Chapter Six
I went to dinner in my armor. Only it was different armor since it had morphed again, as it had a habit of doing. Because, as the designer who’d created it had put it, “I never know what the hell you’ll be up to!”
So, instead of a halter-necked chiffon gown, softly cascading, or a dragonscale battledress silver bright and gleaming, I was currently sporting a swanky silver bodysuit with a high neck, long sleeves, and a fit that left little to the imagination.
And I do mean little.
It hugged every curve in a way that would have made me uncomfortable if it hadn’t also been covered in tiny, liquid-looking scales. They shone like polished metal but were harder than diamonds, which was fair since that was roughly what they cost. Leaving me clad neck to toe in squeaky clean, silver badassery.
To accompany it, I slicked my still-wet hair down with something that smelled divine from the spa and that Pritkin had said was a popular hair gel. Trust the fey; the world could be imploding around them but damned if their hair wasn’t going to look good. But I wasn’t complaining because mine did, too, all sleek and shiny, just like my armor.
I looked like trouble, and since I was, in fact, a freaking lot of trouble for the fey, I felt good about it.
The days of hiding behind a harmless exterior were over. They knew who I was and what I could do. So, the idea was to lean into it and maybe make at least a few of them rethink their plans.
Of course, they might rethink them to make them worse, but I didn’t think going to dinner looking like I’d just crawled out from under a bridge would help, either. This court was clearly about making an impression. If I’d had any doubts about that, they would have been quelled by one glance at Pritkin’s ensemble.
I’d been dealing with my hair in the bathroom, so hadn’t seen the transformation. And it was so extreme that, at first, I didn’t know who I was looking at. For a second, I thought a fey had shown up to drag off the deer bones.
But then my brain registered the truth and almost shut down. He must have used the same gel as me because his hair was flat and shining and lying in place for once. He’d smoothed it back from his face and kept it there with a golden circlet around his brow, leaving the newly paired down features on full display.
And they were so handsome .
I don’t know why that fact always surprised me. Rosier was stunning when he wanted to be, and Pritkin was basically his clone. But he’d spent so much time denying his incubus heritage, of schlepping around in scuffed boots, a scarred old leather coat, a three-day beard, and hair that looked like it was taunting God, that I sometimes forgot.
But the beard was gone now, and the planes of his face were on full display, along with his fey heritage. I wondered if that was why he’d done it, to remind everyone of his royal Alorestri blood. Or, knowing Pritkin, to piss them off because they hated the fact that a part demon, part human, mongrel mutt was even here, staining their pristine halls with his presence, much less competing for the throne.
I grinned. “You’re rubbing their faces in it, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” The green eyes were innocent, which they never were. So, yeah. He was trolling.
Fine with me.
But the troll went a lot farther than a shave and a hairstyle.
“Nice threads,” I said, because he’d somehow managed to get his hands on an outfit that looked like it should be in a Hollywood superhero movie, only they’d have probably struck it for being too sexy.
Skin-tight trousers hugged muscular calves and thighs as if he was wearing a scuba suit. They were black, with a faint green iridescence when the light hit them just right, and a subtle pattern of fish scales. Nothing hugged the equally impressive muscles of his chest as it was bare under a floor-length, sleeveless, open-front tunic in the same material. Golden armbands circled bulging biceps, probably because the fey tended to be more slightly built than humans, so that was more salt in the wound.
And there was a cape because, of course, there was.
It was made of the same almost black material and lined with matching fur that looked like sable but was probably from an aquatic creature like a beaver. These folks had a theme, and they were going with it. It also swept the floor when he carelessly threw it on and attached it in the front with golden chains.
There were no boots to finish it off. Just that blinged-out Aquaman suit and bare feet, like he was headed to some billionaires’ beach wedding. And while it should have looked ridiculous, somehow, it didn’t. It left him a pared-down, gold and black figure that resembled a cross between a merman and an ancient king.
An ancient king with a hairy chest, something else the fey didn’t usually have, but which added to the slightly barbaric air. And with the fur caressing his shoulders and the way those trousers fit, all together it was . . . it was. . . Yeah.
I needed another shower.
Pritkin noticed, and his lips quirked. “We don’t have time for that. You still need to get dressed.”
I blinked at him because I was dressed, only to notice some filmy thing lying on the bed.
I walked over to have a look, and no. Just no. In fact, hell no, I thought, holding it up.
Its weave was so fine that it was practically transparent despite having about ten layers of material. It was pretty, in a soft blue to match my eyes, and floaty enough to make my armor’s alter ego look like heavy wool. But it was still a no.
I dropped it back on the bed.
“Why did I think that would be your reaction?” he murmured against my neck.
I turned my head and there he was, eyes sparkling with mischief because he was enjoying this. “I’m not doing girlie-girl today,” I told him.
“What are you doing?”
“Wartime Pythia. It’s a look.”
“It is indeed.”
Lips found my neck, quickly followed by teeth. They didn’t bite down, at least not hard, but it was right over the mark that Mircea had left when he claimed me. Pritkin deliberately traced it with his tongue, taking his time, learning every slight ridge and dip in the skin.
And causing a shudder to shoot through me like lightning.
It reminded me of the one and only time that all three of us had been together . . . like that. It had been a desperate attempt to fully utilize our power, which was linked by incubus energy, and fight off a god, and it had worked. But I’d been so busy not dying that I didn’t remember much of it.
Probably just as well, I thought, as liquid heat spread through my body, rushing down my spine, arms, and legs until everything tingled with it.
Everything.
Then he bit down, still not hard, but enough that I felt it. Enough that my body jerked several times and then kept on trembling as sensation after sensation crashed through me. Okay, I did remember a little bit, I thought, my mouth going dry, so much so that I had difficulty getting words out.
“I thought . . . you said . . . we didn’t have time,” I gasped as strong arms came around me.
“We don’t.”
“So, what—”
“So, let them wait.”
***
We were late. We were, like, seriously late. Maybe an hour or more, I didn’t even know. I was still trying to slick my hair back down and hoping that the trip through a bunch of broad, cool corridors had faded some of the blush from my cheeks.
I didn’t even know why I was blushing. I didn’t have anything to blush about! Pritkin and I had been together before, and it had always been, uh, memorable.
But today had been even more so. To the point that I’d started to wonder if there was something in the water around here when we suddenly arrived. And I do mean suddenly.
One minute, we were in the hallway, beautifully decorated with flowing, water-themed mosaics on both sides, studded here and there with what looked like genuine pearls for bubbles, gemstone scales on some of the fish, and a gigantic jade tortoise in 3-D that looked like it was coming out of the wall at you because part of it was.
And the next, we were through an archway and onto a landing with a balcony looking over an expansive room. Two impressive stairs were going down, one on either side of the landing. The stairs were terrazzo, with little shells and shiny bits of mother of pearl in the mix, and the handrails were massive pieces of driftwood, bleached in the sun to appear white and polished to bring out their full beauty, yet I barely noticed because the rest of the room was . . . was . . .
Yeah.
It was definitely yeah. And some uh huh and a bunch of oh, wow, and maybe a little damn. And then I lost words entirely because it hit like a blinged-out fist to the face, with all the mind-blowing colors and textures and people —
I decided to start with them because the rest of the place was making my head swim. So, I ignored the masses of hovering balls of light roaming around the high arched ceiling, suspended on nothing and constantly changing their patterns and orientation because static chandeliers were for peasants; and the lack of walls because the whole place was surrounded by a seascape, like the “windows” in our room, only these weren’t windows, they were huge expanses with nothing but powerful wards keeping back all that water; and the black stone floor that made the white draped, circular tables seem to float like rafts on the sea, surrounded by hundreds of laughing, talking, entirely crazy-looking people. And I belatedly realized that the overdressed flunkies hadn’t been overdressed after all.
And that neither was Pritkin. He was practically spartan by comparison because conspicuous consumption was very definitely the order of the day. My God, it was!
A guy at a nearby table had a headpiece made out of a complete set of antlers, only these must have been from some mutant kind of deer. Because they were so big that his neck should have buckled under the sheer weight. Particularly as the headdress was also decked out like a crazy Christmas tree, with dangling shells, jewels, ropes of pearls—of course—and bunches of fresh flowers on each antler.
His chest was bare, too—there was a lot of that going around—although a filmy piece of the nothingness the fey called cloth was draped about his shoulders like a frame. Probably so that his nipple piercing—dripping with a huge, teardrop-shaped pearl—would have something to set it off. He also had a full face of makeup, with seed pearls so thickly encrusted around his oversized eyes that he looked like he was wearing wild, Elton John-type glasses with wave-like flourishes that reached into his hairline, and skin that looked like it had iridescent scale-like tattoos on it when the light hit it just right.
And he was not remotely out of place. If anything, the men outdid the women, the latter of whom were content to show off their perfect, lithe bodies in dozens of layers of diaphanous nothing while seeing how many jeweled belts and pearl necklaces they could pile on top. Fortunately, it was enough to save their modesty most of the time.
And since nobody had on shoes, except for a few wearing backless, jeweled sandals, the whole thing gave off party-at-the-poolside vibes from some deranged club. But I wasn’t feeling it. The glare of all those jewels, silks, precious metals, and gleaming furs made me dizzy.
Pritkin wasn’t fazed, maybe because he’d seen it before or because he’d seen stranger things in the hells. But I had to work hard to keep from tripping over my own two feet as we slowly descended the stairs. I kept glancing away at the serene coolness of the water, deep and dark and restful to the eyes.
That was how I noticed: not everyone was so ridiculously overdressed. Some of what I guessed were waiters were lined up by the wards and barely dressed at all in short, plain tunics in dark shades that almost matched the water. I might not have noticed them, except that they had their own sort of bling, only I was pretty sure that theirs was all natural.
“Servants,” Pritkin confirmed, noticing my interest. “Part human and part fey—of all kinds. That’s where the variety comes from. You remember Wales?”
As if I’d forget. He’d had a problem for a while with the Demon High Council, who had cursed his soul backward through time, skipping across past iterations of himself like a stone on a pond. The idea had been to have him snuffed out of existence when he arrived at his birth and to kill him by basically erasing him from ever having lived in the first place. And while that would have solved their problem, it would have exponentially increased mine.
Not only would it have screwed up the timeline, as Pritkin had played a not-insignificant part in it, but it would have resulted in my death. Without him, I would never have made it past the first month of this job. But the demons didn’t like the gods, either, so offing the daughter of Artemis, even if she was on their side in the war, didn’t appear to worry them too much.
Or maybe they figured I’d survive alone if I had no choice. I severely doubted that, but nobody had asked me. So, I hadn’t asked them when I went pelting back through time after him.
I’d made it—barely—catching up to the fleeing soul when he was a young man in Wales, where he’d been born in the 6th century and known by a different name. There, I’d met many other mixed-species kids since Wales was the sight of one of the Green Fey’s portals to Earth. They’d used it to kidnap human women to breed with their fey and create hybrids to act as cannon fodder in their constant wars.
They’d also used it as a dumping ground for the kids who didn’t have enough magic to be useful or had been born with other defects that made them unsuitable to fight or to raise the next generation to do so. Those were returned to Earth to fend for themselves as best they could or to die trying. I didn’t get the impression that the fey cared much either way.
Yet women continued to go through that portal, some by force, others willingly, to escape the war and deprivation back home. The Green Fey, therefore, had more part humans wandering around their lands than any of the other great houses. And I guessed that not everybody had been dumped who wouldn’t make good soldiers because there were a lot of mixed-race servants.
“Why are they so . . . colorful?” I asked Pritkin, gazing at the lineup.
“Same reason that some of those in Wales were. A sizeable group has built up here through the years, but marriage is forbidden with the Alorestri—”
“But I thought that was the point.”
Pritkin cocked an eyebrow at me. “Breeding, yes; marriage, no.”
I scowled.
“They don’t want to ‘pollute the bloodline,’ which is how they view those of us who aren’t pure enough for their standards,” he added. “The half-castes have to intermarry with each other or the dark fey, who aren’t so particular. The result is what you see.”
What I saw were skin tones in vibrant yellow, true green, pale lavender, or puce. And a few plain old human shades, but with hair the color of newly mown grass, vivid purple, or Crayola orange. I assumed that some of those shades might have come out of a bottle, but not all, maybe not even most, as they didn’t have any other sign of having spent money on their looks.
“They’re called Abrovs, named after the first village the fey established for them,” Pritkin said. “Well, that’s one name. Derebesh is another, meaning contaminated, and others are even less nice.”
“Why hate them? They made them,” I pointed out. “Those witches I saw in Wales didn’t look like they were going willingly!”
He shook his head. “They weren’t. The fey prefer magic users for their slaves, as human magic sometimes boosts their own, resulting in stronger soldiers. But coven witches could protect themselves from the era’s wars and did not wish to serve the fey.”
“But they were taken anyway,” I said, remembering my rage at the sight and at the knowledge that I couldn’t help them without massively screwing up the timeline. Those women had lived their lives in Faerie, influencing the history of this place, or else had escaped back to Earth and influenced ours. Either way, I’d had to leave them, something that still caused a bitter taste in my mouth.
“Yes,” Pritkin agreed. “Something that turned out to be a two-edged sword. All those fey volunteering to father sons on the human women—”
“So noble of them,” I murmured furiously.
“—have transmitted some of the strongest magical blood into the mix, and more than occasionally, it has proved dominant.”
“You mean—”
He nodded. “You won’t see that kind here. They’re kept guarding the borders for the most part so that they can die on cue. But if you did, you’d be hard-pressed to pick out the “polluted” from the true-born. It’s one reason they are so obsessed by bloodlines here.”
“And why you’re seen as such a threat.”
“Oh, I’m more than that. Being part human makes me polluted; being half demon makes me a monster. There are plenty here who would prefer to kill me on sight rather than let me compete.”
“Then why don’t they?” I glanced at the nearest tables of people, a few of whom were shooting us poisoned glances as we passed. “They tried hard enough on the way here!”
“Challenge rules. I was protected once I announced my intention to compete for the throne.”
Yeah, it really looked like it.
“Except in the Challenge,” he added. “There, anything goes. But here . . . if they want to murder me, they’ll have to be more subtle about it. Until then, they demean me whenever they can.”
“Like giving you subpar rooms?”
He nodded. “And then there’s this.”
For a moment, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Until I realized that we had stopped by a tiny table that might have sat four in a pinch. It was missing the gorgeous, over-the-top centerpieces that the other tables could boast, along with a tablecloth and cutlery. There were only a couple of plates and a few dull-looking goblets—in pewter when the rest of the tables had gold.
It was the fey equivalent of sitting by the bathroom, or where the door from the kitchen could hit your chair every time a waiter went in or out. We easily had the worst table in the room, which was barely in the room at all, being in a dark spot a good football field away from the brightly lit, elevated area at the far end across from the now distant staircase, where I guessed the beautiful people sat. Or at least, the “pure.”
I looked at the pathetic place they’d planned to stash Pritkin and felt a wash of fury flood over me. He was worth a hundred of them—a thousand! And he had the slashes on his shoulder to prove it!
A demon lord had gotten his claws into him once for saving a couple of slave girls who had ended up in the hells. The demon had kidnapped them, and for a worse fate than the fey intended, planning to drain the life out of them to increase his power. Pritkin had heard about it, and the ensuing battle had been as close as they came, with him receiving the scars he wore to this day.
But he’d survived, rescued the girls, and won the enmity of the Demon High Council in the process, although not for the damage he’d inflicted on one of their own, who they didn’t like anyway. But because he’d broken the cardinal rule—he’d made them afraid—and they’d never forgotten it. It had been one factor in the aforementioned trip to Wales and plenty of other nastiness through the years.
Yet he’d done it anyway; he’d bled to help slaves instead of raping and breeding them! He deserved better than the bastards here, not worse. And frankly, so did I.
So, I moved us—and the table—to an open spot on the brilliantly lit dais and almost scared a poor servant girl to death in the process.
We popped out of nowhere in front of her, and she gave a little shriek, barely holding onto the golden jug she was carrying. And the shriek carried. Because suddenly, the entire huge room was deathly silent.
I ignored them since they deserved no better, picked up one of the pewter goblets, gave it the look it deserved, and held it out to her. “Thanks,” I said as she stared at me wide-eyed.
And then hurriedly filled my cup and Pritkin’s, too, before scurrying off somewhere.
I took my seat. “We’ll pay for that,” Pritkin said, joining me. But his lips were quirking.
“If we’re ever sat there again, so will they,” I said and didn’t bother lowering my voice.
Then I drank my wine, and damn if it didn’t taste divine.