Page 59 of Faerie Fate
“You guys stay here. I’ll check.” I held out a hand to stop them and went to answer the door. Mike and Bronwen hovered close behind but with Noren with me, whoever it was would know automatically not to fuck with us.
I steeled myself for this, bending into the direwolf for strength, and pulled the door open before I lost my nerve.
A haughty fae male stared down his nose at me from the other side of the threshold. Purple eyes traveled between my scar to my stained Converse sneakers and his lip peeled back in a sneer.
I was very clearly lacking. The direwolf, on the other hand, gave him much necessary pause.
“Where is Poppy?” His cold, high-pitched voice carried a demand.
I blocked his entrance with my hands and way more bravado than I actually felt. “Who’s asking?”
It was the wrong thing to say. “Her master. Where is she?” he pressed.
“She’s busy,” Mike called from the kitchen. “Can we take a message?”
The haughty fae reacted with a small chuckle. “Busy? I suppose you’re going to tell me next that you are friends of hers.”
He found the idea laughable, apparently.
“Bring her out now. OrIwill bring down the protective wards. On you. None of you children would care to experience the sensation of your insides frying while your exteriors remain intact.”
His voice was slick and soft as he looked down the line of his nose at me.
“Are you threatening me?” I asked.
He clapped slowly, the movement rustling the chain mail above his leather breastplate. The man wore the same kind of armor Poppy did. But Poppy—Barbara—had no master. Which made every syllable out of his mouth a damn lie.
“It took you long enough to realize it. Now go. Shoo.” Without changing expression, the man fluttered his fingers at me to get me to move.
I shut my eyes and breathed through my nose. I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of this dude but I might have chanced it if Bronwen and Mike weren’t around. Instead of fighting, the way I wanted to, I stepped aside and braced.
“Come on in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll go get her.”
I backed away cautiously. Noren placed himself conspicuously between us and the stranger.
The top of my list of things I hated? People like this dude. People who looked at the world around them like they were supreme and everyone else maggots to be crushed underfoot.The high and mighty who more than likely only adopted superior hauteur because it covered up their own fear.
Whoever this guy was, he had enough magic to hurt my friends. I sensed it in him. A boiling, seething inferno beneath his surface of purposeful cool.
I brushed by Mike on the way to the kitchen and knocked on the door to the spell room. “Poppy? I hate to bother you, but can you come out? Please. You, ah, you have a visitor.”
I refused to call this dude hermaster. The word left a horrible taste in my mouth. Even thinking about it curdled the sick feeling in the base of my stomach.
I waited a beat, keenly aware of the man’s presence as he glared through me to the door, and finally a crack appeared.
The door opened wider and Poppy slithered out of the nearly black interior, grinding her knuckles into her eyes. A yawn split her features.
“A visitor?”
Her disheveled hair stood on end, her shirt mussed and her eyes sleepy. At least until she caught sight of the fae man behind me.
She went on immediate defense, back curving, the exhaustion wiped clean from her face.
“Kit,” she greeted. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He released another one of his high-pitched chuckles I immediately hated. “You sent your prisoner to my doorstep and failed to make an appearance with him. Seemed odd, given how you usually bring them. Surely you knew I’d come to talk to you about it.”
The air went hot between them and the rest of us might as well not exist.
