Page 52 of Curse the Fae

Then it’s fortunate I didn’t opt for one of the showers, after all. “Well, I could have been gazing into space, but you got in the way,” I protest. “Spacious enclave or not, you take up a lot of room in here. You’re hard not to miss, like a shipwreck or a giant squid. I’m not speaking from experience with those things, but I’m sure I wouldn’t miss the sight of either. Though, I once came across a beached rowboat in a lake on the outskirts of Reverie Hollow.

“Or rather, the boat wasn’t stranded so much as detoured, but since it was moored on the banks and overrun by thieving beavers, I think it constitutes as the same thing. Any visual that a bystander isn’t used to is difficult to overlook. Beavers pirating a skiff and tugging it away—while its passengers have temporarily gone ashore—will certainly get noticed.” I pause and chew on my lower lip. “It’s amazing how much more sense this comparison made in my head than it did aloud.”

Elixir just gazes with a severe frown pinned to his countenance. Yet the skin around his mouth ticks, working hard to stay fixed in place.

I sigh. “I’m staring for the same reason you were listening to my movements: curiosity.”

“I’m not curious,” Elixirs scoffs. “I’m not a curious Fae.”

“Says the villain who tried to bargain a personal question out of me.”

“Curiosity was not the culprit,” he replies, far too quickly for me to accept. “Like I said before, I was being thorough. I asked a penetrating question to discomfort you, purely because I felt like it.”

I slit my eyes. “You’rereallymean.”

This time, that pruned mouth loosens a fraction. “Ireallyam.”

“You need to stop doing that.”

“Being mean?”

“Deciphering every move I make and every physical response I have.”

“Trust me: It does not happen on purpose.” Elixir twists and backpedals, his arms rowing through the water and carrying him to the opposite end. On that side, a larger cascade parts like a curtain and splits down the middle. He reclines on another underwater seat, spreading his arms across mantles of rock while the emerald water sparkles around him. “For instance, now you’re holding still, waiting for me to elaborate.”

He’s right. I haven’t moved.

And because the bath has put him in a rare, charitable mood, he muses, “The way you move in the river. It is not like other mortals I’ve dealt with, for I detect it more acutely. You swim like a fish, as if you were born in the water.”

It hits me. Based on his inquiring tone, this is the perfect opportunity. If I want to unravel his inner workings and get close to him, it’s my responsibility to make a willing move first. If I want to access his soul, I have to bare my own, piece by piece.

Time to make this Fae play my own game.

He’d said I swim as if I was born in water. At the notion, a smile tilts my lips. I inch from my hiding spot, fold my arms over the ledge, and rest my chin on my wrists. My limbs rise, extend behind me, and float on the bath’s surface while I stare down at him. “That’s because I was.”

Reminiscing about my birth parents hurts too much, but I do recite the story of how my mother brought me into this world while squatting in a pond. Before that, I was also conceived in the same location. Not that I’m not about to share that information.

Upon hearing this tidbit, Elixir says, “And you fight as though you’ve trained in the water.”

“That’s because I’ve done that, too.”

“Who taught you?”

“I did.”

I’d taught myself how to wield the spear, Lark taught herself how to brandish a whip, and Juniper learned from trade poachers how to shoot a crossbow. While under Papa Thorne’s roof, we’d honed our skills as best we could.

Elixir’s tail sways. “You like the water.”

“I love the water,” I correct him. “Don’t you?”

“Love,” he mutters. “I respect the water and relish its majesty.”

“All right, so youlikethe water. You do know how tolikesomething, yes?”

“I am not an imbecilic dragon,” he says, belligerent. “I know how to like something. Very well, I like the water. Satisfied?”

“Ecstatic.” From behind, my feet kick like flippers. “My first memory is of the water. When I was four, I sat on the bank of a lake, rested my feet on the shoreline, and watched these teeny little fish gather around my toes. They poked and nibbled and tickled my skin, then scattered every time I twitched my legs. I laughed and waited for them to return, which they did relentlessly like one of those sandpipers who chase waves.

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