The Bitter Seed of Magic

Prologue

Curses are never good—and never more so when you end up trapped in the middle of one—like the droch guidhe, the curse that started eighty years ago.

Clíona, a powerful sidhe queen—one of the noble fae—fell in love with a human, and she chose to bear him a son. Like all mortal children born of sidhe and human, her son was human and therefore ill-suited for life in the Fair Lands. So although she loved him with all her heart, she left him with his father when she was forced to return to her throne, charging those lesser fae who lived in the humans’ world to watch over him and keep him safe.

Only the lesser fae didn’t watch him closely enough.

The vampires found him.

And they lured him to his death.

Distraught at losing her son, Clíona cut off the lesser fae from the Fair Lands and laid the droch guidhe on them, that they should also know the grief in her heart.

Faelings—the mortal children of lesser fae and humans—were (and still are) the first victims of the curse: easy pickings for the vampires through no fault of their own. Unwilling to see more of their mortal children die before their time, and hoping to deny the curse its prey, London’s lesser fae first chose to stop having children with humans, but as time moved on, it became clear that not only were no faelings being born, but since the curse had been laid, no full-blood fae children had been born either.

The curse had blighted the lesser fae’s fertility.

And while they might be nearly immortal, while they might be able to heal themselves of most injuries, they are the offspring of the Shining Times, born of magic and nature conjoined, and to survive, they must continually renew their connection to keep it strong, and that means they must procreate. For if the fae don’t procreate, then the magic doesn’t either, and if the magic fades, then it won’t be long before the fae follow it.

London’s lesser fae are dying—literally—to break the curse.

But now they think they’ve found another way.

Me.