32
Ale, Blood, and Bad Decisions
Blair
Avandal. The city is alive, even at night.
Everywhere I look, cafés and tea houses spill out onto the cobbled streets, tables crammed with fae drinking, laughing, singing beneath strings of glowing fae lights.
Musicians play in every corner. Harpists run delicate hands along their strings, while a dark-skinned siren sings, her voice curling through the warm air like smoke, shimmering with her magic.
My mothers would’ve loved this place. They’d have danced barefoot in the streets, drunk and grinning, spinning each other until they fell over laughing. The thought tears through my chest, sharp as a blade, so I shove it deep down and keep walking.
The houses here are carved from white stone, some paneled in polished wood.
Elegant iron lanterns hang from each archway, spilling gold light across the canals that wind through the alleys.
Flowers spill from the bridges, blue and white, perfumed and soft.
Some petals rain down, shimmering in the stream.
I’ve got the gray hood I nicked from the healer one night when I went back to the temple once Meanara was out and I snuck into her room.
It’s drawn low over my face, my hands buried under her cloak to hide my silver claws.
The healer’s sweet scent clings to the fabric, as if I had a damn roll in the sheets with the woman.
I’m still fuming, my blood running hot in my veins, refusing to cool.
How dare she touch me like that? Shove me into the water and wash my fucking hair.
Doesn’t she see what I am? A flesh-eating monster who’d happily tear that soft skin of hers to ribbons and lick the blood off after with a grin?
Doesn’t she have even the faintest spark of intrinsic fear that sends people running once they spot me?
How in all hells has she survived this long?
Spoiled little wretch. Probably grew up with nice parents in a nice townhouse right here.
Daddy’s darling. Mommy’s pride. A bright-eyed girl with a healing gift and—voilà—she was packed off to Avandal’s grand, prestigious academy.
Bet she never had to fight for a single damn thing.
I flex my claws—and accidentally rip a neat slash through the robe’s lining . Oooops. Guess I’ll return it later, maybe blood-soaked and shredded, just so she knows what could’ve happened if she’d crossed me in the dark. Just a reminder of what happens when you make a witch your enemy.
I cut a corner and find myself on a street lined with glittering shops—diamond-stitched gowns, gold jewelry fit for queens, embroidered silken slippers gleaming in their windows.
This city wears its wealth the way others wear armor. Queen Daphina’s court may live here—but so do plenty of rich assholes and their bored housewives, tossing coin at anything that shines.
It’s obvious Avandal was spared Gatilla and her dark reign, spared the devastating war that has ravaged the rest of the world. The wealth and beauty and joy here isn’t just excess—it’s survival untouched.
I stop in front of a shop window filled with paints and canvas, and something twists ugly in my gut. Melody.
I left her. I abandoned her. For all the hells, I even broke her damn ribs.
She’d like this shop. She’d stand here for at least half an hour, hands pressed to the glass, debating which color looks most like dawnlight or picking out paints for sunrise or rain. Those silly things she thinks about with her artist brain. Cute, silly things.
If we weren’t two broken creatures in a world that hates us, maybe we’d have tea, wander the market, buy her paints. Get our nails done after visiting the damn bookshop that also sells the best hot chocolate on this continent—or so I’ve heard. Yeah, hells, she’d love it.
I shove the thought away hard and march on.
Finally, I reach the shadier district, if you can call it such, because the houses are still immaculate, if not so ornate, although no porches and gardens with blossoming orange trees grace the properties.
Easily enough, I find the tiny door the blacksmith in Akribea talked about once.
I knock three times and then enter a dimly lit room.
A dwarf sits behind a desk, an axe slung around his back.
He strokes his fluffy red beard, his tiny eyes on me, widening slightly when I drop my robe.
“A witch, eh? By the stones, no’ seen one o’ you in a while.” His voice rolls thick and rough, that Akribea-brogued lilt of the mountain clans before my aunt locked them all away from sunlight and warmth to work in the mines. Most of them died during her dark reign. “What can I do fer ye, lass?”
“I need a glamour. Obviously.”
“Aye, that’ll be dear, that will.”
“It won’t be too expensive, lad,” I say lightly, “or I’ll just make one out of you. Keep your beard as a paintbrush. I hear they use squirrel tails around here. Figure yours will do just fine.” I flex my claws for emphasis.
He only chuckles, rubbing his quite impressive belly. “Ha! Not here, ye won’t. Threats like that’ll get ye nowhere in this place. This ain’t the gutters o’ Akribea. I’m under the queen’s law, witch. Her guard’s but one whistle away, and they’ll skin ye faster than ye can mutter yer hexes.”
“Fine. A girl might try, though.” I sigh and roll my eyes, then pull out the golden necklace I also lifted from the healer’s chambers and drop it onto the table with a heavy thunk. The ruby heart gleams darkly in the dim light.
He leans forward in his chair. “Sure ye wanna part wi’ that? Looks like it meant somethin’.”
“Are you here to trade or just flap your mouth asking stupid questions? That’s a crimson ruby—worth three glamours, easy. So stop busting my tits and hand them over like a good little dwarf.”
He gives a low whistle at my tone but pockets the necklace. Then he opens a drawer. “Fine, fine. Here ye go—three trinkets. Each’ll last ye a week. Bring ’em back and I’ll recharge ’em for half.”
I don’t tell him that won’t be necessary. That I might find some fae to hunt and drain to do it myself, eviscerating the magic out of his blood and binding it to a trinket like this. I’m a fucking witch, after all, and we’re unbeaten in the dark arts.
I push a copper ring on my finger, commanding the magic to hide my claws and teeth, and instantly feel better.
As soon as I return to the campus and the temple, the campus’s magic will strip me of the glamour, but here, now…
I can pretend to be someone else. Escape my own skin, at least for a while.
Pretend not to be the miserable mess I am.
I leave the dwarf without another word.
***
The tavern’s called The Drunken Kelpie—a big, loud, reeking barn stuffed to the rafters with music and sweat. Fiddlers stamp on a dais, bawling lewd ballads about sirens and sailors, while barmaids dodge slaps with trays of ale. The air’s thick with maple beer and roasted pork fat.
I elbow through the crowd to the bar, reach for a coin—
Shit. No money.
“Wanna watch me fight later, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart. No one’s called me that in a long time, I think.
Or ever. I turn my head. A fae soldier grins at me, blood drying under his nose, blond hair a sweaty mess.
Ha, if this man knew what I truly am, he would probably shit his pants.
But his blond hair and sparkling eyes remind me of the blacksmith in Akribea, and he was the last great lay I got apart from Connus—may the Abyss hold his soul dear—so I let my gaze travel down his muscle-packed torso.
A little too broad for my taste. I like my men honed like a weapon.
Broad shoulders, with tight and lean muscles you only get from centuries of training.
Shit. Yeah, I definitely prefer my men sharpened like blades—lean, lethal, ancient.
Of course, my mind offers me his body. Caryan’s.
A body with large, black wings.
The angel that probably screwed that scrawny healer.
I can’t help the picture that flares up unbidden in my mind of her and Caryan. I also can’t help the heat pooling between my legs at that more-than-a-little-hot fantasy. As jealous as I am, the thought of them together, of Caryan fucking that healer while I kiss and tease her, turns me on.
Oh, that’s a new level of fucked up. And weird as hells.
But the worst thing about it is, it somehow only gets hotter when I imagine myself between them.
The healer’s too-perfect, soft, warm lips on mine, her nipples pressing up against my chest while Caryan’s fucking me with the same lethal focus and cruelty he displayed in a battle.
Grand. Now I have sex dreams of two people who’ve royally pissed me off. A new low, definitely.
I need alcohol. Or to let off some steam. Abyss, it’s been months since I’ve got properly laid. Humans fuck cutely and nicely, but I sometimes like it to be roughed up a bit.
I meet the soldier’s eyes again. “Well, first: Do you have coin?” I ask. “Because I’m terribly thirsty tonight.”
He interprets my statement the wrong way. Hells, why do people always think that I’m a hooker?
“Got plenty, sweetheart. Been on a winning streak. I’ll buy the lady a drink.”
“The lady ,” I echo, almost laughing. “We’ll see about that.”
He nods toward the fighting ring in the center of the tavern. A huge faun guards a list nailed to a barrel, taking bets from anyone fool enough to try their luck. “I’m up next again. You can be my lucky charm.”
“Yeah. I might have an even better idea. Why not just take your gold myself?” I squint at the faun, then leave the soldier to walk over to the colossus of a man with silver-capped hooves and massive horns and a chest that shows off more hair than I’ve got on my head.
Hells, this dude is as broad as a barn door, and his horns scrape the beams overhead.
“Oi, horn-boy,” I say, jabbing a finger at his list. “Sign me up.”