Excerpt: The Faery Heart

This is the first time my main characters meet.

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As he reached the place where the stream fed into the lake, he noted without surprise that the poles were gone. Shaking his head, he continued on to his camp. He moved quietly, as he’d been trained from infancy. So quietly, in fact, that the prowler in his camp was unaware of his presence.

Eyes focused on her, he did not see the twig that his foot came down on. It was a quiet sound, but just enough to warn her. Dropping the wood she’d been laying beside his fire pit, she whirled around with a gasp.

Simon had only a brief glimpse of wide, startled, amethyst eyes before she vanished.

“No! Wait!”

Dropping the fish he took a step forward. “Come back, please.”

A flash of colour caught his eye. She reappeared on the other side of the stream, poised, as though for flight.

It was the woman from his dream, he would swear it was. She was tall and slender, almost ethereal. She was dressed in a brief shift of gossamer fabric that shimmered with colour, enhancing her generous curves. Long dark hair cascaded down her back and poking up through it were two slender, pointed ears. Her skin was luminously pale and she heart-breakingly beautiful.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said. He took another step forward. “Are you the one who left me the fruit?”

Hesitantly, she nodded.

“Thank you, it was delicious.”

They stared at each other silently. For the first time in his life, Simon found himself tongue-tied. He knew he should say something, anything, but all he seemed to be able to do was stare.

She was real, she was flesh and blood, not a dream, and she was standing only a few yards away. What did one say to a dream made flesh?

What was the matter with him? He wasn’t usually this inept with women, in fact, it was usually just the opposite. But she was so incredibly beautiful, her very existence made him feel like a tongue-tied school boy.

He wanted to touch her, to taste her lips to see if they were as sweet as they were in his dream. He wanted to strip her bare and worship at the altar of her body. He wanted to do all manner of wicked thing to her and when he was done he wanted her to do them back to him.

Something of what he was feeling must have shown in his eyes because he took one more step forward and she suddenly disappeared again.

“Wait, come back!” he called. “I don’t even know your name.”

A voice like bells drifted back to him. “Arianna.”

“Arianna.” He rolled the name around on his tongue. It was perfect, just like her.