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“She’s something of a legend among the fae. She fought fiercely alongside us for centuries but always refused to bond with any of us. None of the fae have even heard her speak before, as far as I know. When there are no battles to fight, she disappears, and no one can find her. Two decades ago, she vanished entirely. No one had seen her since then until today.”
Well, that took me aback.
“Why?”
Eisley shrugged. “People would always say that she was waiting for her companion to be born. The assumption was that she must have a soul-deep connection with her companion, one that lasted beyond the veil separating us from the life before and the life after. But fae aren’tbornanymore. We stopped procreating when the last of the mated pairs were murdered, shortly after my birth. Between the horror of that and everyone’s focus on the war, there haven’t been any new babies, so we didn’t know if she’d ever meet her companion.”
“People in my town would see an esu in the woods behind our village every now and then while I was growing up,” I admitted. “I felt an itch to go out looking for her my entire life, but my father kept me in the village as a kid, and then…” I bit my lip. “Well, it didn’t happen.”
I didn’t want to tell her about my tower.
I didn’t even want tothinkabout that prison.
“Does Kier know you’ve been starving?” Eisley asked, abruptly.
My throat swelled.
So much for avoiding that conversation. “I don’t think so.”
Eisley bobbed her head. “Don’t tell him. Mated fae are driven to care for their mates, so he’d make you insane by shoving food in your face constantly until your ribs aren’t showing.” She handed me the fabric bundle in her hands. “This will probably be too big, but it’ll cover more of your skin than anything else I have. We can find you some clothes of your own after tonight’s event is over. It already went long, and with Kier there, it’s going to go even longer.”
I dropped my towel and dressed quickly. The fae undergarments were smaller than human ones, just triangles of fabric that barely covered the important bits, but I wasn’t entirely surprised given what Eisley was wearing. She said they called their undergarments “scanties,” and according to her, most of Evare did too.
The pain in my wrist was still pretty fierce, but it had faded enough that I could function a little.
“What’s the event?”
Eisley grinned. “A wrestling tournament. We started with weapons two weeks ago, and finally graduated to physical fighting without anything but your hands.”
Ah.
“It probably doesn’t sound interesting to a human since you aren’t as violent as us, but picture this—dozens of naked fae males rolling around together as they try to establish dominance.”
My cheeks went pink at her description as I tugged the dress into place. It was made up of rich black fabric with a top that arched over my breasts, a voluminous skirt that fell to the middle of my thighs, and two puffy sleeves that wrapped around my biceps and only connected to the dress with tiny strips of fabric.
“You look absolutely killer in black,” Eisley said with a grin. Despite what she’d expected, the dress wasn’t too big at all. In my starving state, I was about as wide around as a healthy fae woman. I’d definitely be more curvaceous than them when I gained a little of the weight back.
My stomach rumbled as if on cue, and I spread a hand over my abdomen.
Eisley’s grin vanished. “Let’s find you something fattening to eat, and you can meet the other human.”
She handed me a thick metal cuff bracelet to go around my wrist and cover up the handprint as we headed out of the room.
We found the other human woman sitting in a chair in the castle’s dining hall when we got there. She was alone at a massive table, with enough plates in front of her to feed the largest family in my town.
She waved when she saw me and Eisley, barely taking her attention off the food in front of her to do so. She wore a dress similar to mine, but hers was tight and the off-shoulder sleeves were long. Her skin was paler than anyone’s I’d ever seen, and her hair was somehow both red and orange at the same time.
Eisley gestured for me to sit next to the other human, so I slipped into a chair while she introduced us. “Laeli, this is Nissa. Nissa, this is Laeli.”
“You’re stuck with a fae bastard too?” Laeli asked me, cutting into something that smelled absolutely incredible.
My stomach rumbled again, louder. “Unfortunately.”
She nodded. “It sucks, but at least there’s food. I’ve been locked in a damn cellar since my magic came in, and my town rarely bothered to feed me.”
“I was trapped in a tower,” I admitted.
She shivered. “I donotdo well with heights, so I don’t envy you. Here.” She pushed one of her plates over to me.
