Sylas hums to himself, considering Whitt and then me. “We’ll wait until the others give their reports,” he said. “But if the rest of the word aligns with that… We can’t hide her forever, and it seems to me that showing we have nothing to hide may be a better tactic for dealing with such unsubstantiated concerns.”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
“If all’s still well tomorrow, we’ll introduce you to the pack and get you settled in as a regular fixture in their lives. Once that’s done, perhaps it’s time we invite Aerik and his cadre for a dinner to show there are no ill-feelings over their frequent neglect of our ‘friendship’.”
Wait, what?
Whitt grins. “Give him a chance to investigate up close and find nothing, and he won’t be able to justify continuing to suspect us. I like it.” He aims that grin at me. “With a few careful glamours, you’ll slip by right under his nose as a totally different woman.”
Sylas regards me with a solemn expression. “If you feel you’re ready for that, Talia. We won’t rush the matter—and I wouldn’t ask you to be around them at all if I didn’t think it’s our best hope of getting them to back off for a long while afterward.”
Face my former captors again. See them here in the keep that’s become my sanctuary. An icy shiver ripples over my skin.
It’s not just for myself. How much more danger will the men of this keep have to face because of my presence here? Aerik’s already being so hostile toward them. They shouldn’t have to deal with him at all, let alone invite him into their home where he can attack them up close—an attack that might involve not just words but teeth and claws if the truth comes out.
I’m drawing them here, just like before—just like—
Images of blood splattering grass and leaves in the darkness flash through my head. Snarls and cries, the strained rattle of a last breath. I flinch, holding in my shudder as well as I can. No!
But even as panic clangs through my chest, I understand why Sylas is suggesting this strategy. Stealing me away has already set him and his cadre on this path. It doesn’t seem like we can avoid Aerik forever. Wouldn’t it be better to get the confrontation over with and have him gone from my life than to be constantly on edge waiting for them to spring at us?
At least this way, Sylas can control the circumstances, completely on guard rather than taken by surprise.
I take one breath and then another, thinking of curling up between the three fae men last night, about the warm shelter of their wolfish bodies. When I manage to speak, my voice comes out quiet and a little hoarse but steady. “Are you sure you could disguise me enough that they wouldn’t recognize me?”
“You barely look like the little scrap we stole away anymore, even without magic,” Sylas says. “The main identifying factors will be your shoulder scars, your wounded foot, and your scent. The first can be covered easily enough with clothing, and we won’t reach out to them until I’m sure beyond any doubt that we can mask the other two.”
My body balks again all the same, but I force myself to nod. “All right. If this is the best way to make sure they don’t keep sneaking around here, we should do it.”
“Then tomorrow you make your debut.” Whitt claps his hands. “It looks as though you may get to attend one of my revels before much longer after all, mite.”
Chapter Four
Talia
I’ve only left the keep once before, and that was several evenings ago, in such a hurried mission that I didn’t dare look back. I’ve seen most of the scenery from the windows before, but it’s different taking it in at my leisure with the fresh outside air all around me and warmth of the ever-summer breeze licking over my skin. And I haven’t gotten a really good look at the keep itself before.
I turn on my heel where I’ve stopped on the soft grass that tickles my bare feet. Beyond the nearby fields, patches of forest darken the horizon in almost every direction except the low, rolling hills to my left. To my right, spires of pinkish stone jut up from the distant treetops in spindly towers, dotted with lime-green vegetation. And behind me…
Getting a good eyeful of the place I’ve lived in for the past month, my breath catches. Inside the keep, it’s easy to imagine that while the structure is a bit odd—every wall and ceiling made of the same polished wood as the floors, lighting fixtures that look like branches—it’s still simply a very grand house. Outside, it’s both one of the most beautiful and the most alien buildings I’ve ever seen.
It looks as though several immense trees sprouted up and fused into one being, only the curves of one bending into the next showing where they might have begun and ended. Nothing sprouts from the smoothed bark of the outer walls, but above the second floor, branches weave together into an intricate pattern like the finest sort of lace. Delicate rings spiral out around the arched windows as if they used to be knots in the wood.
“It doesn’t quite live up to Hearthshire, but we built it under direr circumstances,” Sylas says beside me, as if he thinks I’m underwhelmed rather than overwhelmed by the sight. He tips his head toward the pack village. “Are you ready?”
Right. We did come out here for a reason. One I haven’t really forgotten, nervousness making my stomach jump. I might have been using the view as an excuse to dawdle. I square my shoulders. “As I’ll ever be.”
Heading over to meet the larger pack feels weirdly like showing up in a new classroom halfway through the school year. The people Sylas is about to introduce me to have their own friendships and probably rivalries, histories that stretch back farther than I’ve even been alive. How am I going to fit in with all that?
Actually, it’s a gazillion times worse than a classroom, because these “people” aren’t even people. They’re fae, and I’m human, and August has already told me that pretty much every fae views humans as something lesser than themselves.
I limp along beside Sylas, his pace slowed in consideration of my own, sucking the wildflower-scented air into my lungs and willing my heart not to hammer straight through my ribs. Several fae are already moving around their houses, which look like much smaller versions of the keep’s construction: enormous tree stumps that’ve been twisted off to form a pointed roof a few feet above their heads.
A woman is tending to a garden full of bright leaves and berries in a cacophony of colors. A couple of men are working together to bend several pieces of wood into some kind of contraption, it appears with magic, while small pearl-gray hens peck at the grass by their feet. A small group is just tramping back into the middle of the village with weapons over their shoulders or at their hips and a large doe carried on a harness between them.
At the sight of their lord, all activity ceases. Sylas’s pack leaves off their work to approach us, more emerging from the houses as if his presence alone sets off some sort of signal to alert them.
Sylas and I come to a stop at the edge of the patchier grass on the foot-worn paths between the houses, his hand rising to my shoulder. It’s a gesture mainly for their benefit, I suspect—to emphasize that I’m under his protection? That they should treat me with all the respect he’d require?—but his firm grasp helps me stand straight and steady before all these strangers.