With the release of Dark Uprising, book 2 of the Tainted Fae series, in just a couple of weeks, I thought it was time to share the characters!
First up is Riasg!
Riasg is dark fae and troubled might be a kind way to describe him. I think he would say he was cursed, or hexed, or something along those lines. At least when we first meet him.
Speaking of which, if you read Dark Fae Outcast, then you’ve met Riasg and you know what I mean… 🙄
“You are so drugged up you can’t even stand.”
Efflyn’s shove sent Riasg stumbling out the door to fall onto his backside. The drugs weaving through his veins doubled his vision as if he could see time again, witnessing both Efflyn’s push and an offered hand to help him rise in overlapping images. But when he blinked, she stood above him in her regal dress with her perfect face set in a sneer. Seeing his eyes focus on her, she spat on his chest.
“You were powerful once. Is this what you want for yourself?” She swept an arm over his prone figure where he lay crumpled in the mud in clothes where the additional grime hardly mattered.
“You pushed me.” Riasg ignored the fact he slurred. He called power to clean the filth from his clothes. None came. Panic cut through the drugs feeding his high.
Efflyn looked down at him as if he were as low as a human. “I hardly needed to. You no longer have a place with us. Do not return.”
The triple weave of his vision showed the wooden door closing to him thrice. He could not be barred forever.
Yeah, so a wee bit troubled, but he tends to cause as much trouble as he receives. But the cover of Dark Uprising isn’t the first time I’ve shared a picture of him. His dark and mysterious form is actually featured on the cover of Dark Fae Outcast.
There are a lot of problems going on in the world; well, I mean the world of the Tainted Fae —not ours… but they are pretty much the same thing since the Tainted Fae is set in this world and modern times. That means it classifies as urban fantasy, even if more then a bit takes place outside of any city. 🤣
Synthetics, especially plastics and petroleum, are not only toxic to the fae, they destroy magic. Every wonder why the world is a bit less sparkly these days…? So yeah, more than Riasg have problems. To the fae, this is already the end times and they are fading away in deaths just slow enough to be agonizing as they kill hope of a once powerful and nearly immortal race.
“I wast iron bound.” Sgleò spoke the words solemnly.
“That’s just a legend. Iron doesn’t affect us that strongly.” Riasg’s breath came in small sips, and it wasn’t just from the dregs of ola in his blood.
“It doest me.” There was a glint to Sgleò’s dark eyes and a sense of ancient power slowly awakening before Riasg saw just the bundle of arms of an old fae again. A very old fae. Riasg slid sideways in time to see the knife again on Sgleò’s throat as the iron blade touched his wooden skin. The screams sounded real.
Riasg came back to now with a twist of dislocation that made him vomit in the corner.
“Whither art thy magic?”
“I took drugs,” Riasg answered as he rubbed the dripping saliva from his mouth with a shaking hand. He wished it was as easy as throwing up to relieve the fire burning in him.
Sgleò’s intent eyes narrowed. “Nothing can poison us.”
Riasg snorted. “Everything poisons us. Welcome to the Cailite Ré.”
The fae call this time the Cailite Ré, meaning dark time. It was foretold but never really worried about. Funny how the end of the world can just sort of sneak up on you…
But despite being hopeless and dark fae, Riasg keeps finding a reason to help those in a worse state than him… which would be a pretty awful state to be in, really. First, he rescues Sgleò, the last of an ancient fae race whose power once rivaled a god’s… and who had about the same level of humility. Then, he befriends a spiny brownie, Bramble, that seems to be an outcast among outcasts of the small fae.
The small creature with its back of twiggy spikes like a porcupine made of wood inched slowly toward the center of the thicket.
“How do you survive here?”
“I don’t.”
Riasg snorted. Old ways and old fae, he hadn’t heard the roundabout answers and questions for so long he could have hugged the creature that sat watching him with unblinking black eyes.
“What’s your name.”
The brownie growled.
“Oh come on, give me something to call you. I’m Riasg. He is Sgleò.” He felt like lecturing the creature that he hadn’t forgotten the ways of their people, but he knew some had. He’d been offered true names for as little as an ounce of ola. He’d thought of selling his himself.
The brownie climbed out of the shrub and sat next to Sgleò’s shoulder on the bench, peering steadily at him. “He is old.” Its voice chirped like a bird underlain with the buzz of summer bees.
It was so easy to be mesmerized that Riasg had to shake himself to defense. All fae were dangerous, the small ones even more so. Nostalgia for his own kind and times past only made it easier for the small brownie to weasel what it wanted.
From there with a bit of help from a light fae healer, he finds himself on a path that leads him to something truly unexpected… that he might be more than he ever imagined himself to be.
So, what do you do if you see yourself as the worse screw-up in a time of lost magic and slow death, only to have others look up to you for everything you’ve done? Run away? Fight? Help those who need that last bit of hope even if you think they’ve got to be pretty desperate if they think that hope is you?
“He’s the one.”
The voices were quiet at first but grew to the whisper of waves lapping a shore. Riasg tensed with each step, his hands balling into fists.
He spun on his heels and shouted, “I’m not the one!” Riasg gestured to Adahy. “He is or Leanag or Sgleò, but not me.” Most of the sentence was lost as his voice fell away, but the meaning was clear as well as Riasg’s agitation. He stalked past the barely standing chain-link fence and into the city proper.
October and Adahy gave him space for a block until she quickened her pace. For all his power and dark anger, he didn’t frighten her. Not anymore and not with Bramble perched on his shoulder like an acid trip wooden version of a parrot.
“The one what?” She asked as she matched his pace.
Riasg tossed her a sideways glance and didn’t answer for a few more steps. “The one who’ll figure out how to save us all and restore fae and manitou and all that shite.” Riasg stopped and ran his fingers through his hair. “Everyone expects someone to turn up and save them.”
Don’t worry though, he has a very mischievous brownie to not only keep him in line, but on his toes… and not feeling too self-assured. 😉
Riasg has a harder path than he expected… and he was having problems when he thought his best options were to get high and die under the stars. But a few friends come along to help him out… or just give him a reason to keep himself together so he can save them the next time they need. What else are friend for?
Usually, the blood binding felt like a too tight shirt, but one whose discomfort could, at times, feel like a balm. It gave him purpose when he would normally flounder. It caused him to stay alert and try not to get killed or addicted to ola again, which was almost worse than dying. A promise to Soyla, a binding, and now he had two he needed to look after. Possibly three, though he didn’t remember the specifics of the deal he’d made with Bramble.
Riasg filled a cup with filtered water from the kitchen before turning to the windows. The apartment protected them from contaminants. But there were other things that were dangerous outside the boundaries of Wind River. October and Adahy might have forgotten, but he hadn’t.
Riasg dipped his finger in the water and started drawing on the cold glass.
I’ll share more on the other characters soon. But until then, you can go and pre-order Dark Uprising at a discount before its release on March 14! The rest of the series will be close behind with all the books out by the end of June!
