By a Silver Thread (DFZ Changeling Book 1), page 36
In keeping with their master’s samurai kick, these low creatures looked like little Japanese soot spirits. The black poofs bopped and floated like ash thrown up by a fire, but they didn’t leave any marks on the crisp white sheets as they moved the pillows and the giant comforter out of the way so Lola could lay her sister on the bed.
She did so with great care, placing the woman’s sleeping body on the mattress as if she were a piece of dandelion fluff. Her sister gave a little sigh as Lola let her go but otherwise showed no sign that she was aware of what was going on. Her face was no longer twitching from the nightmare, though, and the thread around her wrist shone as bright as the one around Lola’s, which seemed like a good sign.
“Do you know how long it takes people stolen by fairies to wake up?” she asked Tristan as she pulled the comforter over her sister’s shoulders.
“Depends on how long they’ve been asleep,” he replied, walking over to peer curiously at the human. “Most fairies who steal children either eat them or send them back to their parents within a few months, but...”
“But she’s been like this for twenty-seven years,” Lola finished, reaching down to squeeze her sister’s hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “You were always there for me. I’ll always be here for you. As long as you need, as long as it takes, I’ll keep you safe until you wake up.”
It could have been wishful thinking, but Lola swore her sister’s mouth twitched at that. She grinned right back, grabbing a padded chair from the corner and dragging it over so she could sit at her sister’s side. When she was comfortable, she looked up at Tristan.
“So how much is the hotel treatment going to cost me?”
It was bound to be astronomical. Even if she was the one who’d brought back his queen, that had been part of the deal between her and Morgan. Fairies didn’t let technicalities like that slide, and Tristan had just saved her life. That put her dangerously deep in his debt. But to Lola’s great surprise, Tristan shook his head.
“The price has already been paid,” he said, giving her a sad smile. “I have not dealt fairly with you, Lola-cat. I promised I would help you, but I have been sorry assistance indeed. Another time, I’d have said saving you from the blood mage’s black knight balances our scales, but I was recently reminded of the stain of oath-breaking, and with the return of my queen, I am in a generous mood.”
He flashed her a dazzling smile as he waved his hand at the bedroom with its gorgeous mountain view. “You and your sister are now my guests. My home is yours for so long as you wish to keep it.”
By the time he finished, Lola was dangerously close to tears. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d needed somewhere she could feel safe until Tristan offered it.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
The fairy wagged his finger at her. “That’s a dangerous word, Lola-cat. Have I taught you nothing?”
Lola shook her head, but she didn’t take the words back. She just scooted her chair closer to her sister. When she was settled, the knight gave a little bow and left, closing the door softly behind him.
Alone at last, Lola brought her legs up so she could sit cross-legged in the big chair and watch her sister sleep. It wasn’t quite the happy, rain-soaked cabin she’d dreamed about the last time she was in Tristan’s barrow, but she still felt peace falling over her like a blanket. Her sister must have felt it, too, because the silver thread on Lola’s wrist was quiet as a sleeping child, its glittering length moving only with the rise and fall of her sister’s deep, slow breaths. Lola was shifting her own breathing to match when something inside her began to vibrate.
The sensation made her jump. Her magic had been rock solid since Victor’s blood had drained out, but it wasn’t her gossamer that was shaking. It was Simon’s phone, which was somehow still in her pocket.
How she’d held onto it through so many changes, Lola had no idea, but she’d never been so happy to take a call. She leaped on the buzzing device, sliding her fingers through the unlock sequence so fast, she had to do it three times before it was actually accepted. When the screen finally came up, though, it wasn’t a call from Simon or Valente or anyone else she cared about. It was a news alert.
Lola almost didn’t click it. She doubted there was any news she wanted to hear right now, and she was loath to surrender the peace she’d just found. There weren’t any other notifications on the screen, though, and this was Simon’s private phone. Maybe he was trying to send her a message?
That was the only reason Lola touched it. When she tapped her finger against the screen, the alert spawned a floating video in her AR that began playing immediately, dumping Lola into the middle of what looked like a live interview between Chloe Spark, one of the DFZ’s biggest media personalities and Victor’s long-term client, and a man listed only as The Hero.
He looked so different from the furious tyrant screaming at her from the back of the Black Rider’s bike that it took Lola several moments to recognize her former master. He was covered in more illusions than she’d ever seen. He’d even found the golden sword she’d tossed away. He sat with it glittering in his lap, making sure the shining blade caught the TV lights as he listened intently to Chloe’s fawning softball question.
“…obvious every survivor in the city owes you their lives,” she was saying in her concerned-interviewer voice. “Tell us, Mr. Conrath, how did you get Fenrir to retreat like that?”
“It was the only way,” Victor replied in the Hero’s compassionate voice. “When I saw the damage our fight was doing to the city, I knew I had to find a less destructive path to victory, so I used my magic to invade the monster’s mind and force it to retreat.”
The whole studio burst into applause at this stroke of brilliance. Meanwhile, Lola’s hands tightened so hard on the phone, the metal case started to creak.
“Tell us more about your magic,” Chloe pleaded. “There are many who’d call what you do ‘blood magic,’ but that didn’t look like anything so awful to me.”
“It’s not,” Victor said, turning to speak directly into the camera. “I did nothing but use the magic I was born with. Those in power have always feared our true strength, calling it ‘blood magic’ and ‘mind control’ and other names designed to frighten people away from their full potential. But there can’t be anything inherently evil about a power every human has. All magic can be misused, but if I hadn’t defied the laws designed to keep us weak, I never could have saved the city. My ‘blood magic’ is the only effective weapon against monsters like Fenrir. It’s not evil or dirty or shameful. It’s our power—humanity’s true magic!—and it’s one we must all master if we’re to survive what’s coming.”
“And what is that?” Chloe asked, not even trying to pretend that question wasn’t staged.
The cameras zoomed in on Victor as he leaned forward.
“War,” he whispered, his magically enhanced face so bluntly concerned for the safety of all humanity that it made Lola gag. “Horrible as it was, the Fenrir Disaster was merely a distraction, a horrifying diversion to keep us from seeing the main attack. The truth is, we are already in the midst of a full-scale invasion by the fae, parasitic hunters who feed on humanity’s fear. I’m sure you’ve already heard the reports of riders flying through the skies all over the world. They’re not hallucinations or Halloween trickery. That’s the real Wild Hunt. It’s come back to haunt us just as it did a thousand years ago, and all of humanity will be its prey if we do not arm ourselves.”
“With blood magic?”
“With our magic,” Victor said fiercely, never taking his eyes off the camera. “This is humanity’s moment to rise above our petty differences. I’ve already made progress on this front. In gratitude for saving her city, the DFZ has agreed to lift her ban on blood magic. She recognizes that this power is our right, and that it has been kept from us for far too long.”
He held out his hand to the camera.
“I speak now to every mage in the world,” he said in a ringing voice. “If you want to embrace your true potential, if you want to fight back, then come to the DFZ, and I will teach you. No longer must we live in the shadows and be hunted by self-righteous Paladins. This is the moment we stop being prey and take back our world from the monsters that have stolen it from us!”
The studio audience burst into its wildest applause yet. Chloe was actually crying, begging Victor to show them some of his magic on air. He graciously agreed, holding up his long-fingered hands. He was just starting to explain a technique Lola remembered him beating into Simon back when they were kids when she turned off the video.
She sat hunched on her chair in the silent room for a long time after that, shaking with a fury that wouldn’t go away. How dare he? How dare he steal her triumph and turn it into that… that lie! She wanted to say she couldn’t believe it, but the problem was that she believed too well. Of course Victor had figured out a way to spin his defeat into a victory. Her master never lost. He—
Lola stopped herself right there. He wasn’t her master anymore. He was just a liar. A selfish con artist who’d exploited a frightened girl too desperate for salvation to realize he wasn’t the hero he pretended to be. Now he was pulling the same trick on the rest of the world, using the disaster he’d created to trick everyone into believing his abusive power was the only solution to the Wild Hunt he’d unleashed. He didn’t care about the damage he caused or the lives lost. All he cared about was doing his bloody magic out in the open with no one to stop him.
“We won’t let it happen,” she whispered, clutching her sister’s hand. “We’ll stop him. Him and Alberich. We won’t let them do to anyone else what they did to us.”
Even as she said it, the old hopelessness rose up inside her like a viper, whispering that she was stupid. She couldn’t beat Victor. He was the miracle worker, the master of monsters. Even Simon hadn’t been able to escape him in the end. What hope did she have?
The old refrain was swirling through her like poison when Lola stomped it down. She wasn’t his scared little monster anymore. She was her own master now, and if Victor thought he could lie and say he’d won just because she’d chosen not to play his game, he had another think coming.
“We’ll beat him,” she promised, wrapping both hands around her sister’s limp fingers. “We’ll beat them both and take it back, Valente and Simon and everything else they’ve stolen from us! We’ll show the world what Victor really is, and then we’ll see who they call monster.”
She was still shaking from the fury of the promise when Lola felt her sister squeeze her hand.
Not ready for the story to be over? Get ready for…
DFZ Changeling Book 2
That’s right! The second book in Lola’s story is already written and comes out on October 2, 2023, but you can read an exclusive sample right now! Flip to the next page to get started, and don’t forget to preorder your copy so you can have the book delivered to your Kindle the moment it’s available!
As always, thank you for reading! If you enjoyed By a Silver Thread, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Reviews, good or bad, are vital to every author’s career, and I would be extremely grateful if you’d consider writing one for me.
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Now, on to the sample of With a Golden Sword.
With a Golden Sword -- Chapter 1
“Lola Daniels!”
The lady at the vet counter bellowed the name over the din. The office had only just reopened after the Fenrir disaster, and the temporary waiting room was packed with people frantically demanding their pets. Their shouts echoed chaotically off the makeshift metal walls, but all that noise stopped when the woman stepped forward.
She looked like a doll come to life. Her waist-length blond hair was huge, thick, and shiny as glass. It fell in bold ringlets down her back, a stark contrast to her white lace dress, which looked as soft and delicate as a freshly fallen snowflake. Her rounded cheeks were as pink as peonies, and her blue eyes were so sparkly they literally shone in her heart-shaped face. She walked to the vet counter as regally as a princess, flashing a heartbreaking smile at the awestruck assistant holding the cat carrier.
“Is that my sweet kitten?”
The woman nodded, her freckled face red as a tomato as she handed over the meowing crate. She was flusteredly attempting to prepare the release paperwork when the dazzling beauty strode out the door, leaving the entire office gaping in her wake.
Like most DFZ businesses these days, the vet was operating out of a temporary trailer on the campus of Algonquin Tech, the biggest of the DFZ’s three magical universities and one of the only places Fenrir hadn’t stepped on. The rest of the city was still under frantic reconstruction, the elevated highways writhing like a nest of snakes as the Spirit of the DFZ raced to put herself back together.
Since the near-total destruction of a city spirit was a once-in-a-lifetime event, magical researchers had come from all over the world to watch. They took turns observing the rising buildings from a spindly construction platform at the edge of the safe zone. The beautiful girl strolled right beneath them, swinging the furiously meowing cat carrier like a picnic basket as she made her way toward a gap in the fence that was supposed to keep civilians out of the reconstruction area. She was only a few feet away when a ghostly blue light lit up the shadows beneath the academics’ observation deck.
The unspeakably beautiful girl turned around with a sigh, placing a perfectly manicured hand on her delicate hip. “You’re stalking cats now?” she asked in Tristan’s mocking voice. “That’s a new low.”
The blue light flickered as the man got off his silent all-black motorcycle, the mirrored visor of his helmet reflecting the beautiful girl’s scowl back at her as he held up a small spiral-bound notebook.
I knew she wouldn’t abandon Buster.
“Yes, well, that’s not your business anymore, is it?” Tristan said, tucking the meowing carrier under the princess body’s slender arm. This freed his hand for the sword that appeared a second later, its blade shining like silver lightning in the dark.
The Rider scrambled when he saw it, writing furiously on the pad with his nubbin of golf pencil.
I’m not here to fight!
“I find that highly doubtful,” the fairy replied, lifting his sword until the point was level with the Rider’s mirrored visor. “You’ve already shown where your loyalties lie. Not that there was any doubt, but even so…” The sword flicked down to the Rider’s leather collar. “The blood mage was a fool to send you to face me without your head.”
Victor doesn’t know I’m here, the Rider wrote. I came by myself.
Tristan rolled the girl’s jewel-like eyes. “Oh, please. You’re a dog on his leash. You can’t go anywhere without his knowledge.”
He’s busy right now, the Rider insisted, his handwriting growing desperate. I’m not here to cause more trouble. I just wanted to tell her I was sorry.
“What does that matter?” Tristan asked in a cold voice. “I warned you the day I taught you the knighthood oaths that you’d regret swearing yourself to that man. You made this bed knowing full well what it was. You don’t get to be sorry now that it’s time to lie in it.”
I can trade, the Rider promised. I wrote a letter. If you could just pass it on to her for me, I’ll tell you what Victor is doing.
Tristan’s pink lips curled in a sneer. “Such a terrible knight, spilling his master’s secrets. But while I appreciate your willingness to betray the blood mage, you have nothing to offer. Everyone already knows what Victor is doing.”
He vanished his sword to point a slender finger over the Rider’s shoulder, and the helmeted knight turned sullenly to face the billboard that loomed over the evacuation camp like a cliff. It was impossible to miss: a dazzling, twenty-foot-tall AR-enhanced advertisement depicting the Victor the Hero pointing his golden sword directly at the viewer, daring them to “Avenge your city! Join the Hero’s Army today!”
“I’m afraid your master’s already given away the goods,” Tristan said, moving Buster’s crate back to the girl’s delicate hand. “But don’t worry. I won’t tell Lola I saw you.”
The Rider’s shoulders slumped as the lovely girl blew him a kiss and ducked through the hole in the fence, vanishing down the road that only fairies could see.
***
Back in the guest room at Tristan’s barrow, the real Lola was where she always was these days: sitting at her sister’s bedside with a worried look on her face.
It had been three weeks since they’d escaped Fenrir’s vessel at the bottom of the Sea of Magic, and her sister still hadn’t woken up. Tristan and Morgan kept telling her it would happen in its own time, but they were fairies who’d been alive for who knew how long. “In its own time” could mean centuries to them, by which point her mortal sister would be dust.
“Come on,” Lola whispered encouragingly, brushing the dark hair away from the sleeping girl’s forehead. “Just open your eyes. You can do it.”
She reached out with her magic as she spoke, probing for the dream that would take her into her sister’s mind. The connection had happened so easily back in the Sea of Magic, but all she got now was a big fat nothing.
Lola pulled her hand back with a sigh. Aside from that first hand squeeze right after she’d brought her into Tristan’s barrow, her sister hadn’t moved since she’d arrived. She didn’t twitch, didn’t blink, didn’t react to stimuli. She didn’t eat, either, or pee or get bedsores or any of the other things you’d expect from someone in a coma. If her chest hadn’t been rising and falling with her breaths, Lola wouldn’t have said she was alive at all.
