Table of Contents
The Dragon Prince
Crystal Elves
Ethelia
About Annette Archer
JOIN TEAM STEAM and get an ebook in your inbox!
BONUS - Preview of "The Weight of Love" by Annette Archer
- A Sexy Bundle of 3 Fantasy Erotic Romance Novelettes from Steam Books
Copyright © 2014 Steam Books Erotica & Romance
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
Annette Archer's humble beginnings working retail brought her two things: a strong work ethic and an insatiable desire for escapism. Utilizing these traits as well as her degree in English and her natural power of the pen, Annette Archer has emerged as an exciting voice in the realm of romance fiction.
Annette has published independently as well as teamed with publishers such as Steam Books Erotica & Romance. Her "Penny's Choice" series has earned her the attention of romance and fantasy readers alike.
And more from Annette Archer:
Check out these and much more at steam-books.com!
Team Steam members receive updates, news and special promotions from your favorite authors at Steam Books. Find out about the latest releases, sales, contests, freebies, and more happening continually! Signing up is easy and you may cancel at any time.
Please allow 24 hours after submission to receive the email containing a link to download the ebook files.
BONUS
Please enjoy a tease from another tale from 'The Far Realm Chronicles',
by Annette Archer
Later that day, back in her rooms, Carissa read deep into one of her favorite romance novels, a fictional account of a Crystal Elf falling in love with a human male. Such things didn’t normally happen, of course, the Crystal Elves being an old and proud race but also one of the most beautiful in the lands. The idea that one of them could fall in love with a lowly and plain human was ridiculous. Still, it caught her up in a way few of the other stories did. Maybe there was something there about someone falling in love because of who the person was, and not because of their appearance, that made the story so interesting to her.
“No,” the Elven maid said to young Felonor. “I can not give myself to you. Not without losing the love of my father.”
“Is there no way he could learn to love me, too, as he loves his only daughter?” Felonor asked hopefully.
She thought about that for a long time and finally took his hand, bringing it up to rest on her breast. He could feel her heart thumping rapidly, feel the warmth of her flesh under his skin. “Perhaps it does not matter,” she said to him. “Perhaps all we need is this moment.”
Her hands traced the line of his face down to his neck, and then she leaned forward to kiss the slope of his shoulder.
Under his skilled hands her dress fell to the floor, exposing her bare, willing flesh. She longed for him to cup her ass like this—
A loud banging on her door interrupted the vivid mental image that she’d been building. It took her a moment to reorient herself to the real world. When at last she took a deep breath and remembered she was unlovable Carissa, not the stunningly beautiful Crystal Elf in her story, she set the book aside and straightened her dress and wished for perhaps the millionth time that her body wasn’t quite so tightly defined in it.
“Enter,” she called out to whoever it was knocking again on her door.
The King himself, her father, walked into her rooms. There was a smile on his face and his staff with the lion’s head on it banged purposefully against her floor. “My dear Carissa, do you know what you’ve done?”
She lowered her eyes and clenched her fists into the material of her dress. “I know I have embarrassed you, father. I won’t do it again. I promise. It was just that you needed to hear what I had to say and you were going to just send the man from Rikketh away with a deal that was bad for everyone.”
He laughed and raised a hand as she paused for breath. “Nonsense! Oh, I was less than pleased to find you wandering down the back steps, to be sure. But let’s forget about that. You have saved me no small amount of money today. Not to mention, you kept a more powerful nation from taking advantage of us. Well done, my daughter. Well done.”
Carissa beamed. She had never been praised by her father in this way before. He always thanked her for her efforts and complimented her talents, but for him to act so proud of her was a new experience for her.
“Father, I…don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything. You just stay here and keep that mind of yours thinking on the issue. Let me know if anything else comes to you.”
Her heart sank. “Stay here?”
“Yes, of course! I need you sharp and focused. I’ll check in with you tomorrow before Philimor leaves to go back to Rikketh. You’ll let me know, right? Good. I’ll just be off, then.”
“But…” How should she put this? “I had been hoping that perhaps I would be allowed out into public more often now. I mean, the secret is sure to get out that I was the one who came up with the treaty for Rikketh. Isn’t it? What does it matter now if I’m hidden away or seen by all?”
He looked uncomfortable in the flickering light of her candles. “Oh, Carissa. My dear, dear Carissa. You know that we can’t allow that. Our reputation is built upon a certain image, after all. Your sisters fit that image. Our Kingdom fits that image. You… well, I’m afraid you only fit in as my advisor.” He spread his arms and shrugged helplessly. “That’s just the way it is, I’m afraid.”
For just the barest moment, she felt anger sweep over her. It wasn’t fair! But then she sat back in her chair and lowered her head and mumbled a “Yes, Father.” She knew he was right. She was just too, well, plain and ugly. Not her fault, perhaps, but not her father’s fault either. She was the way she was and everyone had to make the most of it.
Her father turned to go and only as an afterthought turned back to her. He swept over to her with a sad expression of pity on his face and hugged her awkwardly. She lifted her arms to hug him back even as he was pulling away again. Her pudgy arms found only the empty air of her lonely room.
“Now then,” he said, already at her door. “I will see you for supper tonight. Don’t be late.”
“Actually, Father, I don’t think I’m very hungry. I’ll find something at breakfast.”
He shrugged again. “Suit yourself. Good work today, Carissa.”
The door closed behind him, and she was left to her own thoughts again. Surprisingly, those thoughts held no tears for her today. She had done the unthinkable. She had shown herself to not only her father and her sisters out in the bright light of day, but a total stranger as well. A good-looking male stranger, at that. She grinned as she remembered his face and his strong arms and his legs in those ridiculously colored leggings.
The only thing that ruined the image was her sisters, Mourning and Eve, hanging off either of Philimor’s arms, almost like they were trying to possess him. Carissa sighed heavily. She realized the image was ruined with the two of them in it. It was oddly complete. Her sisters were both stunningly pretty. So was this Philimor. Pretty people like that belonged together.
She went back to her book, only to have another knock interrupt her half a paragraph later.
Now who could that be? She didn’t have any tutoring sessions scheduled for today. There were no treaties or contracts to look over.
“Come in?” she called, uncertainly.
The door did not open. Instead, there was an odd noise of the handle rattling and something heavy flumping against the door.
Curious, not at all worried that something bad would happen to her this far into her father’s castle, Carissa got up from her chair and slowly went to her door, opening it wide.
On the outside handle a simple wooden hanger hung. On the hanger was a beautiful blue dress.
Carissa gasped. The fabric of it wasn’t a bright blue, but a more muted and subtle hue, like the color of her own eyes. It was hard to tell what it would look like on someone hanging as it was on its little bar, but it had a square neckline and she thought immediately of how that wouldn’t force her breasts up into people’s faces all the time.
A small gasp escaped her lips. Was this dress for her? Could it be? She lifted it up in shaking hands and saw it was voluminous. Obviously not meant for a little stick of a girl like her sisters. Obviously, she allowed herself to believe, it was meant for her.
She hurried with it into her rooms, closing her door tightly. Hurriedly, she took her old dress off, breathing in a deep breath as her larger frame was finally free. In her haste she ripped one of the seams on the yellow dress. She bit her lip, worried now that the dress wasn’t actually for her, that it wouldn’t fit, that she would have to go back to one of her other dresses that fit her just as poorly as the one she had just ripped.
No way to know without trying. This day had turned into a day to be bold. She nodded to herself now and found how the dress opened at the back for her to step into. It slid up her sides easily and settled over her shoulders with short sleeves that puffed a bit. Reaching behind herself, straining to reach that far, she did the back up again. Then she stood there, breathing, feeling the way the dress fit her perfectly.
There was a single mirror in the corner of her room that she hardly ever used. She stood in front of it now, amazed at what she saw. She was…no, she couldn’t even think it. But there it was.
She was pretty.
The dress was perfect for her. It flattered her figure without hiding it, her arms and her waist and all of her body that she had been embarrassed by for so long. It was like she was a different person. Or, more properly, that she had been set free of her old bonds.
Free? What did that even mean.
She smiled at her reflection. She was finding out the meaning of that word today, to be sure. Was this a turning point in her life? No longer the hidden treasure of her father’s Kingdom. Now she would be recognized for her efforts and given the respect she deserved.
That thought seemed so foreign to her she had to repeat the words to herself. Respected. Her? Not likely. She was who she was. The unknown High Princess of Sharimul.
A strong tap pinged out against her window. She turned to the noise, startled, and saw nothing at all. The evening sun was shining more of its light than usual into her rooms, lighting up the barren space, but that was all. Until it happened again. And again.
What in the world?
She went to her windows, not sure if she could handle any more surprises today, and as she got closer she saw a dark object fly up against the glass.
TAP. A rock. Someone was throwing rocks against her window.
Curious, she undid the metal latch and pushed the window frame open wide. The view below of the gardens and the back steps and the hedge maze were just as she remembered them from earlier when she had dared to go out in front of people to save her father from a disastrous treaty of his own design.
Smiling up at her, his thick dark hair falling across his forehead, Philimor raised a hand in greeting. “Hello, Princess. I was unsure of the rules regarding visitors in your father’s Kingdom to his daughter’s rooms, else I would have come in with the dress I left you.”
The dress. She ran her hand down the smooth fabric that accentuated her breasts and the curves of her hips without making it obvious that she was a hefty girl.
“You left me this?” she called down to him. She immediately put her hand up over her mouth, worried that someone would hear her taking to a boy from the balcony of her window.
“Yes,” Philimor admitted to her with another smile. “I left it for you. I thought someone of your obvious intelligence and cunning should have a dress that showed the world just how beautiful she was.”
Carissa’s cheeks heated under the touch of his words. “That is very kind of you, sir.”
“Please, call me Philimor.” He made a little bow to her and then he winked.
Things like this happened all the time in the stories she liked to read. They just never happened to her. She would understand it if Philimor had been at either of her sisters’ windows, but hers? She just didn’t know what to say.
The seconds dragged out longer and Carissa was worried that she had missed some important thing that she was supposed to say to him when he cleared his throat against his cupped fist. “Well. I should go.”
She sighed out a breath. Here was the most intimate moment of her life so far, and she had spoiled it somehow. “Please, stay? For a little while?”
“Alas, I can not.” And there was the ending she had expected.
Yet, he didn’t leave.
“I would like to see you, and speak with you more,” he said instead. “Perhaps tomorrow? For lunch?”
“Lunch?” She was aware of how stupid she sounded just repeating his words, but her tongue had seemed to stop working.
“Yes. Lunch. You do eat, don’t you?”
His words should have seemed mocking. Instead, she started to laugh. He joined her.
It felt wonderful.
To be continued....
Ethelia
On a warm summer’s day, the sun beat down from a cloudless blue sky and a breeze wafted over the Utopian Plains. Long grasses bowed in that strong wind, birds soared high, and Prince Thanus thought that if there had ever been a day to thank the Maker for being alive, this was that day.
His stallion was beginning to flag under him. It had been a long ride from the Sargenian Kingdom on his way to the Kingdom of Rikketh. The Far Realm was immense, and sometimes population centers were few and far between. Thanus knew he would have to stop soon, to allow his horse to rest, and to get some rest himself. It would be another day’s ride, maybe two, before he reached his ultimate destination.
Thanus had plenty of time to get to where he was going. The matter was somewhat urgent, however. The problem with the Blue Sisterhood’s clerics having assumed control of lands along the borders of his Kingdom, the dragons at their side, could no longer be ignored. There had already been deaths. Thanus’s father, King Ichanus, wanted him to investigate.
His first thought had been to go to the source, to the dragon clerics themselves. When he’d tried, nearly all of his escort had been killed. The clerics, apparently, didn’t wish to talk about it.
Rumor was that the Kingdom of Rikketh was somehow in league with the dragon clerics of the Blue Sisterhood. Thanus sighed. King Jelanus of Rikketh had never been known for his even temper. Thanus figured he’d be lucky if just asking for an audience didn’t cause war to break out between their two Kingdoms.
The village of Damiste was just a few more miles ahead. Thanus looked up to the sun and then wiped sweat away from his brow. His dark hair clung to the back of his neck and he wished now that he had left his heavy purple cloak in his saddle bags. This morning, when he’d started out, it had been chilly and dew had wet down his stallion’s hooves and brown legs. Amazing, how weather could change so much in just half a day’s travel.
He shaded his blue eyes and looked ahead past the wide open fields to the horizon. Yes. There was Damiste and its tall central spire. A landmark for travelers and a religious site for the locals who practiced a pagan religion called Temporalism. Thanus didn’t quite understand the ins and outs of their cult, but he knew the practitioners were considered odd even by the oddest of religions in the Far Realm. Something about how all men were holy and all women evil.
Thanus had known some truly evil men, in his experience. Moreover, he’d always known there to be some redeeming quality in every woman he’d ever known, especially in the ones receptive to coming into his bed.
As Damiste came closer, Thanus suddenly realized how dry his throat was. There was a little water left in his canteen. No one would be fool enough to start out in a ride across the Far Realm without at least one full canteen. But he had a taste for something stronger to slake his thirst.
He’d been in Damiste twice before and knew of just the place to get such libation. A place called The Empty Cup, which was a small place with excellent liquor and pretty waitresses.
If he was lucky, perhaps his thirst wouldn’t be the only thing slaked while he was there.
He was thinking on that as he came into the outskirts of Damiste, the streets becoming packed dirt and then gravel as he went past modest homes of baked clay bricks or rough boards. Closer to the center of town, businesses began appearing: general stores, weavers, even a couple of fruit vendors selling apples and loquis fruits.
At the first intersection of streets was a stable. Thanus brought his weary horse to a halt, the loyal animal whinnying and hanging his head, great chest heaving. As he dismounted, Thanus patted the horses neck.
“Good boy, Hurricane. Ready for a rest?”
The horse, Hurricane, nickered as if he understood the question. Taking hold of the reigns, Thanus went to lead him inside.