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Her instincts whispered to her, a gentle murmur on the wind, one she doubted any of the Therians would—or could—notice. The warning spoke to her Fae nature, a creature tied to the earth in ways she still didn’t understand. She’d tried to strangle that aspect of her nature in the past, but it had grown harder every year, likely driven by her isolation.
Now that inner voice was rising, stretching awake, demanding to be heard.
Shale brushed a gentle hand down her arm. “Zennia?”
She looked at him, realized he’d been speaking to her.
She was so distracted she hadn’t even noticed. “I’m sorry. My mind is wandering.”
“You’ve got enough on it.” A rueful smile. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you decided to just take off for a good, long run. If you feel the need... ” He gave her a wicked smile. “I’ll have to put up with a solid bitching from Niko, but to get away from this, it would be worth it, so if you feel so inclined... ?”
She chuckled but shook her head. “No.”
“Very well.” With a droll smile, he nodded off to her right where a couple waited. “I believe somebody wishes to make your acquaintance.”
Zee readied herself for another round of faux well wishes but then she looked—really looked at the woman who had started her way—and she almost fell on her ass.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, only to immediately turn a bright, flustered red.
Because the woman had heard.
Of course she’d heard.
To Zee’s embarrassed relief, the tall, reed-slim woman with hair of silvery-white gave her a humorous smile. “I hope that horror on your face isn’t directed at me, Ms. Day.”
“No!” If ever there was a time for any of the supposed earth magic all Fae supposedly possessed, even if all she had was just a bare sliver, now was the time for Zee’s to become active. The earth needed to open up, this second, and swallow her whole. “I mean, um... shit. Can we just start over?”
Eirian Starfell Romero, one of the few heroes of the Slaughters who still lived, smiled.
It made the woman radiant. She was already beautiful, rivaling even Meridia. But with that smile, it was enough to leave Zee feeling a bit dazzled.
Now she could understand the old tales of Fae women, bewitching passersby with simply a look.
Eirian was beautiful.
“There’s no need to do that, but if you wish... we can pretend we just caught sight of each other.” She held out a hand. “Hello. I’d like to introduce myself, Ms. Day. I’m Leana Shea Romero, although you may know me as Eirian Starfell.”
Starfell—her parents, Ewan and Tracey, were two of the most famous heroes of the Slaughters, particularly in this region. Durham-Starfell has been renamed in their honor after the treaties were signed.
It took a moment for the other name to make sense though, but then, as Zee remembered one of the unofficial documentaries she’d watched about Eirian—no, Leana. All the documentaries were unofficial, as the Nightdweller Fae had never consented to talk to any of the filmmakers.
The woman had chosen a simple life, one where she lived among mortals and worked with a local police department with her human husband, Ashton Romero—and someone with whom she shared a soul bond, if rumors were true.
Gaze tracking to the tall, lean male whose hair had only started to gray at his temples, Zee surmised those rumors had to be true, because if her memory served her right, he’d been alive at the centennial celebration of the end of the Pretern Wars fifty years earlier.
Yet he didn’t look much older than Niko.
Lips twitching as if he knew what she was thinking, he nodded at her, but didn’t offer a hand to shake.
“Ms. Day. I’m Ash, Leana’s husband,” he said in greeting. “Sympathies on the loss of your father.”
“Did either of you know him?”
Leana cocked her head to the side, studying her for a long moment, then with a casually elegant shrug, she said, “Yes. I knew him. I despised him.”
The blunt statement caught Zee off guard.
Next to her, Shale’s subtle tensing didn’t go unnoticed, not by any of them.
