Shadow Magic by Cheyenne McCray

After Rhiannon Castle pissed off her father, the Drow Elf Garran, the D'Anu witches have hoped he would help them. To facilitate him changing his mind, they send the witch Hannah Wentworth to be an envoy to the Dark Elves, along with Rhiannon, her mate Keir, and another D'Dannu named Eavan. Before they can reach the Drow Elf Kingdom, however, they are met by the Great Guardian, a female Light Elf. She gives them an offer for Garran. If he will help the witches fight the Formori, she will give the Drow what they want most... conditionally. They agree to pass on the message.

Hannah doesn't like being underground, but she quickly gets over her distaste when she meets Garran, who despite his blue-gray skin, is the most handsome and charismatic man she has ever met. She can't stop looking at him, or wanting him, and thinks it must be due to the innate magic of the Drow. Garran, in turn, is attracted to Hannah, but since he truly loved Anna, Rhiannon's mother, he isn't going to spend time wondering if this could be love. Attraction is fine with him.

After he hears the Guardian's offer of allowing the Drow to walk during the morning and evening, but not during the middle of the day, he asks what the condition is. The Guardian tells him she will give him a power to return the Formorians to the Underworld, but he will only be able to use the power three times at most. The first time will strip him of most of his magical power, the second will make him ill, and the third will be even worse than that, unless he can find a power to prevent it. Knowing that she means death, he agrees for the sake of his people, and goes to set his affairs in order before he returns to the human world.

He lets his council, the Directorate, know that he has agreed to support the D'Anu witches and the D'Dannan. His first, and Steward, a man named Vidar, is incensed that Garran would consider helping the D'Dannan Elves, who cursed the Drow with the current color of their skins and their inability to stand the light without being killed, but he keeps his counsel, for now. He offers to lead the fight in Garran's place, but Garran refuses. As King, it is his duty to lead the fight. He makes Vidar his official successor, and leaves for the surface.

As Garran showed her around his own Kingdom, Hannah shows him some of the Human world's San Francisco, and he reveals another power the Guardian gave him. He will be able to walk in the day at any time, and while he does, he will look like a light elf, not a drow.

Ceithlenn has lost her two greatest supporters, Darkwolf, the warlock who holds the Eye of Balor, and Junga, the Queen of the Formori who has inhabited the former witch, Elizabeth. Ceithlenn, herself, is merely a spirit in the body of a former witch named Sara, but her focus has been on finding her husband, Balor, who in the last book was brought to the human realm. However, she didn't have enough power to bring him to her directly, so now she must search for him. He, too, is searching, although for Darkwolf, to regain his eye and much of his power. Darkwolf, on the other hand, is fleeing from Balor, trying to hide both the eye and himself from the dark God's reach.

Ceithlenn is counting on the army of Formori and other, worse creatures, that she has summoned to a great cavern under the Prison Island of Alcatraz. When the witches discover where the army is, however, Garran and Hannah travel there on a secret mission to do away with them. However, since he has been told not to tell anyone of his secret power, he explains it to her as a scouting mission and enjoins her to silence. Even so, they are discovered by the Formori, and Garran uses his power to send the entire army back to the underworld. Doing so leaves him weak and nearly powerless, but they manage to return to the compund of the D'Anu and D'Dannan before they can be missed for too long. That night, she and Garran become lovers.

Not everyone trusts Garran when he tells them the army has been taken care of, but scrying by the witches, and visits by the D'Dannan and the SPF make them realize he is speaking the truth. He takes time to return to his people, only to realize that Vidar was the wrong choice for Steward, and doesn't support helping the D'Dannan Elves. So Garran ruthlessly cuts him out of the succession, promoting his second, a warrior named Sepan, to the position of his heir, should he die. He asks Sepan to find a position that won't humiliate Vidar for a new post for him, and the warrior agrees.

Back in San Francisco, Ceithlenn is enraged to find that her army is gone, and scries to find out who is responsible. What she finds makes her eager to enact vengeance on Garran and Hannah, and she decides to do it through Hannah. First, she makes the dragons that Hannah relies on for power and Guidance desert her, leaving her unable to scry. And when Hannah attempts to contact the Dragons at Coit Tower, Ceithlenn has two of the Dragons turn on her and attempt to kill her. When Garran returns from the Otherworld, he realizes what has happened, and uses his power again to deny Ceithlenn the Formori who are attacking Hannah along with the Goddess.

Elsewhere, Darkwolf knows he cannot continue hiding the power of the Eye, and decides to take a radical step... absorbing its power into himself. He succeeds, making the power his own, and destroying the eye as its power is absorbed into his heart. Now huge and monstrous, Darkwolf returns to San Francisco to take on Ceithlenn and Balor.
She has now discovered her husband, but when Darkwolf returns and attacks Balor, Balor tries to strip Ceithlenn of her power to regain his eye. Ceithlenn considers this a betrayal, and takes back the power he has stolen, and all of Balor's own that he has left. Balor dies a defenseless human in Darkwolf's fireball, and Ceithlenn, crying and enraged all in one, flees.

Meanwhile, Garran is slowly recovering from using the power a second time. The news that a band of Drow has attacked the D'Dannan makes the Alliance (now named because the Drow had joined the D'Anu, SPF and D'Dannan, and the name was growing too long) angry, but they take the Drow who survive prisoner. Garran must defend himself and his people, and when he finds out that Vidar was behind it, he turns his former advisor and first over to the Alliance, who turn him back over to Garran's people, who Vidar's attack hurt the most.

But Ceithlenn and her Formori are still out there, and when they attack the humans on the Pier using the fire dragon spirit Hannah once recieved her powers from, she must try to convince the other spirits to help her and fight Ceithlenn. Last time, Ceithlenn may have gotten away when her body's former mentor was decieved into helping her, but none of the Alliance will let that happen this time. Garran prepares to make the final sacrifice on behalf of his people, the alliance, and Hannah, the woman he loves, but Hannah will not let him die, and uses her own life force to bring him back, finally admitting that she loves him.

But Hannah's sacrifice will not be in vain, nor will the Great Guardian allow her to die for her act of sacrifice, and as she Garran recover, Darkwolf, who absorbed Ceithlenn's power after her death, decides to take over her mission to rule the earth as his kingdom. But with the power of two Gods inside him, he is more powerful than Ceithlenn ever was. How can the alliance defeat him?

In truth, I didn't get into this book as much as I did Wicked Magic, and I'm not exactly sure why. The romance was really the only part of the book I felt was lacking. The rest of the story really held my attention and was extremely good, especially the parts with Darkwolf and Elizabeth/Junga. I think it's a bad sign when you find the scenes between the two nominal villains more interesting than the romance between the two leads.

And maybe that's just it. I found the scenes with Garran and Hannah lacklustre and merely ordinary. The scenes didn't transport or even move me all that much. I must be approaching saturation overload on Romances, as I have read so many lately. But even so, this is merely an okay romance. I'm keeping the book, but more for the rest of the story than the actual romance or romantic scenes between the leads, because that part of the story was better.

There will be another book in this series, called "Dark Magic", but I don't know if I will be shelling out money to read it. I may just wait until the library gets it and read it there. I'm actually sad that I spent money on this book. A short recap: an okay, if lacklustre romance for me, but the battle scenes and magic and plotting of the villains were more interesting and better.