Page 16 of The Fae Lord

When the voice calls again, I lean into the sound. It is not Eldrion, I know that. And yet I cannot help seeing his face in front of me. It sends shivers of arousal and anger down my spine, zipping through my bones like splinters of smooth flint. Deadly but beautiful.

I hate him.

But I want him.

And as the water continues to swirl around me and I follow the voice into the depths of the forest, I close my eyes. I do not watch where I am going. Something is guiding me.

Is it him? Is this the moment he finally takes me? Has he come for me?

My feet remain slow, absorbing every second of contact with the forest floor. As I move, more droplets join the ones already swirling, until they are a torturous tornado, propelling me forward into the dark crevices of a forest I do not know.

I should know it.

We have been here long enough now, and yet it still feels unfamiliar. Not like home. Everything here is harsh and sharp and divided. There are fractures within us and around us.

Instead of coming together to fight, we are fighting each other.

And instead of respecting me finally because I helped them to escape, my kin hate me. They despise me. They see me with Finn and they want to throw stones at me. I can see it in their faces.

His kind – the Shadowkind – hate me too, because they think I believe I am above them, and that Finn favours me.

Once again, I have become a pariah amongst my own kind.

And maybe that is why I lean into the voice. I let it take me. I let it pull me into the murky depths of this foreign place, and teach me the steps to follow.

It whispers my name, again and again, a haunting rhythm.

Visions flash in front of my eyes. Or fire and coals and dancing. I hear the drums. I see the scene in front of me as if it were yesterday. The moon celebration. Kayan.

I see his face.

I peel my eyes open and blink into the darkness.

Something glimmers in the distance. A flicker of movement. The promise of a shadow that my eyes cannot quite catch hold of. I blink again, harder, trying to make it make sense.

This time, when I move, the water drops to the floor. It falls in a puddle at my feet, and leaves me trembling with cold.

I wrap my robe tighter around my naked body, suddenly wishing I had put on more clothes.

There it is again. Like a whisper, floating between the trees.

It moves, and with it comes a flicker of greenish blue light.

My breath halts in my ribcage. Then it swells and turns into anxiety. I reach out, trying to feel for a person. Fae, human, elf.

I am close to the shield the fae cast around our camp. I am almost at its very edge. I can feel the magic. It presses down on me and around me, and it feels both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.

Of course, I was not one of the ones who cast the shield. I could not; I have no magic that is useful in terms of spells or incantations.

My magic is nothing but a drain on me and those around me.

And yet... the beads of dew on the forest floor still tremble. I can feel them. If I close my eyes, it’s as if they are talking to me. And then other sounds rush to my ears, too. They drown out the voice. Rivers, waterfalls, rain on the other side of the valley. The ocean, the tide.

I stumble back, clutching my stomach as the strength of the sensations overwhelms me.

When I open my eyes, a low murmur parts my lips.

Kayan.