Chapter 3 #3
“Because I’m part human. Look at me.” I held up my hands.
Their fingers were more pointed than a human’s, but against this long-limbed and nimble creature before me, I felt stubby.
Blunt, somehow. The differences in our details were as noticeable to me as the differences I’d grown up noticing between myself and the people of the mountains.
I was built sleek and narrow, capable of running more swiftly and jumping further than anyone else around me.
But compared to this fae, I felt like a toddler just learning to navigate the world with my body.
“Perhaps you are part human, but that is not what I asked. Why were you there?” he said.
By now, the threat of him was diminished enough that I tucked my axe back into the holder on my belt. If he wanted to harm me, my axe wouldn’t do me any good anyway. Crossing my arms, I frowned back. “I lived there. Or near there. Why does it matter to you?”
“Because you were outside of the Wyldes.” He said it as if this was something obvious that should make sense.
“Babies found in the woods tend to live wherever their guardians raise them,” I snapped. “Please, for the sake of my sanity, what do you want with me?”
He shifted his weight to one side, taking me in as if for the first time. Whatever he had seen in me before was shaken into an entirely different shape in his mind. “Come back to the Wyldes with me.”
“What? Why? I don’t even know you,” I said.
“Those people left you to die,” he replied. “My kind will want to know you.”
“Those people . . . Do you mean the villagers? They had other things on their mind. Like a force of angry horsemen throwing fire across the town,” I argued.
He shook his head. “The men pulling people from the water saw you and turned around. They knew exactly who you were when they abandoned you to the water’s depths.”
Of course they’d left me. The wild girl that Bryn dragged around with him wasn’t worth saving. I knew this, had always known this, and yet the sting of hearing it from this fae, this outsider, still bit.
“Why were you there that day?” I shoved the subject off me and onto a question that might help me gain perspective.
He shrugged. “It’s my job to watch the doings of humans too close to the borders. A raid is of interest, so I followed it.”
“Why intervene? I’m not stupid enough to think the fae have an interest in keeping the humans there safe.”
“No, but then I sensed you.” He said it so casually, as if it were the only obvious answer.
Me?
Me, because I was part . . .
Everything shifted. The fact that this fae had been there might have been coincidence, but when he’d acted, it was because of me.
Because he saw me as one of his kind. Aside from Bryn’s big heart taking in a lost baby, that was the kindest thing a stranger had ever done for me. Ever. It was surreal, and foreign.
“Because you sensed me,” I repeated. “As one of you?”
He nodded. “Those people do not care for you. Come with me to a place where they will.”
That almost made me sound wanted, and I was not a wanted presence.
Aside from Bryn or the kindness of the Mother’s Daughters, I wasn’t a welcome sight.
No village had wanted me there, but my labor was tolerable as long as it was next to Bryn.
No farm, no homestead, no traveling camp, and no city.
Bryn had even arranged our rooms in Sulls while I’d waited outside the inns, keeping my head hidden as we navigated the crowded streets.
And now this fae was suggesting, simply by virtue of being of their blood, that I would be wanted in the Wyldes.
A place where they would care. I’d only ever been an outsider; I’d never been able to picture a life where I wasn’t. My mind reeled with the possibilities but shied away from the unknown.
Do not bring fear of the fae into your heart, child.
My safety was at risk if I ventured into these strange and unknown lands, but I was at risk just about anywhere now that I was alone. Could I do it? Could I find peace with the other half of me?
“Come with you,” I said, slowly, “just like that?”
He nodded again. A few strands of midnight hair fell into his face as he did, and he brushed them away.
There he stood, a bloody mess from saving me from death—for a second time, I reminded myself—with no demands or expectations on his face.
Just a possible welcome for a girl who had nowhere to go anyway.
It was a strange sensation. Not that the fae knew that, but that might have made him even more persuasive.
He didn’t even know this was my last resort, a hand reaching out when I didn’t have anywhere else to seek safety.
But the tentative trust of one fae was still not quite enough to push me over the edge.
“You said your people would want to know of me,” I asked. “Why?”
His brows lowered. “First, because you are one of our kind, and it is difficult to fathom why you would be apart from us.”
Tension rose back into my shoulders. “And second?”
He grimaced. “Your story may hold a clue to an answer we have been seeking for a long time.”
A reasonable person would have elaborated, but once again this short-worded fae did not.
“An answer to what?” I prodded.
“You are not the only one our kind has lost,” was all he said.
Perhaps the subject was difficult to talk about, but it did succeed in making me more curious.
Lost. Were there others like me wandering around the mountains?
It didn’t seem likely, and the way he’d said lost carried a heaviness that indicated a more forlorn use of the word.
“How would this work?” I asked slowly. “If I say yes, that is.”
“There is an outpost another day north of here, in the space we call the borders,” he said. “That is where my triquetram is serving our rotation of watch. In a few days, we will leave, and another group will arrive. When we leave, we can take you with us to our city.”
Too fast, too much information, too many things to keep track of. “Your tri-what? An outpost? There’s a whole city of you?”
He blinked slowly, reminding me of a cat. “My triquetram, my bonded team. You truly don’t know what that is?”
“No,” I said, more defensively than I had intended.
“The others would be better teachers,” he murmured.
“Others, your tri-ket-rum.” The feel of the strange word in my mouth slowed me down. “Wait, so the first step would be an outpost. How many of you are there?”
“Three,” he said.
Three fae. And beyond the borders, a whole city of them, at least. Taking a deep breath, I sent up all the thoughts I had for the Mother’s guidance and hoped Mila had been right to have me trust this fae.
“I would like to come with you,” I said, the words unlocking something in me. Hope? Relief? “I can work. I can find wood and forage.”
He held up a hand. “That is not a worry, I’m happy to have you come with me. I promise we have everything we need at the outpost, no work needed.”
My fingers tingled; I felt funny all over. The whiplash of going from being frightened by this fae to agreeing to go with him. Was I truly going to try my hand at finding a home among his people? My people? Could this possibly end better than it had with the humans?
“We will move soon,” he said. “There could be other unexpected things nearby, now that the wraith is dead. It may even have attracted witches.”
That stopped me in my tracks. “You make that sound like a bad thing.”
His expression hardened, just enough for me to notice. “Our history is a difficult one. There are no conflicts with them now, but I don’t want to run into them regardless.”
What did that mean? There had been conflicts?
Had Mila told me that? Did I not remember?
It was as though the seal written down my back in violet markings, holding something within me from bursting out, now burned.
My heart pounded. Was this a mistake? But I wasn’t a witch, I just carried their work on my skin and Mila’s years of teaching me as a girl in my mind.
It wasn’t as though I had any knowledge of their craft or ability to use it.
Surely this wouldn’t be a problem, right?
“They’re unwelcome in the Wyldes?” I asked.
“I can’t imagine why one would venture into our lands, but I know the lands I am from would be more than wary of one,” he answered.
The truth, I had to tell the truth or this would eat me alive with worry and guilt. “There was a witch, I grew up near her, and she treated me well—”
“You are welcome to come with me.” He stopped the beginning of my ramble before it began. “Whoever you’ve known, wherever you’ve lived to survive until now, I hold nothing against you. You are of the Wyldes, and you are welcome there.”
I hadn’t gotten as far as mentioning the seal, but I found relief in his words.
Besides, Mila had told me to ensure I fully trusted whoever helped me remove the seal one day.
If I never planned on removing it, if I didn’t know this fae enough to have that amount of trust, it should be fine to continue as I had all this time.
Only Mila and Bryn had known about the seal in the first place, and nothing had come of it for over two decades now.
And I could venture back out of the Wyldes to find my old teacher someday, once I had learned everything I could about the people there and the other part of my blood.
“I’m Wren,” I said, realizing we had come this far and still hadn’t introduced ourselves.
“Thain,” he offered.
Thain. It seemed to suit him. “Okay, Thain. I would like to come as far as the outpost and meet the others first.”
He smiled, the first genuinely positive emotion I’d seen from him, and it finished disarming the tension in my shoulders.
“Welcome to the Wyldes.”