FORTY-FOUR #2
Calum led Aly into the kitchen, setting out two teacups on saucers and pouring the tea.
Aly pulled off Sorcha’s cloak and sat in the chair nearest the fire, curling her knees under her chin.
Her bloodied knife still lay on the table wrapped in her handkerchief, though Sorcha had removed her clothes from the basin and draped them flat over the rungs of the pulley that hung above the table.
She turned her face towards Calum, her cheek resting on her knees.
His shoulders were stiff as he poured the tea, and she cast about for something—anything—to say.
“So am I immortal, then? Am I going to turn into a hag when I reach some arbitrary birthday?”
It worked. Calum chuckled, pushing a teacup over to Aly. “You’re not going to turn into a hag. You’re not immortal, either, but . . .” He pulled back, running a fingertip around the edge of his saucer.
Aly’s stomach dropped. “But what?”
“But I think you’re harder to kill than an ordinary human.”
Aly tilted her head. That made sense. The doctors had found no indication of a brain injury after Grant had strangled her, and he’d caused her untold injuries before that had never been seen by a medic.
“So, I guess my dad left me with something useful, and not just the red hair, then.” She let out a slow exhale. “Probably a good thing I’m not immortal, too. I can’t think of anything more harrowing than watching everyone you love die, and having centuries to grieve them.”
Calum winced.
“What?” Aly lifted her head to frown at him.
“Well, you’re not immortal, but you could well live a couple hundred or a thousand years.”
“That’s quite the range.” She said it lightly, but his words made her feel hollow inside.
“It’s hard to judge without knowing anything about your father’s background.”
“Well, I suppose I’d better just make sure I don’t care about anyone too deeply.” Aly picked at a stray thread on her shift.
Calum paused with his teacup halfway to his mouth. “That seems a lonely way to spend centuries.”
“I’ve managed over twenty years, what more is two hundred?” It was better than endless grief. “All right, so I’m going to live for hundreds of years, I’m hard to kill, and I’m not going to turn into a hag. What else?”
“That’s also difficult to judge. Given that you’re fae enough to salch, I would guess that at the very least you could summon a glamour.”
Aly snorted. “Really?”
“You’ve always struggled with magic, haven’t you?” Calum stood, filling a bowl with water from the kettle.
“Aye. Only thing I’ve ever been good at is fire.
” She flicked her wrist, twirling a flame into being above her hand.
With another flourish, she tossed the fire towards Calum, letting it float into his field of vision.
“But it’s one way. I can start a fire just fine, but I’m useless at quenching them unless they’re my own.
” She curled her hand into a fist, snuffing the flame in demonstration.
Calum froze, the cabinet drawer half-open.
He was turned away from Aly, but his shoulders were stiff, the tendons on his forearms sticking out in sharp relief.
He swallowed audibly. “I can’t think of any fae who are particularly skilled in fire magic.
” Pulling out a stack of white linen, he turned and reached for her.
“Can I take a look at the cut on your arm?”
Aly took in the earnest expression on his face, hesitating.
He’d said he was okay with her being fae, but it was one thing saying it and another thing seeing the evidence all over again.
She gritted her teeth. The cut needed to be looked at, either way.
She stared into the fire as she rolled up her sleeve, holding her arm out across the table.
Calum’s calluses rasped over the scars on the underside of her arm, but his touch was gentle as he dipped a cloth in the water and dabbed it over her injury.
His expression was intent, giving no indication of the disgust he must feel at touching a fae’s iron scars.
The pressure stung and she flinched, hissing.
“I’m sorry.” He grimaced in sympathy. “Did you ever find it odd that you can salch when you can’t use magic well?”
It was a transparent attempt to distract her, and she latched onto it. “It seems pretty common among salchs,” Aly said, giving a half shrug. “It’s why we’re selling our magic rather than gainfully employed using it.”
Calum’s brow furrowed as he cleaned her cut.
“This looks shallow, at least. It should heal all right.” He dropped the pink cloth into the water and reached for a bandage.
“Fae magic is different from human magic,” he said, wrapping the bandage around her arm.
“That’s why only fae—or more specifically, demi-fae—can salch.
Human magic comes from within ourselves, but the fae draw it from their surroundings.
Immortal beings don’t have the same life force to pull power from.
Demi-fae, I think, are somewhere in between, able to be conduits for your own magic passing into other people.
” He tied off the bandage. “I think that’s why so many of you end up salching, because you’re not taught how to take in power like a fae.
” He leant back, letting Aly tug her sleeve down over the jagged scars.
Aly pulled her sleeves over her wrists, tucking her arms between her torso and thighs. “That’s why only the salching scars are”—she swallowed, the words catching in her throat—“iron scars? That’s what you said, isn’t it? Because I’m using fae power to salch.”
Calum nodded.
“So, if salchs used bronze blades, for instance, we wouldn’t scar like this?
” Anger bubbled up in Aly’s throat at the thought that so much of the danger from salching could be mitigated with just a change of material, and yet no one had tried it, and it was too late for every salch who already had scars.
“I don’t think so, no,” Calum said. “I suspect it would hurt less, too.”
“And it would be much harder for the police to arrest salchs if we didn’t have such distinctive scars.
” Aly rested her forehead on her knees. She knew it wasn’t a conspiracy—too few people knew the link between iron and salchs—but it felt like one.
And with the new bill Grant was pushing through to reinstate transportation, things would only get worse for anyone arrested with iron scars.