Chapter 16
THREE DAYS LATER
For the past three days,I have seen Eldrion after supper.
For three days, the court has been filled with Sunborne watching Finn perform, and Briony tells me this is unusual. Normally, these kinds of celebrations happen sparingly. But it seems Eldrion feels the need to show off.
Briony thinks this means he is hiding something, that something is going on which he doesn’t want the other Sunborne to know about, that he is using these nightly festivities to distract them.
If that’s true, it seems to be working. Because every night they pour into the Grand Hall and they watch Finn perform, and they drink and dance and eat and fuck and go home, hedonistically sated.
It surprises me that Eldrion never joins the celebrations, yet his presence still feels palpable somehow. As if he is watching us even though he is not there.
Briony is always the one who takes me to him, and she always waits outside the door until we have finished talking. So far, for three consecutive nights, we have talked until sunrise.
He paces the room and asks me questions about the Leafborne’s abilities, about when they first manifest, and how long it takes us to learn to control them. He asks about the colour of our wings and what it means. He asks whether the Leafborne are more in tune with the earth than the Mountain fae or the Ocean fae, and I tell him it doesn’t work like that. “Although we are fae of the forest, our clan is still made up of many different affinities – water, air, earth, fire.”
“But not you.” Last night, after I had finished explaining for perhaps the hundredth time, he looked up at me from his armchair by the fire and steepled his fingers together.
I said nothing. Just met his eyes, waiting to see exactly how much he knew about me. Because we had still not discussed my gloves, or how he found them, or how much he knew of me before he brought me here.
“You have no affinity. You have mind magic.” When he said that, I frowned.
Mind magic is powerful. Mind magic is something only the Sunborne possess and I am no Sunborne.
“Empathy is not mind magic,” I replied eventually. “But you should know that. You should know all of this. You do not need a two-hundred-year-old Leafborne to tell you the things I am telling you.”
In the shadow of the chair, Eldrion puffed out his wings, impressively wide, studying me carefully. “Who told you empathy is not mind magic?” he asked.
I looped back through my memories. Two hundred years; there are a lot of them. “My parents told me. The elders of my village told me. Our history books...” I pause and narrow my eyes, visualising the books I pored over when I was younger and trying to understand what it was that made me so different from the others.
Eldrion quirks an eyebrow at me. Everything about him is sharp, angular, fierce. His features are chiselled. Even his hair is poker straight, and his wings point like daggers at their tips in a way I haven’t seen before.
“Our books talk little of empaths,” I murmur, lacing my fingers together behind my back and feeling the strain of the corset beneath my dress.
“Every fae you’ve ever met has lied to you,” he said brusquely, rising from his chair and stepping into the dim light so I could see the contours of his face and the dazzling brightness of his eyes. Towering over me.
That was last night.
But he did not give me a chance to ask what he meant, simply turned away, clicked his fingers, and told me we were done and that he would see me the next day.
Now, it is the next day and things have happened differently.
I am dressed for dinner, ready to spend the next hour torturously close to Finn but unable to touch him or talk to him, communicating with him only through stolen glances and longing, when Briony tells me Eldrion has requested my presence now.
My heart drops down into my stomach, partly because I am so disappointed I will not see Finn and partly because the change to our routine is unnerving.
“He says you needn’t dress for dinner. He says you should wear outdoor clothes,” Briony says, striding over to the wardrobe and starting to rustle amongst my things.
I call them my things but they are not my things. They’re the things he gave me.
“Here,” she says, pulling out a pair of dark jodhpurs and a grey knitted sweater. “The weather has turned. It’s cold outside.”
I put them on, finishing the outfit with a pair of large boots that make my feet incredibly uncomfortable. Briony too seems nervous, and I wonder whether she knows something that I don’t.
We’re at the door when she says, “Have you ever tried –” she stops mid-sentence and shakes her head.
“Tried what?” I ask, meeting her eyes.
She blinks up at me and worries her lower lip with her teeth. “Have you ever tried to feel what Eldrion is feeling?”
I hold my breath for a moment. Even though I trust Briony completely, my instinct is always to hold back when she asks me a question. Despite myself, I answer her truthfully. “No, I haven’t. Why?”
She asks, now intrigued, “Not even to help? If you could tell whether he thought fondly of you or –” she pauses, searching for the word, and settles on saying, “or not?”
“Perhaps.” I nod. “But I know nothing of his magic. And I know nothing of what he truly wants from me.”
Leaning back against the doorframe so it must remain sharp for a moment longer, I fold my arms in front of my stomach and say, “Let’s face it. He didn’t bring me all the way here just to ask me questions about elementals. He is the oldest fae in the kingdom. He knows all there is to know about our magic, which means he wants me for something else. At first I thought it was sex. But that doesn’t seem to be true, either. So, what does he want?”
“You think he wants your magic?”
“I don’t know. We only started talking about it yesterday. It was the first time he’d mentioned my empathy, and what it means, and how it relates to me being a Leafborne, but he seemed to stop himself before he said too much.”
I pause, trying desperately to articulate the thoughts that have been swirling in my mind for the past three days.
“Something became clear, though. Even here, in Luminael, empaths are a rarity.”
“You didn’t know that?” Briony asks, tilting her head at me.
“No,” I reply, almost embarrassed by my own lack of awareness. “I didn’t. I just always assumed there were more like me somewhere out here.”
“Trust me,” Briony says. “There are not.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh. Something deep inside is telling me I shouldn’t give Eldrion the opportunity to reach my magic, and that means keeping the gates up. It means continuing to go in blind and not being able to tell what he’s thinking. But right now, I feel like that’s the only way to keep myself safe. At least until I have figured out why he is so interested in me.
Why he stole my gloves and how he knew of me before I knew of him.
I smile a little and shake my head because I’m not even making very much sense to myself. But Briony seems to understand.
“Eldrion is powerful,” she says. “More than powerful. You cannot trust anything he says. And no matter how he appears to you, you must remember that he has done unspeakable things.” Her fingers go to her arm and the scars that I’ve seen several times before but have never asked about. “He’s an evil person, Alana. Whatever he wants you for –” she reaches out and squeezes my upper arm. “Keep your guard up. That’s what I’m saying. Do what you can to protect yourself and don’t let him near your magic.”