Page 72 of A Thief Among Fae

“Good.”

His handkerchief catches another tear, and I sniffle. I need to pull myself together. My weakness, my utter inability to stop Auri and Finnian, feels rotten enough on its own.

Yet letting the fae high prince see how rattled I am is its own humiliation. If he had seen me cry like this when we first met, he would’ve rebuked me. He was cold, distant. I can’t imagine him having wiped away my tears. Has this kindness always been inside him? I don’t know if I deserve it.

I remember the giggles I couldn’t control, the wet slickness of the horse’s tongue. Finnian and Auri’s vulturine laughter encircling me. I made a mockery of myself, grabbing Desmond’s ass and trying to kiss him like a besotted maiden in a children’s story.

“They won’t make a fool of me again,” I promise, averting my gaze from him.

He reaches for my clenched fist and squeezes it, just once. It’s enough to slow my racing pulse. I take a deep breath and uncurl my fingers to squeeze his hand back. I didn’t expect him to reach out to me, to care about comforting me.

“Cruelty is tantalizing for fae. A taste and it becomes an addiction,” he warns me. “I think that’s why fae are so fond of inequitable contracts.”

I gently run my fingernails across the lines of his palm to his wrist. He shivers. Then I trace the crescent moon inked there. “Like ours.”

“It protects you,” he says. “It was the only way I could think of to protect you.”

“How? I’m the one who dies if I cross you. And you trust everyone else enough that you didn’t make a vow with them.” That’s bothered me ever since I arrived.

Desmond says nothing. He lies back and gazes skyward, as though the answer lies within the emerging stars.

I lie beside him and let the cool earth soothe my headache. We stargaze, our hands clasped between us.

Then I turn my head to face him, and the soft crimson glow on his golden skin is almost as entrancing as glamour. The dark grass brings out the earthy green of his eyes, and the dying light cuts umber shadows across his elegant cheekbones. He’s beautiful—and it’s not just the fae in him.

My stomach flips. I must still be inebriated. “Was it hard?” I ask to distract myself from it. “Growing up as half-human in the Hollowlands?”

“It was at times. I don’t age at the same rate as pure fae,” he confesses. “You would think that outpacing my peers would be a blessing, but the high fae who look my age have decades of experience on me.”

“Like Auri and Finnian?”

“They’re twenty-two years older than me.”

Gods, that’s longer than Evie has been alive. I raise a brow at him. “Then how old are you?”

“Forty-five.” A smile dimples his cheek. “If I were fully human, I would be around thirty.”

“And in ten more years, you’ll look a lot older than the other fae?”

He nods. “Odd, isn’t it? I’m out of sync with my own people.”

No kidding. His disadvantage must be astronomical, and yet they respect him as their leader. Auri even harbors affections for him, a thought that makes my insides twist.

“Does that ever make you feel more human than fae?” I ask. His nineteen years on me aren’t disconcerting. I already knew that time ran differently for the fae, although I didn’t realize by how much.

“My father wasn’t around to influence me, so I never felt human,” he answers. “It didn’t help that the fae saw me as half-enemy. Though few dared to voice it since my mother’s wrath is so unforgiving.”

Half-enemy. I swallow the lump in my throat. “In Avedor, we’re taught that the fae are amicable to the truce.”

He laughs, low and quiet. “If you suggested as much to them, they’d fight over who gets to roast your entrails.”

I scrunch my nose. “How lovely. Are there other half-fae?”

“We were more common when the Hollowlands doors weren’t guarded by Avedor. Now there aren’t many. They died in battle.”

My heart wilts for him. I remember the vision of Desmond that Gashil forced me to witness. It was so vivid that I can’t help but believe it was a memory. The plumes of fire, the screams and the bodies, his soldiers following him with gruesome injuries. The haunted look in Desmond’s eyes as he left them behind.

I’ve been taught that the war had to happen. Before it, changelings were common as weeds. Unseelie fae hunted Avedorans for sport. We were captured and enchanted to satisfy their whims, then discarded when they tired of us.