16. The House
Chapter sixteen
The House
“ W hy did you think I left you?”
Wren straightened up as Elera sauntered into the small township of Sthiara, marked by a worn-down sign we’d passed a few moments prior on the side of the road. I felt the loss of his warm cheek upon my shoulder like he had peeled off my clothes, but I steadied myself against a shiver. I didn’t want him to touch me, excite me, or comfort me, and so I had taken advantage of the silence while he pretended to doze off, letting myself cool down and work through my feelings.
Eventually, I’d decided to forgive myself for being human and to better prepare myself for my surroundings. Faerie was filled with magic. Wren was filled with magic. I could feel it hovering around me, trying to find a way in so that it could consume me.
I had to keep my guard up.
And that’s precisely what I was going to do.
The road forked ahead; one side led across a bridge over a crystalline stream that appeared to run straight through the town, and the other veered off behind a row of cobblestone buildings with thatch roofing and smoking chimneys.
Elera chose the bridge.
“I don’t know,” I replied contemptuously. “Maybe because you told me to keep my wits about me, and then you left me?”
I felt him roll his eyes behind me, but his voice lacked all traces of its usual ridicule when he said, “I would say goodbye first, you know.”
Something fluttered, heated, and stretched out in my chest, even as I scoffed.
Sthiara was a quaint town that reminded me of Belgrave in the initial years following its establishment. Very few records existed from that time, and even fewer were illustrated, but I had pored over the one book I’d found in Dante’s with faded grey paintings and sketches depicting the little township in its early days.
The cobblestone street is almost identical to Belgrave, even down to the curbs and flood drainage system that were installed centuries later, and have rows upon rows of small apartments and shopfronts adorned with wood carvings of—
“That’s the Court of Light’s insignia,” Wren told me, answering my unspoken thoughts. His ability to track and read my every movement, even when he was behind me, was becoming quite unsettling.
“Flame?” My eyebrows drew together.
“Ha!” His exclamation echoed in my ears. “That’s an orb of light, not flame. Is that what the humans think it is nowadays? By the Elements, Owain will never let me hear the end of it. Whatever you do, don’t tell him that.”
I blinked, long and slow, at the insignia marking every visible doorway in town. “I don’t even know who that is,” I mumbled absentmindedly.
Wren loosened his hold on my waist by a fraction. “He’s the High Lord of the Court of Fire,” he explained. “And he has his own damn insignia, thank you very much.”
I shook off the questions brewing in my mind as Elera continued to walk further into town. How many Courts are there, and is Wren friends with everyone? Why is Belgrave’s insignia shared with a Faerie Court? And why isn’t anyone moving out of the way of the goddamn unicorn clip-clopping so loudly through the street?!
The thoroughfare ahead was crowded with beings that may as well have come straight from a drug-induced hallucination.
Horns and tails and claws and wings and hooves.
They were alien-like, and most of them made Wren look exceptionally human.
The pathway was a mirage of different skin types and shades of colour. Some leathery and wrinkled, or scaled and glistening, others smooth and clear, or opaque and matte. Every colour imaginable—and many of them unimaginable—filled the street, a sea of shades and textures to rival the sky.
Some did resemble Wren, standing at daunting heights with beauty to put the world’s most striking wonders to shame and clothes of a similar fashion—very simple clothing in plain colours and flattering cuts, neither old nor new in their design. Many of those beings, however, had donned a belt of ancient weapons in contrast to their loose shirts and long dresses. I thought it made for a peculiar sight to behold within such a peaceful and cheery atmosphere.
They were indeed talking and laughing as they strode down the street, stopping every so often to admire the wares displayed on wooden tables and the sills of open shop windows, all of them completely oblivious to the approaching beast with horns sharp enough to skewer them if they got in her way.
High Fae , I thought, who perhaps consider themselves above moving out of the pathway of a horse—even a magical one .
But the other faeries, who were lingering at the counters behind shop windows and stalls or conversing on the side of the road, did not look up at us as we passed by either. Not so much as a glance.
Elera jerked to a halt when a small, winged faerie with scaly blue skin stepped out from the curb right in front of her. Wren’s arm tightened almost imperceptibly around my waist, holding me in place.
“What is going on?” I whispered, clutching at Elera’s mane as she shook her large head and snorted her annoyance. She only continued walking once the small faerie had finished crossing the road.
I felt Wren shrug. “I put a glamour over us.”
“You what ? Why?”
He huffed. “Because like I said, bookworm, I don’t want any gossip.”
My blood heated, and I wriggled forward, trying to put some space between our bodies. “Then what was all of that bullshit about posture?”
“You have a nasty little mouth on you, don’t you?”
“Wren!”
“What?”
I sighed deeply. “Nothing.”
Every muscle and nerve ending in my body ached for the journey to be over soon.
The scent of fruit-filled pies and fresh bread filled my nose as we passed a bakery, followed by herbs and spices I couldn’t name wafting out of a large cauldron at a stall two doors up, filled with a delicious-looking orange soup. A faerie who resembled an Ogre with a large bald head and wrinkly sage-coloured skin was standing behind it, using his enormous, thick-fingered hands to wield a ladle and goblet as he served the line of customers trailing down the street.
The crowd thickened as we veered around the queue, and Wren suddenly leaned down, almost horizontal to the ground, and swiped a sprig of grapes from the top of a straw shopping bag on the arm of a purple, three-horned faerie. He offered one to me, but I shoved him off.
I could feel Wren mocking me in his head, and I almost went to say something—but then I heard the crunch of the grape skin bursting as he popped one into his mouth, and I had to brace myself against my stomach’s ravenous complaints.
Baskets of wine bottles and freshly cut flowers lined the road, and a stall towards the far end of the marketplace had a display of hanging crystals that spun in the breeze and cast sharp rainbows on the off-white canopy.
My heart clenched.
Brynn would have loved this place, too .
“Does the glamour bother you that much?” Wren asked, poking me in the ribs.
“No. It’s not that.” There was no use in pretending that he couldn’t detect even the slightest shift in my mood based on body language anymore.
“Then what?”
“Please, don’t start acting like you care about me now.”
Much to my relief, Wren didn’t deign to respond.
He was sullenly quiet for the rest of the ride out of the little township. I matched his hostility—until Elera veered off the cobblestone road onto a dirt lane that was concealed by a thick overgrowth of trees and weeds.
“This is taking forever,” I complained. “Why aren’t we there yet?”
I felt Wren turn his head from one side to the other by the brush of his nose against the back of my hair. “Do you even know where we’re going?”
“No,” I admitted tersely. It’s not exactly like you offered up that information . “Tell me.”
“It won’t make the trip any shorter if I do,” he challenged wryly.
I’ve encountered humans like this before.
Veritable brick walls .
“Honestly.” I sighed. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand to be around you.”
Wren patted one of my thighs. “Then it’s a good thing you’re sitting down.”
Frustrated, tired, and beginning to feel a little sore, I gave up on conversation with him. I had no response, no snippy remark that could ever match up to his apparently bottomless well of bad attitude and deflection skills.
I might cry again . Truthfully, I was tempted to, simply because I was just so tired. But then I saw the house.
Not a house, but a mansion. A grand building of four levels, carved from blue-grey stone with multiple smoking chimneys and a manicured lawn dotted with routinely pruned and clipped hedge trees. Soft lace curtains billowed out from the open windows on the upper levels like a haunted house, and enormous cobalt statues of knights in shining armour stood to either side of a pebbled driveway leading up to the front doors.
Elera saw it, too, and veered towards it. My heart thumped a little louder with each crunch of her hooves on the white gravel.
“Oh, look at that. We’re here.” Wren dug his knuckles into my ribs again, harder this time. “Long may I remember your benevolence in tolerating me thus far.”
As thankful as I was to finally have arrived at our destination—and immensely grateful for it being large enough to put a lot of space between myself and Wren—it was not a castle by any means. And that meant there was likely no High King or dark and dingy dungeon beneath, and essentially no point to my being there aside from the aforementioned freedom from my obnoxious travel companion.
“I forgot to mention this earlier,” Wren went on, as Elera slowed to a stop in the broad front courtyard. “It’s best to look sharp when you’re meeting the High King. A little late for that now,” he lamented, fluffing my hair, “but oh well.”
Shaking off his hands, I forced my stiff muscles to move far enough for me to turn back to look at him, eyes wide with dismay. “ This is where the High King lives?”
A haunted house with a basement rather than a castle with a dungeon?
Wren nimbly slipped down from Elera’s back and extended his arms to assist me. I accepted the help only because my muscles were cramping, and I wasn’t sure that I could make it down safely on my own. Elera was quite large.
“Sometimes. This is the House, his safe house,” Wren amended, gripping me under the arms and lifting me from the enormous creature as if I was nothing but a stack of kindling.
“Why is he staying in a safe house?” I asked, feeling the pressure of solid earth gradually reconnecting with the bones in my legs as I touched the ground. It was a strange but extremely satisfying sensation.
Wren pulled a face. “Bookworm,” he crooned, somewhat remorsefully. “Did I forget to mention there’s a war going on?”