Taste My Wrath (The Iron Fae Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Other books by Debbie Cassidy

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020, Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by Luminescence Covers

  1

  Climbing the rusted contraption that had once been a telecom tower was no easy feat. The fucking thing clanked and groaned with each step I took, but I was determined to get to the top. I needed to see what the pointy-eared wankers had been up to. How far they’d come with their secret project.

  Once, a long time ago, this tower had been a tourist attraction. There’d even been a restaurant at the top, but after the war, it’d been stripped. The windows were smashed, the lift busted, and the emergency stairs were blocked with immovable debris, but I was one determined woman. I’d found a way past it all. Admittedly, it involved clinging to the outside of the tower and climbing up that way to get past the block, but it would be worth it.

  If I looked down now, I’d see tiny buildings and narrow roads, but only idiots looked down from this height.

  I was not an idiot.

  My thick leather gloves protected my hands from the ice clinging to the metal struts as I hauled my ass up the tower. My face stung from the bite of the icy wind that blew through the scarf wrapped around it. My goggles kept fogging up. Thank fuck I knew this route by heart.

  Almost there.

  Now, why had I gone and thought that, because everyone knew that kind of thinking was a jinx, and right on cue, my foot slipped. My stomach shot up into my throat to choke me, and then a hand grasped my butt to steady me.

  “Watch your footing, dammit,” Killion chided.

  I was too busy willing my ears to not catch fire because he was touching my ass.

  “I got it.” I found my footing, and he removed his hand. Thank goodness.

  I didn’t need to look down to know that his bright blue eyes would be blazing with annoyance. Those eyes spoke a thousand words, and they were literally all I could see of him. The man was a shadow who came and went as he pleased.

  My stomach bloomed with a warm feeling he seemed to elicit lately, and then annoyance stamped it out. How dare he piss off for three days and then show up out of the blue to boss me about?

  And save your arse.

  Fuck you, voice of reason. “Well, thanks so much for gracing me with your presence.”

  “Lucky for you I did,” he said. “I told you not to come here without me.” He bit out the words, letting me know how annoyed he was.

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  He totally was.

  “You’re obviously too reckless to be the boss of yourself. I thought I trained you better than this.”

  He was right, but like fuck would I admit it. Thankfully, we were at the entrance I needed. Grabbing hold of a strut, I swung my body up and through the broken window, landing in a neat crouch.

  “You wouldn’t be able to do that if I hadn’t taught you,” Killion reminded me, his tone smug.

  Wait, how the hell had he gotten into the room ahead of me. I sighed and stood, brushing ice off my clothes. Why was I even surprised? Killion wasn’t human. I didn’t know what he was because he refused to tell me.

  Secrets, secrets, and more secrets.

  But he had saved my life, trained me to kick ass and do all sorts of nifty survival shit, so I paid him back by keeping my curiosity in check.

  Least I could do, considering I didn’t have actual spare coin to pay him with. Not that he’d ever asked for payment. He was either one of those magnanimous creatures who did shit for free, or he wanted something from me. It was probably the latter, or maybe I was being a cynical bitch. After all, it had been five years, and the other shoe had yet to drop.

  “Come on then, great mentor. Let’s take a look at what the pointy-eared wankers have been up to, eh?”

  His sigh followed me up the stairs to the top floor. There were no windowpanes up here to keep the elements at bay. The wind howled through the empty panes as if in mourning, and ice swirled across the floor in mini tornados.

  Fuck, it was cold. Winter cut through my layers to chill my skin.

  I walked as close to broken panes as was safe, stopping when the floor groaned. It was close enough to see across the vast snow-laden landscape and beyond the walls that bordered the city. Enough to look out at the world outside the shining ones’ domain. Machines were visible in the distance—huge metallic monsters that razed up the earth and spat it back out. Mini towers and walls had sprung up where there’d been nothing but wilderness. They’d started eight months ago, building, forever building, but no one knew what the fuck they were making.

  Another city?

  An expansion to Middale, our capital city?

  The shining ones weren’t saying. In fact, they acted like nothing was going on, not that any human would have the gall to question them. We were dependent on the Holonews, gathering weekly in town squares to be fed whatever propaganda the shining ones saw fit to spew.

  Shame I was the only one who saw them for what they were. Maybe I was insane, cynical, plain wrong. Maybe I was seeing monsters where there weren’t any. Hell, if not for Killion, I’d probably believe that rubbish. But Killion saw it too. He believed me. He agreed with me.

  The shining ones were bad news.

  Yet, they owned us.

  They owned fucking everything.

  I watched the machines work on their secret project. “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know,” Killion said. “But I have a feeling it won’t be long before we find out.”

  I felt pressure on my shoulder. His hand. He was touching me. He rarely, if ever, touched me. I froze, not wanting to breathe too heavily or too shallow. Not wanting him to take his hand away.

  Being touched by Killion was a gift. It was warmth and security, and something else I wasn’t ready to define.

  “Don’t you have a shift Southside Sector B today?” he asked.

  I smiled. “How is it you know my schedule better than me?”

  “Because I care,” he said softly.

  My stomach quivered. “Jeez, thanks.”

  “How about we take the quick route down?” he offered.


  Was he offering to transport me?

  Once.

  That’s how many times he’d done this. Once, six months ago, when we’d first come up here, and I’d run those five seconds through my mind again and again for weeks afterward.

  My heart did a badum badum of excitement, but I kept my expression neutral. Darn it, I wish I could read his features, but his face was a shadow just like his body. If I looked hard, I could make out a generous wide mouth and slightly flared nostrils. He was tall, slender-hipped, and broad-shouldered, and he was wearing clothes. I could make out the odd seam of fabric here and there, but it was like looking through a filter that had blackened and muted all important details. Yes, I’d questioned my sanity a few times. I mean, how could something like him even be real?

  Maybe he was a figment of my broken mind.

  Maybe I’d died that day five years ago, and this was some kind of fucked up afterlife?

  Doubt would set in worst of all when he was gone, but when he held me…When he touched me, all the doubt melted.

  He was real.

  He was here.

  He was mine, and I was his, and that was the order of things.

  “Danika?” He canted his head as if trying to read me. “You have a shift.”

  I nodded, my mouth suddenly dry. “Let’s do this.”

  He bridged the gap between us and wrapped his arms around me, solid and warm. I touched his bicep, cursing the fact I was wearing gloves, and ran my hands up to link at his nape. He had no scent. He had no face. But he had the most expressive eyes I’d ever seen. Right now, they were looking at me with a strange intensity that made my neck hot.

  I rolled my eyes. “I know, captivating, right?”

  “Undoubtedly.” A flash of white, even teeth.

  And the flush crawled up to stain my cheeks. “Whatever.”

  His grip on me tightened, our torsos met, and my breath gushed out of my mouth. Shit, pull it together, Dani. But damn, he felt too fucking good.

  No.

  Mentor alert.

  Must not think freaky shit.

  And then my feet were no longer touching the ground because we were flying.

  Okay, so we weren’t actually flying, but Killion could move super-fast and fall really well. I closed my eyes, biting back my scream as we hurtled toward the earth, confident that Killion would never let me fall.

  A long time ago, like half a century or so, there was a war, and humanity almost wiped itself out. We were scrambling to survive—no law, no order. Our world was falling into the dark ages as cities crumbled and wildlands began to grow, and then, just as humanity thought it was buggered, the shining ones came. They took control. They rebuilt our capital city. They put up walls to keep us safe from the dangers of the wildlands. They restored order.

  I call bullshit.

  Okay, so I didn’t doubt they restored order or that they stopped us from descending into chaos, but the walls were there to keep us in.

  Ma often reminded me that all the shining ones asked in return was that we work for them. Why? So they could sit in their fancy towers and play power games with each other? Not that I would say this out loud, not often anyway. Speaking against our saviors was taboo.

  They had their own factions—Winter, Summer, Spring, and Autumn Courts. But Winter ruled the capital, relegating the other courts to settlements outside our walls, linked by roads that we, the capital guard, patrolled and kept safe.

  The shining ones themselves came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some were tall, slender, gorgeous perfection with high brows, pointed chins, and flawless skin. They called these the ancients. The council members and the royal courts were all ancients. Then you had the muscular, hulking, shining ones with ember eyes who worked for the ancients, and finally, there were the night denizens, creatures of fang, claw, and tusk that came out after dark. The one thing they all had in common was their shine. It wreathed the ancient ones, pooled in the hulking ones’ pores, and shimmered like stars beneath the night denizens’ skin. And the bleak—hideous monsters who lived in the wildlands—craved it. They craved it like a drowning man craved air. It was the guards’ job to keep the bleak at bay. My job.

  I hated it.

  Why should we keep them safe when all they did was play games with us, using us for entertainment in the name of hope and tradition? I shook my head to clear it of the negative thoughts. I couldn’t carry these views with me to Sector B. I couldn’t let my commander see how much I hated my job. No one could know the truth.

  Sector B was on the south side of Middale. Huge iron gates built into an iron wall rose up to meet me, but the guardhouse to the left of the gates looked empty. I was late. Not by much—thanks to Killion, who’d gotten me to the rail on time—but still.

  The barrier guard, Manny, raised a hand in greeting. “Magnus is pissed,” he said. “You’re late. Again.”

  Fuck. “How pissed? I’m-going-to-fire-Dani pissed, or I’ll-be-giving-her-a-stern-talking-to pissed?”

  “Somewhere in between,” he said with a grin.

  Manny was sunshine and rainbows. Always a smile, always a kind word, and he was also an excellent judge of someone’s mood.

  If he said Magnus was pissed, then he was pissed, and if I didn’t get out there stat, his mood might just slip to firing level.

  I rushed into the guardhouse and quickly donned my arm, chest, and leg braces before grabbing my iron sword. For some reason, iron was the only thing that could kill a bleak, but the shining ones’ armory produced the most lightweight, durable swords. I strapped on my holster, slid the sword in, and headed toward the gate.

  Manny looked up to the tower and hit the intercom. “Status?”

  “Clear,” came the reply.

  He punched in a code to unlock the gates. “Be safe out there.”

  “Always.”

  The gates opened enough for me to slip out onto the road beyond. Several meters wide, it cut through the wildlands that had been beaten back and maintained by human labor. The road led to the Summer and Spring Courts that were situated fifteen miles either way from the intersection up ahead. An intersection where my troop was gathered.

  Magnus’s usually warm brown eyes were hard with annoyance as they settled on me. The man was a legend, responsible for having beaten back the hordes of bleak that had attacked the Winter Court procession eight years ago. He’d been nineteen years of age when he’d risked his life to protect the Winter King, the same age as I was now. Some would say I’d been lucky to be chosen as a guard for his troop, but luck had nothing to do with it. I was a damn good fighter. I was fast, strong, and light on my feet, thanks to Killion’s training.

  I deserved to be here, so why was my mouth super dry and my pulse racing with apprehension?

  I jogged up to the group, ignoring Vala’s snide smile and Timothy’s wince. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  “And yet you keep repeating the same mistake,” Magnus said.

  I pressed my lips together. I had no argument. He was right.

  He studied me for a long beat, and my heart thumped harder in my chest. He knew I needed this job. He knew I needed this title. It was the only protection my family had.

  He relaxed his jaw and sighed. “You’re with Vala and Timothy. Take the Summer road. We meet back here in two hours. Radio in if you get into any trouble.”

  His gaze dropped to my waist, where my radio should be clipped. The radio I’d forgotten to pick up. I was a fucking dick.

  “I was in a rush. I’m sorry.”

  Magnus’s mouth tightened. “Vala and Timothy are equipped. Come see me after shift.”

  My stomach sank. Oh, God. He was so going to fire me later. No. Be positive. Magnus was a good guy. A fair guy.

  I swallowed to moisten my throat. “Yes, Commander.”

  Magnus strode off with the other two members of the troop, taking the road to Spring while I joined Vala and Timothy.

  “Yes, Commander,” Vala mimicked my tone. “Let me
suck you off, Commander.”

  I flipped her off. “Fuck you, Val.”

  “Vala. My name is Vala.”

  “And I don’t give a shit.”

  Timothy chuckled. “Chill out, Dani. Vala’s only kidding, aren’t you, Vala?”

  Vala snorted.

  Forever the peacemaker, Timothy was able to defuse any explosion that Vala and I might create together. I hated the bitch, and the feeling was mutual. Our rivalry was as old as time. Fine, that was an exaggeration, but it felt true. I’d hated her from the moment she spat in my soup in lower school and I ate some before I found out. No, I hated her from when she accidentally-on-purpose dropped paint on my picture of a unicorn. No, no, that wasn’t it. I hated her from when she took my lolly in kindergarten and stuck it in my hair. Fuck, I had no idea why she was such a bitch. Hell, she was tough as nails and sarcastic, and if she’d just stop being so acerbic, we might have been friends, but nope. Vala liked to stick me with a metaphorical knife whenever she got the chance.

  “What Vala is trying to say is that Magnus likes you,” Timothy said.

  “Huh?”

  “He wants to bone you,” Vala snapped. “Bone you with his commander cock. Fuck, I bet you’re already giving him your cunny, aren’t you?”

  My neck heated, but I smiled thinly and met her gaze. “What’s the matter, Vala? Jealous?”

  Vala snorted. “Like fuck.”

  Magnus was handsome and tough, and he was almost thirty. No way did he want a young, inexperienced lover like me. Fuck Vala and her speculation. She was trying to get under my skin.

  “You’re bloody blind, Dani,” Vala said. “Most men want to bone you. You just don’t see it.” Her brows shot up. “Wait, are you gay?”