Chapter 25 #2
I kept him at the front of my mind as we walked down a narrow alley, navigating a maze of them to reach the other end of the witches’ district, where the stores gave way to private accommodation.
Each small white house seemed to have a different style of facade and a different colour roof.
Some were cute, thatched cottages, while others had an undulating roof of coloured glazed tiles, and then there were the ones with terracotta or slate roofs.
Sylvan stopped outside a worn blue painted door and rapped his knuckles against it.
A dark-haired female in a plain black dress opened the door a crack and peeked around it, eyeing him suspiciously. “What’s a fae want with me? Off with you.”
She was young, far too young to have been the one my parents had visited.
This female looked mid-twenties in human terms. Witches were long lived like wolves, but they aged with it too as wolves did.
I had expected a witch who was old enough to have mastered magic and been skilled enough to help my parents a century ago to be far older than she appeared.
“We heard you have a certain skillset we are looking for, one that is rare among your breed. When we asked around about fertility magic, your peers sent us your way.” Sylvan turned on the charm, hitting her with a smile that probably would have melted the panties off most females.
Not this one.
She scowled at him as he leaned against her doorframe and folded her arms over her chest. “If it’s help with your limp dick you want, you’ll be better off speaking to the succubi.”
His grin faltered.
I stepped out from behind the wall of guards and she flicked a glance at me and then her dark eyes roamed back to me.
“Looking to get her knocked up? She’s a bit young for you, isn’t she?” The witch looked me over and then turned a murderous look on Sylvan. “Didn’t think your kind would have a taste for wolf.”
I cleared my throat as I took a step towards her. “One, he’s my family… so your suggestion he wants to put a pup in me is really gross. Two, we’re looking for a witch who might have helped my parents around a century ago. One who might have been involved with his breed.”
That scathing once over again.
She curled her lip. “I’m guessing it was a case of mistaking fae baby batter for wolf, because I can’t see wolves asking for that in their cocktail. Your kind likes to keep things pure. His kind… not so much. They’ll bang anything that moves.”
I cringed at her colourful way with words.
The air around Sylvan shimmered, as if heated to the temperature of the sun, as he growled, “Careful, witch.”
She just shrugged.
“I don’t think my mother knew she was getting fae… you know what.” I kept the heat from my cheeks as I regained her attention. “I don’t think she slept with a fae either. Like you said, wolves like to keep it pure. My father was an alpha. There’s no way he would have risked his position to—”
“It’s Polly you’ll be wanting to see,” she cut in.
“The old hag ran a business once, peddling fertility spells. Trouble is it turned out she was using donor sperm to help females conceive rather than what was provided by the male who came with them. A lot of babes lost their lives when their parents discovered them to be different. She got run out of town for a time, but she crawled her way back in. Can’t work though.
Can’t find forgiveness in the district either.
Would be better for her if she went and lived out in the countryside somewhere people don’t know her and set up business there. ”
It sounded awfully like a lead to me, but I couldn’t be happy about it, not if what she had said was true and most of the parents had slaughtered their babies when they had realised they were different.
I had never felt lucky. I did now.
I was lucky my parents had loved me and had kept me, despite the flawed genes that were beyond my control.
“Polly?” I looked from her to Sylvan.
“She is not one of the names on the list,” he admitted and glared down at the witch as if he was contemplating ending her.
“She’s been out of town for a few months, visiting her niece in Fort William, over there in Scotland.
Some kind of family emergency, she said, but I think she had a run in with someone and needed to lay low for a while.
She got back yesterday.” The witch stepped back into her house and took hold of the door as she jerked her head to her left.
“Take the alley up there on the left, two down from here, and then the third right, and the fifth left, through to the square at the end. Red door.”
She shut the door in Sylvan’s face.
He growled at it, emerging claws pressing into the wooden frame on either side of the door as he loomed there.
“Two down, third right, fifth left, red door.” I pivoted on my heel and headed in that direction, drinking in the vibrant awnings that extended on either side of the road from several stores, and the copper stills that bubbled over fires, releasing an eye-watering vapor.
Glass and terracotta pots and jars filled makeshift shelves and display units, and one had whole rows of books.
Spell books.
I meandered closer to get a look at them.
Sylvan caught up with me and snared my arm in a bruising grip. “Come.”
“But I think they’re magic books.” I pointed over my shoulder and twisted that way. “Maybe I could learn something.”
He scoffed. “Not from those books, you will not. Fae magic is different to witch magic.”
“I still might like to read them.” I wrestled my arm free.
“Do you read Latin?” he snapped as he looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
“No. I don’t read fae either. I’m sure there’s a handy spell that will help me out with it.
” I rubbed at my arm through the sleeve of my blouse.
“Just because your stellar charm failed to work on the witch, you don’t have to take it out on me.
If you continue in this manner, I shall send you back to the Summer Court and go on with the commander. ”
The younger male’s amber gaze drilled into my back as he tensed on my senses.
Sylvan’s lips flattened, but he said nothing.
“Good. Second left.” I turned and strode down the narrow alleyway that smelled of foul things, following it deep into the heart of a not so bright and beautiful part of the town.
The damp flagstones were slippery underfoot and I didn’t want to think about why they were wet in a town that was protected by a roof of stone, buried deep in the heart of a mountain. It smelled like urine.
A door ahead of me burst open, golden light and laughter spilling from it, and a large male stumbled out of it, his dusky horns striking the wall on the other side of the alley as his back slammed into it.
A cheer went up. The demon’s eyes flashed crimson as he swiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
He grinned, revealing fangs, and rolled his shoulders, his enormous honed arms flexing with the motion as he stalked back towards the door.
He had barely disappeared inside it before he was flying into the wall again.
This time, he hit it hard enough that the pale plaster fractured and rained down on him as he landed on his backside on the filthy cobbles.
Out cold.
Sylvan proceeded with caution and I crept along behind him, heart hammering in my throat as I kept a close eye on the demon. The closer I came to him, the more I could smell the alcohol on him.
“And stay down this time.” A petite blond female came to the threshold of what appeared to be a tavern, dusting her hands off.
She had to be two feet shorter than the brute of a demon.
She caught Sylvan looking at her and flipped him off before sauntering back inside and slamming the door in his face.
“That’s twice now. Not having much luck with women today, are you?” I chuckled even when he tossed a black look over his shoulder at me.
He stalked onwards, stepping over the demon.
I followed, careful not to jostle the male. The last thing I wanted was for him to wake up while I was passing him. I saw flashes of Malachi attacking Kaeleron, how brutal he had been and how powerful, and I didn’t want that sort of raw strength and violence unleashed on me.
“Have you been to many fae towns?” I said to Sylvan’s back as he easily navigated the alleyways, glad he could remember how many twists and turns we needed to make.
“I have visited this one before, and one near Vancouver, when I was looking for you.”
I had forgotten about that. “How did you come to know I existed?”
He paused to glance back at me. “The court seer found you, and so I went to where she had seen you and there you were, only your parents were quick to remove you from the city and I lost you. I am still not sure how she could no longer see you.”
Magic.
The spell that had been placed on my pack lands.
I filed away the titbit about the Summer Court having a seer.
“So how did that seelie—Luthryn, was it? How did he know about the… auction.” Gods, it was hard to say that word and even harder to think about that night and the events that had occurred around it.
My wolf side grew restless again, snarling and pacing within my heart, the pain of those days still imprinted on my soul together with how badly wrong it might have gone for me.
And how I might have never met Kaeleron if Luthryn hadn’t run at the sight of him, or if someone had outbid him.
“The seer had another vision, this one only a few lunar cycles ago, pointing us towards a wolf male and an auction, and it did not take much research to discover this male was well known for selling females. Luthryn was sent to retrieve you, and Luthryn failed in his task. Although, I suppose he was successful in the end.”
I swallowed. “Before Kaeleron killed him.”
We reached the square.
“Yes, before the Wrathful King killed him.” Sylvan’s correction wasn’t subtle in the slightest, and the look he gave me, one that was scrutinising, warned me to watch my tongue around him or risk giving away that half of what I had told him about my time in the Shadow Court had been a lie.