A Pirate's Dream (25 page)

Another knock sounded just a minute later, and in stepped Nimue’s father, looking dashing in his black suit and tie, his newly polished hook gleaming brightly as he adjusted his tie.

“Nimue. My daughter,” he grunted.

He didn’t say he loved her, but she felt the sentiment all the same when his cornflower-blue eyes began to shimmer.

Surrounded by the people she loved most, Nimue walked to join her soon-to-be husband.

Danika and Jericho stood at the head of the assembly, and as they’d done for each one of her charges, joined the two of them in holy matrimony.

After exchanging stones of Veritas, she beamed up at him. It was done.

Sircco wrapped his tail around Nimue’s legs, drawing her close to his side so that not even a whisper of water could pass between them.

“Blood of my blood and soul of my soul, my waters are yours. My soul, yours. You own me,” he whispered hotly and for her ears alone.

And in that moment, Nimue saw nothing and no one, save for him.

“Blond-haired, blue-eyed fry. That is what I want, and I want them only with you, my Sircco. My beautiful, beluga whale.”

There may have been a peal of delighted laughter at her words, but she couldn’t be sure, because when he tipped her chin up and kissed her, nothing else mattered. For the Lady of the Lake was finally and truly home...

*

C
alypso, goddess of the seas, closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.

“It is done,” she whispered, and with a flick of her wrist, all the waters of the deep danced with life, rejoicing that their king had finally found his joy.

*

I
f you enjoyed this story and want to know when my next Kingdom book will drop, make sure to sign up for my
newsletter
. I promise to never spam with it, but I will let you know when I have a new release coming out. In fact, the long-awaited
Ice Queen
is next, if you’ve read
Her One Wish
, you might be familiar with Queen Luminesa.

Keep reading for a sneak peek of the first chapter, or if you’ve read out of order, make sure to check out my books page below, as it will show you the exact order the books should be read in.

Finally, if you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review. I'm grateful for every one of them.

~Marie/Jovee

Her Mad Hatter (Free everywhere! Book 1 based on Alice and the Mad Hatter) Gerard’s Beauty (Book 2 based on Beauty and the Beast) Red and Her Wolf (Book 3 based on Little Red Riding Hood) The Kingdom Collection (Books 1-3 with bonus deleted scenes) Jinni’s Wish (Book 4, based on Arabian Nights) Hook’s Pan (Book 5, Based on Peter Pan) Danika’s Surprise (Book 5.5, novelette and first introduction to the upcoming Dark Princess Series) Moon’s Flower, (Book 6 based on the legend of The Man in the Moon) Huntsman’s Prey, (Book 7 spinoff Dark Princess Series) Rumpel’s Prize, (Book 8) Hood’s Obsession, (Book 9) Her One Wish, (Book 10) A Pirate’s Dream, (Book 11)

The Ice Queen, Book 1 (COMING SOON)

The Sea Queen (Calypso’s Story)

The Passionate Queen (Queen of Hearts Story)

The Magic Queen (Baba Yaga’s Story)

The Dark Queen (Evil Queen’s Story)

The Fire Queen (Maleficent’s Story)

M
arie/Jovee loves books that make you think or feel something—preferably both. And while she’s a total girly girl who loves glitter and rainbows, she’s just as happy when she’s writing about the dark underbelly of society. Well, if things like zombies, vampires, werewolves, and mermaids existed. (She has it on good authority that mermaids do, in fact, exist, because the Internet told her so.)

She’s married to the love of her life, a sexy beast of a caveman who likes to refer to himself as Big Hunk. She has two awesome kids, lives in Hawaii, loves cooking, and occasionally has been known to crochet. She also really loves talking about herself in the third person.

If you’d like to know more about Marie/Jovee, then you can contact her at
[email protected]
If you just want to stop by and say hi, she has a
Facebook page
and a twitter handle
@joveewinters
. Also, if you’re interested in really getting to know her and maybe winning some cool prizes from the contests she runs throughout the year, sign up for her
newsletter
. If you still can’t find ways to contact her, then I don’t know what else to do.

Also, she reads any and all emails, and you’ll get a response from her. So if you don’t want to go public, she’s cool with that. Slip her a note on the low low, and she promises not to blast your thang all around the net. And whether you liked the book or not, leave a review. Please, those things are like gold in her world.

The rose in the valley is blooming so sweetly. And angels descend there, the children to greet...

~H
ans Christian Anderson

aka

Nom de plume of one of the thirteen fairy keepers of the
Tales

I hide in shadow, but only because I fear my identity being known. Should any of my sisters ever discover what I am doing... I shudder to think it. All my life, I’ve been taught to keep the tales, to keep the truth hidden deep in my heart, and to tell no one. But I can no longer abide the lies and deception.

But the tales as you know them, perhaps they aren’t so. Perhaps what you’ve been taught never really happened at all.

Maybe, just maybe, there are more to the stories. Maybe the truth is even more fantastic than the tales.

I cannot keep the secrets inside me anymore. They burn my soul. The truths of my world. My people. And so, readers, I shall share these tales with you.

I’ll only ask one thing... keep my secret. Tell no one of what I say. Keep these truths hidden in your heart, and maybe next time you read a story, you’ll remember what I’ve said and see the stories for what they really are.

Simply nothing more than a fairy’s tale...

~ Anonymous, one of the thirteen keepers of the
Tales

T
wo children, Kai and Gerda, who are the best of friends, like to tell tales of the Snow Queen, a beautiful woman with bees that dance through the air like snowflakes about her. It is during one particularly cold and blustery night that the queen comes to the window and taps on it, awakening Kai. But when he opens the window for a woman he believes to be more beautiful than all the stars in all the heavens, she tricks him and flings a sliver of a spelled mirror into his eye, instantly bespelling him and turning his love for his friend, Gerda, toward wickedness. Kai is then tempted away to the Queen’s Ice Palace, where he is held and told he can never leave unless he can spell out eternity with shards of ice. And it is only Gerda’s love for Kai and her unyielding desire to find and return him home that eventually breaks through his spell and dooms the queen to an eternity of loneliness...

Or so you have read time and time again. But now, with shaking fingers and a trembling heart, I shall pen the tragic and true tale of the Ice Queen.

Her story begins like most stories do.

Once upon a time...

L
uminesa walked barefoot upon a thick patch of pristine snow that glittered like frozen fragments of iridescent mother-of-pearl.

Her silvery gown made up of snowflakes and ice crystals trailed in a sweeping undulation behind her. She felt the eyes on her. The owls and the mice hidden within the shadows of skeletal trees watched her movements with hawk-like curiosity.

She’d not left her ice palace in years, accustomed as she was to her isolation. But a star had fallen from the sky into her snowy realm, and it was a matter that needed investigation.

Snow bees danced about her shoulders, their gentle buzzing a soothing melody to her fractured mind.

Just then, a sharp cry pierced the air—the call of her only friend, Batha the Snow Falcon. Luminesa paused and stared up as he circled the bluish-gray-tinted sky once, twice, and a third time before he finally lowered toward her to sink his talons upon the shoulder plate of her ice armor.

“Batha,” she said in a voice grown rough and scratchy from long years of disuse, “what news?”

The white falcon blinked tawny eyes back at her before cocking his head and ruffling his beak along the inside of his foot, at the leather pouch Luminesa had attached there.

“What have you there, friend?” She gently shoved his beak away and undid the leather thong.

A strange silver shard winked back at her.

She was just about to reach for it when a pulsing wave of dark magic breached her palm.

Hissing, she snatched her hand back. Curling her fingers into a fist, she hugged her hand tightly to her chest. Threads of steam hissed through the air as the heat of that darkness mixed with the ice of her flesh. Heart racing, she turned her gaze toward Batha’s and quickly retied the thong.

Luminesa knew this sort of darkness. She’d beheld it once before, many moons ago. This level of darkness could only come from the wicked heart of the Under Goblin.

“Where did you find this?”

With an ear-splitting shriek, Batha took to the air. His powerful wings sliced through the sky, moving slowly enough that she could follow.

Luminesa was the Queen of Ice. She could shape her body to be more than mere flesh. If she so chose, she could turn to a pillar of swirling snowflakes.

But the falling star had awoken her from her slumber, and for the first time in ages, she found her curiosity piqued—now more so because of the glass shard.

Wishing to retain her human form for a while longer, Luminesa followed Batha’s trail, and as she did so she looked at the landscape she’d crafted when she’d first come to this realm fifty years past.

Then, it’d been green, lively, and full of warmth and heat. She’d not set out to turn her surroundings bleak and cold. Though in truth, she found none of this bleak and cold. There was beauty in the ice, in the simple flake of a snow, and its uniqueness.

But soon, another flash of silver intruded on her musings. Batha circled the small object before landing and tucking his wings against his breast, giving her a sharp cry.

Luminesa studied the stark landscape, looking for any signs of tracks or anything that could give her a hint as to where the Under Goblin had gone.

But the hills and valleys were smooth and clean. Snow drifted gently on the breeze. It would have taken at least an hour to wipe away any tracks made by an intruder.

“Do you smell him, Batha?”

The falcon merely blinked at her. She cocked her head, eyes narrowing as she thought of something else.

“Was this the falling star?”

The falcon’s stare never wavered.

So what she’d seen hadn’t been a star at all, but a fragment of mirror. She stared at the leather pouch tied to Batha’s foot. Why had a mirror fallen from the heavens?

“To me, Batha.” She held out her arm.

Her companion heeded her command, landing swiftly and heavily on her forearm, sinking his thick claws into the ice of her skin. Her form was so frozen that she felt no pain.

Untying the thong from his foot, she hefted the pouch in her palm, testing its weight. If she’d not seen the sliver for herself or felt the waves of its power, she’d not have thought there to be anything inside. The fragment felt like little more than air.

Batha grunted.

“No. You cannot have it back.” With a twirl of her finger, she encased the leather in ice before tucking it into the bodice of her gown. “Have you seen the demon lately?”

With a graceful nod, the bird took powerfully to the air. He traveled quickly, necessitating her change to snowy mist.

This was her home. She’d made sure when she’d come here decades ago to plant herself in place isolated and separate from the rest of the world.

If he dared, if even
anyone
dared—to try to take her home, there would be death.