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Luz clapped their hands together and marched back to the tent site. I followed behind them, uncertain if I’d made the right choice. Never had I felt this sense of protection over someone before. I’d not even known Lira for a full day, and yet, the idea of either dropping her off to her fate or including her in our plans seemed unbearable.
Luz was right, though. It should be Lira’s choice. It wasn’t my place to take that from her. She’d wound up in our group by some stroke of fate. Luz’s magic could determine if she was trustworthy in case something had broken in my ability to stay detached.
CHAPTEREIGHT
LIRA
Elisa,with her kind green eyes, and gentle expression, was magical apparently. Golden sunlight brought out highlights in her curls and illuminated her creamy complexion and the splash of freckles that trailed over her nose. She didn’t look fae. She appeared human. An exceptionally beautiful human, but despite that, she didn’t sparkle or gleam or have pointed ears like fairies did in the books. Or did she? I couldn’t tell from behind the thick texture of her hair. I tuned back into what she said as her voice took on a musical note. “—and that’s why I wasn’t well last night.”
Right. She had been explaining magic to me. “Do all magical beings get exhausted if they use too much of their powers?”
Sai and Luz walked into the clearing, standing beside Neia who had watched my conversation with Elisa with careful eyes but hadn’t contributed. Elisa acted like she didn’t notice the tension stringing through the other three. “It depends on the level of magic a fae possesses of course but—”
“Are you a fae?”
Elisa’s brow wrinkled, and she exchanged a look with Neia before offering me an uncertain smile. “All magical beings are fae, including you.”
I leaned away from her as if to separate from that thought. No. That wasn’t true. Or was it? How much did I actually know about the magical world except that Mother avoided it? We were supposed to use our magic as little as possible because it could attract fae and I hadn’t asked questions. Mother had always acted like sirens differed completely from fairies. She detested fairies and their magic but approved of our powers of compelling. I knew more about magic from novels which I suspected were more fantastical than reality.
Sai crossed his arms, and when he spoke my breath caught. I didn’t know what it was about him that made it hard to think when he looked at me. “We have a proposition for you, Lira.”
Neia stared at him for half a dozen heartbeats, some silent conversation passing between them, before she tossed her hands in the air and walked over to a tent which she pulled down with a frustrated grunt. I couldn’t blame Neia if she didn’t like me. I’d gotten her partner in an unfortunate situation the day before and had been nothing but a burden to the group.
“Yes?”
“We have a job we’re about to do and wanted to ask if you’d like to join.”
The way Luz looked at me—looked through me, really—made me want to curl my knees against my chest and hide. I swallowed. “A job?”
Neia chimed in for the first time that morning. “How do you feel about justified robbery?”
“You’re robbers?” Elisa chuckled like it was a joke, and Luz raised their chin, as if they were proud of the title. I fiddled with a ruined end of lace ribbon on my dress, the tattered strands gritty under my fingers. “I suppose I should have guessed as much since I met you taking coins from someone’s wagon.”
Sai’s voice hardened. “We weren’t stealing from the humans.”
I stood and faced him. I may not know about the fae, who these people were, or what they were doing in Landre, but he had clearly been stealing coins from that wagon when I’d stopped him. Fixing my gaze on his soulful brown eyes was like staring into the sun until it hurt. My stupid, ridiculous heart gave another painful lurch before I kept my voice steady. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” He lifted a pouch from his pocket, drew out an emerald the size of an acorn, and raised it into a ray of sunshine so that the gem shimmered. “We left stones worth far more than any money we took. We have a need for human money while we travel but can’t trade without bringing suspicion of what we are.”
“What are you?”
I blurted the words out before thinking, and his eyes flashed as he raised his chin. “I’m a fairy.”
I took a step back and crossed my arms. Was everyone in this group fairies? Were they dangerous? They’d seemed so normal. “But you don’t have pointed ears.”
Sai laughed and Elisa joined him, her nose wrinkling before he spoke again. “Don’t believe everything you read in books.”
“Are you Seelie or Unseelie?”
Neia hissed as she whirled around and stormed towards me. “There’s no such thing.” I stumbled away from her and tripped over a root before I grasped the ivory form of a birch tree to stay upright.
Sai grabbed Neia’s arm. “She clearly doesn’t know our ways; let’s assume the best.”
“He’s right,” Luz said. “She’s unaware… of quite a lot in fact.”
Sai turned up the hem of his jacket’s sleeve into a perfectly smooth roll. “Unseelie is an insult the Seelie created for our court, the Prasanna Fae.”
I crossed my arms and took in the group. Luz seemed unimpressed, Elisa maintained her gentle expression, Sai appeared wary, but Neia still glowered at me, and I spoke to her. “I… I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
