I made a full turn towards him, trying to keep my calm. “What friend?”
He sighed, slowly walking towards me as his soles brushed the overly sanded wooden floor.
“Sprout, I think it’s time to stop lying to each other,” he replied and leaned onto the island board, his face only a few inches away from mine. His stare rippled darkness, intruding into me so fiercely that I had to close my eyes for a second and blink that gaze away. I tried not to think about Ansgar, as though he would be able to see inside my mind.
“Stop calling me that, it makes no sense,” I huffed and turned, searching for anything to shove into the fridge and escape his closeness.
“Oh, but it does,” he purred. “You will understand eventually.”
“Aha...” was my only reply, head still stuck in the fridge. I had come to know the two Rhylans, and the dark one wanted to come and play today. I much preferred the friendly detached guard who liked cake and Kit Kats.
He remained silent a long while, waiting for me to finish storing things away so I didn’t have any excuse to dismiss the conversation. After a few minutes I gave up and closed the fridge, turning towards Rhylan yet again. I felt tired and this was probably the weirdest conversation I’d had in the last month, so I involuntarily snapped at him.
“What do you want, Rhylan?” I tensed, expectant of his reaction and hoping it would not be a violent one. Somehow, even my frail muscles knew this was not a man to be crossed.
Surprise lit his eyes and a seductive smile cropped up on his face. “It bites,” he murmured, throwing me a pleased smirk.
“What I want to know, lovely sprout, is if that fae fuckboy of yours enjoyed walking in and out of this house to his heart’s content.”
If there was ever a time for my heart to stop from shock, this would probably be an adequate one. I drew in a slow breath but I didn’t say anything. Rhylan continued, “Before you try to offend my intelligence again with your lies, girl, I know about the fae,” he confirmed. “I know what they eat, where they sleep, what they do and how they do it. I know everything.”
Rhythmic gasps came out of my chest, my mind blocked, not knowing what to say.
“How?” It seemed to be enough to de-tense him slightly because he turned towards the sitting room once more and regained a seat on one of the armchairs, the closest one from the kitchen.
“My grandmother’s sister,” he announced, suggesting it was all the explanation I would need. When I frowned, he sighed dramatically, most probably at my incompetence to connect information and continued. “She went into the faelands. Fell in love with someone and went along with him.”
“She went into their world? How?” I asked, surprised. My curiosity piqued and I moved to take a seat on the couch, making sure to place enough distance between the two of us.
“Mates. None of the family understood but the two of them were convinced, so he came and asked for her hand in marriage and off they went.”
My heart started pumping uncontrollably, so rapidly that I was almost dazed from the amount of oxygen flooding into my lungs.
“Your aunt mated a fae? A human?” The words turned into a whisper, so soft that he must have read my lips rather than hearing them.
“Yup,” he nodded. “Apparently it is a rare thing back there,” he leaned lazily onto the upholstered back of the armchair, stretching his neck.
“How...” I barely breathed. “How do you know it’s true?”
He raised his eyebrows, not understanding my meaning.
“That they were mates, I mean,” I clarified, readying myself to devour his next words.
“She came back to visit, couple of years later. Told my granny everything, her life there, customs, stories. So many details that my only bedtime stories were about the fae.”
“Do they keep in touch?” I enquired, needing to know if I could contact this woman and ask her everything I wanted to know.
“Nah, she stopped visiting once she started popping out kids. They had seven the last time my grandma saw her.” Rhylan turned back to his usual activity, flicking through women’s magazines.
“So your grandma didn’t see her again?” I questioned.
“She wanted to, her sister left her some kind of tea for her to drink and pass into the faelands to visit. But Nana had my mother and… life happened,” he replied.
“What kind of tea was it?” I eagerly asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied bored. “Some kind of burnt root of something. I have it at home,” Rhylan explained with a sigh, not in the mood for more questions. “I can bring it to you if you want, use it with your loverboy. He’ll know what to do with it.”
“Thank you, Rhylan!” I wanted to hug him, but he raised his hands to push me away.
