Page 18 of Throne of Ice and Blood
All around me, people are chatting and going about their day like normal. As if this isn’t one of the most monumental moments in my entire life.
A woman walks out of a doorway to my right and closes it behind her. Then she staggers over to a rickety wooden chair that has been placed on the porch. It creaks as she drops into it. With a sigh, she leans back and tilts her face up towards the sun.
I stop dead in the middle of the road.
My jaw practically hits the ground when I take in her face.
It’s… wrinkled.
Her cheeks are saggy and there are bags under her eyes and there are lines all over her forehead and around her eyes.
My heart is barely beating as I just stare at her in shock.
She’s old.
And she’s not just old. Shelooksold.
I have never seen someone look old before. It’s fascinating. While the old woman sits there and soaks up the sun, I stand a short distance away and stare at her like an absolute idiot. Stare at the way her limbs look thin and frail. The way her skin seems to hang loosely around her bones. At the wrinkles and the dark spots on her skin.
Fae don’t physically age like that. And neither do dragon shifters. So it’s the first time that I have ever seen a physically old person. It’s mind-blowing. Her entire body is a testament to the fact that she haslived. Proof of all the decades she has seen. All the things she has endured and experienced. It’s incredible. Absolutely incredible.
It isn’t until people start staring atmethat I force myself to keep moving. But it doesn’t matter. Because I meet several other old people as I continue down the next street. I stare at them too, but a little more discreetly.
Once I’m several streets deep, I have finally figured out how to tell the humans and the dragon shifters apart. Since normal dragon shifters can’t perform a half-shift, no one out here has wings on display the way Draven and the Icehearts do. And there is no real difference in terms of height or physique either. Instead, the thing that sets the humans apart is something more intangible.
They all look more alive, more real, than both the dragon shifters and we fae do. Because we don’t physically age, both fae and dragon shifters have an ethereal sense of timelessness toour features. The humans don’t. Instead, they look like they have truly lived, even the young ones, in a way that we don’t.
In all the stories about humans, no one ever mentioned this strange aura that they possess that the rest of us don’t. Though I suppose the fae who were allowed to live after the dragon shifters conquered us wouldn’t have had a chance to meet a human before that, so maybe that’s why.
I study them intently as I walk. Apart from lack of that ethereal quality to their features, they look almost exactly like dragon shifters. They also have those strange eyes that only have one color instead of?—
Panic shoots through my chest.
My eyes.
I’ve been covering my ears. But my turquoise and lavender eyes are just as damning. I’m the only person here who has two colors in both eyes.
Shit. Tugging the hood of my cloak down, I cover my eyes in enough shadow that people hopefully won’t notice. The dragon shifter guard at the gate had to have noticed. But I must have manipulated his emotions enough that he truly believed that Draven had sent me even though I was fae. And I must have gotten lucky with that human woman back there on the street. Or maybe the humans don’t know about fae.
I frown as I turn a corner and disappear down a far less busy street.
Is it possible that the dragon shifters have kept our entire existence a secret? Or maybe they just don’t know about all of our physical characteristics since they have likely never seen any of us before. Just like I didn’t know that humans didn’t have the same ethereal quality to their features as we do.
Shaking my head, I continue deeper into the city. There is so much I don’t know about this world that I’m now supposed to be a part of. So I study everything intently as I walk.
Now that I know which people are humans and which are shifters, I notice something else. All the fancy shops I pass are owned by dragon shifters, and all the hard manual labor is done by humans. The shifters are also dressed better. Not in terms of style, but rather quality. The clothes that the humans wear are, in general, more worn and frayed. The humans also look more tired, though I don’t know if that’s just because they age differently.
I frown as I note the holes in a human man’s shirt as he pulls a heavy cart up the road. Maybe the shifters treat the humans like they treat us too. But why would they? Their race didn’t enslave the dragon shifters the way that all of our ancestors did.
“What the fuck are you staring at?”
My heart leaps into my throat, and I whirl towards the sound of the voice.
A small breath of relief escapes me when I realize that the comment wasn’t directed at me. Across the road, a little to my right, two male dragon shifters in silver armor have cornered a human man against a wall.
“Nothing,” the human says. He keeps his chin lowered as he shakes his head. “I wasn’t looking at you.”
“Oh really?” the black-haired shifter replies. “Then why could I see your disrespectful eyes glaring at me when you thought I didn’t notice?”
