Dawn's Light by Shannon Blair

Author:Shannon Blair [Blair, Shannon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQIA+, Royalty, first time, sexual discovery, elves, goblins, duplicity, mercenaries, kidnapping, revenge, action/adventure, coming out, enemies to lovers, in the closet, slow burn, road trip
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2021-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

That night, Moranthus’s dreams carried him back to the winding streets of Lower Aurora. The sun had just begun to crawl its way over the horizon, bathing the time-worn cobblestones beneath his feet and the faded, old shopfronts around him in a hazy, pink glow. Most of the city still slept. Down at the docks, the fishermen had long since rowed out in pursuit of their day’s catch, and the smell of baking bread filled the air, but the streets around him were empty and draped in a heavy veil of silence. His footsteps echoed as he wandered in search of something important. He couldn’t remember what it was or why he needed to find it, but he knew that if he just kept walking, his feet would carry him to it sooner or later, and he’d recognize it when he saw it.

He wasn’t surprised when his feet carried him to the run-down street near the bottom of Lower Aurora where he’d grown up, always bathed in darkness by the shadows of Upper Aurora on one side or the towering city wall on the other. He also wasn’t surprised to see his childhood home still standing instead of the brothel that had taken its place after it was burned to the ground. Half the homes in Lower Aurora were burned along with it in an effort to purge Aurora of the plague that had ravaged its lower districts before it could reach the upper city. It was a drastic measure, but a successful one. The plague claimed only a handful of lives in Upper Aurora, while there wasn’t a single elf in Lower Aurora who hadn’t lost at least one relative to its deadly clutches.

As if in response to Moranthus’s thoughts, the world began to shift around him, the entire street twisting from a fond memory to the cold, unfamiliar slum it had grown into. Moranthus shook his head to clear his mind, and his childhood home snapped back into place. This was what he’d been looking for, after all. He knew that now. And he couldn’t let it slip away from him until he remembered why he’d gone looking for it.

A plume of smoke curled out of his childhood home’s chimney. If Moranthus stopped to peer through the cracks in the wooden shutters over its window, there was no doubt in his mind that he’d see his parents, and himself, huddled around their hearth like they always did on cold winter mornings. Maybe that was why he’d come here.

The moment he stopped walking, the front door swung open, and his mother stepped through it. Not the withered, pock-marked corpse he’d last seen her as, after she’d succumbed to the plague, but the tall, wiry woman who’d carried him on her back all through the city while she picked up clothes for the wash. She’d taken more care while weaving her red hair into a simple commoner’s braid than most nobles did with theirs, and her mouth was downturned

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