First Light: Chapter Five

This is the last chapter preview I’m going to give you for First Light! The book comes out a week from TODAY and I’m so excited for you to read it.

Direct store: https://bit.ly/4grqTZ7 (Delivers 10/28 via the Bookfunnel app)

Amazon (affiliate): https://amzn.to/3ZA15Uv

Hardcover: https://tinyurl.com/FirstLightHardcover

Goodreads: https://tinyurl.com/FirstLightGR

Here are some of the advance reviews for the book:

First Light was my most anticipated release of 2024 and it did NOT disappoint! What an exciting new series this is! First Light took all of my favorite things and melded them together in a unique new way. Magic, mythology and dragons oh my! I have read so many books that have some the elements that First Light has, but never have I read them so uniquely and beautifully combined into one brilliant story.  —This Literary Life

The story had me from the first pages. I am desperate for the second book! World building and epic storytelling is a talent for this author. I LOVED this book! —Nicole R., Goodreads Reviewer

Cleverly woven storylines with descriptions so vivid you can hear the strange noises in the fairy murder forest. All wrapped up in my favorite way for her to end a book. An epic battle and the promise of more of the story to come. —Shelly K., Goodreads Reviewer


Chapter Five

Carys and Duncan were back at the Four Crowns pub in town, sitting in a corner booth and waiting for someone.

“You said you’d take me, and the minute I agree, you drag me back into town.” Carys was annoyed and starting to feel like Duncan was leading her on a wild-goose chase to try to run her off. Maybe he’d been right and she should have laughed in his face and driven back to Edinburgh.

What are you doing, Carys? She was unhinged. This was stupid. This was an absolute ridiculous situation, and when she finally found Lachlan, she was going to give him hell about making her trot off into Duncan’s delusions to find him.

She looked around the dark pub, which smelled like beer and… oddly, moss. “Why are we back here?”

“We need a favor.” Duncan grimaced. “From Dru.”

“The bartender?”

“He’s that as well,” Duncan muttered. “He can take us, but we’ll need to bargain with him. Don’t say anything, and don’t tell him your name.”

Wow. So Duncan was… really into the fairy tale thing.  “What are you—”

“Duncan Murray.”

Carys turned and saw the lithe figure of Dru walking through the growing crowd at the bar. It was Thursday afternoon, but they were far from alone in the afternoon rush.

“Dru.”

The tall man slid gracefully into the booth across from them and smiled. “And Carys Morgan.”

“You know my name.” The man’s beauty was startling all over again, his lips full and pink like berries she wanted to bite. The dark stubble on his jaw begged for her touch.

“Not from her, you don’t,” Duncan said. “So don’t be getting ideas.”

Dru smiled. “I asked about the American visiting and asking questions about Lachlan. People here are so friendly and forthcoming.”

“So you might guess why we’re paying you a visit.” Duncan’s voice was a borderline hostile growl.

Dru pulled another bottle of whiskey from seemingly nowhere, and three glasses were on the table in a blink. “Do you need my help, Duncan Murray?”

“You know I have leverage.”

Dru’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying that you want to trade one of your favors? For her?”

“Don’t make this complicated, Dru.” Duncan lowered his voice even more and switched to Gaelic, which Dru apparently understood and Carys didn’t.

The two men went back and forth for several agonizing minutes while Carys grew increasingly impatient. She hated not knowing what was going on, and all of this reeked of insiders keeping secrets.

She hated that.

Carys hated cliques and secrets. She abhorred gatekeepers and insiders. Her father used to tease her about it, calling her his “very American daughter.”

“Enough.” Carys broke into their hushed conversation. “Either tell me what you’re talking about or I’m leaving.”

Dru’s eyes lit up. “And who are you to dictate the terms of this negotiation, Carys Morgan, stranger to two worlds?”

Duncan blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“She’ll know when she knows.” Dru turned to Carys and poured a finger of whiskey in her glass. “Drink with me and I’ll know you. See that you don’t get lost in the shadows tonight.”

She eyed the glass with suspicion, then turned to Duncan. He gave her a slight nod. Dru poured another finger of whiskey in Duncan’s glass, then in his own.

“We have an agreement then.”

Carys didn’t know what made her do it, but just before Dru was about to pick up his glass, she reached over and switched her glass with the strange man’s.

He looked at her with amusement, picked up the glass he’d poured for Carys, and drank.

Duncan sighed, then downed the whiskey. “Done.”

Carys picked up the cold glass holding the golden liquid, tipped it up, and drank it in one gulp. “Done.”

Dru’s eyes came alive, and the vivid blue seemed to get darker as she watched him. “I’ll see you on the edge of the forest, Duncan Murray. Be there at sunset.”


“Leave it.” Duncan took her phone and tossed it on the bed. “We don’t have much time. The days are short this time of year.”

“I’m not leaving my phone—”

“If you don’t leave it, they’ll take it.”

Who will take it?” She shook her head. “You keep telling me all these mysterious rules, and I know a lot of them are based in old European superstitions, but—”

“Ha!” He snorted. “Old European… Yes, it’s all superstition. Listen, woman, I traded something quite valuable for this passage, so you’ll listen to the rules I give you. Don’t take your phone. It’ll be safe here at the house with Mary and Andrew, and if you bring it to the forest tonight, you’ll lose it. Trust me, I’ve tried. No cameras. No film of any kind. No metal that’s not fine—”

“What does that mean?”

“No iron or iron alloys.” He looked at her necklace. “Is that gold?”

Carys wore a necklace that had been her mother’s, a gold chain with two Welsh dragons on it, one in gold and the other in silver. “It’s gold and silver, yeah.”

“That should be fine,” he muttered. “Basically, anything modern, just leave it. I can’t even take a pocketknife to this place.”

She pointed to the knife hanging on his belt. “What’s that then?”

He drew the blade from the leather-wrapped sheath. “It’s bone with a flint blade, and I’ll be hiding it before we meet Dru.”

Carys was starting to feel like she was entering someone’s delusion. “Is this going to be dangerous?”

Was Duncan Murray really a serial killer who was going to dispose of her in the forest tonight?

After meeting you at a pub in a small town and introducing you to his housekeeper?

She listened to too many podcasts.

“Dangerous?” He shrugged. “Could be. Could be fine. You wanted to see Lachlan, so we’re going.”

“You said you went to this place when you were a kid, so I assumed that this was…”

“What?”

Some kind of elaborate prank to be honest. Carys was going along with all of Duncan’s plans, but in her heart, she didn’t really believe in any kind of alternate dimensions, shadow worlds, or different timelines no matter how many times her levelheaded engineer friend Laura told her that the science behind dimensional shifts were entirely possible in theory.

In theory. Not in practice.

“Text your friends,” Duncan told her. “Tell them you’re going camping with Lachlan for a few days and that you’re fine. Leave your phone here and give them Mary’s number. The last thing we need is more Americans showing up to harass my staff.”

Carys knew leaving her phone was good advice, but it also made her feel naked. But practically speaking, she knew that even if wherever they were going was just a remote area of Scotland, the signal probably wouldn’t work.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Duncan was annoying her the longer he lingered in the room where Mary had put her luggage.

“Can you give me some privacy please?” She looked at him from the corner of her eye as she texted Laura and Kiersten her location.

“Fine, but be ready in an hour and dress warm.”

Carys told Laura and Kiersten she was going camping like Duncan had said and that if they were worried to call Mary Burris at Murrayshall House. She also told them that Lachlan and Duncan were some kind of minor Scottish royalty, that everything was fine, and she’d explain later.

She was going to come back to two hundred messages, she just knew it.

Duncan left the room, and Carys walked to the window to stare at the forest where they would meet Dru later that night.

Though the town was only a short drive away, the forest behind Murrayshall House and the old castle felt primeval. The dense forest reached up the giant hill—not quite a mountain—surrounding the ruined castle and an even older-looking fort on the hill above it. Grey stones butted up from the top of the ridge where the old fort had been built, like jagged teeth from the jawbone of a monster.

There was a stream running down the hill and into the meadow around the house, curling and bounding over moss-covered rocks and twisting between the curves of the earth. A waterfall was barely visible between the trees.

And somewhere in that forest was Lachlan, at least according to his brother.

She changed her mind. This was the worst idea in her twenty-nine years of life on this planet. Going into a dark forest with her missing boyfriend’s not-twin brother.

She was following that bunny all the way into the woods, and the wolf was probably the one guiding her.

Carys changed her trousers to the heaviest khaki canvas she owned, pulled on wool socks and a microfiber undershirt, layering a wool sweater over her shirt before she donned a wool coat that Mary had loaned her.

Apparently her bright red puffer coat was a little too conspicuous.

She finished her trekking outfit with sturdy boots, then walked down the stairs to meet Duncan, who was waiting at the door in similar sturdy hiking clothes.

“Ready?” he asked.

No.

He cocked his head. “Last chance to leave it.”

Carys lifted her chin, walked past him, and opened the front door.