Cerulean’s glower might as well be hammered into his face. “Are you quite finished?”
“No, you haughty bastard. I’ve still got my free rule, and I’m playing it now.”
“Indeed? I’m all pointy ears.”
“Never call me a pillager.”
Cerulean startles. “What?”
“Don’t dump me with the rest of ’em. Understand?”
“That’s your request? You could bend or twist any rule to your advantage. Yet you would ask that I don’t mislabel you.”
“Schemes abound when it comes to rules, especially where you’re concerned. I want something rarer: your word. And if you ask me, maintaining my integrity is plenty. Same as my name. It’s Lark.”
The Fae stares at me, bewildered. Hasn’t anybody in this cursed land ever bargained for their honor before?
After a moment’s pause, his body unwinds into the chair. “Done.”
“Deal,” I agree. “I’m ready for some grub now.”
Almost. He almost grins.
Almost. That grin almost strokes between my breasts.
Cerulean gives me a prolonged once-over that would make a bat blush. Without looking away, he waves an arm toward the kitchen. “Be my guest. Restore yourself and give me something to work with.”
He gains his feet, picks his javelin off the fireplace wall, and strides across the cottage. Swinging back the curtain, he steps into a green-blue glare of moonlight. A speckled beam catches the rims of his shoulders before he disappears, blending with the tinkling chimes drifting from outdoors.
When he’s gone, I’m not thinking about what’s beyond that threshold. All I’m thinking about is that Fae standing briefly in a radiant shaft. All I’m thinking is how far the moon hovers from this place. All I’m thinking is how far its light had traveled to touch him.
Then I’m thinking, maybe nothing’s ever as distant as it seems. If moon rays can strike a Fae’s shoulder, and if a bird’s call can travel a great distance, and if a girl can find herself galloping from one world to the other, maybe that same girl can reach the top of a mountain.
14
Because I’ve slept plenty by now, food is the next order of business. That I haven’t expired from hunger is a marvel.
In the kitchen, Cerulean’s untouched feast crowds the table. The roasted partridge and pears, the seeded bread, the cheese wedge, the date cake, the canister of chimera berries, and the assortment of drinks.
None of this atones for everything he’s done. The Fae are made of fifty percent magic, fifty percent ulterior motives.
That doesn’t stop my stomach from gurgling. I tarry beside the table and nibble on the cheese…then munch…then gobble. I avoid the berries but shovel the rest of the banquet into my mouth, so famished that I don’t give a shit anymore. I clear most of the table, guzzling milk from the jug and topping it off with draughts of coffee, then sagging with a belch that would annoy Juniper and horrify Cove.
Stuffed to capacity, I migrate into the living room, where the fire pops. One of the curtains dances with the breeze, and a whistle skips through the cottage from outside, which reminds me of the animals back home in our sanctuary. My heart twists as more lilting whistles sneak into the dwelling. I approach the arched window, inch the drapery aside, and peek through. In the woodland, shadows cross the ground, scurrying too swiftly to identify.
As a tyke, I remember curling my body in the attic chair and gazing at the shrouded view of this mountain—daydreaming about the dangers of Faerieland, spooked and beguiled by its lore. Until collapsing in front of this cottage, I’d barely had time to breathe, much less to look closer.
I throw on my dress, pad barefoot to the threshold, and whisk open the curtain. “Fables eternal,” I gasp.
Beyond the flagstones, nighttime submerges the mesh of woodland in shades of dark teal. Gnarled trees huddle together, green podlike vegetables bud from vines coiling through the undergrowth, and frothy blooms purse, their trumpet petals encrusted with dew.
From the branches, gilded wind chimes dangle like lanterns, drizzling mellow light into the wild. Their clinking melody practically sparkles, a mirthful sort of music spilling from them.
But it’s the shifting forms that get me to move. I trot across the walkway and then stop, because they could be deadly, salivating creatures. On the other hand, they’re small and fringed, and after spending nine years communing with animals at home, I trust my instincts.
I tiptoe down the path and tuck myself behind a trunk. The sources of those lilting whistles make an appearance. Nightingales!
Of course! Moth had called this place The Watch of Nightingales.
In my world, they’re pecan brown, the shade flat and earthen. In this domain, the color is richer, as luminescent as a gemstone, and swims within brilliant turquoise plumage. The combination creates whorls of pigment, the avians’ slender beaks painted in the same turquoise.
And their birdsong! The vibrations harmonize with the chimes, recognizable yet spectral.
They flap at ground level, serenading the jade canopy in search of mates. Mesmerized, I inch from the tree, afraid to spoil the moment. They spot me and launch from the green, their wings opening and catching the air. In unison, the assembly spirals around my waist and then flits away, baiting me to follow.
I give chase. Grabbing my skirt, I dart after the Watch. The illuminating wind chimes drip from the leaves, pouring a faintly jolly music into the grove. I swerve around trunks and caper after the birds. They peel off through the creepers and brush the chimes, a metallic chuckle skipping from the mobiles. Doubling back the way they came, the Watch leads me to the spot where we began.
A grin splits my face. But in a trice, they break away, splintering along the ground and returning to their nests. One of the chicks remains behind. It flutters by my ear, its beak poking playfully at my hair. I take a chance and run my finger across the cutie’s wings, which rustle with glee.
There’s a Fable about these creatures. It goes…
“Once, there was a Nightingale who longed for a mate,” a male voice recites.
The chick zooms past me. I flip around and follow its trajectory toward a masculine outline lounging against a trunk, the black satin shape of him intangible, nighttime painting his angular features in dark teal.
Cerulean advances, the javelin harnessed to his hip. His ear caps swerve outward with a flourish, and the deep V of his shirt exposes flexing muscles as solid as a breastplate.
Hot damn. What’s the milk laced with here?
When Faeries are gruesome to behold, it’s the stuff of nightmares. But when they’re pretty…
Never mind. I thought he’d left. Has he been out here waiting? Doesn’t he have mountain-monarch chores to do? By the way, where’s his trusty owl?
The nightingale chick flutters around the mussed midnight of his hair. The Fae’s eyes sink to the pump of my breasts—it had been a vigorous chase—then rise to my face. Holding my gaze, he crooks a finger for the animal to land upon, then whispers something I can’t hear. The bird listens and vaults into the offshoots.
After a pause, Cerulean debates with our winged spectators. “What do you think, precious ones?” he asks them while focusing on me. “Does she know the rest?”
I plunk my hands on my hips and sidle toward him. “The mystical Nightingale sang but received no answer.”
Cerulean swaggers backward, but not in a submissive way. It’s a come-hither kind of way, luring me up a hill nestled between the trees. “So the bird shifted, using magic to grow larger, knowing its call would be heard at a vaster distance across Faerie.”
I mosey after him. “For days, the bird remained taller than the trees and sang its melody. Still, it received no reply. For Faeries, mating is fated. But for the Fae fauna, many must search high and low.”
Cerulean crests the hill and inverts his palm, a feather materializing midair. With a few deft rotations of his wrists, the quill pirouettes. “Thus, the Nightinga
le failed to notice another bird waiting quietly in the underbrush.” The plume disappears as he wiggles his fingers like an illusionist. Then he murmurs conspiratorially, “For the Nightingale had shifted too largely to inspect its surroundings. It did not realize its mate had indeed followed the song and was there all along.”
His dark lips curl. “So the mate gave up and found an owl to fuck, since they see much better in the dark.”
“Hey now,” I say. “Improvising is cheating.”
“That’s immaterial. You’re merely disappointed I’ve left out the consummation scene.”
My mouth wads, holding back a laugh. In spite of himself, he glances sideways, reluctant mirth puffing from his nostrils.
It’s a minor slipup, an unexpected pinch of humor. All the same, we sober quickly, idling beneath a wind chime, its music having subsided the moment we’d approached.
I don’t know what to make of our recital. Worse, I don’t know why it makes me feel years younger, the same way these creatures had while I chased them.
But I do know something horrendous. If this Fae and I were tykes, we’d like each other, because we wouldn’t know better, because instead of thinking about hate and hierarchies, we’d be too busy learning how our imaginations worked.
Then I remember we’re not tykes. Then I remember he’s not my friend.
The moment deflates, and I cross my arms to prove it doesn’t matter either way. “Can’t get rid of you, can I?”
Cerulean raises his arms to indicate The Watch of Nightingales. “I’ve been out here, entertaining my peers. They have grievances occasionally, and I’m not often in this area, which apparently was the grievance. After holding court, I waited to see how long you would dally before exploring the wild. You exhibited a rather jubilant picture instead of a petrified one. More’s the pity.”
I shrug. “If nothing’s what it appears on this mountain, then maybe I’m supposed to trust its fauna, in order to survive this place. There’s no way to do that without risking a flub or two.”
“Then tell me. What do you see when you look around? An answer for an answer.”
“That’s easy pickings. I’ve always thought of nature as alive, but it’s magnified here. I’m getting random ideas. Like, does the wind have a pulse? If I spread my arms, will I feel its heartbeat?”
“Or will it snatch you?” he indulges.
“Or will it lift me off the ground?” I add. “What can I say? When I was a tyke, I wanted to become a bird.”
“A lark who favors animals with wings.”
“As much as you fancy ruling the sky.”
Cerulean hedges. “I’m but a symbol for The Trapping. In general, we mountain Fae commune with the wind in limited, varying ways. How the wind reacts to us, and interacts with us, differs from soul to soul. We beseech it, and it answers, but we can’t command it any more than we can command the fauna, for we don’t have that right. Ultimately, no one controls the sky except the sky.”
His ambivalence dredges up The Black Nest and the look he gave Moth when she called him Sire. That he’s conflicted about his rank, not to mention his role in history, and modest about the wind, well, stumps me. But I like what he said about not controlling the sky. “When I was little, I wanted to fly free, high, and unafraid of the world. Why are you making that face?”
Cerulean wavers, his eyes flickering. “You…remind me of someone.”
“There’s someone else who thinks like I do?”
“You flatter yourself, human.”
“Depends on who she was? Or he?”
The Fae gazes off with a remote grin I don’t think he’s aware of. “She was miraculous and devastating.”
Why does that comment poke me in the chest? I shake my head, because it’s my turn. “That a good thing? Seeing as I remind you of her?”
His head whips toward me, the cuts of his cheekbones sloping upward, the shadows digging trenches beneath them. “Hardly,” he says, annoyed.
The word snaps from the cage of his throat. How many words do I have locked inside me like that? How many more words are thrashing to get out of him? Would any of those words be the same?
I open my mouth to say…whatever I’m about to say…but Cerulean notices. He twirls his fingers, summoning a breeze that sneaks through the wild. The current coaxes the nightingales from their nests. They spring into action, migrating along the grass and cavorting farther into the woods to resume their mating serenade.
The lilting whistles fade into the wild. We’re alone now.
Out of nowhere, Cerulean eats up the distance and catches my hands. I make a gruff noise of protest, but my muscles go slack. His expression visibly wills me to cower, those eyes impulsive but determined, the visage of a dark imagination. Speckled visions fill my mind—late nights in a forge when reckless discovery had been so sweet. It urges me to see what this Fae will do.
He spreads our arms, splays our fingers, and turns my palms up beneath his, so that I feel whether the breeze has a heart. Our faces tilt, lips stalling a hair’s breadth apart, near enough to bite and draw blood. We stay like that, holding, holding. His intakes become my outtakes, and his shadow becomes my outline.
His skin warms my knuckles. Slender fingers cup my own, soft and thumping with an honest-to-goodness pulse. The rhythm matches the one beating through my veins.
Cerulean angles his head, his mouth brushing the slope of my ear. “Is that what you expected to feel?”
The question’s barely audible, shimmying down the side of my body. Cerulean’s good at that, blowing heat into the air. He’s a master at whispering.
Goosebumps flare. Vibrations ricochet over my spine. When that voice hooks onto the apex of my thighs, my mouth parts.
Cerulean’s eyelids shudder. “Answer me,” he intones, his accent causing another shockwave. “Does it have a heartbeat? Is it slow or fast?” His throat constricts. “Is it shallow as a sigh? Bottomless as a moan?”
Shit. That violent murmur, a withering funnel of sound.
He’s being flippant, yet the black silk of his voice unfurls down my legs. That hook between my thighs prods deeper, an invisible tongue flicking at the private knot of nerves hidden in my core. Fuck me if I don’t begin to throb.
He hasn’t moved, yet those whispers reach everywhere important, dampened warmth building under my dress. Every gulp of his throat, every hushed split of his lips, every muted syllable…I hear and feel it all, each breathy noise licking inside me.
Normally, I’d whip him up some snark. But I know my actual response is gonna haunt me: I burn as hot as a griddle.
And I’m wet, soaked from a few whispers.
Abruptly, Cerulean’s nostrils flare. So much for remaining elusive; his reaction is as boundless as the sky, spanning his whole face. It makes no difference that the only place we’re touching is our hands, because his intonations and my inhalations do the rest. His jaw ticks, and my nipples tighten, rising into the fabric concealing them.
He twitches, suddenly aware of what he’s doing. But he doesn’t let go, and I don’t pull back. Not until the breeze dissolves, ushering us apart.
I can’t decide whether to feel dejected, insulted, or plain pissed off at myself, so I settle for all three. It keeps things interesting.
I glower. “Don’t you have work to do? Solitaries to revel with?”
The menace returns, setting his blue irises aflame. He nicks his head toward the woodland route from which I’d come. “Do you not have a mountain climb? Or are you feeling overconfident, overeager, overindulgent? Shall I fix that? Up the ante?”
I stiffen. “You wouldn’t. It’s—”
Cerulean gives a close-mouthed chuckle, low and mean. “It’s what? Not fair?”
With an indolent swipe of his wrist, the path leading out of here vanishes.
15
My gaze catapults across the wild, hunting for the trail. All I see are the pillars of jade trees, vines of vegetable pods tangling across the soil, white flowers
burping that deceptive verbena-scented mist and the grass straining to catch it, and cackling wind chimes dousing the night in puddles of gold.
I swing my eyes back to Cerulean’s elegant smirk. “Know what happens to cheats in my world? They hang from a noose.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport,” he admonishes. “We were doing so well together.”
“Who’s we? I’m curious,” I snap. “Must be a hoot, watching a measly human do all the work while you stand by and jerk your magic wand.”
“It must be validating to assume what looks easy doesn’t take work.”
“That’s your ego talking, baby. I don’t buy it.”
He approaches once more. “I’ve made a decision about that,” he confides, each wispy word patting my lips. “I’ve decided not to care, because I’ve remembered that you’re wrong. Magic is given only to those worthy of the gift, the ones capable of learning its intricacies. What you call lazy is…” The Fae tilts his head, his lower lip stroking my cheek, “…anything but.”
The reply shivers from his tongue and blows between my lips. What is happening? I’m right peeved, which means I should be jamming my knees into his groin for manipulating the landscape. That’s what I should be doing.
Instead, I’m getting ideas I shouldn’t be getting. When it comes to blokes, I’m no blushing prey. Not since I was a little one. Not since that masked boy. But here I am, loathing a Fae so badly I taste its acidity. Here I am, craving that taste, wanting to know what it’s like to hate-kiss.
Cerulean’s attention drops to my mouth, the same way I fixate on his. “This doesn’t make sense,” I push out.
“No, it does not,” he rasps, stalking me across the hill, across the blooming grass, and backing me up against a rock wall that appears out of nowhere. “Why do you spurn me to viciousness as much as admiration? Why do your words insult yet invigorate me?”
Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) Page 13