A Flash of Silver: A slow burn sci fi fantasy reverse harem series, page 1
A Flash of Silver
Anam Cara
Book One
Silk Aubrey
A Flash of Silver: Anam Cara Book One Copyright © 2024 Silk Aubrey
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art: dreams2media
Editor: Ezra O’Neil
www.scarsdalepublishing.com
Trademark Acknowledgements
Kevlar
Prologue
Kinnia
I sprinted toward the jagged, silver rift a hundred feet ahead, ignoring the whir of machines gaining on me. The sword strapped to my hip smacked against my burning legs with every stride. Earth’s barren landscape blurred past in monochromatic grays. I focused on the glimpse of color between the edges of the rift’s tear in reality.
Thrae, my home, my only hope, shone through that tiny gap in the hellhole I’d been trapped in for almost five years. I gathered the last of my waning energy and forced speed into my legs. I had to get through the rift.
The sound of my frantic footfalls disappeared beneath the blanket of beeping and hydraulics that chased me with automated grace. Tech, terrifying nightmares of metal, cables, and parts I couldn’t name, raced after me. They could be killed, but for each one destroyed, two more took their place. Something our doomed party hadn’t understood until too late. We’d been so naïve. I destroyed everything I loved, everyone I loved, and—
I needed to keep running.
Hope and terror fueled my leap through the vertical opening, barely wider than my body. The burning edges crackled against my skin. I landed face-first on the ground. Rich soil filled my nose. The sounds of birds and life almost deafened me. Tears of joy stung my chapped face as I dug my fingers into the rich dirt.
Home.
The dead and drained world of horrors abandoned by the humans that once ruled it lay behind me. I trembled as relief mixed with the adrenaline still pumping through my veins. Leaves crunched. I whipped my head toward the sound. A dizzying mixture of hot oranges, bright pinks, and rich golds swam into focus. I had landed in a forest, and such brilliant colors only existed in fae territory.
“What in Fire?” a man blurted.
My heart ached. It had been so long since I’d heard a voice other than my own, but I hadn’t survived this long by letting my guard down. I shoved up into a crouch and grasped my sword’s hilt. The rift hung open behind me, its edges burning into the thick bark of an orange-colored tree. Hydraulics hissed out.
I could taste freedom. Not even the fae could stop me now.
“Some…one came out of the rift,” the same man said.
I scanned the vivid forest for the speaker.
A new, deeper male voice rumbled out of the trees. “Nothing good comes out of rifts.”
My patchwork suit of Kevlar and metal glinted in the bright sunlight. My pale skin had gotten so dry and dirty it looked more like scales. Tech didn’t have hair, and I kept mine so short, the breeze chilled my scalp. I looked nothing like the girl I’d been when I got trapped on Earth five years ago. I looked like the monsters I’d just escaped.
Two large men stepped around trees and into view. Not men, fae. The shorter one, bald and muscular, barely reached my six feet. Pale scars, purple and white scales, and navy tattoos stretched across his almost lilac-colored chest. He wore only brown pants and boots. Instead of eyebrows, he had more of those swirling blue tattoos, and his ears fanned into five delicate, deeper purple points.
“Someone close the Fire-damned rift.” The other, about my height, slid into a fighting stance and lifted his lanky arms. His palms glowed with a fire that built until even his slit-pupiled eyes burned molten gold. “Zel!”
He wore one side of his hair shaved to the skull like mine, but the other glistened with fiery gold locks down to his chin. His brown pants matched his partner’s, though a simple cream tunic covered his chest.
I rose to standing and drew the sword I’d found in a partially collapsed building a few weeks after I escaped the first lab. A metal plaque next to its case had read, “Katana.” The word meant nothing, but I’d committed it to memory anyway.
Hydraulics hissed from the rift, much closer now.
“Zelimir!” The golden one’s gaze flickered between the rift, seconds away from pouring Tech into Thrae, and me.
The shirtless fae stalked forward. His gaze bore into me as he reached for the sheath on this back and withdrew a massive, bright red axe with black veins on its surface.
My heart leapt to my throat. I reached for my energy but found only hollowness. I’d used the last of it to get to through the rift. The well of power that existed beneath my skin buzzed as the reservoir refilled, but I didn’t yet have enough for any fancy tricks.
The shirtless fae stepped toward me. My dry scream cut through the roar of near-overwhelming hydraulics, and I charged just as a silver leg emerged from the rift and buried itself in the ground.
He cursed and dove out of my way. A third fae appeared at the edge of my vision. I veered to the right and focused on not tripping on the rocky forest floor. The fae wilds occupied the southern lands, and human territory, the north.
I could only run.
Chapter One
Kinnia
I shifted the pack on my back and rested my hand on the hilt of my katana. The blade bumped my quiver, both belted to my left side to balance the array of weapons I’d accumulated in the nearly two and a half years since I’d jumped through that rift into the fae wilds.
Tweek, Grant, Tommy, and I walked in loose formation around the cart in the merchant caravan we’d been contracted to guard. The rumbling wheels had become background noise long ago. Colorful goods strapped in place by even more colorful ancient bungee cords lay hidden under layers of dirty canvas. Merchant carts stretched before and behind us as we plodded ever southward.
The cloth I tied around my mouth and nose to keep from breathing in the dust kicked up by the teams of horses and oxen had shifted downward once again on my sweat-soaked face, and I tugged it back up.
Grant spit a wad of phlegm onto the dry, cracked ground. I dodged around the greenish patch with practiced ease.
“What? Hour left ’til the Cross Roads?” His voice crumbled like the dirt underfoot.
I shrugged. A sour smell filled the air. Another of the short man’s farts.
Our destination, a human town that dared survive on the edge of the fae wilds, spawned rumors all the way in the far north, where I’d spent most of the last two and a half years. No other human settlement had so many fae visitors. I didn’t really want to come face-to-face with any fae, but everyone talked about what their presence did to the architecture and customs. Being a mercenary allowed me to see unique places often enough to keep me satisfied, and I doubted anywhere was more unique than the Cross Roads.
I rubbed the dusty leather covering my stomach and tried to steady myself. I hadn’t traveled back to the edge of the wilds to sightsee. As it had every day for the last few months, a small ball of tension like I’d eaten something my stomach refused to digest urged me ever south. I flexed my hand. Energy trickled into my muscles like a cool river of power, then away again. Completely different from the ball.
Tweek twitched and scratched his elbow. “Can’t be more than an hour.” The thin man stood an inch below my six feet and, like all the mercenaries I’d met over the last few years, he wore a ragged mix of leather, chain, and ancient nylon. I didn’t touch old-Earth materials, though, and chain only weighed me down, so I'd pinched and saved until I could piece together fully leather armor.
Tommy scoffed.
Grant spit again. “Fuk’n guard duty. Fuk’n Cross Roads. Any insight for us, Dick?”
They all called me Dick, though I’d introduced myself as Declan, since our first night together ended with me breaking Tweek’s nose a few weeks ago. I snorted and returned my hand to my sword. The men were crass and blunt, but they didn’t ask much of me. After a couple nights of drinking, I took them up on their offer to join their crew for this job.
“Yeah, ya fuckin’ know-it-all.” Tommy sneered. “Any insights?”
He had the straightest nose of any of us but me, which he brought up often, and his paranoid streak stretched a mile wide.
“First time I’ve been here.” I shrugged. Not really a lie. Two and a half years ago, the Cross Roads had gone by in a blur.
I adjusted my cuirass. Looking the part of a man came easily. I had broad enough shoulders, well-defined muscles, and the stance of a swordsman. My hands were calloused and rough from use. My flop of black curls obscured enough of my face, and my relatively small breasts looked flat enough under my cinched leather cuirass that I rarely even had to bind them. A pretty man, maybe, but still male. Men tended to be faster and stronger than women, so when I tapped int
I glanced at Tommy to see his narrowed eyes locked on me. The stone sent a curl of fear up my spine. Had he detected my fib about the Cross Roads? No, the stone was just making me nervous.
Once again, I tried to press my energy into the heavy lump in my gut. Like oil and water, the two didn’t mix. Energy poured back into my body, and I shivered. The stone couldn’t be caused by something natural. Couldn’t be my energy. I’d known for some time now that could only mean one thing. Magic. But magic only came from fae. Despite centuries on Thrae, humans never had any.
“Freak,” my last foster parents had said when they kicked me out. “No magic in this house.”
I touched my bow, nestled in two pieces on my opposite hip, followed by the sheath of one of the two daggers I kept strapped to the outside of my thigh. Their familiarity grounded me in the present. The stone hadn’t hurt me. It didn’t keep me from eating or affect my life at all. It simply drew me south. Toward magic. Toward fae.
I hadn’t followed the magic on purpose. I hadn’t followed it at all. But by chance or fate, the best jobs over the past few months had meandered steadily south. Now, the mountain pass that protected human lands lay behind us. Rocky, barren plains stretched to the east, but my gaze always drifted south. The fae wilds loomed closer with every step.
Memories of bright colors and creatures I had no name for sped through my mind in a haze of horror and hope, but as always, horror surged forward. The landscape around me turned gray, and I envisioned the ground littered with machined metal and splotches of blood. My hands shook. The scent of sweat and livestock filled my nose. Thrae, I was on Thrae, not Earth.
“Firs’ time Dick?” Grant laughed. “Yo’v got th’look of yuth a’out you.”
Tommy cackled. “Can you even piss standing up yet?”
I seized onto his words like an anchor in the storm, and the memories vanished. I shrugged, and he laughed again. I didn’t know my exact age, but I’d guess mid-twenties. Like pretending to be a man, when people assumed young, they gave me less thought.
Tweek scratched his nose and grinned. “Bet ya never been with a woman, neither.”
The three of them laughed, and I joined in at their expense. The air pressure abruptly dropped. Someone yelled at the back of the caravan, and I whirled toward the sound. Two signal flares exploded in the air behind us. Trouble.
Grant grunted, “Get run’n.”
I dropped my pack and sprinted down the line of wagons with Tweek at my side. Grant and Tommy would hold position at our wagon.
“What the fuck?” a man shouted.
The hiss of hydraulics set my heart to a wild rhythm. No. Rifts didn’t appear outside the wilds. I skidded to a stop at the end of the caravan. The scouts might not recognize the shimmering split in reality that lay thirty feet ahead, but I’d never forget the silver of a rift.
I leapt atop the last cart with the other archers, unhooked my bow from my hip, and snapped it into a single piece. Metallic EarthTech glinted in the hot sun as the first silver, multi-hinged leg stepped through and onto Thraen soil. All the mercs would die if I didn’t teach them how to fight these machines.
Five more legs reached through the rift and pulled the eight-foot-tall Tech from Earth into Thrae. A bleached, armless human torso with black cables intertwined and plugged into what would have been its hips and stomach bounced as it burst into a run with inhuman speed. Its vaguely human face gave way to a clear plastic dome that housed its pulsing brain. Oddly angled silvery arms with sharp claws jutted out of its back. A SpiderTech.
And two more behind it.
Hatred churned in my stomach. “Aim for the eyes!”
I grabbed an arrow from the quiver at my hip, nocked it, drew back my bowstring, and loosed. My arrow sliced through the monstrosity’s eye and lodged in its brain. The Tech faltered, then stumbled to its knees.
Other archers followed my lead. On the ground, mercenaries with swords drawn charged the SpiderTechs. Human screams soon mixed with the clash of metal. I shot my second arrow into the lead Tech’s other eye. Not dead until you smell oil. Sparks flew as it collapsed into a pile of metal.
Rancid oil assaulted my nose. My hands shook as I reached for another arrow. I gritted my teeth. They were in my world now. Another SpiderTech knocked over a group of mercenaries. I took aim and loosed another arrow. The Tech lurched to the side, and my arrow went wide.
The rift remained still as death, but no more abominations emerged. I grabbed another arrow. Draw, aim, breathe, release. Pods of fighters surrounded the remaining monstrosities and kept them from the wagons. A few mercs had discovered the weakness of the cables, but only the Tech brought down by arrows stayed down.
Three figures on horseback burst from the line of trees at the edge of fae territory. Fae guards, the only ones who could close rifts. About time. We were fortunate only the pack of SpiderTech had been near enough to come through.
The stone in my gut hummed. I grabbed for another arrow but found my quiver empty. Shit. I unstrung my bow, holstered it, and leapt to the ground.
“Cables!” I hollered. “Climb the bastards—aim for eyes and brains.”
Sparking cables dangled from the barely functional body of the nearest SpiderTech. I dodged between its skittering legs, then swung up onto its back and grabbed its cold, human torso. The monster’s head whirred as it spun to try to get a visual on me. I yanked one of my daggers from its sheath and drove the blade into the SpiderTech’s brain, just above the glittering metal plate bearing its designation. Oil coated my arm, and the thing shuddered.
I dove off and rolled. One to go. Against my better instincts, I sheathed the knife still covered in oil, drew my katana, and charged the remaining machine. I threw myself across the ground and skidded between two metallic legs with my katana stretched up over my head. The blade sliced through the underside of the SpiderTech. Oil sprayed down on me, and I struggled not to choke. I twirled and hacked into the seam that joined legs to body. Two legs thudded to the ground. The thing groaned as it fought to stay upright.
My fellow mercenaries roared. They’d managed to stretch a length of rope out in front of the Tech and surged forward as it wobbled. The rope hit the thing’s remaining joints and swiped its legs out from beneath it.
I dove to the side and under the rope as the Tech crashed to the ground, then rolled to my feet. Mercenaries sank blades into the monster’s head until only a pulp of oil, gears, and gray matter decorated the dry ground. Tense silence replaced the clash of metal and the buzz of electronics. Tech and mercenary bodies littered the ground.
The three fae now stood in front of the rift. One watched the battlefield with his arms crossed, while the other two faced the shimmering crack in reality, their backs to me. The slimmer one leapt atop the other’s shoulders. The sun glinted off the golden, almost fire-colored hair on one side of his head.
The bare, broad shoulders of the fae on the bottom dented slightly with the weight of his friend as the one atop began tracing large, colorful fae letters across the rift’s opening. My gaze caught where his tapered waist disappeared into his beltline, and I yanked my attention upward to the delicate, fanned ears jutting out from each side of his head fluttering in the wind. Warmth gathered in my gut. Navy tattoos kissed along his sculpted, lilac-colored back, ran across his shoulders, and swirled down his spine. Recognition tugged at my memory. Then, I realized why.
Could they be the same fae who chased me out of the wilds? The slim one continued to write fae letters in the air, and my arms pebbled with goose bumps. I frowned. His movements increased in grace and speed. The fae he stood on grabbed his ankles, purple biceps flexing. A deep frown creased the brow of the fae facing me.
My breath caught as I looked at him. He had at least a foot on me, with broad shoulders that matched his stature. Small dots of moisture collected on his dark skin, and the long twists of copper hair that hung well past his shoulders were so shiny they looked metallic. He wore the same cream tunic and brown pants as his companions, but he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. The fabric strained across his pecs.
His mouth thinned to a line as he scanned the battlefield. His purple gaze met mine. My skin zinged. I took an involuntary step forward as the stone in my gut trembled. A black blur burst from the trees.
