The other Houses mock you. Your humans are better behaved than Fae.
Also true.
The three units proceeded with caution to the meeting point our intel had designated, slipping into the dense old-growth forest of lichen covered firs the size of redwoods.
A cousin Skilled to manipulate shadows covered our approach to the campsite. We evaded Montague’s blue-and-silver armored warriors, and I recognized the colors of three other Houses. Two allies of Montague, including Labornne, onethatclaimed to be neutral, and Sivenne.
A Faronne ally.
I hissed. Traitors.
I’d burn their House down around their ears.
Our House might be uncouth and poor, but we were relentless. We had to be to make up for our shortcomings. Relentlessness was free; we’d perfected our thorns.
Édouard signaled to Numair, and the order spread throughout the team. Once again I wished for the telepathy the Fae had possessed back in the old realm, but the crossing to Earth rippedthataffinity from everyone.
A trilling bird call whistled from the forest canopy. We burst forward, a battle cry in our throats.
I unsheathed my sabre, a light double-edged blade designed for slashing instead of thrusting, balanced to avoid straining my slender wrists.
We’d brought three units expecting to interrupt a small, routine political meet guarded by a minimum of warriors because Montague assumed today was business as usual—Faronne typically only attacked safehouses and supply caches.
In seconds I recognized the lack of surprise on enemy faces. More emerged from the trees, jumping lightly from branches. We were outnumbered three to one, and from Édouard’s face he realized the same fact.
We’d been lured.
A Montague warrior leaped in front of me; my height, but forty pounds heavier with muscle under his armor. A pixie dance of tension fluttered through my veins, tensing my muscles with a rush of adrenaline.
“The Faronne halfling wench,” he sneered, the mingled delight and contempt in his voice edged with satisfaction. Right. He thought he’d earn a promotion by managing to kill Aerinne Capulette.
“She is I, and I am her,” I murmured, already dissecting his style of movement. My physical strength would never be at the level of a full-blooded Fae, but I matched their speed.
“We’ll see if you are as good with a blade as they say,” he said. “I think it a lie.”
We circled. He feigned left, but I didn't fall for the ruse, parrying his true strike. Eyes didn’t lie.
“An unSkilled wretch can’t hope to defeat me,” he said.
Realms, he’s one of those. A talker.
Stupid too, for assuming I was unSkilled. Skills were unique to the person, untrainable except through individual practice, and unreproducible by anyone else. An artifact of the individual’s mind and magical strength combined. No one advertised their particular Skill unless they had to, or they were a non combatant. It was just good strategy to keep one’s mouth shut.
No point in debating the walking dead, though. I didn’t flaunt my Skills, so those whom I’d taught some respect were mostly buried six feet deep.
One day someone would put two and two together, but because I’d heavily encouraged the rumors that my human blood rendered me powerless, no enemy expected anything but a mid-level soldier.
The assumption was reasonable—before my Skills had emerged, giving me an edge, I’d survived these guerrilla skirmishes through luck, my family at my back, and dirty tricks.
No shame.
“Aerinne, stop fucking around,” Juliette said, sprinting past me, knives flying.
Fine.
Drawing on my power, I flickered out of sight, the warrior dying a moment after his eyes widened in shock.
I slashed his neck in a blur of speedthatlasted a fraction of a second—unparalleled speed and accuracy, my secondary Skill.
