Indigo Dusk Read online

  Indigo Dusk

  By Kristy Nicolle

  The Aetherial Embrace Trilogy- Book 1

  TRILOGY 3 IN THE

  QUEENS OF FANTASY SAGA

  Trigger Warning:

  Chapter Fourteen’s concluding scene contains graphic sexual assault which may be distressing for some readers.

  First published by Kristy Nicolle, United Kingdom, April 2020

  QUEENS OF FANTASY EDITION (1st EDITION)

  Published October 2020 by Kristy Nicolle

  Copyright © 2020 Kristy Nicolle

  Edited By- Jaimie Cordall

  Adult Paranormal/Fantasy Romance

  The right of Kristy Nicolle to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Disclaimer:

  This ebook is written in U.K English by personal preference of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN:

  www.kristynicolle.com

  This one is for all the chronic pain and invisible illness warriors.

  Never forget who you are.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One: The Green Fairy Book

  Chapter Two: The Stranger

  Chapter three: Les Misérables

  Chapter Four: One hundred years of solitude

  Chapter Five: Persuasion

  Chapter Six: Great Expectations

  Chapter Seven: Brave New World

  Chapter Eight: Beloved

  Chapter Nine: The Age of Innocence

  Chapter Ten: The Awakening

  Chapter Eleven: Women in Love

  Chapter Twelve: A Tale of Two Cities

  Chapter Thirteen: The Grapes of Wrath

  Chapter Fourteen: Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

  Chapter Fifteen: If Tomorrow Comes

  Chapter Sixteen: The girl with the dragon tattoo

  Chapter Seventeen: The Living Mountain

  Chapter Eighteen: Into thin air

  Chapter Nineteen: A room with a view

  Chapter Twenty: Deathnote

  Chapter Twenty-One: Gone Girl

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Secret Garden

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Wind and theWillows

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Alice in Wonderland

  Chapter Twenty-Five: A midsummer night’s dream

  Chapter twenty-six: One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Through the looking glass

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Crime and Punishment

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Art of War

  Chapter Thirty: To Kill A Mockingbird

  Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Stand

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Shining

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Want more Aetherial Embrace enchantment?

  HIGH LORDS AND LADIES CHARACTER GUIDE

  FAE

  FAE OF NIGHT- Kindred of Apollo

  High Lady Hynos

  High Lord Morpheus

  High Lady Kodiak Nguyen

  High lord Alistair Sol

  FAE OF LIGHT- Kindred of Aphrodite

  High Lord Phineas Beckett (Spring)

  High Lord Quinn Arlet (Fall)

  High Lady Neve Eirwen (Winter)

  High Lady Ember Cyrus (Summer)

  DRACONIANS

  DRACONIAN- Kindred of Hecate

  High Lady Genevieve Thomas

  High Lord Lucien DeLaurent

  DRACONIANS- Kindred of Nemesis

  High Lady Anastasia Dragos

  High Lord Gage Lee

  EQUINIANS

  ARESIAN EQUINIANS- Kindred of Ares

  High Lord/Chieftain Asher Oswald

  High Lord/Chieftain Landon John Archard

  ARTEMISIAN EQUINIANS- Kindred of Artemis

  High Lady Aliandara Montgomery

  High Lady Evangeline Senft

  SEPHILIM AND NEPHILIM

  SEPHILIM- Kindred of Zeus

  High Lord Aro Black

  High Lord Caleb Abara

  NEPHILIM- Kindred of Hera

  High Lady Storm Shaw (Deceased)

  High Lady Harmony Baker (Deceased)

  Prologue

  HERA’S DEFIANCE

  This story, you will be surprised to discover, does not start with Hera.

  Not at all.

  No, this story, in fact, begins with Prometheus.

  Prometheus had always been close to Zeus. Perhaps closer than either of the god’s brothers could claim to be. The two were thick as thieves, best friends, and yet still, Prometheus found himself coveting Zeus’ devoted worshippers.

  It was nothing personal against the King of the Gods, but Prometheus longed to be unconditionally adored too. He longed to leave his mark and to make sure he was remembered.

  Zeus was world renowned, made so through art, literature and poetry as inspired by the muses, as well as being the chosen God of the people of the Lower Plains.

  In fact, he was so well known that even though the ancient Greeks had long since fallen to the Romans, there were still many who adored him among mortals.

  Despite the stellar reputation of his best friend, Prometheus was still virtually a stranger to the religious canon of the Lower Plains; a fact he felt like a consistent weight upon his shoulders.

  He found his solution, or what he believed to be, not in one individual but in many. He looked over to one of Olympus’ bordering nations, The Eternal Kingdom, and observed a force of divine beings that were not jealous, nor envious, but simply pure, devoted, and yet full of power. They worked well together and served one known only as Him without thought or question. They were called the Seraphim, and as winged beings of total divinity, he was in awe of their diligence to their master.

  Prometheus knew that these creatures were not High Born. Oh no, they had come from the earth, from Gaia’s lands, made immortal by their master after a lifetime of servitude in His name.

  Prometheus was decided then — he would raise his own force of these Seraphim, their immortality his blessing, sourced from his spirit, and they would spread his message, worship, and serve him. The Seraphim, he dreamed, would elevate him so he might be revered just as much as, if not more than, Zeus.

  In order to bless mortals with some of his power, he needed the Immortal Flame, a gift given to Zeus after the fall of Cronus. The flame would allow him to segment some of his innate power, to bless his chosen mortals. And so, he took his plans to Zeus, hoping his best friend would sympathise with his plight and aid in his quest for notoriety.

  This, of course, was naïve folly.

  Zeus laughed at Prometheus, sure that giving mortals immortal life was insane. He claimed sharing his power would allow them to rise and challenge the gods and that no diligent follower or believer could be made from this method. Humans, said Zeus, are too unstable to have access to such power. They will only destroy themselves in the end.

  At these words, Prometheus’ covetous heart, a thing which had plagued his soul with consequent guilt for many years, mutated into an unstoppable force, no longer held at bay by the god’s moral compass, but set wild and fre
e by his rage instead.

  And so, that night, Prometheus made his choice and stole the flame from Zeus’ secret vault by force.

  Then, he fled and did as he had proposed, creating the very first Kindred, the Seraphim of Prometheus. He took the chosen men from across the globe, picking them for their devotion to servitude. They rose with the sun upon the dawn of a new earth day, transformed but in a world that remained the same as it had always been.

  Upon discovering what Prometheus had done and what had been stolen from him, Zeus flew into one of his infamous wild rages. Though, it was not like any Olympus had felt before because Prometheus had been Zeus’ friend.

  Determined to make an example of him, he sentenced Prometheus to torment down in The Underworld and sent Nemesis’ daughter, Thanatos, to carry out this interim sentence until he could decide how to rid the universe of Prometheus’ treacherous soul forever.

  Next, Zeus turned to the abominations Prometheus had unleashed upon Gaia’s Kingdom. He knew he could not leave the Seraphim to walk the mortal plains, for it put magic too close to the average man and gave them power to rebel against the Gods, just as he had warned Prometheus it would.

  Zeus now looked to the final gift his mother had given him. Her final gift of protection to her sons in death.

  It was called Aetheria.

  After the fall of her husband Cronus, Rhea and her sister Aether had decided their time among The Higher Plains was done. They used their life energy and created a barrier between The Lower and Higher Plains as a final act of protection to keep Cronus from further troubling his sons. Their magic was pure, great, and created a pocket dimension called Aetheria that was rich in magic.

  Zeus, placing the Seraphim of Prometheus here, forgot about them for nearly ten years until one day he received word that they were trying to free their creator from his torturous prison down in the underworld.

  Outraged, Zeus knew he must rid himself of both Prometheus and his Kindred once and for all. He took Prometheus and decided to end his existence altogether, placing his ashes and soul across two different dimensions so that they might never find one another.

  To guard his ashes, and to rid him of the Seraphim, Zeus created his own Kindred, the Sephilim. This race of dark angels shared his power to wield the lightning of the skies and rose in a force unlike anything the Seraphim of Prometheus could have ever imagined.

  Hera, meanwhile, watched the Sephilim and Seraphim go to battle, knowing that while the Sephilim would surely triumph, creating Kindred of such strength and power-hungry personalities, Zeus would surely lose control of them from afar.

  She was, of course, correct.

  The Sephilim did indeed triumph, dethroning the Seraphim and leaving them little more than extinct.

  Then, Brutus, the very first of Zeus’ Kindred, took the throne for himself without pause. Hera watched on as over the following days the men beneath him split into sects, devising ways to usurp the king and take the throne for themselves.

  Civil wars erupted between the Sephilim with many being killed in the most brutal of ways, leaving Zeus’ army upon Aetheria floundering as each day brought the spilling of more blessed blood.

  This, thought Hera, needs a woman’s touch.

  She asked Zeus if he might allow her to create her own Kindred, so as she mellowed her husband, they might mellow the violent and ambitious Sephilim. Perhaps by gaining lovers, they might feel they had more to lose, and the fighting would cease or at least be saved as a last resort solution. Perhaps the women in their lives might even inspire more civilised politics.

  Zeus, of course, laughed at his wife.

  She knew nothing of such matters, being merely a goddess.

  This vexed her, and so being Hera, Queen of Olympus, she naturally defied her husband and took the Immortal Flame to hand, creating the very first of her own Kindred. Harmonia, the first Nephilim, and the winged female equivalent to her husband’s Sephilim was born.

  Zeus, despite his anger at the stubborn woman, wanted more than anything to prove her wrong, and so decided to forgive his wife, and let them watch how the situation developed together.

  Harmonia predictably enraptured Brutus, who was hanging on to the throne of Aetheria at this time through mere stubborn will alone.

  She did as Hera had expected, placating him, melting his heart and making him take a moment before crying out decrees that would lead to more precious Kindred being lost.

  Years passed, and all seemed peaceful as Brutus had seemingly gained the respect of his people at last. Zeus could not deny his wife’s triumph, and so the Nephilim continued to increase in number.

  All was well.

  This was, until one day Brutus finally met his end at the hand of none other than his beloved Harmonia. She, it seemed, had grown tired of constantly trying to talk him down from the ledge of decreeing the decimation and destruction of his own people behind the closed doors of their bedchamber, knowing now that he could not be changed at his core. She felt her failure to Hera like lead in her heart and saw no other way to carry out her duty to the Goddess.

  Zeus took the news to his wife, smug as ever, but as he relayed Brutus’ obituary, Hera heard the cries of Harmonia, all the way from Aetheria.

  Hurrying to the looking glass chamber, she gazed down upon Aetheria and found Harmonia, sobbing, in a puddle of her lover’s blood.

  It seemed from the dagger clutched in her palm that she had, indeed, murdered him.

  “Hera, Queen of Olympus, why have you forsaken me so? For no woman could truly love, nor change a King of death crowned by violence and baptised as monarch in blood. All he ever had to do to prove himself worthy of the crown was the cold-blooded murder of another… how can this be your will? No immortal king championing the agenda of peace can ever be birthed from war. Don’t you see what folly such a task is as mine?”

  Hera thought on this, running her long languid fingers down the ample curve of her defiant jawline. She looked next to the Aetherial crown, tinged scarlet in a pool of Brutus’ cold blood where it had fallen from his head.

  She knew what she had to do.

  That night, long after Zeus had retired to bed, no doubt to dream of another, Hera went about cursing the crown of Aetheria.

  No King would be crowned unless coronated willingly by a marked Nephilim of her choosing.

  In order to be worthy of the throne, the heir would have to win the heart of her chosen Nephilim, one which would be known this day forth as Heirbound.

  The crown could not be taken by force any longer, nor could it be stolen by manipulative cunning. Now, it could only be laid upon the King’s head by a Nephilim, chosen by Hera for her gentility, grace, and value of immortal life.

  Hera smiled, as ever defiant, thinking next upon the joy she would gather from her Husband’s undoubted and inevitable fury.

  Chapter One

  The Green Fairy Book

  KAIRI

  The scales sheen like rain slick whetstone, refracting the intense light of the surrounding cavern. My palms sweat, slipping against the heavy crystals inlaid into the metal handle of my sword, biceps aching.

  Whirling, the world tilt on its axis as the dragon before me allows its jaws to spread wide in time with my pupils, a sound of primal beastly fury shattering several stained-glass windows. Kaleidoscopic glass explodes from where it was just moments before filling gaps in the crystal walls, which throw my trembling reflection back at me a million times over. Adrenaline hits my bloodstream, curdling with my fear, heart pounding harder against the inside of my ribcage, and yet my legs remain steadfast beneath me.

  I duck, feeling shards of glass pepper my face and snag in my hair, shielding my eyes as I move on pure instinct.

  It rears while the enormous talons attached to its onyx front feet flash violet, catching the moonlight pouring unfiltered through the glassless windows behind me.

  I step back, a sign of weakness, breath coming in short and shallow wisps. The air around me chills an
d I brace myself against the vibration of the very rock beneath my feet as the beast lands back on all fours with a deafening crash. The scent of wintergreen fills my nostrils, causing my mind to sharpen as I realise that attempting to face the dragon is futile. Its sinuous wings spread wide, veins illuminated as though the wingspan is made from charred leaves by the malachite chandelier that dangles, glinting gold overhead.

  I take another step back as the beast tosses its head from left to right in anger, talons digging deep into the single cerulean plane of the floor, holding me captive then with its gaze.

  Blackness consumes me, the pupil of the dragon a starless void, a chasm fractured from all light that causes the last of my courage to evaporate as though it were never more tangible than smoke. In that split second, I feel all bravery slip through my fingers before rising fast into the atmosphere above, never to be seen again.

  My sword falls from my grasp, fingers succumbing to fear-induced atrophy as they drop slack against the cold gold of my armoured thigh. The blade sings on impact, lamenting its own uselessness and reflecting a slice of my reflection up at me, capturing only my terrified stare, the epitome of my paralysed expression.

  I turn, hair flying out around me in dark tangled tresses, as I give one final glance back at the nightmarish scene behind me, finally finding the strength to push myself into forward motion.

  Mid-pivot, something catches my attention, a figure barely visible in the shadow of a far corner. His hair boasts a dim viridian sheen in the half light, eyes contemplative and surreal as I take him in for only a moment.

  If I had longer, his strangeness would surely stop me in my tracks, but I don’t have time to wonder who he is or why he’s here.