An Unedited Excerpt from
The Unseelie King's Rebel
Torin set his hands on the dead leaves of the Seelie Fae forest floor and whispered to the creatures of the night. Magic tingled across his lips and his words sifted from his mouth as sapphire smoke that curled along the ground. The smoke slipped faster and faster along the roots of the massive oaks, maples, and pines.
“Take up her slippers and find her there. Return to her what is hers…” He whispered the command again, infusing it with his Unseelie will, his dark magic.
The leaves on the forest floor shuffled. Beetles with shiny backs and Fae mice with small horns and sparkling, black fur partially made of impossibly small mushrooms crawled out of the forest and headed toward the spot where the human female had lost her silken shoes.
Swarming around the slippers, the creatures picked and rubbed the fabric until it was as clean as muddied silk could be. Torin stood and leaned on an oak while they crawled over the temple’s garden wall with their new treasure in tow. He let his arms fall as he stepped closer to the Veil, not quite piercing it, but coming close.
The silk caught the moonlight and it seemed the beetles and the Fae mice were deliberating on which way to go to reach the female. Fae mice were the same in the Seelie realm as in Torin’s Unseelie world, so they would be able to pick up her scent. Perhaps the wards did affect them after all? He’d thought the magical barrier would only hold and injure uninvited people…