Teaser Tuesday: The Huntsman and the Spellweaver (Under Elfhame’s Stars) by Lucia Lawrence


#TeaserTuesday this week is an epic fantasy romance by Lucia Lawrence. The Huntsman and the Spellweaver is a fantasy tale of lost love, the Wild Hunt and souls finding each other through it all. Once you've enjoyed the excerpt, the book is available on 29th October. 

From the blurb:

For centuries, the Huntsman has searched the mortal world for his long-lost love, stolen from him by the Morrigan—the vengeful goddess of fate, victory, and death….  

When a mysterious stranger saves Tam from being cruelly—and perhaps fatally—outed, Tam quickly discovers that his rescuer is no ordinary man: he’s a cursed spirit from another world. The fae of Elfhame are free to love whoever they want, without judgment, and when Eadric offers to take Tam to live among them, Tam can’t resist accepting. And it’s not just that the offer carries the promise of all he’s ever dreamed of.

The draw Tam feels to Eadric is undeniable—a captivating force that sparks across his skin and straight to his heart with even the simplest touch. But Eadric is haunted by the deadly Wild Hunt, and at its mercy, the pair are quickly plunged into a world of unforgiving goddesses and ancient magic.

Not even his certainty that his feelings could never be returned can keep Tam from hopelessly falling for Eadric, whom he is determined to free from his curse before the Wild Hunt can devour his soul; even if he has to break his own heart to do it. Time is running out though, and as the magnetic attraction between them builds until Tam can’t help but wonder if Eadric might feel more for him than he’d ever dared to hope, it may be too late to save Eadric from being consumed by the curse he’s fought so long to escape.

Let yourself be carried away by a scintillating queer MM fantasy romance novel that will capture your imagination and heart with characters to fall in love with and a paranormal twist. As the second standalone novel in the Under Elfhame’s Stars series, The Huntsman and the Spellweaver is a steamy slow-burn cinnamon roll romance that’s perfect for readers who have a soft spot for tales of self-discovery, unexpected bravery, charming chivalry, and enduring love that overcomes all.


Excerpt:

I don’t even have time to dream before a shout rips me awake again, and I’m upright, staring wildly around the cave.

Another shout—Eadric’s voice.

“Stop! No! I won’t let—”

Then his words are drowned out in a terrible, choking sob.

I’m on my feet, muscles tensed, but there’s nothing.

My eyes sweep the dim space, and then I see him lying, half curled on his side, on the floor, his face pressed into his hands, and I understand.

“Eadric,” I’m on my knees beside him in an instant, pulling his hands away from his face.
His eyes are closed. He’s still asleep.

His face is contorted like he’s in pain, and beads of sweat stand out on his forehead as he shifts, one arm half rising, his hand closing tight like he’s grasping his sword. He shakes his head, a half coherent sound on his lips.

“Wake up! Eadric, it isn’t real.” I shake his shoulders gently, and his eyes flutter open to dart from side to side, his breath heaving and uneven.

“It wasn’t real,” I whisper, unable to stop myself from reaching out to cup the side of his face in my hand.

His wide eyes still and come to rest on me, recognition softening the wildness they’d held a moment before.

“Cael?”

That name—the way he said it, his voice a broken, low question—like he thought I was—
What exactly that means, I can’t begin to decide as my pulse leaps with an inexplicable excitement at the same instant as my stomach sinks with resignation at the fact that it’s Cael he’s wishing for. And all the while, stronger than everything else, my heart breaks for Eadric and his loss and the torment of his curse.

His forehead furrows in confusion and he shakes his head slowly. Then his eyebrows shoot up.

“Tam,” he says, a bit louder, sounding a little more like himself, as he pushes up to sit. When he does though, his knees pull up to his chest, and his face sinks into his hands, his elbows resting heavily on his knees.

My hand fell away from his face when he sat up, but now I bring it to his shoulder, realizing suddenly that he’s removed his mail shirt. It’s lying on the cave floor beside him. Through the fabric of his tunic, I can feel the warm outline of his rigid muscles and the slight tremor of his uneven breath.

“Would it help to talk about it?”

I’m not sure if I should ask, but gods, I don’t know what else to say.

What I do know is that I can’t just sit here and not say anything, not do anything to help. All I want is to comfort him because seeing him like this—

I can’t help the way my thumb brushes against his shoulder in a slow, stroking caress. The urge to wrap my other arm around him and hold him is so strong that I pull that arm around my own chest instead, clinging to the fabric of my shirt at my side.

He shakes his head, but then he lifts his face from his hands to look at me. His eyes are wide and staring, more haunted than anything I’ve ever seen before.

“I tried so hard not to let them,” he whispers, “but I couldn’t stop them. Sometimes I could, but not always. And every time I couldn’t—”

His face falls back into his hands, but he keeps talking, his voice muffled and broken. “All those years, those centuries. I would have found a way to banish the Hunt from the beginning, but I couldn’t until I—until my curse broke. For all those centuries, I waited for Samhain and those wonderful and terrible days of Yule when I was free to search through the day, but then every night when darkness fell and the Hunt awoke, I knew what could happen.”

He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head again. “But the horrible truth is, much as I dreaded Yule, I didn’t dread it half as much as I yearned for it.”

Lifting his head, he stares at me. “Even though I knew that every night the Hunt might break free of my control, leaving behind death and desolation, I counted the days until the time came again each year because it meant another chance for me to search.

“I’m as guilty as the beasts and demons of the Hunt, Tam. As—”

“You are not.” The words rip from me like a shout even though they’re barely more than a whisper.

My other hand is suddenly free of its hold on my shirt and on his other shoulder, and I half shake him, my fingers clenching against the hardness of his knotted muscle, and he doesn’t pull away. “You can’t blame yourself for how you feel and for wanting to find him, for wanting to have him back more than anything in the world.”

His eyes flit across my face, and for a beat, a look of something like surprise interrupts the horror and self-reproach that had been there a second before. The next second though, they’re back, blotting out that other expression.

“You said yourself that you’d have banished the Hunt from the beginning if you could have. I can see, even though I don’t want to, because of how much it hurts me to see how it hurts you, what you feel for every soul lost to the Hunt over the years.”

The honesty of those words, so near to the truth that’s so tenuously hidden in me at this moment, makes my eyes sting, but I go on, barely able to draw breath as the rest of what I have to say rushes out of me.

“You never wanted those terrible nights with the Hunt. All you want are those days—those few days every year when you have a chance to try to find the happiness that was stolen from you. It’s not your fault that you can’t just settle for giving up on finding the love you’ve lost. Because why should you? Why should anyone, even you, get to decide that wanting that is wrong?”

The pitch and speed of my words are rising, but I can’t stop it as they tear from me. My hands don’t leave his shoulders, but by now, I’m using them to hold myself up as much as anything else.

“You can’t just decide that you don’t deserve happiness or that you’re wrong for how you feel when you can’t help it, and it’s only the truth and it doesn’t hurt anyone or change anything except that, for you, it changes everything.”

My breaths are as ragged and desperate as his were, and I can feel the tracings of tears down my cheeks because, at some point, what I was saying became as much, if not more, about myself than about him, and for the first time, I believe every goddamned word of it without question or reservation.

Because it is true, and it is right, and I should have known it all along.

His eyes are locked on mine, and for once, I’m not afraid of what he sees.

Just like the line blurred between what I was saying to him and for him, and what I said to and for myself, I can feel the lines blurring between us. Where does the simple decency of being there for someone who needs to know that he can forgive himself for something he never should have blamed himself for in the first-place end, and where does it cross over into being something more?

I don’t know, and right now, I don’t give a damn because somehow my arms are around him, and his hands are wound round my arm, gripping tight, pulling me against him as he leans into me, his head resting against my shoulder. I close my eyes, pressing close as I feel the misery and horror retreating from him. Gradually, the tension in his body relaxes into mine and his breathing slows, along with my own.

The Huntsman and the Spellweaver will be released on 29th October, and will available as an e-book through Kindle Unlimited. 


Comments