Page 59 of Curse the Fae

Elixir detects where I’m standing, his eyes crawling across my form. “You know why.”

Yes, I do. Pain eventually heals, and when it does, the scars teach us to value our happiness more. But that’s my definition, not his.

I wait. In fact, I’ll wait as long as it takes.

Though, just for good measure, I warn, “If you don’t humor me eventually, I’ll start talking, and I won’t stop until I’ve covered every story ever penned, including my favorite romance of all time, about a gallant knight and his fair lady, with a detailed recounting of the sappy bits. There are lots of them. It’s a three-hundred-page work. Oh, and did I mention it’s told in verse?”

For a second, his mouth tilts. Then it flattens into a line. “You provoke me.”

“That means we’re even.”

“Pain makes us stronger,” he finally answers. “Come closer.”

Half of me wants to, the other half stays still. “You play intensely. The music is so lovely, it becomes sad. It hurt to listen.”

“That sounds like melodrama.”

“You play angrily, too. And on such a delicate instrument, I worry you might break it.”

“I prefer to break delicate things,” he acknowledges. “I relish music, the way I relish water and brews. They are fluid and temperamental. Each can be pure or destructive, dangerous or…”

“A haven?” I volunteer.

He grunts in acknowledgment. “The harp is an instrument of the river. It is as graceful as water. But like any body of water, it can rage and drown its visitors. That is why I chose it.”

“And is that why you play here? To remember your pain? To connect with it, so it keeps you strong? Against what, I wonder. Humans or yourself?”

“You tell me,” Elixir bites out. “When you were listening, what did you hear?”

“I heard suffering and violence,” I murmur. “I heard loss and sorrow. I heard darkness. I heard everything you don’t hide and everything you don’t realize you’re hiding.

“I think you rely on power and magic. And that gnaws on you because you don’t want to rely on them. You crave being a ruler, but you secretly wish you didn’t. I think blinding others is a weapon, but it’s also your downfall. I think you cling to these things to compensate for whatever you’ve lost. I think you know this.”

An agonized flicker cuts through his facade before it tightens like a fist. Elixir releases the harp, the instrument thudding into an upright position. He stands and prowls toward me, stalling on the opposite side of the water ring. “I have changed my mind,” he growls. “Go away.”

So, I’m right. And I refuse to cower or obey. He doesn’t want me to leave, or else he wouldn’t have stood up.

My feet carry me through the water and into the fountain. “No,” I whisper.

Tension emanates from his large body. Tension and heat and sadness and hate and fury and…need. So much need.

My fingers steal out to graze his jaw. “Whatever it is that hurt you, I’m so sorry.”

Elixir shudders like a scaffolding about to collapse, fragments breaking and splintering apart. “Do not be,” he rasps.

I hear the pleading, the resistance. If I pity him, it will be his mortification. If I care, it will be his undoing. If I feel anything for this monster, it might just shame him. Either way, it will lure him to me.

I would say he’s playing my game, and I would be correct, if that mattered right now.

Does it? Or do I care beyond that?

He can’t take my kindness. He doesn’t know how. The water lord doesn’t know how to withstand what I have to offer, because he’s never encountered it before. Nor have I ever dreamed of offering this Fae such tenderness.

He was always my exception to compassion, but in this enclosure, that isn’t so.

It’s easy to hate villains. It’s much harder to understand them. It’s hardest of all to forgive them.

My digits trace from his jaw to the incline of his cheekbone. “What do you desire above all else?” I ask. “Why is your name Elixir? What are you trying to heal? What gives you comfort?”

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