Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Read online

  Noble’s Honor

  Glynn Stewart

  Noble’s Honor © 2019 Glynn Stewart

  Illustration © 2019 Shen Fei

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  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

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  About the Author

  Other books by Glynn Stewart

  1

  Someone had clearly thought it was a brilliant idea to put a restaurant on top of a giant spike in the middle of downtown Calgary. Okay, the tower was already there and people were going up it, so feeding them at the top made sense.

  I did not understand just what logic went into making the thing rotate and turning it into a fancy restaurant.

  But there we were. My American immigrant three-quarter-fae self needed a nice place to take my wildcat shifter girlfriend for our first anniversary, and this was where the leader of the local Fae Court had suggested.

  It wasn’t like I couldn’t afford it.

  My name is Jason Kilkenny—along with a long list of other names I don’t generally admit to—and I am a Noble of the Wild Hunt and a Vassal of the Queen of the Fae.

  Both of these come with salaries so large that I have no idea what to do with the money they give me beyond “stick it in a bank and try not to think about it.”

  These days, I wasn’t even openly armed. One of the tricks I’d learned from the Wild Hunt was that not only could I step Between to travel from place to place, I could open a pocket of Between to store my gear.

  “Wait, are you scared of heights?” Mary Tenerim asked me with a chuckle as I carefully stepped out of the elevator, trying to ignore the glass that made up much of the floor.

  “There is a gap between being scared of heights and a quite reasonable fear of being, what is it, five hundred feet in the air with only glass between myself and the drop, isn’t there?” I replied.

  “It’s stood up to a few million people, love,” my petite redheaded girlfriend told me. “I’m sure it will survive our feet.”

  “That’s probably true,” I conceded, still gesturing for her to lead the way. Both of us had dressed up for the night in plain black suits cut for athletics. I towered over Mary, at just under six feet tall, with long brown hair neatly cut around my shoulders to help cover the fact that I had visibly pointed ears.

  “Sir, ma’am,” the hostess greeted us. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Under Kilkenny,” I told her. “For two.”

  Mary had grabbed my hand as we approached the lectern and leaned against me. It had been…months since we’d had time for anything resembling a date. She helped run the shifter community in town, and I, well…

  My job for the last six months had been to turn Calgary into a trap for the enemies of the High Court of the Fae. With myself as the bait.

  The rest of that name I mentioned earlier? Jason Alexander Odysseus Kilkenny Calebrantson.

  Mom was a mythology major and my father was dead before I was born.

  He had also been Calebrant, the Horned King, the master of the Wild Hunt. His only son was target number one for the people who’d killed him.

  Dinner lived up to the ambience and the price tag, even if the slowly rotating floor threw me more than a little bit. Calgary’s downtown was a brilliantly lit-up skyline in winter evenings, and the view was definitely worth the price of admission.

  “How’s Grandfather?” I asked Mary as the servers brought us desserts and wine. Both of us were more than human and had the metabolisms to go with it. Dessert was a requirement.

  “According to him, his joints hate the cold more and more every century,” she replied.

  Grandfather was Enli Tsuut'ina, the Speaker of the Shifter Clans in Calgary, an old, old cougar shifter who’d been born in the region…before Europeans had ever shown up and called it Canada.

  “Has to be at least some downside to being him,” I said. “Everyone in line at last?”

  The previous Speaker for the Clans had been Mary’s own Alpha, Tarvers Tenerim. He’d died in the political nightmare that had wrapped the city shortly after my arrival just over a year before. A year wasn’t long as supernaturals counted things, but it was probably enough for the Clans to adjust to a new Speaker.

  “Finally,” she agreed. “He’s taking a bit more of a direct approach than Tarvers did. He didn’t have much choice, not after Fontaine tried to kill us all.”

  “And it’s not like our side of the political spectrum has been nice and calm,” I admitted. The Fae Court and the Shifter Clans were the two largest supernatural groups in Calgary, two of the three pillars around which the supernatural community here orbited.

  The fae had basically fought a civil war, related to my own authority as Vassal of the Queen and the discovery of my parentage. That had left two of the pillars of the community in flux, though the seemingly permanent assignment of a troop of the Wild Hunt to me was helping.

  The third pillar was the Wizard Kenneth MacDonald, the demigodlike Power generally regarded as the city’s overall supernatural ruler. He had his own problems, which meant that the community we both served had been in a disrupted and dangerous state.

  Stability was an ideal, never truly achievable, but we were getting closer.

  “Always a joy to see what happens next,” I said brightly, toasting her with the glass of sweet dessert wine. “Together.”

  “You aren’t getting rid of me soon, that’s for sure,” Mary told me. “At this point, I know how to get ahold of your boss.”

  “Which one?” I chuckled. As a Noble of the Wild Hunt, I answered to Ankaris, the new Horned King. As a Vassal of the Queen of the Fae, I owed Fealty to Mabona, the Queen of Light and Darkness.

  “I have phone numbers for both of them,” she said sweetly. Further joking was interrupted by the arrival of our waiter, and something about him caught both of our attention.

  I felt more than saw his tension. Fae and shifters were predators, even more so than humans, and I could sense the prey instinct running behind his eyes. The young man’s shoulders were tensed up and his hands were trembling.

  I was about to ask if he was okay when he dropped a black leather folio, presumably our bill, on the table and vanished as quickly as he’d arrived. I exchanged a long look with Mary and opened the folio.

&nb
sp; Somehow, I wasn’t surprised that it wasn’t our bill. It was a note, written on the restaurant’s stationery.

  If you wish to avoid unnecessary mortal deaths, come to the observation deck. Now.

  “Short and to the point, I suppose,” I said softly. I glanced over at the kitchen, where our waiter had disappeared. The restaurant was only about two-thirds full, but that was still over a hundred people. We’d come alone, though both of us had panic button apps on our phones that would bring support in a few minutes.

  “The type of person who leaves a note like that doesn’t have much patience,” Mary noted. “Shall we?”

  I pulled several hundred-dollar bills from my wallet and tossed them on the table—probably at least twice the cost of the meal, but I suspected the extra tip was going to be needed.

  “Let’s go see what our mysterious note-writer wants,” I agreed. Half-consciously, I was checking my dimensional pocket.

  Whipstock, a gift from the Wizard MacDonald that acted as a focus for my power. Check.

  Silver-hilted sword with a cold iron blade, the standard weapon of a Rider of the Wild Hunt. Check.

  Multiple firearms, ranging from a small nine-millimeter Jericho pistol to the Steyr AUG assault rifle favored by the Wild Hunt—and, not coincidentally, I was sure, by the Irish Army. Check.

  Stepping out of the restaurant, Mary turned an eye on me and held out her hand. Chuckling, I pulled one of those firearms out of the pocket—the ugly little machine pistol she favored, already in its shoulder holster. She tucked it under her jacket then looked over at the stairs.

  “Well?”

  2

  I wasn’t really surprised to find the observation deck completely empty of civilians. Nor was I surprised to find it occupied by half a dozen armed men. I wasn’t expecting them to be armed with strange curved swords to go with their AK-47s or, well, to not attack me on sight.

  All six of the men could have been cast from the same mold. They were evenly six feet tall with dark hair and skin, wearing dark gray suits with big swords strapped to their backs. The hands holding the familiar assault rifles were all gloved as well.

  The uniformity was odd…and also a sign that I was dealing with supernaturals of some kind. Just not a kind I was used to.

  Before anyone could say anything, a seventh figure stepped out of the shadows. He was dressed similarly to his men but was shirtless under his gray blazer. His revealed physique was spectacular, with muscles on top of muscles…and traces of gold swirling across his dark skin.

  He was the only one not carrying an assault rifle, but he held a long, curved sword in his hand. Wave-like patterns glittered in the steel, ringing a faint bell of memory, but my focus was on his brilliant white smile.

  “Jason Kilkenny, Noble of the Wild Hunt,” he greeted me with a thick but intelligible East Indian accent. “I am Raja Venkat Asi and I am tasked with your death.”

  “This is oddly formal for an assassination attempt, don’t you think?” I asked dryly. I doubted the Indian supernatural was fooled by my lack of visible weaponry.

  “There are standards to these things,” he told me. “If possible, I wish to avoid unnecessary damage.” He gestured to Mary. “The girl can leave freely.”

  “And if I shoot you in the head?” Mary asked, drawing her machine pistol from inside her coat.

  Asi laughed.

  “Then you become necessary extra damage,” he told her. “I am charged with the death of Jason Kilkenny. I will do whatever is necessary to achieve that.”

  His men were spreading out, blocking the exits. I tested the links I was using for communication and was unsurprised to find them blocked. This Asi was far more prepared than his casual manner suggested.

  “And you’re, what, expecting me to kneel down so you can chop off my head?” I demanded.

  “That would be such a disappointment,” Asi said. “I’ve never fought a Noble of the Wild Hunt before.” He lifted the sword and pointed it at me. “I will permit you to prepare. Draw your blade.”

  I sighed and gestured. Despite his instruction, I didn’t bother with my sword. I had been training, but I wasn’t going to pretend I was more than a mediocre swordsman.

  Instead, I drew a sixteen-inch-long rod of black wood carved with golden orichalcum runes along its length. It looked like a whip handle without the whip—because that’s exactly what it was.

  I cracked the wooden stock through the air and conjured faerie fire through it. White-cored green flame snapped through the air between Asi and me, and the other man’s grin widened.

  “Let’s dance.”

  The golden tinge to the other man’s skin lit up as he moved towards me, a soft glow wrapping around him as he charged with a grace and speed no mortal could match. A golden aura wrapped around his hands and extended up over the blade of the sword.

  He then proceeded to run into an invisible wall. A projection of my Gift of Force, the chest-high barrier stopped him in mid-step. He bounced backward but reacted quickly by leaping over my magical barrier.

  My whip met him in midair, the green-and-white faerie flame smashing into the golden aura around him. The aura resisted my magic as I wrapped the whip around him and used it to fling him to the floor.

  My whip didn’t cut through him, which was a minor surprise, but he couldn’t resist its force. He broke free as he hit the glass and bounced back up to his feet.

  Grinning.

  I hadn’t even managed to singe his suit—though it wasn’t like he’d even managed to reach me, either.

  The sword flickered in front of him in a pattern even I could barely follow, generating a strange sigil of glowing light that then blasted toward me with unexpected speed.

  I didn’t manage to get a shield up in time, and the glowing symbol hit me like a runaway semi truck. I stumbled back, and a second sword-conjured symbol crashed through my hastily-raised shield.

  I went flying and smashed into the glass wall of the observation deck. The lights of Calgary’s downtown spread out beneath me, and a chill ran through me. Even a Fae Lord might not survive that fall—and for all of the powers I was still learning, I was still fragile compared to the more powerful fae.

  I heard the glass crack beneath me and vaulted back into the main deck. My whip cracked across space. I wasn’t aiming for Asi this time. I was aiming for his sword.

  The Damascus-steel sword wasn’t a mundane blade, even before the other supernatural wrapped it in his power. It still wasn’t ready to get hit with the faerie fire of a Noble Fae, augmented by a Wizard-forged focus.

  Asi’s power managed to keep the blade intact. It didn’t manage to keep it in his hand, and I flung the weapon away. It slammed into the window blade-first, embedding itself in the carefully designed security glass.

  “You fight well,” he complimented me. The golden glow around his hands was intensifying. “But the duel is for my pleasure. Your death is demanded by a higher call. Take him.”

  That last was an order to his men, who had spent the last few seconds keeping Mary covered to help convince her not to intervene in the duel. Assault rifles spoke deafeningly in the enclosed space, but I was already moving.

  A bubble of force shielded us as I dove for the ground next to Mary. She was raising her own weapon to fire back, but I grabbed her hand before she could object, and stepped into the Between, that strange frozen place beyond the world that some fae used to travel.

  Among fae, the gift of traveling Between was one of the key markers for recruitment to the Wild Hunt. We wanted powerful fae, Nobles and Gentry and others with power to shake the world…but we needed the fae who could step Between and cross continents in mere minutes under their own power.

  Few were those who could follow me Between, and I started to take a breath as Mary and I recovered from the stumble into otherness.

  And then a golden portal began to take shape behind us.

  “They’re following us,” I told Mary.

  “Um. I thought no one
could do that?” she asked.

  “No one who isn’t fae is supposed to be able to,” I replied as I studied the golden light behind us for a few seconds. “It looks like it’s taking them longer, but we should really be elsewhere.”

  “What if they can follow us?”

  I grinned at her.

  “We had a plan for rogue Hunters,” I admitted. “If these guys, whoever they are, want to play on the Hunt’s ground, they get to play by the Hunt’s rules.” I held out my free hand. “Trust me.”

  “I do,” she confirmed as she took my hands. “I just still remember the terrified kid with no idea who he was that saved me in a dark alley a year ago. We’ve come a long way.”

  “And we need to keep going,” I agreed. With both of her hands in mine, I closed my eyes and moved. My Power wrapped around us, sweeping us from the heights of the Calgary Tower to the ground in a moment.

  The fact that we weren’t in the “real” world helped. Distance Between wasn’t exactly a logical thing.

  “Yep. Glowing golden guys walking out of the doorway. Just who is hunting us, Jason?”

  “I wish I knew,” I said as I continued to move us through the strange otherness of Between. “Not fae, not shifters. I can recognize those. Nothing I’ve ever met before.”

  “I’m guessing that doesn’t narrow it down much,” she said, leaning against me as we moved.