The Devourer: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (Airshan Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THE DEVOURER

  A Reverse Harem Fantasy

  Airshan Chronicles 3

  Nhys Glover

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. With the exception of historical events and people used as background for the story, or those clearly in the public domain, the names, characters and incidents portrayed in this work come wholly from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental

  Published by Belisama Press

  © Nhys Glover 2018

  The right of Nhys Glover to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is copyright. All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please delete it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY NHYS GLOVER

  ANCIENT ROMAN HISTORICAL ROMANCES:

  Liquid Fire

  The Barbarian's Mistress

  Lionslayer's Woman (Sequel to Liquid Fire)

  White Raven's Lover (Sequel to Barbarian's Mistress)

  The Gladiator's Bride (Sequel to White Raven's Lover)

  WEREWOLF KEEP TRILOGY:

  Guardian of Werewolf Keep

  Imprisoned at Werewolf Keep

  Defiance at Werewolf Keep

  Insane (A novella)

  NEW ATLANTIS TIME TRAVEL SERIES:

  Nine Lives (Cara/Jac)

  The Dreamer's Prince (Jane/Julio)

  Savage (Faith/ Luke)

  Shared Soul (Maggie/Travis)

  Bitter Oath (Liv/ Rene)

  The Titan Drowns (Eilish/Max, Karl/Lizzie, Pia/Marco)

  The Key (Kat/Bart)

  Pieces (Krista/Dirk)

  Second Chance (Bree/Hakon)

  Watcher (Jin/Rafe)

  Vision of You (Ellen/Duke)

  Osiris (Takhara/Dan)

  Causality (Willow/Jarvidh)

  Gods of Time (Teagan/Jason, Lucien/Alba)

  Book of Seeds (Shay/Cy)

  SCORPIO SONS SF/SHIFTER ROMANCE SERIES:

  1: Colton 2: Connor 3: Cooper 4: Chase

  5: Cameron 6: Caleb 7: Conrad 8: Charles

  GREYWORLD SERIES:

  (Paranormal Sweet Romance)

  1: The Anomaly

  2: Mallory

  3: Earth Angel

  4: Crag Wraith

  REVERSE HAREM FANTASIES:

  THE AIRLUDS TRILOGY:

  The Sacrifice

  The Chosen One

  Goddess Unbound

  THE AIRSHAN CHRONICLES

  The Five

  Daemon

  The Devourer

  OTHERS:

  The Way Home (Ghost Romance)

  Caught in a Dream (SF Sweet Romance)

  Labyrinth of Light (New Age Inspirational)

  Find out more about Nhys and her books here:

  www.nhysglover.com

  Chapter One

  SHARDRA

  As we strolled along the sandy beach I stared at the huge winged creature holding my hand. His skin glistened in the late afternoon sun, tarnished silver with a rose hue he had lacked under his own realm’s sunlight. Long, silver-grey hair, as straight as a waterfall, fell around his shoulders and over his chest. Even after the gusts of wind he’d experienced during the flight from the cave he’d been hidden in for eons, his hair remained oddly untangled.

  If Airsha, the Goddess Incarnate, hadn’t cut off all my frizzy locks because of the knots and bugs, I would be suffering from more than my share of tangles after that ride. Now, though, I appreciated the feel of the air on my head and the lack of bulk weighing me down. It was only one of the things I had to be grateful for. One of the things the Chosen One had done for me.

  Her people had not only taken me from my cave and freed me from the hag who had been sapping my essence for five long suns, but had also brought me across an unknown sea. They had trusted me to lead the way to my comforter, the half-daemon I had named Sky in my head—the halfling who was the Key to the underworld—the being who had the power to suck in the monstrous, devouring energy called The Jayger and lock him away yet again.

  He would do that for me. Not for the Goddess, or the other air-breathing creatures at risk in the world, but for me. Because I was the one the Goddess had promised him. The only one who would ever love him.

  And I did. With all my heart. And he loved me the same way. Our total focus on each other had come out of necessity. There had never been anyone else in our lives but each other. He had been my comforter since I awoke in his dream realm when I was five suns old. At that time, I had recently been established in my new home—a cave on the side of a mountain—with only a paid nurse for company. And it was a cave on the side of another mountain, a volcanic mountain, that I had found him on the physical realm fifteen suns later.

  “You are more beautiful in this realm than you were in mine. I thought that could not be possible. I thought you were already too beautiful to be real, back there. But I was wrong.” His voice was deep and rumbling, like thunder. But it was smooth too, sliding over my senses like warm water over my skin.

  “I was worried you might be disappointed,” I confessed. “I am still so thin.”

  He turned me to him and ran one silvery hand down the side of my face, his skin warm, his action gentle and tender. “You are beautiful to me! You will always be beautiful to me, no matter what your outer shell looks like. Because you wear a glamour. Do you know what a glamour is?”

  I nodded. “A magical mask that makes something more beautiful than it actually is.”

  He nodded, frowning a little. “Mayhap a glamour is not what I mean, or my definition is different from your own. I am still acquiring your language with all its nuances. After fifteen of your suns, I am still imperfect in its use.

  “To me you wear a gossamer veil over your physical body that is breathtakingly beautiful. That veil is your soul or essence. It makes the physical body underneath, no matter its age or condition, glorious. Because you are glorious. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. I did understand. But I changed the subject because it made me uncomfortable.

  “When I saw you lying there in that dark cave, surrounded by eerie glowing stones, I feared you were dead. I thought I was too late, and you had died waiting for me. That what I had experienced in that other realm was... your spirit set free from your physical body. My heart broke. It felt like my heart broke, and the pain was excrucia
ting.”

  He leaned down to kiss my hair. It was not a short distance to lean. The top of my head did not even reach his shoulder, and I was not a short woman, something I had only discovered recently. It was hard to know such things as height when you have no one with whom to compare yourself. So, now I did know. I was a tall woman. But, my comforter... Sky... was far taller.

  “I was hibernating. My body was, at least. That was the only way I could have lived this long. Elementals like me are not immortal. We age and die like all creations of the Goddess. It is part of the cycle of life. Do other fire or air elementals still exist in your world?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

  He nodded. “Of course, I knew that. From your memory, I knew that. I suppose I just hoped that when I met you in this realm it would be different.”

  “You would want sylphs to still exist? After the way they treated you?” I asked incredulously.

  He sighed. “How would you treat something that reminded you of a terrible violence carried out on an innocent? If I had looked less like my father mayhap they could have forgotten. But my size, my teeth and claws, my need for raw meat to sustain me... they could not look past these things. Every time I ate I saw them turn away in revulsion.”

  “You eat raw meat?” I asked, curious but not repulsed. Many wild beastlings were predators and ate raw meat. Even some featherlings did as well, such as the cawl.

  “Yes. After I was weaned, it was the only way I could survive. Sylphs drew sustenance from the air around them. They did not so much breathe air as sup on it. When my mother became pregnant with me, she developed breasts for the first time. To feed me as a babe. They repulsed her. Made her feel like a beastling with dangling udders that a monstrous creature would then suck on to stay alive. Like a parasite. She called me a parasite. A sylph gave birth to babes already able to sustain themselves by supping from the air. A mother’s only job was to protect them until they were big enough to defend themselves, or flee. I was different. I was always different.”

  I heard the bitterness in his voice behind the sadness.

  “And daemons? What did daemons eat?” I do not know why I was continuing this line of enquiry. I could see it hurt him. Yet there was so much I did not know about him. So much I needed to understand.

  “Daemons eat melted rocks, magma. When they broke free of the underworld they had to stay close to volcanoes for their sustenance.”

  I frowned. “But you do not eat rocks? And you do not eat air. How is it that you eat other creatures of the earth?”

  He shook his head. “I asked the Goddess that once. She said that earth was a blending of fire and air. Or fire and water. That made me a creature of the earth—because I blended fire and air in my veins—as much as any other kind of earth elemental.”

  He paused to look down at me from his great height. “Humans are earth elementals. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head in amazement. “How is that possible... we are... Well, we are just human. Not magical beings like sylphs, daemons and sprites.”

  “Do you have magic?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Some of us do.”

  “Then you are magical beings of the earth element. I watched your kind when I was growing up. Even then you were forgetting what you were. Some knew... but others... they considered themselves no different to the other beastlings.”

  “So, in a way then, we are not all that different,” I said with a big smile.

  He turned to face me, his eyes filled with sadness. “We are different. I am half monster. You are not.”

  “Just because you share your blood with a fire elemental does not make you a monster.”

  At that moment I heard the flap of wings overhead and looked up to see Flame coming in to land. She looked fierce, as if she was readying herself for a fight. For a moment, I was scared. What if she used her lightning magic on my comforter? What if he defended himself by tearing her in two? I could not stand it if the two people I cared about most tried to destroy each other.

  “I mean her no harm. She will realise that fast enough. And she needs me, I think.”

  “Flame can be hot-headed and act before thinking things through. She may know she needs you, but if she fears for my safety...”

  I received another tender kiss to the top of my head. “Do not fear, my love. Do not fear for either of us.”

  As the red-head jumped off her airling and strode toward us, I stiffened. No matter that my comforter thought all would be well. He did not know her as I did. Without the calming influence of either Zem or Landor, I did not know what she might do.

  “You have to be Flame,” my comforter said with a welcoming smile. “Thank you for bringing my love to me. I am forever in your debt.”

  This seemed to calm Flame a little, but she still chose to challenge him. “And you are?”

  “Shardra calls me her comforter. My mother and her people called me daemon. I have no other name. Names are used to distinguish you from others, and there are no others like me.”

  “A halfling?”

  He nodded his head regally.

  I heard the wings overhead and felt relieved that Flame’s men had joined her.

  When they landed and came to her side, my heart shifted sickeningly in my chest. They also looked more than ready to fight.

  My comforter must have been mulling over what he had gleaned of these men from my memory because, as they approached, he said, “Ah, now I see it. You are the ones the Goddess wants me to assist.” His rumbling voice was amiable.

  “You are the Key that can unlock the way to the underworld,” Zem said, equally amiably, though his tension was obvious. He was no longer the shy, anxious youth I often spoke with on the ship but a warrior suffused with earth magic.

  My comforter looked suddenly very sad. “I will not fight you, human. Why would I? You have freed me from my hiding place and brought my love to me. And, yes, I am capable of not only opening the gateway to the underworld but creating a whirlpool of energy so powerful it can suck the entity known as The Jayger into it. I have done it once, I can do it again.”

  “If necessary. It may not be– ”

  The world suddenly disappeared and I was surrounded by destruction. Waves pounded on villages and towns, sending them to their watery graves. My worst fears had been realised. The Jayger was released, and he was literally raining down retribution on the heads of all the Goddess’ creatures. And it was terrible!

  How long I watched it—felt it—I have no idea, but finally it ended, and I awoke to find myself in my comforter’s big arms yet again.

  I turned my head to see Redin, the tall man who had saved me from the hag and had become like a brother to me during the sea journey here, racing down the beach toward us. Short of breath and panting, he gasped out his news as he stared up at my comforter. I could read fear in his eyes, and I wanted to reassure him I was all right. But I knew he had more important concerns to share with us. The same bad tidings I had to reveal.

  “They did it. Gods, she had just hauled me in to find us in the scrying pool when it happened. I heard the chanting and was aware of the Godling cutting his palm over a stone disc marked with unintelligible symbols. He was adding his blood to that of the human sacrifice laid out, spread-eagle, across the disc. That poor wretch was already bleeding out.

  “The hag wasn’t expecting it to work. It had not been successful any other time. But this time... Gods! Suddenly the disc exploded into a million pieces and water gushed out of the hole, flooding the whole tunnel, washing the Devourers away.

  “The last thing I saw and felt before I came back to myself, freed from my bonds, was the hag being swallowed up by the water. I felt her shock and her sense of betrayal. I was supposed to be spared! Why am I not being spared? They were her final thoughts as I returned to myself as she died.”

  He fell to his knees in the sand, his whole body shuddering under the onslaught of what he’d witnessed. Flame placed a comforting han
d on his shoulder.

  I shifted restlessly, anxious to also go to Redin. My comforter put me down gently. On shaky legs, I went to Redin and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, feeling the way he trembled in my arms. It was how I trembled.

  Seeing other places and other times was no gift, it was a curse! In that moment, I despised it with all my heart.

  I had to tell them what I saw. Though I hated to confirm what Redin had witnessed, I could do nothing else. This was what we had been planning for. This was what the Goddess had created The Five for. The reason my comforter had remained hidden in a cave for eons.

  For this day!

  “My vision was of storms. Wild, raging storms. Of the sea boiling up and washing over the land; washing away homes as if they were kindling; washing away whole towns as if they were a childling’s playthings.” I shuddered as I finished sharing my vision with them all.

  “How long have we got?” Flame asked.

  “It will not happen all at once,” my comforter said. “The last time it took a full moon cycle for the end to come. It needs to build on itself. The Jayger needs to build itself up.”

  “Yes, that is exactly how it felt,” I agreed. “Like he was weak when he came from the underworld and he must rebuild his strength with the storms. More water, he needs to create more water energy. To disrupt the balance. What I saw felt like the first assault on the land and the Goddess’ creations. And it will come in a little less than half a moon cycle. That is when what I saw in my vision will occur.”

  The reality of it washed over me anew. How were we going to stop this terrible thing? It seemed impossible.

  I could see Flame was tottering under the weight of the responsibility resting on her narrow shoulders. She was younger than me. And I felt impossibly young for my minor part in this terrible drama. How could the Goddess have made her responsible for saving the world?