,
Lady Marian.
It’s
your
garden. A garden in which we were supposed to meet to discuss progress as per arrangements
you
agreed with yesterday.” She shook her head, her fraying straw hat threatening to fly off somewhere to die a respectable and long-deferred death.
She’s got you there. You did agree to the meeting, and you are the one who missed it. The proper thing to do is apologize
.
“And I was on my way to the meeting when I spotted the fox and remembered what
you
were saying yesterday—I believe in the same conversation that the meeting was mentioned.” Marian jabbed a finger at the other woman. “You said the foxes were tearing up the garden, and there was nothing to be done about getting rid of them on your end and so I needed to do something about it.”
“I said you should
have something
done about it. And by that, I meant
delegate
that task to someone else so that you could see to the work already on your schedule.” Ermentrude solidified her stance, planting her feet firmly shoulder width apart as if expecting the confrontation to grow physical.
It was a laughable thought. If only she knew how laughable.
“I do not like to delegate work that I am more than capable of taking care of myself.” Marian removed her arrow and replaced the unused ammunition in the quiver at her back. “That is not how my parents raised me.”
Ermentrude anchored her hands on her ample hips. “You have no problem delegating all the work in the fields. Is that the way your parents raised you?”
A lump rose in Marian’s throat, stopping up anything she might have said. An image of her parents rose in her mind, her mother who was no more than a hundred pounds soaking wet and her father who wasn’t much taller than Marian had been at sixteen. When she remembered them, they were in the fields, kneeling in the dirt, elbows deep in seeds, weeds, or fertilizer. So many of her memories placed them there. It was where they’d been their happiest. Where they’d belonged. Where they’d wanted her to belong.
Her bow sank and dangled at her side from fingers slowly chilling into ice. Ermentrude was right. She hadn’t been in the garden or the fields in weeks. And what would her parents have said about that? Her parents who had wanted nothing more out of life than dirt under their fingernails and the sun at their backs? The parents who had taken her in as their own, a little orphan found muddy and crying in the woods after a storm that by all rights should have killed her. The parents who had been so hopeful that their adopted daughter would carry on their legacy when they were gone.
The world went misty as tears welled in her eyes, shimmering there without falling.
They must be rolling in their graves over how I turned out.
“I’m sorry, Lady Marian.” Ermentrude’s voice softened and she dropped her arms to her sides. She wrung her hands a bit and tilted her head to try and meet Marian’s eyes. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Marian turned her cheek, unwilling to share this moment with the gardener.
“You’re right of course,” Ermentrude continued feebly. “I have got an awful habit of speaking out of turn.” She shuffled her feet, stirring up the earth that matched her muddy boots until it looked as though her legs had melted into the forest floor. “I’m sorry, Lady Marian. It won’t happen again. Please don’t cry.”
“We will have to reschedule our meeting.” She forced the minced words past the lump in her throat through sheer willpower and unpinned the lapels of her cloak. Light, moss green material closed around her body and washed around her legs, and for a split second she wished she really could disappear into the surrounding greenery like some kind of forest sprite. “I will try to make some time tomorrow.”
Ermentrude shuffled uncomfortably. “As you wish. You know where to find me.”
There was no censure or disbelief in Ermentrude’s voice now, but Marian’s psyche was only too happy to fill it in. The servant politely lowered her chin and turned to lumber back the way she’d come. Every footstep she took was a condemnation of Marian’s deplorable loyalty, her total lack of dedication. Every pace took Ermentrude closer to the gardens that Marian’s parents had loved so dearly. The gardens Marian couldn’t bear to be in for more than a moment, the gardens that held not even the briefest flicker of interest no matter how hard she tried. The order and calm of the gardens couldn’t compete with the wilderness, the unpredictability of the forest.
The hunt.
Groaning wood tickled her ears and Marian abruptly eased her grip on her bow before she snapped it in two. She took a slow breath in through her nose, willing the tears back where they’d come from, and holstered her bow across her chest, the string a welcome and familiar pressure.
Something brushed against her leg, rustling the skirt of her teal-toned dress. Her brow furrowed as she gripped her cloak and skirts and slowly pulled like she was drawing a curtain. Beady little black eyes blinked at her before squeezing shut as the fox scratched its chin against her toe, features tight with concentration.