By
USA Today Bestselling Author
Nova Nelson

This earthbound angel’s next investigation just fell from the sky.

Autumn Knight Olivia Swift finally feels her angelic powers returning, and just in time. Because when an elf is found dead on a pile of feathers, the falconer who makes Olivia’s heart flutter falls accused of the crime. Certain he’s not the culprit, she must search through the tall tales of the Renaissance Faire to find a killer on the loose.

When she senses her sweetheart isn’t telling her everything he knows, her gift of truth-seeing feels more like a curse. And the deeper she digs, the less she can trust anyone around her, including herself…

Can this fallen angel unravel the case of the fallen elf before the wrong person goes down for the crime?

Olivia is an earthbound angel. We met her in ‘A Midsummer Knight Scream’ where she cleared herself of murder and actually got the opportunity to return to heaven.

Although she decided to remain here as a permanent resident of the Faire, she is getting some of her angelic investigative powers back, as is Pax, her wings turned dove. The ability to identify lies has helped her in the past and they’ll prove useful in this case as well.

The stable master Bartholomew catches the attention of the four knights just before they are due to joust. There’s a body in one of the stalls and a huge hole in the roof of the stable.

This is a favorite scene.

Ursula, Elias, and I dismounted at once.

“Dead?” I said.

“Who is it?” Bartholomew shook his head. “I don’t know, Sir Olivia. She’s facedown, and I didn’t want to move her. But it looked bad.”

“Show us,” I said, and he led the knights of Elbion to the scene at the back of the stables.

As I approached, the stall door obscured my view of a body, but what did catch my eye was the massive hole in the roof above the stall in question. Through it, the morning sun cast thick beams that shimmered in the dusty air, a natural spotlight on something I would likely regret seeing.

When Bartholomew opened the stall door, I was confronted with nothing but questions.

The woman was dressed like a peasant and was lying beneath a layer of wood and straw debris from the busted ceiling above.

“Fangs and claws,” Ursula muttered, stopping short.

I rushed forward, kneeling next to the body and checking for a pulse. Nothing there, but no surprise. I hadn’t felt a single bit of aura around her as my fingers touched her skin. I had felt something else, though. Around her hovered a lingering haze of deception.

“What on earth and sky happened?” I murmured, getting to my feet again.

“Should we call Sheriff Boswell?” Bartholomew asked.

“No!” said every knight at once.

Fabian stood next to me, staring at the body. “Should we turn her or preserve the crime scene?”

“We don’t know it’s a crime,” I said, though I hardly bought that myself.

Ursula chuckled darkly, staring at the hole in the roof. “What, she loaded herself into a catapult and pulled the release?”

I grunted and nodded for Fabian to help me roll her over.

As soon as she was face up, the stall went so silent, you could have heard a feather land.

I noted the resemblance immediately, but even if I hadn’t, I would’ve caught on from Elias’s gasp behind me. “No! It can’t be!” He pushed Fabian and me aside and dropped to his knees by the body. “I thought she was dead.”

I refrained from stating the obvious.

Ursula was the first one to ask the question on my mind. “Did you… have a sister, Elias?”

The resemblance between the Summer Knight and the dead woman was startling. Granted, elves of all genders looked rather similar to me, the men having a more feminine appearance on the whole, and the women being equal in height and stature to the men.

“A twin, yes,” Elias replied. “But I thought Eloria was dead or had found some way to escape the Faire years ago.”

There were no tears on his face, and his eyes weren’t even red. Sure, he was a brave knight, but there was nothing in our code against crying over a loved one.

“What is that?” he said, pointing at a gray mass where Eloria’s body had just been.

But as soon as I saw them, I knew what they were: feathers. She had been lying on top of no fewer than a dozen large feathers.

My mind jumped back to Brandon’s recent unexplained deception, and I struggled not to connect the two things.

No, surely, he had nothing to do with this elf’s death.

“Feathers,” remarked Fabian. “But I’m not sure which variety of bird this belongs to.”

“I know someone who would know,” Ursula said, and I didn’t love the suspicion coloring her words.

Elias leaned over his twin’s body. She looked like she could have been sleeping. “And what in the realm is this?” He pointed at it without touching, and I pulled my attention away from the feathers.

There was a white silk ribbon around Eloria’s shoulder, looping under her armpit, and tied to it was a cork stopper with a ring of broken glass around it.

“It appears to be the remains of a shattered potion bottle,” Fabian said. “Look! Drops of something orange still cling to a few of the shards.”

I knelt next to him and held out my hand. “Handkerchief.” Fabian always carried one on him, and today was no exception. He pulled it out, a plain white swatch with FG stitched in one corner, and I used it to soak up those drops. I would need to have them analyzed by a magic practitioner later.

I heard wing beats a second before Pax landed on my shoulder. What mischief he’d been up to previously, I didn’t ask.

He gripped the straps of my shoulder plate to hold on and whistled in my ear. “This is way more exciting than stealing kettle corn with the ravens.” He fluttered off my shoulder and lit on one of the downed roof beams, cocking his head this way and that as he gawked at the body.

“Elias,” I said gently, “you thought your sister had died. Did you have a reason for that, other than not seeing her around?”

“Certainly,” he said. “She had a death sentence against her.”

“A what?”

Still staring down at her without the slightest sign of emotion, he said, “She’d been sentenced to death by the Elven Council.”
Nelson, Nova. Tw’Elf Knight: A Paranormal Cozy Mystery (Magical Renaissance Faire Mysteries Book 5). Kindle Locations (335-371). The Faire Ladies LLC. Kindle Edition.

The Knights of Elbion would be investigating this death, since it appears to be Elias’ sister Eloria. First, they had to Joust for the crowds. Probably not a good idea right after finding the body as Elias seems to go a bit feral.

As Olivia is walking to the stables she finds a juggling pin, something not expected to be anywhere near the stables. Giving her a new suspect, Marcucio the juggler.

However, she can’t discount the feathers they found under the body. Brandon would be able to tell the kind of bird they came from, and he had been acting strangely the previous night. She had sensed a lie, but could Brandon really be a murderer, she didn’t think so.

I get such a kick out of Pax, her wings have such a unique sense of humor to go along with their mischievous ways. Pax has also mentioned something being familiar about Eloria, even though he didn’t know her.

The first thing was to get the body to Vern the vampire who serves as the Faire’s coroner. Hopefully he’d have answers as to cause of death.

Things get very interesting as this tale unfolds, with twists, revelations and more than one surprise. There’s also laughter, tears, loyalty and romance.

I am already reading the next book in this multi-author series.

5 Contented Purrs for Nova!

Nova Nelson

Nova Nelson grew up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie novels. She loves the mind candy of cozy mysteries and has been weaving paranormal tales since she first learned handwriting. Those two loves meet in her Eastwind Witches series, and it’s about time, if she does say so herself.

When she’s not busy writing, she enjoys long walks with her strong-willed dogs and eating breakfast for dinner.