Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance collection, Tales from Blackthorn Briar, a sequel to Oak King Holly King featuring hurt/comfort and many happily-ever-afters – available wherever fine books are found!

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Shafts of sunlight pierced the water from the jagged hole in the ice overhead. By their illumination, Wren glimpsed a shadowy thing. It glided through the water beneath him; he knew not how many fathoms down, but not far enough. Its smooth undulating form, dappled like a leopard in shades of grey, ran some three yards long, if not longer, from head to tail. It had a maw like a hound on a skull the size of a horse’s—as long as Wren’s thigh and as broad as his shoulders. The eyes were pure black, almost human in their shape, but nothing human in the promise of cold death behind them. And as it rolled through the water, it fixed its hungry gaze on Wren.

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Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance collection, Tales from Blackthorn Briar, a sequel to Oak King Holly King featuring hurt/comfort and many happily-ever-afters – available wherever fine books are found!

~

Later, when he had a moment to reflect on the incident, Wren would realise his error. He, a mortal man, weighed some ten or eleven stone. The white hart, being ethereal, weighed nothing unless it chose to.

And in that instant, it chose for its hooves to prove as hard as adamant as it struck the ice and bounded away.

A sound like a thunderclap resounded across the lake. The crack shot across the ice from the point the hart had struck, spreading from the drinking hole and shooting between Wren’s boots. He had just time to perceive it before another noise burst the air, this one like lightning cleaving an ancient oak in twain, as the ice shattered beneath him.

Wren plunged into darkness.

Cold like a thousand knives raking his skin. Cold fit to turn his very veins to ice. Cold that burned in his bones in a way he’d never realised cold could do before. He wanted to shut his eyes against it. He couldn’t.

And a very good thing that turned out to be, for he was not alone.

~

 Amazon • Apple Books • Barnes & Noble • Kobo • Scribd • Smashwords

Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance collection, Tales from Blackthorn Briar, a sequel to Oak King Holly King featuring hurt/comfort and many happily-ever-afters – available wherever fine books are found!

~

One might say, as doubtless Dr Hitchingham would, that this was all just as much as any clerk ought to do for their employer. Ephraim might have agreed with this, were it not for how, whenever they dined at the Red Lion, Mr Hull made a point to reach the table in the back room first and draw out Ephraim’s chair for him and wait for him to settle before he seated himself. This behaviour drew even Dr Hitchingham’s notice. Ephraim didn’t mind, and supposed this must be how all clerks conducted themselves in distant lands. The thrill he felt at having an admittedly extraordinarily handsome young man perform such attentive services on his behalf, he shut away in the little lock-box in his heart and did not dwell upon.

~

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