Someone’s finger sweeps aside a lock of my hair. Swinging in the hand’s direction, I smack the invasive fingers away—then stumble backward at the sight.
This Fae’s made of all things fine and lightweight. She’s got a tumbleweed of topaz hair piled around her head and the most garish eyes I’ve ever seen, the irises enameled in the same gem tone. Sort of like a raccoon, a thick swatch of nut-brown cuts across her face, from temple to temple.
A gauzy gown cocoons her compact body in winding strips of cloth. Her pale-as-paper skin matches the silken moth wings flaring from her back, a set of topaz dots dabbing each tip.
The female is slight. She looks young, but who knows with this immortal lot?
Shock robs me of speech. She’s as gorgeous as Cerulean—and as freakish.
The rest of them emerge into the rotunda. My audience edges closer, their movements fluid and mischievous. They possess a hybrid of animal, human, and Fae features, a flamboyant perversion of what I’d imagined, some downright ghastly, others astounding in their beauty.
Tall, graceful monsters sport the feathered arms of sparrows. Stocky dwarves display the armored torsos of beetles. Hovering pixies flourish their butterfly wings, the sheer membranes as animated as stained glass, the tips flouncing into streamers.
The Faeries resemble animals of the sky and mountain.
Bats wings, licorice black and skeletal. Bird wings, the iridescent quills layered along mantles that each span six feet.
The pronged or spiraled horns of antelopes. The conch horns of rams.
One figure has a bobcat’s muzzle and vertical feline pupils. One sprouts jackrabbit ears.
Another flaunts a tail of quail plumes. Another has the lanky neck of a fucking swan.
They’ve got pigmented skin, the green of ferns or the grey-blue of rainy mornings. They sport intricate, spiraling ink marks across their faces. They wear diadems and feathered anklets. They brandish claws and talons. They’ve got pointy ears.
Cerulean slouches on his throne with casual indifference. Propping a finger on his lower lip, he watches while his entourage mocks me.
“Foolish human,” the female moth jeers, a set of porcelain combs sinking its teeth into her tumbleweed hair. “Silly girl.”
She circles, sneering things I can’t hear because I’m too busy ogling the other Faeries. Most take up residence by the trees, where they lean against the trunks, the better to observe this scene.
When the moth chortles something about my being too stupid to talk, the rest cackle. She surveys the exposed seams of my dress—evidence that I’m wearing it inside-out—and speaks with a cocky slant in her voice. “It appears someone has done their homework. By any chance, did you pack hawthorn berries as well? With a side of salt?”
I crank up my chin and call her bluff. “What if I did?”
In answer, the moth glances sideways. I follow her gaze and spot a human woman in burlap rags with matted blonde hair and a maddened expression on her oval face. Blindly, she stumbles toward the precipice and throws herself over the ledge.
But she doesn’t scream. I do.
My feet launch toward her, then stagger in place at the cliff’s rim. Gawking into the abyss, I see no signs of a falling, shrinking body. Not a single, insectile speck of arms and limbs.
Guffaws hit the sky. I whirl toward the Faeries, my heart punching into my sternum. Cerulean throws back his head and chuckles with them, his lips peeling back to expose sharp canines.
My horror morphs into fury. What I saw…it wasn’t real.
“One of our former guests,” the moth boasts. “She met a tragic end. Did you know her?”
I didn’t know her, but that doesn’t matter. I move fast, striding back to the rotunda, to where the twit beams. My whip snatches her leg and sends the bitch on her ass, her wings jiggling. More uproarious laughter from these hellions—but not from their ruler.
Cerulean’s blue mouth crinkles with displeasure. “Quiet!”
The mirth dies a quick death, but the pint-sized Fae leaps to her bare feet with a vengeful hiss. Cerulean cuts her off, saying something in their fluid, melodic language.
Never heard anything close to the Fae tongue. It’s as if somebody sprinkled crystals on their lips.
I sweep my head between the two. The moth points at me, her voice peppered with anger. Cerulean maintains his lazy posture, contemplates her words, then cuts his eyes to me and flicks a dismissive hand. “Leave us.”
“Stay,” I blurt out to them. “I’m not afraid of you lot.”
