Brigid Collins is a fantasy and science fiction writer living in Nevada. Her fantasy series The Songbird River Chronicles, the Clockwork Kingdom Saga, and Winter's Consort, her fun middle grade hijinks series The Sugimori Sisters, and her dark fairy tale novella Thorn and Thimble are available wherever books are sold. Her short stories have appeared in Fiction River, Feyland Tales, and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar anthologies. Sign up for her newsletter at www.brigidcollinsbooks.com/newsletter-sign-up/ and get a free copy of Strength & Chaos, Mischief & Poise: Four Cat Tales, exclusively available to her subscribers!

Winter's Consort 2 - An Ally in Summer by Brigid Collins

In the Faerie Realm, chance meetings can carry tempestuous consequences.

Bound to the Winter Court for a year, Chelsea Hewitt takes her responsibilities seriously. When she's on watch, no bloodthirsty springlings can touch her winterling Folk.

But springtime is fading into summer. And Chelsea is running out of excuses to avoid the Winter Queen.

An invitation to a ball in the Summer Court is timely. What better way for Chelsea to secure Winter's protection than to gain them a powerful ally? But Winter isn't the only Court invited, and not all the attendees will be happy to see Winter represented.

CURATOR'S NOTE

I let the authors choose their own books for a StoryBundle. That way I don't have to keep track of what's been in previous bundles. I read a lot of Brigid Collins' writing and love it all, but I missed this series somehow. As I was putting together the StoryBundle, this paragraph caught me: "Abandoned at the altar, Chelsea Hewitt swore she'd never don another wedding dress. No one could be worth the PTSD." – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I am soooo there. I hope you will be as well. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "This is a charming, suspenseful page-turning F/F paranormal fantasy romance filled with plot twists."

    – Amazon review
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

An Invitation

If anyone had ever told Chelsea Hewitt she'd one day come to look upon the cold and ice of winter as comforting, or that she'd find spring's warmth and color threatening, she'd have scoffed.

She liked flowers. She liked having muscles that weren't sore from constant shivering. She liked her commute to each of her three minimum-wage jobs sans snowdrifts and idiot drivers. She liked keeping her hard-earned cash to pay for things other than the overpriced heat her shitty apartment provided.

But this theoretical "anyone" would have been telling her these strange fortunes before the unexpected events of her best friend Jennifer's wedding. Since that fateful Midwinter ceremony, Chelsea had found herself taking on all sorts of new opinions.

Horses, for example. In her old, normal life, Chelsea had never once had an opportunity to so much as pet a horse, let alone ride on one. Now, she had definite thoughts on how a good horse ought to behave whilst being ridden for a scout mission through the forested hills along the contested border between the Faerie Realm's Winter Court and Spring Court.

She tugged at the reins of her normally quite useful gelding for probably the thousandth time this afternoon. "Quit eating every bit of green you see, you dumb horse. You know very well they might have springling poisons in them."

The horse curved his snow white neck around to shoot Chelsea an indignant glare, though whether it was for the unfair name-calling or for what some of the winterlings had called over-cautiousness on Chelsea's part, there was no way to tell.

Magical the horses of the Faerie Realm might be, but very few of them could talk.

Thank god for that small blessing, Chelsea thought. I've got more than enough of the Folk piling opinions and judgements on me without adding the residents of the stable to the lineup.

That was the lot of a Consort of the Courts, apparently. Swear to serve as partner to the monarch, promise to use your power to protect your Folk, and get so many people weighing in on how you ought to behave and comport yourself you barely have time to fret about the entire year you've bound yourself to spend in the Faerie Realm.

No time to worry how your best friend and her wife are doing back home in the mortal world, and certainly no time to use your magic to pop back for a quick visit, just to check, just to ease your mind.