AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What about you? What’s your drink?” I asked.
“That depends,” she said. “But right now I think I’d like a mocha. Something about mochas remind me of the holidays. Especially if they put a little peppermint in it. Mmm…”
I ordered our drinks and she tried to give me money to pay for hers, but I waved it away. “My treat,” I said. “To celebrate your first ride.” We moved to the end of the counter to wait.
“Hey,” she said. “That reminds me. I saw some stone ruins on the way here. Do you know what they were?”
“The ones off in the middle of the field?” I pulled out a chair and sat down at one of the tables.
“We passed a lot of fields. But yeah. The one that had stones instead of sheep.” She slid into the chair across from me and slipped her long, thin hands out of the fleece gloves I’d lent her.
“They’re the remains of an ancient temple. Your uncle published a paper on it. Fascinating stuff. But most tourists don’t know any of that history. They just read the bit in the guidebook and come snap a few photos before having a lark about town and driving home.”
“Huh. I’d love to go check them out, after I read my uncle’s paper, of course,” she said. I realized that I’d never asked her field of study or what she did for work. I tended to forget how invested humans were in that sort of thing. If I intended to win her over, I would have to do better.
“Sure. I can get that paper for you and take you out there when you’re ready,” I said. “Of course, you should also check out the guidebooks if you want to learn about the local legends and superstitions. They’re not the best source for information on that type of thing, but they do a good summary.”
“What kind of legends?” she asked.
I shrugged. The barista called my name to pick up our order, and I returned to the counter to retrieve our drinks. I handed Evelyn her mocha and waited for her to take a sip. She tipped the cup against her lips and closed her eyes.
“Wow! You guys take mochas to a whole new level!” She licked a bit of foam off her lip, drawing my focused attention to her bow-shaped mouth.
“It’s the chocolate,” I said, finding my words.
She took another sip and nodded. “Definitely the chocolate. But the milk, too. It all tastes so fresh!” She appeared to be completely ignorant of my struggle to maintain a platonic conversation and not lean across the table and lick the foam from her lips myself.
“Well, some of those cows we rode past probably contributed to the effort.” I took a sip of my espresso and pictured those very unsexy cows, hoping that might help cool me off.
She nodded. “Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.” She took another sip. “So tell me about these legends and what they have to do with my uncle.”
I sighed in relief. Perfect way to distract me. Talk about history. “Well, they’re mostly ghost stories. Certain times of year when people claim that you can go there and speak with the souls that have crossed over. That sort of thing.”
“Why would people think that?” She wrinkled her nose and frowned. If she hadn’t just been telling me how great her drink was, I’d have thought she’d tasted something sour.
I hesitated before responding, just long enough to give my brain a chance to sort the human stories from my family history. I couldn’t lie to her, but it would be safer if I stuck to telling only the things other humans knew.
“Hunting has always been important in this area, at first for survival, and then, later, for sport.” Arabella, as captain of the Queen’s Guard, had earned the title of Huntress among the Fae. Humans might consider her a goddess, I supposed. Any who still believed, anyway. But I pushed those details to the background and focused on what Evelyn’s uncle would tell her. “Most historians, your uncle included, believe that it was a temple dedicated to the Goddess of the Hunt.”
“You mean, Diana?”
“Similar. Each culture appears to have put their own twist on the God or Goddess of the Hunt in their mythologies. Around here, the Goddess of the Hunt was believed to be one of the Fae.” I needed to tread carefully here. Strictly speaking, the historians didn’t officially agree on this conclusion. But I knew the truth.
“Are you telling me that my uncle actually wrote an academic paper saying the Goddess of the Hunt was a faerie?” She said this like I’d just told her that her uncle had exposed himself in public.
Of course Oscar had not written that, precisely, because he couldn’t, and not for the reasons she thought. I struggled to find an acceptable response that wouldn’t involve lying. “This is the land of the Fae, Evelyn,” I said. As long as I stuck to human facts and beliefs, no one could accuse me of breaking our laws.
Oscar knew about the Fae. Years ago, he’d encountered the Hunt and been granted an exception as a descendent of Edric and Godda. But he’d been sworn to secrecy because no humans could know of the Fae. The price for revealing our secrets or learning of our existence was death. I was fairly certain he hadn’t guessed my true identity, but I couldn’t be certain without breaking any number of rules.
“But those are just stories they tell children.” Something in her tone told me that she wouldn’t be swooning from excitement if she found out about my heritage. The thought made me smile. It would be nice to find someone who liked me for me and not because I was the son of the Faerie Queen. But I would never know how she really felt about it because telling her would mean signing her death sentence. I pushed the thought away and refocused on the conversation.
“It’s also history because it influenced what the people who lived here before us believed. It affected how they lived their lives.” She seemed like someone who would appreciate this more rational argument.
She took another sip of her mocha and looked thoughtfully out the window. “I suppose,” she said.
“So do you still want me to tell you about the legends?” I almost hoped she’d say no. This conversation was reminding me that I should be back at the house, searching for an artifact, not sitting here trying to impress a human woman and fool myself into thinking I was only doing this because Oscar had asked me to.
“Sorry,” she said. “Go on.” She finished the last sip of her mocha and licked her lips before dabbing them with a napkin.
