Excerpt from Iron Angels: A Noblebright Fantasy with Slow-Burn Queer Romance

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Blood in the Stone

When a prisoner screams in Craighaearn’s mines, it only ever means one of two things.

A cave-in. Or a fight. And I’d heard both enough to tell the difference.

This wasn’t a cave-in.

The sound tore through the tunnels – raw, desperate. Someone was already losing.

I was moving before I could think. Boots hammering against packed dirt, shoving past prisoners who were too exhausted or too damn curious to move fast enough. A few grunted as I pushed through, but none of them were stupid enough to shove back.

‘Celyn, move it!’ Old Garth’s shout carried down the tunnel, rough with years of drinking and barking orders.

He’d be there now, having been posted there for duty, but no way could he break up a fight alone. If I got there too late, I’d be scraping bodies off the rock floor. And no one wanted to see what a pickaxe could do to a human skull.

I clenched my jaw, shoved past exhausted prisoners who’d stopped working to gawp. Lazy bastards. They still had a job to do. Didn’t matter if it was haearn, duwrhem, or stormstone – so long as the carts hit their blood-quota, no one cared.

I growled as I raced past. ‘Get back to work.’

Useless. They weren’t listening.

I skidded the last turn. Took in the scene.

Blood smeared across the tunnel floor. One prisoner hunched over another, fists driving down, over and over. Pickaxe forgotten. The victim’s cries had already faded, body limp against the rock.

I snapped my gaze to Old Garth. He was on top of the rebel, grunting, cursing, trying to pry him off. Struggling. Not strong enough.

‘Come on, gell,’ he yelled over.

I sniffed, debating smashing my baton over the rebel bastard’s skull. It’d end this fast. But the law – weak, pathetic, written by pen-pushers and not people actually on the ground – kept us from giving scum like this what they deserved. So instead, I dropped down, grabbed the rebel, and helped Old Garth wrench him back.

We hit the ground hard. I rolled, pinned him, my knee driving into his spine. He bucked, but I held firm – I’d wrestled worse than him.

‘Give up,’ I snarled, but a loose black curl had plastered itself to my mouth. I huffed, trying to spit it out, but it clung to the sweat on my face.

The man laughed. ‘You’d better give up,’ he rasped. Bloodied spit hit the stone. ‘We’re all screwed.’

‘You will be if you don’t shut it,’ I growled, digging my knee harder into his back and debating on shoving his face in his own spit.

Old Garth waved another guard over to check the unconscious prisoner.

‘You don’t get it, gell,’ he rasped, voice sticky with blood. I nearly knocked him out for calling me that. Old Garth had known me since I was a little girl. That was the only reason he wasn’t getting clobbered for it. ‘We’re all dead. You just don’t know it yet.’

I pressed my knee harder into his spine. ‘Make sense, or I start breaking things.’

He laughed. His breath hitched, half a choke, half a grin. Like a man who knew something.

‘They’re coming,’ he said. ‘Iron Angels. High ones. The kind that take what they want. The kind that don’t leave anything behind. Royals.’

He was grinning like a man gone mad, with blood smeared over his teeth.

I rolled my eyes. Couldn’t believe a word of this. ‘Yeah? And I suppose the wee princes and princesses are coming all the way down here personally just to take a nice tour of this shithole?’

His smile only widened. ‘Wait and see.’

I stilled for half a second at his lack of bite.

Piece of—

Old Garth pushed me off and grabbed him – faster than I’d ever seen him move.

‘That’s enough,’ he hissed, yanking the prisoner up with a lock around his neck. His grip was tight. Too tight. Old Garth wasn’t one for fast movements. He moved like his joints ached. Like he needed an extra second to react. But now? Now he held the rebel like it was personal.

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off with a sharp nod to one of the other guards who’d finally arrived.

‘We’ll take this piece of shit to the punishment quarters.’ Not the usual tired grumble. He didn’t look at me. Didn’t meet my eye. ‘Stay here until the medics arrive from the other tunnel for that one,’ he gestured his head. ‘After all, you know more of what happened than any of this late, useless lot.’

The prisoner stared at me as they dragged him away. Still grinning.

Wait and see.

I frowned. Let them go. Barked at a few prisoners. Flicked my ponytail back. Gave the unconscious one a glare.

Why the fuck did we need medics? This guy was dead. We all knew it.

And watching over a corpse was the perfect empty task to let my brain mull over what the rebel had said.

We were all screwed.

The Iron Angels were coming.

Why?

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