Christina Marie Palumbo
Published: 2014-10-10
Total Pages: 178
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Lucressa Marie Douglas-Campbell had been locked away in a white marble wing of her mothers estate in Los Angeles, California her whole life. She felt as if she were a princess from a fairytale being guarded by an evil dragon or wicked witch. Lucressa never had any friends, though not from a lack of trying. The interpersonal relationship skills that seem to be inherent in others, she found had passed her by. The lack of a social life had given Lucressa ample time to focus on her studies and she graduated from her all-girl magnet high school at age nine. By eleven she had gotten her doctorate in virology and has been since working in a lab her mother had purchased for her downtown. For nearly seven years Lucressa has been working for a cure for H.I.V. but had only succeeded in finding a suppressant, which her mother was able to get on the market, manufacturing it in a pharmaceutical plant she owned. On the eve of her eighteenth birthday her mother tells her the secret she had been keeping from her daughter since she had been born. Lucressa had been vowed to a King, and at 3:54 A.M she was going to be collected. After watching her life go up in flames, literally, she is whisked off to Fairy Paradise, the land of the Notorious Nothings. Faced with a terrifying hoard of everything that goes bump in the night, and the King of Fairy, Lucien, the husband she was vowed to when she was born, Lucressa found she had only one ally. Micah. Forbidden passion reigns hot and freely, and love, solace and comfort are found in each others arms. The fact of the matter is if it is found out that the Bride has allowed another to touch her that would be a death sentence for them both. Lucressa becomes pregnant, a fact she does not tell Micah. Time is against the lovers, and Lucressas son. The Elixir of Life, which sustains immortality for only 150 years, will wear off in two months time. Lucressa knows that her child will not be viable within that that time so her imminent mortality date will be her childs doom as well. Lucressa beseeches that Micah, whose abilities supersede what the other Notorious Nothings are aware of, to return her to wholly mortal, and smuggle her away from Fairy. The Elixir of Life actually freezes the aging process of the Bride at whatever age she was at the time it was administered. Lucressa had been eighteen, when aging for her had stopped. That gave her plenty of years left to live, and for her son to live. As Micah opens a portal to the ionic river, Lucressa promises Micah that she is eternally his. She promises him that after the search for her ends they can be together on the mortal coil. She makes promises she knows she cannot keep, for she could not live in any realm without the knowledge that somewhere Micah lives too. And if Micah disappears form Fairy, not only would being away from the wild magic of the land drain him to the point of death, but he, and she would be found and brought back to Fairy to be executed. But he did not need to know that. Besides the love of the child she was carrying superseded all, even the love she bore for Micah. Finding herself in 669 A.D. in Ireland, Lucressa counted her luck stars when she stumbled out of the woods and into a clearing with a village. Thanks to Micah she had the appropriate coinage so she could pay for a room and meals for a long while. She came across Stephen Lohne, Laird of Avoigne and began a conversation as to why she was unattended in the woods. She had studied the time period, the cadence and speech and the language, and had a cover story ready. She had chosen this place and this time period, knowing of Avoignes reputation of taking in wayward souls and accepting them. She knew of Laird Stephan Lohne, and his reputation for kindness and mercy. And she played the role of lost soul flawlessly. He took her into Avoignes gates and gave her food, shelter and clothes. She told him, when he informed her winter was coming and the pass would be too treacherous to pass for many months that she was a healer and could offer her services to pay for his hospitality. He accepted the offer, stating that Avoignes healer had died with no children to teach the craft and no lasses with the skills to heal. A week later Stephen proposes, which was to Lucressas relief. Having a child out of wedlock would make Lucressa a pariah, even in Avoigne. They married in a weeks time, much to Lucressas relief. But she was right now two and a half months pregnant so she began praying the she was way overdue. Lucressa was a month and a half over due. Unfortunately she birthed several still born babies and only her son Dougrey lived. She almost died in child birth. The Bride can only have children with a Notorious Nothing; apparently if a Bride conceives with a mortal man death happens. Lucressa is informed she is incapable to have any more children. Micah confronts Lucressa about Dougrey being his. He says he waited until the search for her died down and he came for her life she had told him to do. He expresses his rage over finding that a mortal man had stepped in, claiming her and his son for his own. Lucressa tells him that if he ever loved her to leave and never return Dougrey, at twenty-six, fell in love with Maudlin MacDonalad, a lass from an estate a few miles away from Avoigne. Her father, Sir Ivan, had turned every one of the suitors who had come calling for Maudlins hand in marriage and terms are agreed to. But soon plots arise that could see them all cold in the grave and Lucressa returned to the hell she had escaped so many years before.
