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??I am sorry for your problem, but if Pestale is here, then here is where I must be to do my job, and doing that, you must see, will also be the solution to hopefully get you back in time to do yours.” He said, “Now, before we go inside the inn, you must tell me just what you are, Jazmine Decker, for we both know you are quite a bit more than human.”
She realized she wasn’t afraid of him any longer. For one thing, she had remembered the Treaty: Fae were prohibited from causing any permanent injury to humans. She sighed, for she knew the Treaty didn’t stop them from playing their pranks, but it did prohibit them from doing more than that. In addition, her inner self told her this Royal would consider it beneath him to bother playing planks on her. He seemed sincere about returning her to her life, but would he still do that if he knew what she was?
Should she just tell him that she was a seer? He would guess it in the end. She opened her mouth but instead of telling him said, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!”
“No, that is correct. You would be dead,” he answered pragmatically. “Now, if we could get back to my question. What, Jazmine Decker, are you?”
“Listen here, Royal. I am a tour guide, and very soon, this fall in fact, I will be a marine biologist at the Charleston Aquarium, and … oh, never mind.” A sudden urge to cry tickled her throat.
“Yes, but that is not what I am asking,” he said, displaying something close to a temper, which surprised her. She had been raised to believe the Fae were an alien race, superior mentally and thus coldly detached and unemotional. His constant change of facial and body language disputed that old theory and gave her pause. She would have to rethink this later.
Her reticence had obviously annoyed him, and her brows went up as he shouted, “Now, tell me not who you are, or what you do, but WHAT YOU ARE!” Clearly he had lost patience as he hovered threateningly.
“Rude!” she declared as her own temper came to the fore. She had been hauled off to another time by forces out of her control, and he was treating her with anything but compassion. Out of frustration she hauled off and kicked him in the shins, and then she gasped at her audacity.
Pain did not register on his face, but she was certain from his slight flinch that he had felt some. Then he put a finger in her face and warned, “Do that again, and you will be sorrier than you ever dreamed possible. Now, back to my question before I lose interest and leave you here to fend for yourself.”
She hesitated, and then said, bending her neck back slightly so she could look up and meet his gaze, “You must first promise not to take me as a prisoner to Faery.”
“Why would I do such a thing?” he asked incredulously.
“Because it is what the Seelie Fae have always done.”
“What are you talking about, Jazmine Decker?”
“I am a Fios, as was my mother before me and her mother before her and so on.” She saw his expression of dawning understanding, and a shiver of dread went through her.
He slapped his forehead. “Indeed, why did I not realize immediately? Absurd creature. We have not carried off anyone to our Isles of Tir since the Treaty was signed. If you are a Fios, why do you not know that?”
“We are raised to be cautious,” she answered.
“I should have known. A Fios … I am acquainted with a Fios. My brother had some interest in her awhile back.” He frowned at her and added, “You are very different than BJ, who is a very talented Fios. You do not seem as talented as she.”
She put her hands on her hips. “How do you know? You haven’t seen me in action.”
“True,” he said on a laugh. He bent towards her, wrapped an arm around her, and held her close. “I look forward to that—seeing you in action, Fios.”
She felt herself blush, but he was already straightening up and telling her, “Very well, then, we have no time for this. We must track this fresh scent and see what we may find.”
“Why wouldn’t he disguise his scent?” she asked. “I mean if he is a Dark Royal, doesn’t he have dark magic? My mother said Fae are capable of disguising, concealing, themselves from one another.”
“Not exactly true, but, yes, for short periods of time even the Unseelie, at least the Royals, can conceal their scent, but he doesn’t know we are here, does he?”
“Right.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t know we were sucked into the portal.” She sighed and then frowned once more to ask, “Why didn’t you immediately realize I was a Fios?”
“Your scent misled me. As I said, BJ, who is a part of our ragtag team, and I have an acquaintance. We fought the Unseelie together not so very long ago. Her scent is very different than yours.” He bent, took a long whiff, and mumbled softly, “Very different.”
She stepped back and said sharply, “Hey! Well, as to that, early in the Fios history, way back in the day before the Treaty, we seers found a way to disguise our scent from the Fae. A different genetic formula for each of our family lines so that Fae could not pick up on any one common link.”
He considered her with a thoughtful gaze and said, “Very well, then, more than human, not immortal, and with only limited powers.”
She wanted to kick him in the shins again but controlled herself and said, “Tell me more about the Dark Prince.”
“You know all you need to know. He is deadly. He is without moral compunction of any sort. He wants out of the Dark Realm so he can rule the universe and will do anything to accomplish that final goal. Get in his way, and you will die.”
“Dontcha worry, bud. I am not about to get in his way.” Jazz’s tone added weight to her words.
