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    Crow and Firefly
    Crow and Firefly
    Crow and Firefly
    Ebook78 pages2 hours

    Crow and Firefly

    By Sam C. Leonhard

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    About this ebook

    The laws of man and nature are harsh and decisive: Unwed mothers are not allowed to raise their children, and shapehifters must wed and consummate the marriage to satisfy the magic that would otherwise render them beasts forever upon the morning of their twenty-third birthday.

    With the life of his sister and newborn nephew at stake, shapeshifter Ari is trapped in a castle and compelled to accept a situation he’d dreaded: he is forced to marry Lord Dagur, a man he’s never met. A man called “The Cruel.” A man he fears, and not just because he fancies someone else.


    Winner in the 2013 Rainbow Awards.
    Fourth (tie): Best LGBT Cover – Illustration

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateOct 31, 2012
    ISBN9781623800673
    Crow and Firefly

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      Book preview

      Crow and Firefly - Sam C. Leonhard

      Storm

      THE storm was much worse than the usual winter storm. Clouds were thick in the sky, heavy with rain. Flashes of lightning cut through the air. The thunder was deafening, rattling the castle that was barely visible, freezing its walls, cracking its windows, and scaring its inhabitants.

      It was not a time to be outside. Yet one was: a crow, fighting its way through icy hail and deathly winds. Although it wasn’t night yet, it was dark outside. The storm would rip the crow to pieces in another little while. Fighting against wind and hail was a lost cause, but the crow refused to give up. It was a fairly young bird, at the height of its strength and with long, straight wings. Too thin, though; too small to survive for much longer.

      The crow desperately tried to get away from the castle. It would fail, eventually.

      It was stubborn, that crow. Fighting against the storm, no matter it had no chance to survive whatsoever. By morning, the crow would be dead, a heap of bones and feathers buried beneath an icy blanket.

      Whenever the wind threw it back toward the stone walls barely visible in the weather’s chaos, the crow fought to gain another foot, another inch, if only to avoid the high, narrow windows rimmed with lead, the slender battlements, and mainly, the north tower. It was, for a castle, not unpleasant to look at, yet the crow seemed determined to die rather than seek shelter under one of its roofs.

      The crow might have made it, despite all odds, had it fed properly recently, but as it was, there wasn’t much flesh underneath the feathers, and the muscles sustaining the rain-heavy wings grew more and more tired with each passing heartbeat. When the wind threatened to crush the crow in its cruel grip, the bird finally accepted it had lost the fight. Going limp, it was helpless, unable to control where it was going any longer, unable to tell where was up and where was down, and definitely unable to say in which direction the castle was.

      When the storm threw the crow against one of the windows, it came as a bigger shock than the bird would have believed possible. It hurt, and the impact on the glass, although it didn’t shatter, dislocated one of its wings.

      The crow fell, half-unconscious. As it tumbled, the wind caught it again, lifted it up, whirling it around in endless circles.

      Right before the wind could drop the bird to its death a hundred feet below, the window it had crashed against opened and hands—slender, long-fingered hands—caught the crow and pulled it inside into the warmth of a cozy, firelit room. You stupid idiot, a woman’s voice hissed. Didn’t you have anything better to do than to run away although Lord Dagur is awaiting you in your wedding bed?

      Two months earlier—Autumn

      FOR rich people, autumn in the plains was a pleasant time. Their farm hands took care of the harvest. Their servants took care of preparing and serving food and tidying up the rooms. Their guards protected the women from the poor and angry, and the priests educated their children if they had any. For rich people, autumn in the plains was a time of laziness, and a time to go hunting if they fancied fresh meat.

      For poor people, autumn in the plains was a time of fear. In autumn, there was already the occasional hint of cool in the air. The changing colors of the leaves brought a foretaste of winter’s menace, and winter meant icy rains, bone-cracking frost, and starvation. It meant at least one out of five children died, especially the young ones, and of those, most likely the newborns. There was no time to dwell on the sight of colorful leaves, quickly running brooks, or grazing deer. If a poor man was lucky enough to see a grazing deer, he shot it and skinned it and gutted it, and then he took home the meat so his family might survive another few weeks. If the poor man wasn’t caught by a rich one, of course. In that case, he would end up as crow food.

      What was called hunting by the rich, and considered a jolly pastime, was a criminal offense for a poor man. And in Farrow, smallest of the several dozen small villages on the plains, there were many poor people and barely anyone considered wealthy, let alone rich. Which was just as well in the opinion of the people of Farrow, given rich people were usually a nuisance, and a dangerous nuisance on top of it. In Farrow lived a few hundred people only. It had one pub, and once a month, there was a market. No one ever bothered to lead a hunting party through their streets—they were muddy and narrow, and the huts as crooked as the weather-beaten, ancient trees surrounding them. In fact, not many rich people even knew the village existed.

      So when the man who was expected to become the new king decided not only to lead his hunting party through Farrow—which gave most people half a heart attack already—but also got off his horse and went into the Shiny Pig, it was nothing less than a sensation, and one people would talk about for generations afterward.

      Boring, Ari said when he saw the lord. He said it to Claire, the barkeeper, and he said it in a low voice so no one else would hear him.

      How can this be boring? Claire asked, pure surprise in her deep, slightly hoarse voice, a result of too many drinks in her own pub. This is Lord Dagur, the king’s nephew, Ari! He will be crowned in another few years. It’s not boring; it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened in this hellhole since Bragen’s goat bit Bragen’s thumb off.

      Boring, Ari

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