Page 6 of Faeling
“Yes?” he called.
The door opened a crack, one of his guardsmen announcing, “It’s the soothsayer, my king.”
“Ah, good, send her in.”
With a sigh, Vallek stood from the tub, rivulets of water sluicing from his body.
“You sent for me, my—ack!”
2
Ravenna spun around, pulling the hood of her cowl lower over her eyes to hide her blush—and her avaricious gaze from the perfect backside of the orc king. The moment offered a chance to claw back her composure, and she took it.
By the time she heard the slosh of him stepping from the tub, her glamoured mask was firmly back in place.
“Forgive me,” she begged, “I thought—”
“Indeed, I did,” he said in that brusque, deep voice of his. “My apologies, the afternoon slipped away from me. You’re punctual as always,kone.”
“Far be it from me to keep a king waiting.”
He chuckled, the sound rich and resonant. Ravenna’s toes curled in her old boots, and she cursed the little flutter of her heart every time he spoke to her like that. Intimate. Warm.
Such a tone featured often in her dreams. She heard that voice of his tell her a great many things, from mundane to wicked, and she listened raptly. The human fates and faegoddesses were all cruel cunts for blessing him with a body and voice made to make a woman come apart.
Straightening her heavy cloak, Ravenna ruthlessly squashed such thoughts. Orc noses were sensitive, and she didn’t need him sniffing out her consuming lust for him. No need to give him a reason to laugh at her.
“I’m decent now. Your modesty is safe,” he teased.
Ravenna turned to find a luxurious robe draped from his shoulders and tied loosely around his thick waist. Sumptuous white fur lined the collar, and the rich burgundy of the robe matched the other trappings of Balmirra. As he crossed from the tub to an ornately carved set of table and chairs, Ravenna kept her gaze at his shoulders or higher—she definitely didn’t try to sneak a peek at what lay hidden beneath the red folds.
“You must save your flirting for a younger woman,” she chided, “my poor human heart can’t take it.”
He smiled roguishly as he poured two cups of mead into golden goblets inset with rubies. “As king, I take my flirting very seriously. I know I’m safe with you,kone.”
Kone,he called her. Seer. Although it was her position within his household, he didn’t say it like a title. No, the way he saidkone,he might as well have called hermy darlingorsweetheart. That was the way with him, that informality, an intimacy. It wasn’t hard to understand how he’d gathered so many clans already to his cause without having to use force.
In truth, Vallek Far-Sight didn’t need her and her power. He’d been called Far-Sight long before she presented herself before him, offering her services as a soothsayer. His own vision and confidence had seen him succeed where most others would fail—she supposed her little predictions were merely a nice reassurance.
That was all right. She didn’t need to be more. She couldn’t be more.
He extended one of his huge green hands toward the empty seat across from him. “Come join me,” he invited, although it wasn’t a request.
Bowing her head, she acquiesced. Someone had already anticipated her arrival, leaving a cushion and step stool for her. In the human world, she was a perfectly adequate height—to the orcs, she was positively puny.
Stepping up to take her seat, she settled on the cushion, sure that her cloak draped over as much of her as possible. Although she pushed the cowl back enough to reveal her face, she didn’t let it completely fall from her head, as the shadows offered a little more protection for her pointed ears.
She’d had enough practice by now to hold her disguise without the cloak, but only having to mask her face and hands made it much simpler. As a half-fae, her grasp on magic had always been more erratic. At the home she shared with her mother, in the territory claimed and saturated with magic by her father, it’d been easy enough.
Now, though, far away from the little life she’d once had, surrounded by stone and steel and orcs, it took concentration to utilize her inherent magic in such a focused way.
When he smiled at her over his cup, he would see an older human woman, perhaps in her forties or fifties. A little weathered but still clinging to some of the beauty of happier times. The glamour hid the soft lilac shade of her skin, replacing it with the bronzed color of a woman who’d worked long hours outside. Her dark hair held streaks of gray, and her eyes were muted from their usual violet to a grayish blue.
Nothing like the striking lapis-lazuli blue of Vallek’s intensegaze.
She had tried to make herself plain, simple, unremarkable. What her glamour became, what was easiest for her to hold, though, was something she knew intimately. And that was her mother’s face.
So when the chieftain grinned over his cup, it was a facsimile of Aine’s face he smiled at.
