Fae

by Jennifer Bene

  “How can you believe that, Fae? After everything that’s been done to you, how do you still believe in any of it?” His face scrunched up with the depth of his frustration and confusion, but she just smiled.

  “I have faith in her, that’s how. Eltera’s power comes every morning and heals me. Every. Single. Morning. In more than two thousand years she’s never missed a sunrise. I don’t know what it costs her to do that, but it lets me know she’s there. It lets me know she’s out there, somewhere, and that she still knows I’m alive. I couldn’t leave her to suffer alone, just to end my own pain.” Fae looked down to see her fists clenched from the passion of her speech, and she made herself relax her hands. “My turn again. Have you seen Eltera?”

  “Yes.” Kiernan nodded, but he was still staring at the floor, or the wall, or the ceiling, and not her.

  “How was she?”

  “It’s been more than a hundred years, but she always looked fine when I saw her. But, you know, she’s a goddess.” Kiernan clenched his teeth for a second, and then he seemed to make a decision. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I know that that from our reports, the ones we write about you guys, Gormahn finds out what happens to you all and he makes Eltera watch his favorites so she knows you’re suffering. I think that’s the worst thing he does to her, worse than hurting her in any other way.” His voice trailed off and Fae’s stomach knotted up. To imagine everything that Eltera could have seen – it wasn’t good.

  “I just – I miss her.” Fae leaned forward and wrapped her arms around herself. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but it had spilled out, and Kiernan finally looked at her again.

  “I’m sorry, Fae.” He walked towards her and knelt down in front of her. Fae looked down at him and met his dark eyes as he continued talking, “I’m sorry for everything. Everything you’ve gone through, everything that’s happened. I didn’t always do my job, and I wasn’t always watching, but from what I did see, if that’s been your life since – since Gormahn… I’m just sorry.”

  Fae didn’t know how to respond to that, he seemed sincere and almost as if it hurt him to think of everything that had happened to her. She thought for a minute, staring at him, that in all her life no one had ever apologized who actually had a hand in her suffering. He’d had every opportunity to hurt her, to send her back to Butler, to send her anywhere, and instead he had bought her clothes and kept his distance. He hadn’t told his friends about her.

  “I believe you.” Fae said it flatly and Kiernan’s face registered surprise. She hadn’t accepted the apology, but she hadn’t rejected it and he realized that. He reached forward and ran a finger lightly across the bruises on one of her wrists.

  “I swear I’ll never hurt you, not even accidentally, ever again.” Kiernan seemed to be promising himself more than her, and Fae couldn’t respond to that so she just nodded. He seemed so sincere, but it was hard to believe anyone. Especially a Laochra. Everyone gave in to the temptation of the bands eventually.

  “How am I supposed to trust you?” Fae tilted her head as she looked down at him.

  “You’re not. At least, not until I’ve earned it.” He pushed himself up to standing and looked around the room, taking a deep breath. She could respect that answer, and she was glad he knew that pretty words were not going to do it. He looked back at her, a serious expression on his face. “You know what we need after a day like today?”

  “What?” Fae arched an eyebrow up at him.

  “A drink.” He held his arms out like it was an obvious answer. That made her laugh, and the laughter soothed some raw place inside her that had been torn open.

  “Haven’t you been drinking all day?” The smile disappeared from her face but she looked back to him. He shrugged a shoulder and walked to a coat closet.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t here, and we both need a drink after all this. Don’t you want to go out and see the city? Feel normal for a bit?” Fae was itching to leave the apartment, to see other people, and walk around without worrying someone was going to yank her proverbial leash – and she really wanted to drink until the memory of Juliet was fuzzy and distant.

  “Yes, I do.” She nodded and stood up. Kiernan gave a grin that transformed his face, it made him look young and mischievous, and – she had to admit – good. Fae forced herself to look at the floor and tried to quell the uneasy feeling in her stomach about him.

  He clapped his hands, a new energy filling him up. “Then put on your shoes, and let’s go.”

  Chapter Ten

  Seattle, Washington

  Watching Fae step out onto the street was quite a sight. When she walked out the front door of Kiernan’s building, her eyes widened at all of the Christmas lights in the trees and the big bows around some of the street lamps. He already felt better about their disaster of a talk just seeing her enjoy the sights of the city, outside and free for the first time in gods knew how many decades.

  “It’s so beautiful.” Fae turned her head around to look at the lights as they headed down the street, the red strands in her hair catching the light at random. His heavy coat was slung around her shoulders, dwarfing her and hiding her incredible curves. He kept them on track as she took in the city with wide-eyes, occasionally gasping and muttering to herself, spinning in place to look up at a building, or staring across the street at other couples heading back from the bar district. He cleared his throat trying to think of something, anything, to say to her after the difficult conversation they’d had.

  “Yeah, I always love this time of year, it’s Christmas time for them. It’s a Christian holiday, and they celebrate by -” Kiernan started to explain, but Fae looked at him like he was stupid.

  “I know what Christmas is, Kiernan. I may not have been out in the world and free all this time, but you’d be surprised that people actually talk to me about things. Slaves may not see much of the world, but we’re not blind.” She had shoved her hands inside the pockets and was lifting her shoulders against the breeze, her auburn hair whipping around her face.

  “Sorry. I guess if you have a question, ask me.” He shut his mouth, obviously failing at the casual conversation thing. He wanted a drink even more now. Stopping in front of one of his favorite bars, he opened the door and Fae stepped in before him. It was crowded and Kiernan realized it was a Saturday night, which meant a lot of mortals packed in. Fae was frozen at the door, her eyes widening as she looked at all of the people crammed into the room. There were low tables on the left side of the bar for eating and higher pub tables on the right side around the bar, but she wasn’t moving forward.

  Maybe this had been a mistake.

  He gently touched her elbow, and he noticed she didn’t jump for once. Raising his voice over all of the noise he pointed at the bar and asked, “Do you want to get a drink?”

  Fae nodded and followed him as he pushed his way through the people, and when he got to the bar he was glad he was tall because he could just lean over the hipster that had snagged a stool. The guy turned to give him a glare, but when he saw Kiernan he switched on a nervous smile and leaned out of his way. When the young girl behind the bar noticed him she grinned.

  “What can I get you?” Her perky voice was on the edge of annoying, but he smiled back. The way she was pushing her chest out was more comical than attractive, but he was used to it. He’d always figured his almost black eyes would scare off the mortals, but instead they seemed to be drawn to him. Like they all had a fucking death wish. Kiernan turned back to see Fae hidden behind him, so he tugged her elbow gently so she stepped in front of him to the bar and he could give her a little bubble of breathing room by shielding her. The bartender’s face fell when she saw Fae, and she suddenly wasn’t so friendly anymore.

  “Okay, Fae, what do you want?” He raised his voice and talked close to her ear so she could hear him.

  “Depends. Are we drinking just a little, or are we drinking a lot?” She looked up at him and he let out a sudden laugh.

  “After e
verything that’s happened today, let’s go with a lot.”

  Fae craned her neck trying to read all of the bottles lining the walls, but she quickly gave up. “Let’s go with scotch then, whatever they have.”

  Kiernan smiled and turned back to the bartender who was leaning across the bar, now directly in front of him. Her low cut top didn’t leave much to the imagination and her plastic smile was back on her face. He was tempted to tell her to stop trying so hard, that it was a waste of time, but it was pointless. A glance to the side and he could see that Fae was annoyed with the bartender’s antics because she rolled her eyes. “You heard her, do you have any Glenlivet? It’s a scotch. Eighteen or twenty-one?”

  The bartender sighed at the lack of attention and walked along the wall of bottles for a minute or two until she found a bottle. She brought it back to them and sat two glasses on the bar a little harder than necessary. “We have the twenty-one, single or double?” Kiernan shook his head.

  “I’ll just take the bottle.” He handed across his credit card and the bartender took it and asked him to wait. He watched her walk down the length of the bar and grab a male bartender and come back. The guy took the card from the girl and started talking to Kiernan while his eyes were glued to Fae.

  “Hey man, you know how much a whole bottle is?”

  “It’s fine.” Kiernan answered, and the guy shrugged and rung it up at the register along the wall and came back to hand the card to Kiernan. As he was tucking his card back in his wallet, the bartender leaned across the bar with his hand extended towards Fae.

  “I’m David by the way, if you need anything else just ask for me.” He gave a charming smile and added, “I’d be happy to give you anything you need.” Fae smirked at him and shook his hand once, but she didn’t offer her name or any other response. Kiernan grabbed the bottle in one hand and the two glasses in the other, glancing at the bartender who shrugged and grinned before heading back down the bar.

  “Let’s grab a seat.” Sitting down at one of the tall tables he set the bottle and the two glasses down, opened it, and poured an inch or so of the amber liquid into each glass. Fae was staring into hers, still hunched inside the huge coat. “You know you can take off the coat if you want?” Fae shrugged it off and gave him a small smile, before she swirled the scotch in the glass, her eyes flickering around the room.

  Her shoulders were tense and he was going to suggest they just leave, but then she sat up taller and spoke. “So do you come here a lot?” she asked, and Kiernan laughed. Fae furrowed her brow, frowning at him, “What?”

  “That’s sort of a pick-up line. Like, something you’d say if you wanted to take me home.” A blush crept across Fae’s cheeks and she glared at him. It made him grin, but he tried to stifle it.

  “Not what I meant, at all.”

  “I know, it just caught me off guard, but yeah when I’m in town I like to come here.” Kiernan took another sip of the scotch. “So, are you okay? With the crowd? If not we can leave.”

  Fae nodded and finally took a drink. “I’m fine with it, just not used to it.” She licked her lips and inhaled slowly over the glass. How she’d developed a taste for scotch in her time as a slave would have to be a topic of conversation. “So how long have you been watching me in that glass of yours? The whole time, or do the Laochra take shifts?”

  “You’ve been assigned to me since we started the monitoring, probably fifteen hundred years ago now. At first, Gormahn just let the curse do his work for him, but then somehow he found out one of you had been free, without a master, for over a hundred years.” Kiernan stared at the bottle, speaking quietly so other tables couldn’t hear him. “That’s when some of us were assigned charges. Not all of the Laochra monitor, and I’ve got four of you I’m responsible for. But, honestly? It was only a couple hundred years ago that I did more than just react if you got free somehow, same with the others. That’s rarely happened though, so I didn’t really observe as often as I should have according to Gormahn. He wants quarterly reports on what’s happening, but I turn mine in about half as often.” Kiernan couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he’d ignored his job as one of the monitors. What was worse - watching and not doing anything, or not caring enough to know what was happening? He poured himself another drink.

  “So, what changed two hundred years ago?” Fae finished her first glass and waited for him to pour another. When he sat the bottle down again, he leaned back from the table.

  He shrugged, “I don’t know.” Fae sighed and finished her glass, reaching for the bottle and glancing at the others in the bar. She let out a little huff under her breath as she poured. “I really don’t, Fae. I have some theories that Gormahn’s power is waning, or that he’s not spending so much of his power keeping us under his control, but I don’t actually know anything. All I know is that I’ve slowly felt more like who I think I really am, or who I was before.”

  “And who do you think you really are?”

  “Hopefully a better man than I have been with Gormahn.”

  She nodded and finished her glass again, pouring herself some more. “Well, I hope so as well. Since I’m trapped with you,” Fae mumbled into her drink, and Kiernan felt a panic in his chest at the idea that she thought he had kidnapped her – which he kind of had. Shit. He was about to start explaining when Fae smiled. Her smile stopped his heart from racing, and it felt like it almost stopped altogether. Her voice was a little playful when she continued, “I’m kidding… sort of.”

  “Oh.” Kiernan swallowed against his suddenly dry throat. “Look, I just want you safe, and it might be hard to believe, but I think I’m your best bet on that for now. I know we started out on a bad -”

  “It’s fine, Kiernan. I stayed in your apartment all day because I needed to know more about what you are, who you are. And now that I know a little more,” Fae shrugged, “I’m not against staying with you for a bit, until I can figure out what comes next.”

  “I wish I could say I had some ideas on that front, but –” He blew out a breath. “This is complicated to say the least.”

  “What’s the risk that your friends will show back up?”

  “Not very high.” Kiernan refilled his glass, smiling to himself at the fact that he didn’t need to try and act mortal around her. Knocking back scotch this fast would lay out most humans, but he was barely feeling a buzz. Looking at Fae, it seemed to be true for her too. There were some advantages to being touched by the gods. “I haven’t really seen either of them in a while, I sort of disappeared a while back and Cole only recently started reaching back out to me. The hunt we were on was my attempt to figure out what the fuck is going on with me.”

  “And what is going on with you?” Fae narrowed her eyes at him, leaning forward on the table to evaluate him like she may be able to answer the question herself.

  “I wish I knew.” Kiernan felt his lips tick up in a smile. “I do have to say I like this version of myself a lot better than the dark one.”

  “The dark one?”

  He laughed under his breath. “Uh, yeah, it’s kind of the phrase I use for the side of myself that I feel is Gormahn’s influence. It’s like this darkness living inside me, and if I’m not careful it just takes over.”

  Fae was staring at him in silence for a minute, her blue eyes boring into him until he felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. “You’re right. About the dark one.”

  “Huh?”

  “I saw it in you.” Fae pointed at him with the hand holding her glass as she leaned back from the table. “When we fought, and I called you a so-… the thing you asked me not to call you, I saw the darkness in you. You had been in control, and then the person I’d been talking to was just gone. It was in your eyes.”

  “My eyes are black. What do you mean it was in my eyes?” Kiernan was surprised that she even believed him. He’d tried to talk to Cole about it once and he’d stared at him like he was crazy, but she not only agreed with him, she said she’d seen
the dark one.

  “They looked different. Right now I can see you, Kiernan, the person. When you choked me, it wasn’t you. Not the guy talking to me right now anyway.” Fae shrugged like it was the most normal thing in the world to talk to him about having different sides to himself, one of which had tried to kill her.

  “I can’t believe you believe me.” He shook his head and she smiled over the glass at her lips.

  “You’re kidding, right? After everything that’s happened in my life, in my very long, very fucked up life, why wouldn’t I believe that someone created by a god could have some bad side-effects?” Fae licked her lips. “The gods don’t always think everything through.”

  “Eltera seems to have done a good job, except for betting against Gormahn.” Kiernan tilted his glass towards her. “That probably could have been handled better. But other than that, what has Eltera done?”

  “Let’s just say that for the first fifty years after the curse, Eltera’s healing gift was a little too thorough. As in, I was a maiden again at dawn every day?” Fae finished her glass in a single swig as the drink Kiernan had been taking almost made him choke. He started coughing and she grinned at him, completely amused by his discomfort.

  “Okay, so, yeah, that was a mistake.”

  “Absolutely. She figured it out though, and it hasn’t happened again.” Now that Fae had somewhat warmed up to the bar she was watching everyone around her, listening to their conversations and twisting in her seat to track some as they left. He leaned back to let her enjoy herself, wondering if she’d ever had the chance to just observe mortals who had no idea who or what she was. It was probably a unique feeling for her. Fae suddenly turned back to him, excitement threading in her voice, “Let’s do a toast.”

  “What?”

  “A toast. Those people over there just did it.” Fae raised her glass up above the table, and Kiernan followed suit as she announced at a high volume, “To being immortal, and better days ahead!” Kiernan rubbed a hand across his face, and he didn’t repeat it as he just clinked his glass against hers. She grinned and finished it. He could tell she was finally getting a little buzzed, because she was much more animated and that gorgeous smile wasn’t fading.