Page 18 of Curse the Fae

“But without them, we end up alone.”

Some type of disturbance spasms across the ruler’s face. “I’m not alone.”

“I didn’t say you were,” I tell him, my breath mingling with his. “But if you have no regrets, change is impossible.”

He whips off his hood, revealing the entirety of his glare. His black locks are cinched in a low ponytail, the mane pouring down his back. Those basilisk eyes kindle to their boiling point. “Do I look unchanged to you?”

Unlike him, I’m not in a rhetorical mood. I’ve always been attuned to someone’s inner joy or turmoil. Usually, this helps me to see them more clearly, allowing me to offer a helping hand or a soothing cup of tea. I search his irises for any sign of repentance for all the things he’s done to my people…for what he’s done tome.

Does he look unchanged? We’d tackled this before, and I stand by what I’ve already told him.

“Yes,” I whisper. “You’ve lost your vision, yet your soul remains the same as it’s always been. It’s still evil, and that’s tragic, because whatever happened to you isn’t the only thing that matters. What matters is also how you responded to it.”

He blinks. Then he sets an index finger to his lips, the caps of his digits glinting. “Shh,” he warns. “The more you speak, the more I hear.”

And the more vulnerable things he knows about me.

For one who says so little, this monster manages to stuff enough meanings into a handful of words and still succeed in twisting my thoughts against me.

Not for the first time, we’re standing improperly close, suspended beneath a constellation of teal specks. The lantern flames simmer, illuminating the outline of my body beneath the caftan. The vestment is graphically thin, the material grazing my breasts—a faint, teasing contact that causes my nipples to pucker in a most indecent display.

Although Elixir can’t see this transformation, my cheeks sizzle with heat. And when they do, his head twitches in awareness, and his pupils shift, assessing something. “Your temperature has changed.”

“No, it hasn’t,” I lie, flustered. “What a thing to say!”

“Your blood is restless.”

“That’s…private.”

His baritone drops, the edges frayed. “Not from me.”

Because I’m not an octopus, my hands can only accomplish so much at once. I fan my face, then fidget with my caftan, then cross my arms to hide the pits of my nipples. I’ve never been so mortified in my life, and that includes my first kiss with the cobbler’s daughter, when the initial curl of her tongue had made me squeak, which caused the female to cough into my mouth.

A droplet drizzles down the side of my neck. The Deep is a humid place, but this is a new level of oppression.

Elixir’s head ticks toward my throat. His pinky steals out to collect the drop.

My jaw unhinges as he pulls away, the globule quivering on the pad of his digit. He contemplates the droplet, then closes it in his fist and pockets the bead like a trinket. I open my mouth, but Elixir cuts me off by prowling away while ordering, “Do not talk.”

His hood flops down his back, and the ponytail lashes about as he blends in with the murkiness. My legs carry me across the corridor. I remain close enough that he won’t lose patience and haul me with him, but far enough that I won’t slam into him if he turns abruptly.

Before coming to live with my family, I’d learned how to sneak around people, flitting in and out of crowds with targets none-the-wiser. That’s how a little girl learns to take what she needs—through sudden twists, evasive maneuvers, timed tricks, and intricate sleights of hand. That’s how a child trains herself to be a pickpocket.

I take note of Elixir’s gait, angle myself with his shadow, and pretend I’m trying to see past his shoulder before presumably giving up. In the second between approaching and scuttling backward, my left hand dives into the pocket of his robe and fishes out the bead of sweat.

Instead of bursting or seeping into my flesh, the globule maintains its shape by some form of the ruler’s magic. Smug satisfaction lightens my step as I cocoon the droplet in my hand. Gladly, my pickpocketing days were over the moment Papa Thorne got me off the streets. It’s been years since my digits performed such an act, yet they haven’t forgotten.

Elixir keeps going, and going, and going. Then without warning, he pauses. His body clicks in place. In a flash, he wheels toward me, upends my hand, and swipes the bead back.

While he resumes his path, I stall and feel my features clench in outrage. “How did you know?”

“You have impressive stealth,” he answers without looking behind. “I would not have known, had I not heard the droplet rolling in your hand.”

He pounds up a new flight of steps. At the landing, the atmosphere takes a much-needed breath, our path expanding and leading to a building etched into a cavern wall.

We pass through a doorway with interlocking serpents carved into the lintel, a replica of the design I’d seen upon first entering The Deep. The threshold is curtained in a sheet of falling water, and when Elixir stalks toward it, the liquid parts to allow us inside.

I stumble through, gawking as the water curtain closes behind us. Ahead, a flat stone walkway cleaves through a lush enclosure of plants that resembles a giant terrarium. Dozens of serpents curl and slither along the damp soil. Braided nests of scales, from waxy and radiant, fill the area with rings and ovals of blue, green, black, and gold. The reptiles range in size, from slim as strings to thick as tree trunks, from small as pins to large as anacondas.

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