Outcast (Book Two of the Forever Faire Series): A Fae Fantasy Romance Novel Read Free Page A

wondered if there was enough snowine in the world to keep him from thinking about Tara. With every step he felt her presence more keenly. When he stopped at his door he could swear that he even smelled the delicate fragrance of her pale skin and moonlit hair. Suspicion made him glance up and down the hall. Light spilled from an open door at the end—an unused room. He stepped silently to stand in its opening. There seemed to be a bundle of velvet on the bed. But it turned, revealing a narrow face and a tendril of pale hair.
    Despair and elation dueled in his chest. Had she come looking for him? Hadn’t she reached for him at the lake, and smiled at him by the bonfire?
    He should wake her and send her back to her sister. He knew he should. And yet when had logic ever ruled his heart? Tara was so close. Quietly he stripped off his shirt and pulled off his boots, but left his trousers on as he approached the bed. She stirred as he drew near, her pretty lips parting on a sigh as he stretched out next to her. He thought she might wake as her silvery lashes fluttered for a moment, but she only sidled up against him. Jannon moved his arm around her, and the sound she made as her cheek nestled on his shoulder made him close his own eyes. For all the trouble Tara Rowe might be, a changeling poised on the path between the light and the dark, she felt as weightless and warm as a sunbeam.
    During the few hours that followed Jannon did not sleep. He listened to her breathe, and thought of home and all that he had lost after being cast out. He had deserved nothing less for what he had done to his wife and her lover.
    Bryn had been his greatest love, and his cruelest mistake. The daughter of a neighboring clan leader, she’d tantalized him from the moment they’d met. So ensnared by her was Jannon that he refused to believe the whispers about her. When his parents had tried to withhold their blessing, he’d even threaten to end himself. Bringing her into the clan as his bride had been the happiest day of his life.
    Jannon’s clan wondered why he had been so blinded by Bryn’s wiles. Surely with all her flirtations, secretive glances, and disappearances he should have suspected something. But no, he had thought her a good and faithful wife. When he’d gone off to battle a rival clan, however, he’d been spell-wounded early, and sent home to recover. Jannon had found Bryn in their bed, slumbering naked in the arms of one of her many lovers. A moment later his power escaped him in one great, seething burst of rage, killing Bryn and her lover. It had left Jannon close to death for days.
    Such a crime called for Jannon’s life in return, but on the day slated for his execution Bryn’s clan had come forward to reveal her power over men. The seductive enchantment she had used to control Jannon had been absolute until the battle, when the enemy had torn his body shields from him. That had also damaged Bryn’s secret enthrallment spell. Once confronted with her true nature, the enchantment had backlashed on Jannon, resulting in his lethal reaction. For that his life was spared, but he was cast out of his clan and forbidden to ever join another.
    With his shattered heart Jannon had not cared about his fate after that. He no longer needed kin, or believed in love. He would likely be dead now if Ryan Sheridan had not found him drinking and fighting his way across Ireland. The master of Forever Faire had challenged Jannon to a contest of skills for an enchanted purse of gold against a hundred years of service. Knowing any manner of violence would bestir Sheridan to go berserk, Jannon had agreed, even allowing his opponent to choose the weapons and the field of play.
    The game of chess that followed had been mercifully short. Ryan had trounced him in ten moves.
    Once he had served his century of service, Jannon might have gone back to his pursuit of death by pub brawling. By then Ryan and the other men of Forever Faire had made themselves his