Chapter Two #2
Declan considered the question. Took the moment to drain his tumbler. “Not in the capital-N, capital-G nice guy fashion, no. But a standard, maybe normal nice person manner, I’d lean yes.”
Kevin laughed again, carefree and unfettered. And he was nice. Kevin felt like the sort of man to be sunshine on a dim gray day, bright as the voids-riddled shirt he wore over a chest that looked made for biting.
Faerie would eat him alive. Declan, too. Or Kevin would burn him with his light, too loud and too vibrant for a man who knew kindness as a danger when not offered by family.
“Can I buy you another drink?”
Declan smiled again, the kind that showed teeth, a flash of white against dark. Small, human teeth, rather than the sort to haunt the man’s nightmares.
“I have to go,” Declan said apologetically. He held out his hand, with its short, rounded black nails. “May I have your number?”
“If I don’t see the entire establishment burn before you perish, I will be very disappointed in you, Declan. Do you hear me?” That had been Aisling’s requirement of him, when he suggested this.
Declan remembered his response to her demand. The not-quite promise made. “No need to worry on that front, Mother. I’ve every intention of spreading the ashes myself.”
A changeling would mean something different.
Thus: a bench in some random park. The early morning light shone thin and gray, reminding him of similar mornings halfway across the world.
Florian eyed the bench with some distaste, the look only deepening when Declan dropped into it without flinching.
“I believe this is considered stalking,” the old wisp informed him, that lined human glamour pulled into a mask of disapproval. “You’re stalking your future demise, changeling or no.”
“Very likely,” Declan agreed, smiling up at him. He showed teeth, this time. A few of them. “Do you think this one’s shirt will proclaim that he’s ‘totally tubular’?”
Florian snorted, glancing down the lane where a slight, pretty man and a small dog were just out of plain sight if one were human. “I bet my rooms he does not. I’m getting coffee.”
“Cream in mine,” Declan called after him, turning to watch Florian hunt down a coffee stand. The surly wisp said something in turn that sounded rude, though the words were unintelligible. Declan shrugged, resettling just as the man jogged down the sidewalk, out of the trees.
Intense, Aisling had said. One shone too fiercely, the sort of soothing that echoed on metal sheets in the rain, overwhelming and comfortable alike. Declan thought the second one might be along those lines: large, both physically and in personality, laughingly facing their own lack of edges.
But this one did not, in fact, wear a shirt with a saying on it, nor was it bright enough to wake the birds. A logo, yes, of a charity Declan vaguely recognized, the garment well past his waist. Cargo shorts, sneakers, and a tiny canine accessory that looked more fur than substance.
Micah. His name was Micah. Aisling hadn’t caught the dog’s name, or, at any rate, had failed to report it to Declan.
Micah slowed when he saw Declan, watching with hesitant eyes the same brown as his messy hair.
Unfortunately for Micah’s wavering, his pet sped toward Declan.
The dog, tail wagging, tried their best to haul Micah’s delicate self toward Declan, despite the changeling’s half-hearted, “Pepper, please.”
“Good morning, Pepper,” Declan greeted. “Are you a puppy that’s allowed ear scritches?”
“Uhm,” Micah said, his voice soft and lilting and sweet, “If– If she, she’s bothering you, you don’t need to pet her. I’m sorry. She’s just– She’s friendly.”
“She’s grand.” Declan leaned over, offering his hand for a sniff.
Pepper snuffled at his fingers, licked at his nails, and squirmed closer with a happy whine.
Dogs were supposed to dislike strange things from the voids, but she was very small.
Maybe it was a thing for dogs over a certain size.
Aubergine, minimum. “Her name is Pepper?”
“I– Yes.” Micah twisted his hands together, big eyes curious and wary by turns. “I’m Micah.”
Micah was rosemary and spring blossoms, threaded through with sweet, soft sugar. Fragile. As small as Declan, and all the more delicate for it with the flutter of thick, long lashes, and teeth nibbling at his own lip. Meadows and glimmering hooves, and-
A bloody unicorn. Had to be. A unicorn changeling? He–
A question for later. Not for now, with Micah’s careful step closer, hands now trembling and lips parted to taste the air. His eyes flickered gold, silver, and then back to the lovely soft brown.
“Hello, Micah. Pepper.” Declan rubbed the dog behind the ears, studying Micah from under his lashes and short hair, left loose. “I didn’t mean to alarm you.”
Micah blushed. He blushed, a fierce scarlet over skin only a few shades darker than the bleached bone of Declan’s. Those eyes dropped to Pepper, staring as if she held all the answers.
Declan hadn’t made someone blush without trying in … ever. He stared, fascinated, as the heat crept over Micah’s cheeks and temple to ears, neck, and voids knew where else.
“You– You didn’t. I mean, I wasn’t, we weren’t, there isn’t usually anyone … here. That’s all. What I mean. I– Do I … know you?” Micah swallowed hard, daring another peek at Declan. “I’m sorry. That– I don’t mean to be rude. Presumptuous.”
Declan needed to speak to his mother about her definition of ‘intense.’ Kevin had that glaring vibrancy to him. Micah swung to the other side, shivered like a flower wilding in the cool dark of a monster’s shadow.
“You aren’t being rude,” Declan assured him. Micah’s breath caught, big eyes all the more so, pretty and breakable and quivering from Declan’s existence. “Don’t worry, Micah. You aren’t for me.”
“I’m- I’m not, that’s… You make me think of fire.” Whispered, that, and Micah’s eyes gone wet. At their feet, Pepper whimpered. Bloody unicorns. “A field of flowers and flame. It’s… I–”
“I’ve a friend who might remind you of something happier than that,” Declan interrupted, making himself tread gently. He pulled Kevin’s number from wherever those things went, when fae had no pockets, and offered it to Micah. “This was a mistake.”
“But–”
“I’d burn you.” Declan leaned in and tucked the number into a pocket newly created on the changeling’s shirt. He patted Micah’s chest once, when the paper was safely tucked away. “You should have someone kind. Call my friend. Or text, if you fear you’ll cry on the phone.”
Declan wasn’t a nice person. He left as Micah’s eyes welled with fresh tears.
Declan found his mother in the kitchen. His sister, Eithne, cooked by hand as her trade, but other than her visits, it remained largely a space for Aisling’s small magicks. She enjoyed shaping the world in little ways, stitching magic into trinkets, rather than leaving it to Faerie’s whims.
She glanced up expectantly when Declan stepped inside, then behind him. He saw the moment it clicked for her, when her brows, thin and dark, furrowed together, lips pressed into a line.
“Productive visit, darling?” Aisling looked back to her project, curling it tidily into a ball.
“Oh, yes.” Declan leaned against the counter, his fingers splayed on the cool surface. “When you said ‘intense’, I imagined brooding. Focused. Not good-natured sunshine and a changeling who cries at the taste of magic.”
“I thought you wanted someone with emotions, hummingbird.”
“Mother, he said I reminded him of a field of flowers on fire and still wanted to be near me.”
Aisling sighed heavily, as she liked to do, and tucked the project away in a pocket. “Are you upset with me because your prospects liked you? That isn’t the face you make when you’re turned down.”
No, it wasn’t. Declan hid away when an invitation to discuss a possible bond returned with rejection. His face was silence and absence for a day, and back to normal the next. He allowed himself that day.
“They were very nice,” Declan admitted, quiet. “I’d break either of them, Mother. You said there was a third?”
Plates of food slid into existence on the counter. Aisling nudged a plate toward him, head shaking, eyes large and depthless. “He’s unsuitable, precious. I told you that too.”
Unsuitable, and Declan didn’t care. Everil had said much the same about Bo, the first Declan met the human. Declan himself fit the definition as well as any human if the rest of the world had anything to say about it.
Sluagh were the dangerous and toxic fascination of Faerie, acidic and rotten.
Few wished to bond a thing others called monster.
Declan’s father was one of the rare sluagh to find someone willing to share his soul.
And he’d been selected for his bond as a child, raised up to be a proper companion to a seelie. As much a bodyguard as anything.
Now he was busy with his wisp bond, Yomore, and House duties more often than not. But at least they liked each other. That too, was rare, for sluagh.
“Unsuitable how?” Declan picked up an impossibly small pie between index finger and thumb, studying it with narrowed eyes. “If he’s a public figure like Bo, I insist on meeting him.”
“No, precious. He was a fae’s pet, once. Put away when no longer entertaining, I imagine. He seemed quite put out about the whole thing. And I gathered that his opinion of the fae hasn’t improved since.”
Aisling shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. Declan’s attention focused in on her with a raptor’s intent. Aisling nonchalant sat at the same level of alarming as did her smiling sweetly.
“Oh?”
“He mentioned an encounter with a kelpie a couple years past. Apparently, the kelpie took up with a mortal. When he attempted to warn the mortal off, the kelpie cursed him.”
Cursed by a kelpie. Even if Declan weren’t clever, it didn’t take a genius to work out which kelpie; not many fae took up with mortal lovers. Certainly no kelpies, as far as the fae gossip network was concerned.
Only Everil and his Bo, crowned by Faerie and confirmed by the Council.
“He was upsetting Bo. I didn’t eat him.”
“Well, Hollow are rare. Too bad I wasn’t there. Would’ve given him a proper fright.”
“He’s a Hollow?” Declan asked, flat as the kelpie in question might.
“Yes,” Aisling answered, soft. So damned soft. She didn’t look at him. “He’s a Hollow, lovely boy.”
Hollow, the scant number of humans who couldn’t see fae glamour. Declan hadn’t studied the specifics, but he knew that as well as anyone. Rare, as he told Everil.
Hollow, and what hope stubbornly attempted to wriggle into being dissolved once more. Oh, it would be ideal, having a partner who knew of the fae already. Less of a jolt. But a Hollow?
Few fae knew what sluagh looked like without the niceties of glamour.
Eyes like a bird of prey, but pale, nearly white from pupil to lashes, bright against the dark circles that spanned eyebrow to zygomatic.
Conical teeth made for crushing and rending flesh.
Monster’s teeth, blunted at the ends than the shark razors of Everil’s kelpie form.
Gaunt. And the wings, bat-like and bones only.
Claws that would bury several inches deep into flesh, though Declan kept his trimmed.
Midnight purple at lips and those claws and matching bands at his wrists, with cracks up the length of his arms and torso and neck, legs.
Starting black to purple and fading to pale gray.
Everything sharp.
“Ah,” is what Declan said. The pie tasted neither of oilskin nor sugar. Only ash. “What did he do?”
What had the Hollow done when he saw Aisling. Banshees, all teeth and eyes, angles and pitch black, smiles fit to split their own skull. Declan thought it a lovely combination, but Declan thought a lot of things others disagreed with.
“He told me to leave, then helped me find Puck. Very polite about it, or as much as I imagine he could be with the circumstances.” Her lips twitched in wry amusement. “To his credit, it was more on me being fae than a banshee.”
“Ah.” Voids and starshine, when did he stop being able to speak?
“There’s– Sweetness, there’s no chance he’ll say yes.
It’s why he’s unsuitable.” She said it so softly.
Declan loathed that softness, as if he were about to break over a single rejection.
“Not because of you. Not anything about you. He doesn’t want to be a part of this world, hummingbird.
He’s a mechanic. He surrounds himself in iron. It’s kinder to leave him be.”
The Hollow would say no. Declan knew that. If anything in the worlds was certain, it was that. A no or a look so filled with disgust and fear as to be a rejection without words.
If he said yes, though–
He wouldn’t. But if he did, it would be a bond with a human who knew how dangerous fae were. One with survival instincts, or at least enough brass to face Everil, knowing what he was, to help Bo.
At least a rejection would be familiar. It’d not sit the way knowing he threw two possible bonds together for being too nice and too soft. He had standards. (So did the mechanic, from the sounds of it. Another reason Declan would return home without.)
“Will Florian take me?” he asked.
Aisling sighed. Declan waited, glancing up to meet her eyes.
“Yes, my sweet boy,” she said at last. “Florian will take you.”