Page 137 of First Light
Naida raised a single arched eyebrow.
“Right,” Carys muttered. “An answer for an answer. I’m in the forest because I’m going to the blessing to talk to Darius. He did me a favor the other day, and I wanted to offer my appreciation.”
“And you wanted to escape them.”
Carys frowned. “The unicorns?”
“The humans in the castle.” Naida smiled a little. “They do not know what you are. Humans don’t like that.”
“Right.” Carys knelt down and snapped off a mushroom growing among the oak tree’s roots. She held it out to Naida. “For you.”
“A gift.” The fae woman smiled. “I am grateful.” She put the mushroom in the basket and turned back to Carys. “Other fae will sense the Crow Mother’s mark; they will leave you alone. No fae would harm you with Branwen’s mark on your skin.”
“Wait, is Branwen actually her name?”
“It’s a name she uses where I come from.”
“You’re not from here?”
Naida smiled but said nothing.
Carys tried to put pieces together. Naida was shorter than the fae in the Borderlands, and her speech was different too.
Wait.
The fae woman’s hair was dense and curly. She could hear Cadell’s voice, and she was small, muscular, and clearly at home in the forest. Her mother’s stories came back to her from a hundred different nights. Mysterious creatures hiding in her canvases, fairies who looked much like Naida.
A familiar warmth grew in Carys’s chest. She’d missed seeing Naida for who she was because the setting was wrong. But fae traveled too, and if Carys was right, this one was far from home.
Carys smiled slowly. “Ellyllon.” The woman before her wasn’t a fae of Alba but one of Cymru. “You’re far from home.”
Naida’s eyes lit up. “It pleases me to hear our name in Cymric even if your accent is not very good, Nêrys Ddraig.”
Carys sat across from the elf. “Why are you here? Is that rude? My mother?—”
Naida’s eyes glowed. “Did your mother tell you stories of the ellyllon in the Brightlands?”
Carys’s smile was impish. “An answer for an answer.”
“You learn quickly, Nêrys.” Naida set her bone knife down. “A heart will travel great distances for love.” She leaned closer to Carys and breathed in. “But when I smell you, it reminds me why I remain here.”
“My smell…” She frowned. “Lachlan?”
Naida’s laugh danced through the trees. “Not the human.” She wrinkled her nose. “Definitely not a human.”
What other fae had she been around? Was the bear a fae trapped in an animal’s body? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened in a story. Carys racked her brain but came up with nothing.
“Yes.” She remembered to answer Naida’s question. “My mother loved telling me fairy tales.” She leaned back against a tree trunk. “I think she liked fairy tales more than facts.”
“Perhaps fairy taleswerefacts to her.”
There was a great rumbling roar in the distance like thunder and shrieking rolled into one.
“What was that?” Something about it reminded Carys of the fae bear, and goose bumps rose on her arms.
Naida looked toward the trees. “The water horse is restless today.”
Through the trees, Carys could see the silver of the loch glistening in the low light that illuminated the forest. “I saw a woman near the loch once. She was talking with a dark man, and he looked angry.”