4. Pretty Little Neck #2
We’d stopped in the middle of the road, which had transitioned from dirt and sand into cobblestone, and some of the mist had cleared enough that I could begin to make out the colour in the windows of nearby stores and houses bleeding through the gloom.
“You went off somewhere in your head again,” Wrenlock remarked. “Are you okay?”
I pressed my fingertips into my eyes and rubbed them, trying to wake up properly. Why do I feel like I keep falling asleep? Probably the aftereffects of burning myself out with power, I suppose. “I’m fine,” I answered tersely.
He didn’t look convinced, but we continued to walk.
Barely a few steps further into the outskirts of the city, I noticed someone staring at me—a girl who looked about my age with fire truck red hair that made her stand out against all the grey.
She was carrying a wooden bucket down the road in the direction Wrenlock and I had come.
Pausing, she hiked the bucket up on one hip and cocked her head to the side as her eyes sought out mine.
As soon as I glanced over, she gave me a small wave with the hand she’d freed—a wave with a delicate flare of pure flame.
Fire magic.
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head at the sight of someone holding fire burning in their bare palm.
It was beautiful and terrifying, and it made something awaken deep in my stomach, twisting up into my chest. I gave her a small albeit awkward wave back, and her brows drew together as she watched like she’d been expecting something else and I had disappointed her.
Quickly, my eyes darted away, and the only fire I experienced again was of the flames licking at my cheeks as we moved into clearer sections of the city.
I am still a human in Faerie.
I’d do well to remember it.
Caeludor was not like Sthiara in its streets.
Where Sthiara had been quaint and reminiscent of the Victorian era in Belgrave, Caeludor was something out of a gothic nightmare in the Middle Ages.
The buildings were multi-dimensional, leaving cavernous spaces between their high ceilings and long walls, and the structures were taller than they needed to be.
Everything was elaborately decorated with spires, overlaid tracery, and carvings of cauldrons, broomsticks, and unicorns.
It was also largely bland and greyscale, whereas Sthiara had been bursting with colour.
I could easily tell that not only the fog was to blame.
Somehow, though, the resident faeries were more diverse.
A few of them even presented as human in their appearance—but, if I looked closely enough, I could spy an identifying trait such as a tail or a third eye.
None of them looked remotely interested in us as we walked through their streets, even though Wrenlock was the only person partially undressed, and I didn’t have the pointed ears that were so commonplace.
For a moment, I felt like Livia waking up on solid land for the very first time. Then, another thought struck me, and my heart sank.
“Have you put a glamour on me?” I asked, turning to Wrenlock with tears already welling in my eyes. They didn’t fall, but I still wanted to slap them away.
Why does my heart feel like it’s breaking all over again at the thought?
To my relief, he looked genuinely horrified. “No,” he promised. “No, Aura, I would never do that to you.”
Another crack speared through the ice. “Then why isn’t anyone looking at us? I’m human, and you’re…half naked.”
Wrenlock smiled at me warmly. “I’ll show you, if you like.” He held his hand out with his large, smooth palm turned up towards the sky. “Do you trust me?”
“No,” I countered honestly.
“What I meant was…” He sighed. “Do you trust me enough to evanesce a few hundred metres further into the city with me?”
“Oh.” I chewed on my lower lip as I considered. It might be good practice for my ultimate escape. “I suppose so.”
Taking his hand, I felt a jolt of electricity and familiarity strike me at the touch.
It was not unlike the moment we had experienced in Lucais’s bedroom in the House—back when the High King was still pretending to be Wren—where some twisted and confused part of me had recognised him as my soulmate.
Although, as he squeezed my hand and I stepped into his embrace, I began to wonder if that recognition had stemmed from something else. Is it possible that I—
My scream caught in my throat as Wrenlock’s power sucked us into a vortex and we vanished in a fit of wind, swept up from the quiet street like runaway ribbons.
With my stomach flipping and twisting angrily, we landed inside a mini tornado down an alley off the side of a bustling street.
Dampness hung in the air, hand-in-hand with an icy chill.
Teetering to the side, my hand found purchase on the grooves in a wall covered with slimy moss to hold myself up. Feeling violently unwell, I wondered if there was another way to travel using magic that I could learn to master instead.
This particular mode of transport will simply not do.
When I reassembled my wits about me again, Wrenlock put a finger to his lips and beckoned me to follow him to the opening end of the alley.
He crouched down behind a stack of crates filled with vegetables waiting to be brought through the back door of a nearby establishment—perhaps a restaurant or a bar, if the animated echo of voices spilling out into the street every time a door swung open was anything to go by.
I was surprised to see how many of the supplies looked like normal, human-grown food items.
Judging by the crowds of people walking or flying up and down the street, we were much further uptown than I’d expected.
Giant frogs, the size of small dogs, hopped up and down along the side of the road.
Cats lazed on top of the slanting rooftops, tails flicking over the edges of the guttering, taunting the frogs who were jumping up to try to snatch them with the end of the long, red tongues catapulting out of their mouths.
Children—faelings, they were called—were racing each other through the street.
I’d never seen a faerie child before, and it was like being punched in the gut.
Brynn .
But with wings.
Tiny little wings like those of a dragonfly were attached to the shoulder blades of the faelings.
They were translucent, patterned only by the barely noticeable, wafer-thin bones that stretched up and down each wing, reinforcing their delicate structure as they beat with all the force of a lady beetle and the stubbornness of a human toddler.
For all of their efforts, the faelings barely made it a footstep or two into the air each time.
They were chasing orbs of light, balls of fire, droplets of water, and little hurricanes of wind up and down the street, playing with them as if they were snowballs. Older faeries were watching, talking, and waving—
Waving with the elements .
My brows drew together as I studied the way those people were greeting each other. Every wave of a hand displayed a very small, harmless show of the faerie’s power. But my train of thought was brought to a grinding halt by a sudden, intrusive silence.
All at once, everyone and everything stopped .
Wrenlock nudged his head towards the road, and it clicked that he had brought us up ahead of the High King’s carriage. The clip-clop of the six sets of heavy unicorn hooves on the cobblestone was unmistakable.
Some people vanished. They simply evanesced from the street—there one moment, gone the next.
Many took faelings or large frogs with them, while others hurried to usher the young off the road, either hiding them behind their legs or shoving them behind doors.
The faeries with wings took off into the sky or settled to the ground and folded their wings behind their backs in a motion that seemed very redolent of a human putting their hands in front of their face as a mark of self-defence.
Somewhere, a window slammed shut, and the sound of a set of curtains being drawn followed it, the sharp scrape of the metal eyelets against the rod distinctive and ominous.
And then there was Lucais’s carriage.
I couldn’t see him inside it, and I wasn’t sure if anyone else could, but there was no mystery shrouding its ownership or doubt surrounding its occupancy. His presence was as powerful and naturalistic as a change in the weather outside or a drop in the temperature in a room.
The six black and white unicorns pulling the carriage were frightening in a spine-tingling way when I observed them up so close.
Their dark grey horns looked like a mess of tangled vines, like thorny brambles growing atop their heads.
Truly, I couldn’t tell where one horn began and another finished.
They were much larger than Elera—if that was even possible.
They looked proud, strong, and absolutely menacing.
The carriage itself appeared to be carved out of a giant shell. White and gold shimmered like that of a pearl, a faint sheen of luminescence falling over it in a blanket of light—a striking contrast to the darkness pouring out from the inside.
Lucais wasn’t using his magic at all. Didn’t even seem to be in touch with it.
Normally, he was light magic on legs. His hair, his eyes, and his skin unfailingly glowed with some semblance of light.
Even under a grey sky, even on a foggy street…
but the inside of the carriage was pitch-black.
No light lined the tiny gaps in the curtains.
Nothing glowed or even glimmered from within.
I almost started to convince myself it was empty and my sixth sense was actually the result of deeply-rooted paranoia until I saw it—a single, mildly flaring golden eye.
Just one, peering out through a slit in the curtains.
I couldn’t tell if he was staring at me or not, but I felt the urge to hide overcome me like a handkerchief dosed with chloroform.