Wench (breathtaking debut romantasy)

Prologue

For as long as there have been crowns and courts, mortals and fae have shared the same soil.

At first, they lived like neighbours at the edge of a great wood: wary, watchful, yet bound by the same rivers and stars.

But where the fae sought to keep the balance with the natural world, mortals sought to master it.

They came with their hunger for timber and ore; the fae met them with fire and blade.

What might have been shared was seized. What might have been bartered was broken.

And so began centuries of blood. Fae raiding parties swept through villages, taking vengeance for each tree felled, each sacred grove cut down.

Mortal armies answered in kind, their forges fed by veins of ore ripped from the earth.

Hatred sank deeper than roots, passed from parent to child, until it seemed no one remembered a time before the war.

Mortal children were raised on stories of fae cruelty, taught that their beauty was a mask for malice.

Fae young were taught that mortals were nothing but greedy thieves, blind to the natural magic woven through the world.

To be human was to fear the fae. To be fae was to despise the human.

But war is a hungering beast, and even kings tire of its teeth.

One such king had seen enough of broken fields and ash-choked villages to know the realm could not endure another century of bloodshed. He sought a different path. If mortals and fae could not share the same hearth, he reasoned, then perhaps they could share the same land – divided, but at peace.

He set his sights on Sherwood.

A forest older than crown and court. A place that was still wild, thick with the breath of fae magic. Mortals feared its shadows and fae revered its roots.

He decreed that Sherwood would be set aside, not as a spoil of war but as a sanctuary.

Within its borders, the fae would be free to dwell without the threat of mortal axe or iron blade.

It would be the beginning of something greater: a pact to divide the land in measure, each step pulling both peoples further from the jaws of slaughter.

Peace, he swore, would take root where blood had so long been spilled.

His council, divided though it was, could not deny the need.

Even the most hardened among them feared the cost of another hundred years of war.

Word spread that an end might finally come to the endless cycle of blood.

Some mortals scoffed, unwilling to cede even a strip of land to those they had long called monsters.

Some fae bristled, mistrusting a king whose people had hunted them for generations.

But beneath the murmur of dissent, a fragile thing began to stir – hope.

It flickered in quiet corners, in the whispered prayers of humans who had buried too many sons, in the tired songs of fae who had grown weary of sharpening blades.

Sadly, fate does not always bow to kings.

The summons came, swift and holy, carried on banners that bore the cross.

A crusade, declared in the name of God, calling all sovereigns to distant fields where the gullet of war demanded to be fed all the same.

The king, bound by duty and oath, could not refuse.

He marshalled his armies, raised his banners, and departed, leaving Sherwood’s fate to linger in silence.

Years passed. Seasons bled one into another.

The king’s banners faded on distant fields, and still the pact remained undone.

What might have been the first step toward peace instead became another scar, and Sherwood remained what it had always been: neither haven nor prize, but a place between.

While the king fought on distant sands, others built kingdoms in the shadow of an absent crown.

Mortals who coveted its ore crept closer, pickaxes glinting at its edge.

Fae who called it sacred withdrew deeper within, unwilling to surrender root or stream.

Suspicion festered. Skirmishes flared. And with each clash, the fragile whisper of peace grew fainter, thinning in the wind.

And through it all, Sherwood watched, waiting for the day when blood or mercy would decide what kind of place it would become.