Review: Best of the three novellas
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 18, 2012
This is, by far, my favorite of Thea Harrison's three Elder Races novella and I'll tell you why: this is all the about the romance.  And Harrison knows how to write romance.  --That's not to say her action and adventure tales aren't fun, but in the love stories, she truly shines.Our hero and our heroine both come from the Dark Fae world we got to know in Storm's Heart. Xanthe is an assassin for the Fae court.  Queen Niniane dispatched her to America to find and dispatch the last of the traitors to the throne.  We saw that mission play out in the last novella. Now she is home, but her identity is compromised. No longer able to work covertly, she becomes a guard for the Queen herself.Aubrey is the chancellor who would have been king, had Niniane not stepped forward and claimed the crown. His power-hungry wife was behind the plot to have her killed, but she lost her own life in the process.  He is a good man, but blames himself for failing to see his wife's treachery.  He is also clueless to the fact that the Queen's new guard is completely crazy about him.Xanthe thinks Aubrey is totally out of her league. But an attempt on his life leaves him in her custody while the Queen investigates.  She slowly nurses him back to health and falls deeper and deeper in love with him the more time they spend together. So, too, does Aubrey grow to care for the loyal, strong, and unassuming woman who has taken him into her home.The love story here is sooo good.  Xanthe thinks herself so beneath Aubrey that he could never return her feelings, but it's such a joy to watch him prove her wrong.  Both characters are incredibly likable and I was rooting for them from the very beginning.  The sex is fabulous (as always in this series.) And the ending is very satisfying.Really good.