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  The Warder's Leprechaun

  A Warder, a leprechaun and a bargain for exchange of services, any services, is just what is needed to unite two souls parted by magic.

  When Asha's cousin Elhara is struck with a memory-eating spell, Asha knows just who can help. She travels to the leprechaun city, deep in the woods, and faces the man she has been dreaming of for over a decade.

  Tuartha has undergone a few changes since he first kissed her in the forest and now, she has to negotiate with a male who blames her for her desertion and agrees to help her cousin under one condition. She is to give herself to him, body and soul.

  Asha isn't sure which part of her will give in first, but she hopes they are in private when it does.

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  The Warder's Leprechaun

  Copyright © 2011 Viola Grace

  ISBN: 978-1-77111-092-1

  Cover art by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books

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  The Warder's Leprechaun

  By

  Viola Grace

  Chapter One

  Elhara was looking pale and pasty, even to her cousin Asha. "Are you okay?"

  They were washing dishes at their grandparents' home deep in the woods of Realm and Asha was getting concerned. The normally cheerful Elhara was almost silent.

  "Yes. No. I don't know. I have the feeling that I have forgotten something and for the life of me, I can't remember what I forgot." She rubbed her forehead and grimaced.

  Asha heaved a deep sigh. "It is probably nothing. I can't imagine that you would disregard something important."

  Elhara rubbed at her forehead, "I can't either, but there has to be something. I never feel like this."

  Asha finished putting the dishes away and steered her cousin to a chair. "Have a seat. I am getting Gran."

  Helora of the Crimson clan came as soon as Asha beckoned from the hallway. "What is it, love?"

  "Elhara is becoming ill and I think there may be magic involved." Asha bit her lip after she whispered.

  "I thought you Warders were impervious to magic."

  "That comes and goes. It all depends on whether we are expecting the attack. In Elhara's case, I really doubt it." Asha grimaced. Her cousin was the most trusting of all the folk she had met in her life. She greeted everyone with an open heart and a wide-open mind.

  "She is a good soul, that one. Come on, let me take a look." Gran Helora came into the kitchen and stopped short.

  Elhara was slumped face forward on the table and her skin was chalky white. Everything went downhill from there.

  The healer pressed one of her six hands against Elhara's face. "There is deep magic at work here."

  Helora looked to the healer and Asha watched as her Gran acted in goblin fashion. The healer was slammed into the wall and held up by one of Helora's four hands. "That is my granddaughter. Now, tell me what is afoot."

  "It is a forgetting spell. It should be a simple matter for most folks, but your girl is open hearted. That is dangerous and you know it."

  "What can you do for her?"

  "I can give her some energy, but that will not help her. She needs to wake and find what she has forgotten and that is now impossible."

  "What do you mean?" Asha was standing behind her Gran and scowling at the healer.

  "I mean that her soul has retreated inward to find what was lost. Her body will wither and die and there is nothing that you can do to stop it." The healer grimaced with her pointed teeth exposed and gnashing. "She will die."

  Asha swallowed. "There is something that can be done. Gran, let her go. I will give El what she needs and then I will go to find her a cure."

  "There is no cure for what ails her." The healer struck the floor hard as Helora let her drop.

  The two women stood next to the bed as the healer gathered her things and left.

  "Gran, I am going to provide her with all the power I can. I am hoping to buy us some time."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "First, I am going to set the wards, then power them." She paused before she told her Gran the last.

  "What then? I don't want you in danger as well." Gran gripped her arms with all four hands.

  She stood quietly and let the truth out into the open. "I am simply going to see a leprechaun about a charm."

  Gramps had helped her find a steed to take her into the dark forest favoured by the leprechaun clans. Despite popular myth back in the normal world, leprechauns did not live under toadstools. Instead, they crafted detailed and puzzling constructs out of wood, metal and leather. Homes of complex beauty and individuality were their hallmark and she merely needed to get herself into their specific section of Realm before she could look one of the forest tricksters in the eye.

  The thick carpet of moss made the footfalls of her goblin pony completely silent. She shifted in the saddle and tried not to think of the worried looks Gran and Gramps had sent her off with. Their sons were living on a foreign world with their wives and only the visits of their granddaughters brightened the lives that they lived, or so they said.

  In reality, it was being able to be completely at home in the goblin house that gave Asha the acceptance that she always found lacking in the world she had grown up in. Her parents loved her, there was no doubt about it, but the regular humans always looked at her as if she was ever so slightly wrong. She found her visits to her grandparents soothing. Even as a Warder amongst goblins, she still knew that she had a place in Realm.

  It gave her life the centre that she could never find in the other world.

  Elhara had another reason for seeking the safety of Realm. No one here was chasing her for her bloodlines. Warders were just another set of talents living in the halls and families of Realm.

  Elhara was safe in Realm, or that is what Asha used to think.

  She bit her lip and fidgeted with the reins as the sun's rays became further between. The thickening of the canopy was a telltale sign that she was getting close. The green men in armoured breastplates coming to block her path were another.

  "Halt, human. You are trespassing." He had to be six and a half feet if he was an inch. His green skin was matte, absorbing any and all light that struck it.

  "I come seeking a boon of the council." She kept her seat, aware that the amount of wild magic in her immediate vicinity could fry her if she wasn't careful.

  The atmosphere immediately became more casual, the men with spears leaning on them and smiling at her with a flirtatious mien.

  "What would a creature like you need from the likes of us?"

  "I need magic to break an unknown spell, the magic of the leprechauns is the strongest that I am aware of. I will trade if necessary, but I do need help." S
he jerked on the pony's reins as the guard came a little too close and the pony got peckish.

  "Fine. Come with us. You will remain under guard until the council has made a decision whether to hear your plea or not." He jerked his head for her to follow him down an invisible path and toward the city that few could see.

  She nodded, not caring that he wasn't looking at her anymore. "Tell them that Asha Warder is asking and the life of a Warder hangs in the balance."

  Heads whipped in her direction and she fought the pony as it grew uncomfortable with the attention.

  The initial guard kept his distance but raised his brows. "A Warder?"

  She nodded. "Yes. Granddaughter of Eckar and Helora of the Crimson clan."

  "Then, come this way, Warder. It has been years since one of you deigned to visit our fair city."

  It had been twelve years, three months and nine days since a Warder had been in the land of the leprechauns. Asha wondered if it had changed any since her last visit.

  Chapter Two

  Her pony was being fed a haunch of meat in the stables and her guards had ceased their flirting the moment that they realized their charms would not work on her.

  She fought the occasional smile as the references to leprechauns and charms from her home rang through her head. If only the humans knew that it referred to the green men's ability to get into the pants of just about any female they laid eyes on, it wouldn't be a common reference for a children's cereal.

  "Warder, the council has convened and will see you now." The guard from the forest had returned to his post. This new fellow was not wearing armour but rather a hood that threw his face into shadows. It was a common-enough look for leprechauns in the forest. They were not fans of direct sunlight.

  He had green hair instead of green skin. It was common enough, all of the leprechauns had one or the other, few had both. The forest warriors were chosen for their birth-related camouflage. Those with the green hair and bronze skin served their community within the city.

  She got to her feet and walked beside her guard. There was nothing to be said until they arrived in the council hall, so she simply enjoyed the changes in the city.

  The pathways were lined with the same silence-inducing moss that covered the entire leprechaun territory. Each building was a work of art--carved, shaped, hammered to the owner's specifications. Every generation built their own homes, the magic of their predecessor fading and turning their creation to dust at their passing. Any wives or daughters had to move in with a male relative, join council housing or create their own building.

  A few buildings had a distinctively feminine touch now, far more than she had seen the first time she had been in the city.

  Asha grew distinctly nervous as they reached the council hall. She had a sense of the familiar when she walked into the centre of the round council chamber. The same faces were older, but some were locked in time. At the centre of the council was the face she had been dreading.

  Tuartha watched her approach, his forest green eyes in shadow and the long flow of his black-green hair confined by the hood that did not conceal his features. "What is your business here?"

  His voice was cold. Perhaps she shouldn't have run the moment that she could, but she was a child at the time and home was where her parents or grandparents were. A stray wish had landed her in the forest of the leprechauns and another had sent her home.

  She twisted the invisible ring on her left hand. "I have come to beg a boon, an object of magic."

  His eyes focused on the slight motion of her hands. "We are not in the business of handing out magic to just anyone. Why did you choose the leprechauns out of all the races in Realm?"

  Asha breathed deeply. "I chose you because you of all races have enough power to help my cousin."

  He leaned back and drummed his nails on the table. "What do you need?"

  She bit her lip. "My cousin has been affected by some sort of memory charm. The goblin healer has suggested that it was a spell to remove a memory and my cousin is fighting it."

  "If a Warder is fighting a charm, how can we do better?"

  "My cousin is in a coma. She may be carrying on a fight in her mind, but her body is not participating gladly. She will weaken and she will die if there isn't some kind of intervention. I beg you for help."

  Inhaling, she dropped to her knees in front of the leprechaun council. "Ask what you will, but help me to help Elhara."

  The leprechauns murmured in shock at her humble pose.

  She remained on her knees, her head high and her gaze locked with Tuartha's. She wasn't sure that he knew who she was, but she was sure that this was the same man who had taken care of a lost girl and locked her heart to his.

  She had thought about him every day since she left the forest in a whirl of light and power. As her fantasies turned from girlish wanderings into the torrid imaginings of a young woman, she had adapted to the hole that was in her soul.

  No other man, human or magical, had ever sent her heart tripping in her chest like the vague memory of Tuartha. Like several Warders who had met their soul mates, she had settled in to wait until the time was right, only to find that her nerve had fled the moment she entered Realm and looked toward the forest.

  Over two dozen visits to Realm since she gained adulthood and she had never made it back into the forest to speak to the man who held her heart. Until now.

  "Please." She couldn't stop the tear that coursed down her face. The magic in the room turned it into a diamond as it fell to the ground. Asha stared at it as she waited.

  Tuartha's voice was softer, more compassionate when he said, "We need a moment to deliberate. Casos will take you to a room where you can rest."

  She nodded and got to her feet. The man next to her took her arm and a quickly cleared throat from Tuartha had him releasing her just as fast.

  "This way, Lady."

  She was numb. Being back in the land of magic and surrounded by the buildings that haunted her memories combined with the physical presence of the man of her dreams was overwhelming. Add Elhara's illness into the mix and she was completely off balance.

  The room that she was taken to was the best of the forest combined with an English garden. A table was in the centre of the space and when Casos led her to it, she sank gratefully into one of the chairs.

  He brought her tea and scones before taking a seat across from her. Together, they waited.

  Casos finally broke the silence. "I have never seen High Lord Tuartha so off balance. How do you know him?"

  She sipped at her tea and relaxed as the heat rolled through her. "We knew each other a long time ago. I am sure that he has long since moved on."

  "Moved on?"

  "Gotten a wife, kids, tiny little leprechauns?" She touched the spirit ring on her finger once again.

  "No. The High Lord is still a bachelor, though many of the women hereabouts are trying to change that." Casos leaned back in his chair and gulped his tea.

  The thrill of joy that filled her at that small declaration was sobering. It confirmed more than anything that she still had an obsession with Tuartha. "Wait, High Lord? When did that happen?"

  "A decade ago. His father retired from public service and Lord Tuartha stepped into the gap."

  Asha swallowed as she acknowledged a new hurdle to her hopes and dreams. The folk of Realm were fairly stringent when it came to bloodlines and family connections. As a Warder, she had nothing to offer but herself. That was not good enough for most advisory councils.

  A page arrived in the doorway and bowed low. "The council has made its decision."

  She finished her third cup of tea and stood up. "Then let's get this over with."

  Casos walked at her side and hung back when she resumed her place in the centre of the council hall.

  She stood straight, staring forward with her eyes fixed on nothing. She would find another way to save Elhara.

  "Asha Warder, we have deliberated and have come to an agreement."

&
nbsp; She held her breath.

  "We agree to assist you with your cousin's illness under one condition." Tuartha was sitting as he read the document in front of him.

  "Name it. Anything you wish."

  "You and your cousin will remain here during her treatment. We will send warriors to the goblin settlement of the Crimson clan and have your cousin brought here. All of our healers and magic users will work to bring her back to herself, her memories intact."

  Asha blinked rapidly. That was better than she could have dreamed. "What service may I offer to the leprechaun city?"

  Tuartha smiled slowly and a few of the folk in the council hall shifted nervously. "Whatever I command you to do. You will be my personal servant and companion for the entirety of your cousin's treatment. Welcome to the leprechaun city once again, Asha Warder."

  Chapter Three

  The council seemed embarrassed but Asha took it in stride. "Thank you for your welcome, High Lord."

  She bowed formally. Whatever dignity she had, this was the time to hang onto it.

  To her surprise, the whole collection of councillors filed out leaving them alone.

  Tuartha got to his feet and came toward her. "I never thought to see you again, Asha. You have grown."

  She nodded and swallowed as he continued to approach. Asha had forgotten how tall he was. The image of leprechauns that the humans thought of was but astral images of the real thing. Small reflections of a larger power, it was why they could never be caught.

  "That happens to mortals, High Lord. We grow, we mature and we get taller."

  He chuckled as he looked down at her from his considerable height. "Not that tall."

  "What do you want me to do first?" She looked up at him, noting the small marks of stubble on his chin.

  He took her hand in his, his thumb moving over the spirit band. "I see you kept part of our city with you after all."

  It was on the ring finger of her left hand, a finger that her family reserved for marriage bands. It had been the only place the ring would sit, no matter which of her other fingers she tried it on. The moment it had touched her ring finger, the magic had been sealed.