Fury's Mantle
FURY’S MANTLE
-A Fury Unbound Novel-
-Book 5-
YASMINE GALENORN
A Nightqueen Enterprises LLC Publication
Published by Yasmine Galenorn
PO Box 2037, Kirkland WA 98083-2037
FURY’S MANTLE
A Fury Unbound Novel
Copyright © 2018 by Yasmine Galenorn
First Electronic Printing: 2018 Nightqueen Enterprises LLC
First Print Edition: 2018 Nightqueen Enterprises
Cover Art & Design: Ravven
Editor: Elizabeth Flynn
Map Design: Yasmine Galenorn
Map Layout: Samwise Galenorn
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any format, be it print or electronic or audio, without permission. Please prevent piracy by purchasing only authorized versions of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, or places is entirely coincidental and not to be construed as representative or an endorsement of any living/ existing group, person, place, or business.
A Nightqueen Enterprises LLC Publication
Published in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Welcome to Fury’s Mantle
Map of the Seattle Area
The Second World Shift
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Playlist
Biography
Acknowledgments
I’m really glad people have been wanting more Fury—and I’m thrilled to offer you another volume in her world!
Thanks to my usual crew: Samwise, my husband, Andria and Jennifer—without their help, I’d be swamped; to the women who have helped me find my way in indie, you’re all great; and to Fury herself—who started long ago as a glimmer of an idea, and who wasn’t allowed out of her cage till I escaped from mine. I honestly never thought I’d be able to write these books, but thanks to technology and the courage to step out on my own, here they are.
Also, my love to my furbles, who keep me happy. And most reverent devotion to Mielikki, Tapio, Ukko, Rauni, and Brighid, my spiritual guardians and guides.
If you wish to reach me, you can find me through my website at Galenorn.com and be sure to sign up for my newsletter to keep updated on all my latest releases!
And a reminder: if you love my books, please think about leaving reviews!
Brightest Blessings,
~The Painted Panther~
~Yasmine Galenorn~
Welcome to Fury’s Mantle
My name is Kaeleen Donovan. I’m a Theosian—a minor goddess. They call me Fury.
In the wake of the second World Shift, Tam and I have spent eight years building UnderBarrow and Willow Wood into a thriving community. We’ve created an oasis of civilization, a safe haven in the vast sea of chaos left after Seattle fell. But as we settle into our new life, a terrifying danger is rising…
Travelers through our territory are being attacked, viciously savaged and taken for food. There are no survivors and no witnesses, but rumors begin to circulate—that one of the old gods has returned with a taste for blood. With the lycanthropes gathering under a strange banner, we know we’re in trouble. Whoever is at their helm is proving a ruthless, deadly enemy. As the attacks close in on Willow Wood, I realize that if we can’t stop them, everything we’ve worked so hard to build will be destroyed.
Map of the Seattle Area
Post—Second World Shift
The Second World Shift
THE END OF civilization as we knew it arrived not with a whimper, but with a massive storm. When Gaia—the great mother and spirit of the Earth—finally woke from her slumber to discover the human race destroying the planet through a series of magical Weather Wars, she pitched a fit. The magical storm she unleashed ripped open the doors on the World Tree. In that one cataclysmic moment, known as the World Shift, life changed forever as creatures from our wildest dreams—and nightmares—began to pour through the open portals.
The old gods returned and set up shop. The Fae and the Weres came out from the shadows and took their place among the humans. The Theosians began to appear. Technology integrated with magic, and everything became jumbled together. Nothing in the old order remained untouched.
But as time has proven over and over again, greed won out. Once again, we ignored history. This time, we started the destruction ourselves, with a storm of unimaginable devastation that swept through the world. Yes, our kind started it, but Gaia finished it.
Back to the ashes. Back to the roots. Back to the drawing board. And now, we’re rebuilding anew, hoping to avoid the mistakes of the past. But dangers are rife, and in the untamed wilds, there are still madmen and would-be conquerors waiting for their chance.
Sometimes, change takes a long time to play out.
Chapter 1
My name is Queen Kaeleen the Fury. I stand at the Crossroads, bathed in the glory of Hecate’s fire, overseeing a field of ash and bone.
Eight years ago, I married my love—Lord Tam, the King of UnderBarrow. In the time since the second World Shift, we have healed a great many wounds and are focused on rebuilding our world.
Willow Wood has become our new home and we’ve done our best to help our people grow and thrive. Life has been good the past few years. But there are dangers everywhere in this new world, and even as we strive to keep the peace, there are times when I can sense dark forces waiting just over the horizon. I may be a queen now, but I haven’t been able to hang up my whip and sword. And the fire still burns within me.
I STOOD AT the top of the hill, shading my eyes as I stared over the barren fields below. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for, but I had been somehow prompted to ride out here, and I wanted to know what had called to me. But there was nothing to see. The crops had been harvested and there was little going on below, except for some gleaners gathering stray bits of wheat and corn.
I turned my gaze toward the horizon.
There was a tang in the air, one that was growing more familiar with each year. We had long passed the first descent into autumn, and were approaching the storm season as the rains began to pour and the chill in the air left our breath visible.
To my right, from beyond the hills behind Reflection Lake, clouds gathered, dark and heavy with moisture. They wouldn’t be here for another few hours, but when they hit, the rains promised to drench the Wild Wood and everything in it. Grateful we had brought in the last of the harvest a week ago, I shivered as a gust swept past, whipping at my legs. Rain and hail could bring famine if they hit while the crops were still in the fields, and we struggled each year to let the crops grow long enough to ripen, but not long enough to be pummeled by rain and hail.
Once again, the sense of uneasiness hit me. There was something different about this storm, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up, a sensation that reminded me of when an Abomination was near. But my Trace screen showed no sign of any Aboms, and truth was, they had been coming fewer and farther between over the past couple years. Hecate said they were still arriving via the World Tree, but the creatures wandered off in different direc
tions, and seldom made their way up here to Willow Wood.
“Your Majesty?” Zed had been standing back, leaving me to my thoughts, but now the guard stepped forward. Dressed in the official colors of UnderBarrow—indigo, plum, and silver—he was loyal to a fault. In the years he had been attending me, I had grown to like and understand the Bonny Fae. Zed had a good mind, and more than once I thought his talents had been wasted in the Guard, but he loved his job so I kept my thoughts to myself.
“Yes?” I turned, giving one last glance to the fields below, where the gleaners hurried to finish before the weather hit. Tam and I gave them permission to pick through the fields once they were harvested. It was foolish to waste food, and some families had more children than others, so we encouraged them to forage in order to add to the allotment they received every month.
“We should get back to UnderBarrow. The light is going and the sun will set before long,” he said, glancing around.
Absently, I nodded, my thoughts still on the approaching storm. Yes, there was something off about it, and if Hecate had taught me one thing, it was to pay attention to my intuition. But unable to suss out what was amiss, I finally let out a sigh and shook my head.
“Right. Let’s head back, then.” I turned to follow him back to the horses. Captain, my horse, was a Theosian as well. Only he was trapped in his horse form when he was on land. I had met him in his form as Captain Varga, when he had owned a ship. He was bound to Poseidon, as I was to Hecate, and when he was on a boat, he could take human form. But the moment he touched solid ground, he turned into a beautiful white stallion.
After the second World Shift, Varga had opted to live in his horse form rather than risk life on the open ocean with so many unknowns. We had become good friends, and at least once every couple of weeks we ventured out on Reflection Lake on a raft specifically made to hold a horse, where he would shift into human form and we would talk about everything and anything.
I swung my leg over his back, settling into the saddle, and Captain turned to follow Zed as we rode east along the trail to Willow Wood. The trails were navigable for the most part, and we did our best to keep them that way. But even though we had done our best to clear out the dangerous plants, it was best to stick to the paths when traveling. Wandering Ivy and Honey Sickles grew thick around here. Carnivorous plants were well-adapted to this area, and it was all too easy to wander into a patch, not realizing it until it was too late and you became so much plant food.
As we approached the village, we arrived just in time to witness the early evening bustle. Shoppers hurried from one store to another to finish their tasks before the shops closed, and the Market Faire was shutting down for the day, the vendors packing it in to go home for supper. The lights marking the street intersections were coming on. Generally, the illumination would last until midnight, powered by the spells of UnderBarrow’s techno-mages. While we couldn’t produce power for the entire village, we had managed to generate enough to provide lighting on the main streets and lights for the Healers Hall.
Willow Wood had expanded from the tight little knot of survivors who had founded it and was now a thriving community of over eight hundred people, not counting the five or six hundred living in UnderBarrow itself.
The first year, we had started with a population of about two hundred who had managed to make their way out of the devastation that had been Seattle. Where the rest of the survivors went, we had no clue, but we had settled in here, on the shores of Reflection Lake. Tam moved UnderBarrow here, and we did our best to create a welcoming but orderly community. Over the years, others had found their way through the sprawling wilderness to join us.
There had been plenty of rubble with which to build new houses, and plenty of groundwater to establish the wells we needed. The first few years, we had sent raiding parties to Seattle to plunder whatever we could find in order to strengthen our position, but now we seldom went to the dead city. There were too many zombies, too many ghosts haunting the ruins, and the dangers outweighed the prospect of what we might gain. Most of the agroline was gone, and with its demise, the cars we had once used were nothing more than rusted heaps of metal, abandoned on what was left of the roadways.
As Zed and I passed the school, the children began to file out. During the late spring and summer, they helped out in the fields like everyone else. But during late autumn and winter, they spent full days in school as the teachers crammed all the knowledge they could into them.
As soon as they saw me, the children stopped, coming to attention along with their teachers. In a wave, they knelt as I passed by.
I had gotten used to the attention, and had finally, at Tam’s urging, accepted it as my right.
“You’ll never be a proper queen unless you willingly take on the mantle of leadership, my love,” he had said when I protested that it felt odd and uncomfortable. “You accepted marriage into the Court of UnderBarrow. Now, you must accept the responsibilities that go with it.”
And I had come to terms with those duties and responsibilities, as I realized that he was correct—I had married not just my lover, but a throne and a crown.
One of the littlest girls looked up, her eyes wide, and she broke formation by waving at me. As her teacher reached for her shoulder, I lifted my hand and waved back. The teacher hesitated, then simply nodded at me with a smile.
Zed and I passed through the rest of the village and then turned south onto the path leading toward UnderBarrow proper. Another fifteen minutes saw us to the walls of UnderBarrow just as the clouds broke and rain began to pound down. I slipped off Captain and patted his muzzle, and my private stable hand took him away.
Zed opened the door for me. We were home.
“DID YOU FIGURE out what’s been troubling you?” Tam asked as I stripped off my wet clothes, trading them for a pair of dry leather shorts, a V-neck long-sleeved tank, and a sweater that Patrice, my lady’s maid, brought me. She gathered up my wet clothes and dropped them into the laundry basket, then held up my brush and waited silently by my vanity.
I slid on my shorts and the tank, tucking the hem into the shorts before I threaded a leather belt through the loops. Not quite the costume of a queen, but then again, we didn’t live in a story-book world where the queens sat like china dolls on their thrones while the brave knights went out to slay dragons.
“No, though I could feel the uneasiness even stronger while I was out there. Whatever’s on the horizon seems to be coming in with the storms, but I couldn’t get a good bead on it. I’ll talk to Hecate tomorrow about it. I’m supposed to meet her after breakfast.” I paused. “By the way, the gleaners have almost picked the fields clean. I think in a couple days we should be able to turn them under for the year.”
I pulled the sweater over my head, welcoming the warmth. UnderBarrow was always on the cool side, especially as summer moved into autumn when the temperature of the days still fluctuated. But it was nearly time to start lighting the hearthfire in our quarters.
Tam came up behind me, circling my waist with his arms as he leaned down to nuzzle my neck. He was King of UnderBarrow, and king of my heart, as well. Tall and lithe, he moved in a sinuous dance, his gestures as graceful and smooth as his voice. His hair fell in a tangle of curls to his waist, and he held it smoothed back from his face with a silver barrette. His eyes were silver, ringed with black, and he was muscled but taut and firm. His lips bowed in a way that made me want to kiss him every time I looked at him. We had been together almost nine years, and each day, I thanked the gods he was in my life.
He kissed my ear, then whispered, “I want you.”
“I want you, too,” I said. “But I want to take my time with you, and we’re supposed to meet the others in less than twenty minutes.”
I glanced at the clock. It was set to run on out-world time, not UnderBarrow time. It helped me keep track of my days better. The Bonny Fae had a natural affinity for knowing how much time had passed—both outside their realm
and within it. But I was Theosian—a minor goddess—and I didn’t have that internal sensor.
“All right. But later, you’re mine and all mine,” Tam said, spinning me in his arms. He pressed his lips to mine, and all thoughts of time and Abominations and dinner went out the window as I melted into his kiss. His lips were warm, sensuous against mine, and it felt like he was trying to drink me up, dive deep into my soul and become one with me.
As he let go, I came up for air, gasping. “Damn, you don’t give a girl a chance, do you?”
He smiled, the corners of his lips tilting up. “When it comes to you, no. I don’t ever want you to regret marrying me, Fury.”
I sat down at the vanity. Patrice was smiling, but she said nothing. The ideal lady’s maid, she knew how to keep from intruding on private moments, all the time being there whenever I needed her. Now, she began to brush out my hair, toweling it dry and then braiding it back.
I watched in the mirror as she smoothed the wayward curls. My hair was black, with crimson flames running through it. My eyes were dark brown—coffee straight up, please. I touched up my makeup when she finished braiding my hair, then she carefully placed my circlet around my head, affixing it snuggly. I wore it when I wasn’t in the throne room, saving my “fancy” crown for official gatherings and functions.
I sat back, eyeing myself. “Thanks, Patrice.”
“What shoes do you want, milady?”
“I think the Umbiargo ankle boots. They’re comfortable and warm.” I waited till she brought them, then held out my feet for her to put them on me. I had learned to accept her help, because it was her job and she was glad to have it, so I quit fidgeting a long time back.