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I huffed at him. “Asshole.”
“I would also like to inspect that part of you, yes.”
A snort escaped me. “Seriously, you’re the male version of me.”
“You’re still avoiding it, Iloli.”
“And you’re still being a dick,” I shot back.
But then I forced myself to stop thinking—and I jumped.
The water engulfed me.
It was a shock to my whole damn system.
I didn’t move, at first. Just felt myself sink to the bottom of the icy lake. Small, smooth stones met my ass, and I let out a slow breath of air as my body adjusted to the cold. On Earth, I knew that snakes couldn’t create their own body heat, but I wasn’t an Earth snake. And, as I remained under the water, my lungs beginning to strain against the pressure, I got used to the temperature.
When I finally kicked off the ground, swimming up to the surface, I didn’t feel like I was dying anymore.
I was shivering wildly, though.
“Do you feel healed?” Remmo asked me.
“No.” My puffs had deflated, and now my hair was plastered to the top of my head, dripping freezing water into my eyes. “Tell me about the word, please? I’m going to swim around and see if the healing thing works.”
“A fae’s eyes only become mismatched when he has developed ultimate control over himself. It’s the goal of all unseelies—to become iloli.”
My nose wrinkled as I continued to tread water. “Why do they want ultimate control over themselves? And how could I have that?”
“There is power in self-control that the seelies refuse to recognize. Vevol’s magic sees it when someone develops that control, and changes them. As for how you developed it, I suppose I would need to know your past to say.”
My frown deepened. “I don’t think I really have self-control. If I see cake, I eat it. Period.”
He chuckled. “Not that kind of self-control, Sunny. It’s the ability to see yourself honestly, and control your emotions thoroughly.”
“Well, I definitely don’t have that either.”
“Don’t you?” His voice was slightly amused, and I felt like the question was rhetorical. “It applies to your physical forms as well. Some fae struggle to see both halves of themselves as one; your eyes declare that you do not.”
I guess he was right about that part. I’d still felt like myself, even the first time I shifted into my massive, creepy snake form. Honestly, I felt pretty damn powerful when I was scaly.
“I still don’t know why all of the unseelies would aim for that,” I admitted.
“Because otherwise, we were aimless,” he said simply. “We had no females. There was no potential for love, or children. This world held nothing for us, and yet here, we were trapped. Becoming iloli was a goal that united us in a time of pure loneliness and emptiness. Perhaps it meant nothing to the seelies, who were content to spend their time fighting each other, but the rest of us wished for a higher purpose.”
Huh.
When he said it like that, I guessed it made sense.
“How many of you became ilolis?”
“Not one.” He chuckled lightly. “If it hadn’t kept us alive, I’d say our effort did more harm than good, which is part of the reason why many of us are defecting to the seelie side. Our search for perfect control seems to have affected the females on our land negatively.”
The words felt like a nudge.
Maybe my ultimate control was doing more harm than good for me too.
“On Earth, I always had to walk on eggshells,” I admitted to him. “My family was abusive, and then my boyfriend was too. I got away from him for a while, but then he found me. I thought he was going to kill me. I had to learn how to wear a mask, to play a role, just to stay alive. That’s probably why I have the eyes.”
