Stone Hearts: A Monster & Fae Romance (War of the Underhill Book 1)

Stone Hearts A Monster & Fae Romance S. E. Wendel Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Wendel. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form by any means, including scanning, photocopying, uploading, and distribution of this book via any other electronic means without the permission of the author and is illegal, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publishers at the address below. S. E. Wendel [email protected] This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover illustration Bethany Gilbert Art Interior graphics provided by Canva Pro ISBN: 9798388663399 For everyone who loves to go spelunking through the Wikipedia blue links and learn something new. And everyone who loved the Disney Gargoyles show. We didn’t stand a chance. Prologue In a time when time was kept through song and stone and crown, a desperate people did a desperate thing. When Caesar stepped onto the shores of Albion, five legions at his back, the Pritani, the Celts of the Isle, turned to magick to save themselves. Their magick-weavers, the druids, called upon the magicks of Albion using a language older than man. From the earth the druids pulled great stones, carving them into mighty warriors. To give them warmth, the druids offered their own blood—and to give them life, they used ancient magick. From the stones sprang terrible creatures with wings and claws and fangs, as fearsome as the Pritani’s ancient enemies, the Fomorians. Fiercer than a pack of wolves and stronger than the bears that once roamed Albion, the guardians fought alongside the Pritani against Romans, Angles, and Saxons for six hundred years. But the magicks that gave life to the guardians had been stolen, ripped from the earth and the fae who imbued it there so long ago, when they were the lords of Albion. And the fae did not suffer thieves… One 574 AD Western Coast of Albion Shielding her eyes with one delicate, clawed hand, Carys peered into the sky. Her stomach swooped to behold the noonday sun. Surely it cannot be that late! Shouldering her satchel, she hurried through the forest, the little path she’d worn nearly swallowed by the verdant green of springtime. She flapped her wings for more speed, batting ferns and saplings away in her excitement as she raced back to the clanhome in long bounds. The wind swept her long sandy hair from her face, and the bright spring sun glimmered along the gold veining pattern in her skin. She’d gotten her mother’s coloring, all blushing pinks and golds, the colors of the pink marble their ancestor was carved from centuries ago. All guardians could trace themselves to one of the First, the rock-born. Heavy with muscle and towering six to seven feet tall, taller still with their arching horns and membranous wings, their colors ranged from basalt to granite to marble, and their skin was tough as hide. Her mother took great pride in their kin colors and strength, always happy to show off how the gold striations glittered off her hard warrior’s body in the right light. It was why Carys’s diminutive horns, tiny claws and talons, small stature, and above all her malformed wings, shamed her mother, Arda. “How could our line come to this?” she’d bemoan, pointing an accusing claw at Carys. As if Carys had had any choice in the matter. As if Carys wouldn’t give anything to be a female her mother could be proud of, one her clan didn’t look upon with pity, one a mate could love. She’d been trained to fight alongside the other fledglings for a time, but she was no warrior, so Carys apprenticed under the human druids in nearby Caerdyf to learn their magicks and healing. Her mother scoffed that Carys may as well have been human with her softer features and human height, but she couldn’t argue with Carys making herself useful. The clan chief allowed her to travel to the human village, on the other side of the valley, several times a moon. Carys took a little pride in her growing skills; she hoped a mate would, too—enough at least to overlook her faults. The path grew steep, and she dug her talons into the earth to begin the climb up to the clanhome. Her clan had made a home from the natural caves burrowing into sloping seaside cliffs, perfect for flying in and out and watching over the shore and Caerdyf. There had been a time, hundreds of years ago, when the guardians fought and lived alongside the Pritani, but as they grew in number, they’d been pushed out of the human villages and went in search of good, fertile places to make their own. Perhaps it was just as well. Her kind needed room and access to the sky; it wasn’t in their nature to huddle together in small dwellings like the humans. There were now many clans, spread across the western forests of Albion. They were protective and territorial in nature, made for fighting, and in times when there were no invaders to battle, her kin could be a volatile lot with too many horns to knock together. So the elders decided to make many settlements, but every so often, on special days, days like Beltane, today, the clans came together again for the Gorsedd, the great gathering. Carys’s wings shivered with excitement, and she pushed herself to go faster up the path she’d worn in the opposite slope. Her hips and thighs had grown thick and strong from the exertion, so unlike her female kin with their broad shoulders and chests, large from the work of flight. Her mother dismayed