Cruel Enchantment Read Online Free

Cruel Enchantment
Book: Cruel Enchantment Read Online Free
Author: Anya Bast
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pulled her pack over her shoulders and nodded. “I understand.”
    “You sure you don’t want a car? It’s a long walk to the city.”
    “No, I told them I’d rather walk.”
    His lips drew back in a smile to reveal pointed teeth. It jarred her a little. Clearly she’d been with humans for too long. “Good luck.” He pointed down the dirt road that would lead her into the city. “Stay on the path until you hit Piefferburg City.”
    Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Man, she hoped there weren’t any flying monkeys.
    She nodded, hitched her pack higher on her shoulders, and took off. Time to get this show started. Her boots crunched on the dirt as she made her way in. It would be a good few miles, according to the map she’d looked at, before she reached the outskirts of the huge main city.
    It was early spring, but it was a warm morning. She would take this time to collect her thoughts and commune with this land that was closest to that of her homeland, Ireland, just from the fact it was occupied by her people.
    Piefferburg was a large territory, home to every type of fae imaginable. Sort of like a big, very deadly zoo. These were the Boundary Lands, where the wilding fae lived, the ones that preferred the forest glens, tree groves, freshwater lakes, and treetops. Mostly they kept to themselves, forming their own society apart from the rest. Like the goblins did. Also the water-dwelling fae—the selkies, Untunktahe, kelpie, sirens, and the rest—who mostly resided in the eastern part of Piefferburg, where the ocean met land.
    Not far from the gates of Piefferburg was the city. There she would find the Rose and Black Towers and the trooping fae, the work-a-day fae who lived all over Piefferburg, in both the city and the rural areas. The troop idolized the Seelie and the Unseelie for reasons she would never understand. The Seelie Tuatha Dé, especially, were like royalty.
    Having avoided the Great Sweep thanks to her ability to cloak her true nature so well, she really only knew these things academically. She’d left Ireland, and the fae world, when she was only twenty years old. Walking through these enchanted woods now, with the pollen dancing through the air, the shimmering lights of nearby wilding fae winking in the foliage, and the low hum and sing of magick in the air around her—it healed her soul. Sprae, the tiniest of her fae brethren, minuscule beings that provided magickal energy to the forest, flocked to her, lighting on her arms, hands, and face. It was like being welcomed home.
    Smiling, she took a deep breath of her environment into her lungs and held it there for a long moment. Her mission was critical, but she could take a moment to put aside her fears and relax here, among her kind.
    It had been too long. She barely remembered what it was to be fae—what she was under the layers of illusion she’d donned. It was good to be here. She didn’t regret a bit not ordering a car to come for her at the gates, even though the walk would not be doing her leg muscles any favors tomorrow morning.
    She blinked, glimpsing something down the road that didn’t fit with her natural surroundings. Someone striding through the dappled sunlight and pollen-laden air. A man. A large, muscular man walking with purpose toward her. He carried something in his hand, but she couldn’t quite make it out.
    Her pace slowing, she watched him approach, seeing something intangibly familiar in the way he moved and the broad set of his shoulders. Who was this man? What was he doing way out here? His posture and the way he strode toward her seemed vaguely threatening. Suddenly she wished for a weapon. She usually carried one—old habits died hard—but she hadn’t brought any into Piefferburg with her.
    He strode on heavy boots and wore black pants and a white poet’s shirt that would’ve made any other man but him look feminine. His long, dusky blond hair was pulled partway back at his nape, free tendrils moving around a face
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