Instead, it was a young man about my age, maybe slightly older.
A very tall, very shirtless man.
He was easily the most handsome man I’d ever seen, even with the cruel smile on his face.
His torso was muscular but stamped with the strangest scars over it—the outline of scorpions over his stomach and side, crisscrossing each other like a macabre web. It was as if he’d had the same image branded on his skin over and over and over. His strange silver hair was loose at his shoulders, and he had a deep scar from his cheekbone to his chin that belayed his handsomeness into something more dangerous.
As my gaze traced up the man’s jaw, I jerked when I saw pointed ears.
Not a man.
Fae.
Peri.
I was in Peristan. A fae world., I couldn’t assume that anything I knew was the same as it would be in Astola.
“What are you doing near the River at this time, human? You don’t know what things lurk in the dark, waiting for those like you to get lost.”
His voice was soft, but felt no less a threat than the growl of the wolf behind me.
“I... er, got lost. Then I saw—” I gestured vaguely behind me, realizing I didn’t know the names of anything here. “A beast.”
The fae male glanced behind me, and it was alarming how beautiful he was. His shoulder-length silvery hair seemed to glow, and his eyes were dark and piercing.
“The halmasti.” He nodded. “I’ve been hunting it. It’s got your scent though, it’ll find you eventually. They’ll cross multiple Courts if they’re locked in on something.” He angled his head, his eyes sliding from the beast—thehalmasti—and back to me.
As if he were the one who was locked in on me.
“Who are you?” I asked again and with less ire. Though I nearly regretted it when his gaze sharpened on me, roving up and down my body, as if trying to take my measure. He smiled faintly, just a quirk of lips so that I couldn’t tell if his mouth moved or not. “I’m not someone you want to know, girl.”
“And yet you’re going to save myfuckinglife?” I arched a brow, despite my heart beating wildly at the beasts both behind and in front of me.
He blinked, then angled his head. “It’s not often a halmasti is out wandering the wood. And I’m fairly certain you haven’t the means to defend yourself from it.”
His eyes swept over me, and I had a feeling he was amused at what he saw. Short, disheveled,human, with tangled hair and wet clothes, my spectacles askew, my satchel swinging haphazardly beside me and my skirt torn from running through the woods.
I debated my next question to him: “Why do you keep calling me girl when we are the same age?” or “Where did your shirt go?” when my eyes alighted on something glimmering in the dusk.
He held a long dagger. My gasp echoed through the trees as I recognized some of the early fae blade work from the swords I had unearthed for the Citadel.
“What is that?” I whispered.
He followed my gaze to his weapon. “Did you think I was going to kill the halmasti with my bare hands?”
My gaze jerked up. “You’re going to kill it?”
“No, I’m going to feed it forest sprites.”
Another growl thundered through the forest, the halmasti snapping at the branches of the mango tree I’d climbed.
Fear still flooded my blood, but the scholar part of my brain pushed it aside. I took a step closer to the fae, and he raised an answering brow. I gestured to his curved blade, the handle a magnificent filigreed gold, set with such vibrant jewels they glimmered in the moonlight. The pommel looked like the curved head of a naga, the cobra ready to sink its fangs into skin.
It was a breathtaking fae dagger right here in front of me.
And it was a reminder of where I was—a place that only usually existed for me in a hidden vault beneath my feet.
“I just wanted a closer look at your sword.”
