DARK FAE
THE DARK FAE
BOOK ONE
Dark Fae
Book 1 of The Dark Fae.
Copyright © 2020 by Quinn Blackbird
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.
Imprint: Independently published.
Blurb.
He came to destroy the world.
He came to destroy us.
But he kept me alive when all else died.
It’s the end of us—the humans. Our world is ravaged, burned to the ground, destroyed by the armies of dark fae crawling all over our lands. They seek to end us, weed out the last of our survivors, and tear us to pieces.
We hide as best as we can. But it’s inevitable.
A dark fae army finds us, hiding in a little village. We’re all goners. All of my group dies, and I’m about to join them in death—until he spares me.
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Before all this, I never realised how dark the night really was. With all the light pollution—street lamps, phone screens, illuminated shop windows—it was never really dark. Not like it is now.
Outside this little abandoned shop we’re cooped up in, the darkness is so thick that I can’t see the houses across the street. The road doesn’t look like a black river, because I can’t even see it. It is thick, drenching blackness … everywhere. I can’t tell if it’s day or night. We lost track of that time-telling long ago. Not even a moon in sight to cast a faint white glow over our misery.
I sigh and release the curtain, letting it fall back into place. We shouldn’t be looking through the window—we shouldn’t be seen. Stay hidden, that’s our rule of survival. And it has kept us alive for a year.
That’s how long it’s been since the day turned to darkness for the first time, then it spread all over the world. It started in Britain, sweeping over Scotland first, then spread like a virus all around the world. No daylight. Our technologies died. We starved, fell victim to the Black Plague, and wars broke out. It all happened so quickly, and soon, there weren’t many of us left.
Our numbers were depleted before the dark fae even came to finish the job. Now, they march all over our world, every continent, thousands of armies burning down our cities, slaughtering the survivors they come across. Just making their way through our world one day at a time. They want nothing more than our end—plain and simple.
It’s all we can do to survive these days. Barely.
Still standing by the window, I look around at what remains of us. Twelve. That’s a fraction of what we once were. Starvation is our greatest enemy. We face it every day, just scraping by. Well, it’s easier with so few mouths to feed now. But back then, even just months ago, we were living on scraps we could scrape up from abandoned homes and shops and hospitals—whatever we could find, we looted.
Infection and disease aren’t to be taken lightly, either. They’ve taken more of us than I can count on my hands. Childbirth, old age—you name it, it’s a threat to us.
We’re back in the dark ages.
“Come away from the window, Vale.” It’s Maureen, our eldest woman in our little tribe. She’s the kind of woman who, when the world was normal, spouted out racist tangents at Christmas dinners, but insisted she was anything but a bigot.
It takes more energy to fight her than to listen, and it is energy I don’t have to waste. I just nod and push from the wall. She’s not wrong anyway. I shouldn’t have been by the window. We can’t risk being seen, not by the dark fae who scour our world and rip us to pieces, and not by other groups. Can’t trust anyone these days. Not even our own tribes.
That’s why, when I park myself on an upside-down crate by the bookshelf in the little village grocery store, I count my supplies that are laid out at my feet. Three tins of baked beans—a favourite of mine (when cooked! Never raw.)—and a can without a label that I dread will be something like cat food or tinned stew. I’ll trade it with someone for tinned fruit if it comes down to it.
Satisfied no one pinched my share, I unzip my backpack and peel apart the leather to inspect the inside. My flashlight stares up at me, taunting me. Ran out of batteries over a week ago, haven’t found any that fit since. There were some in the store when we broke our way in through the backdoor. But I was on watch duty while the slowest of us made their way inside and set up, then I had to do a sweep of the shop. By the time I was done and found the battery shelf, they’d been wiped clean.
It’s first come, first serve around here.
I could always trade in my heavy-duty torch for
