AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Javi had done exactly as I bid in sending Talia out to the back pasture to collect a horse, but still I couldn’t keep my heavy breathing under control as I angled toward her in the tall grass.
Javi had once been a little gray mouse, trapped under an awful curse even worse than mine. But he’d completed the requirements to break the enchantment—took him almost the entirety of four hundred years—and regained his freedom. With his help managing the horses, I used what remained of my diminished magic to maintain the enchantments that blanketed Starfell.
Not far ahead, Talia gripped the halter in tight fingers. She held one hand over her eyes to shield her from the bright sun and scanned the wide, sloping pasture. If she could sense my magic at all yet, she might try calling Tinieblas; he would, of course, come directly. But as of this moment, she had no idea how to employ magic.
I pawed my way forward, sticking to the tallest grasses and the shade of the occasional tree, always out of her periphery. Fae didn’t marry humans because it tied us to their mortal weakness, an abomination to most of my kind. My kind married mortals to acquire their immunity to iron, but then, these brides would never be the sole marriage partner of a high fae. A mortal bride was more like a concubine, a mistress even, though vows were technically exchanged to bind the magics together. In all our records, only a handful of immortals had ever married humans for love, and they were the laughingstock of our own histories. There were, however, powers mortals possessed that fae did not. Like the power to see past weakness.
Talia spun around, looking for Tinieblas, and I flattened myself against the earth, inhaling the rich scent of warm dirt and grass. It was because mortals were so fragile and fleeting that they could love that which was also broken and dying. My curse could never be lifted by the love of one of my kind. How odd, that a thing as small and delicate as a blade of grass, here today and gone tomorrow, had the very power I needed.
Sunlight danced off her hair and warmed her skin with a fine rosy blush. Glamours made women lovely, but they were masks; Talia needed no mask to be lovely. She had a small bump in her nose that gave her a more authoritative look. She held her eyes narrow and tight, always scrutinizing and assessing her surroundings. She was not one to be trifled with. I doubted many mortal men had dared approach her, given her hard expression, but that made her all the more exemplary in my mind. I imagined Talia didn’t toss around flirtatious eyes meant only to tease. If she looked at a man with longing, it was real and unmasked.
And despite everything that was at stake, I wanted her to look at me that way.
I snorted, and the grasses rustled.
She glanced my direction, her brow pinched and eyes searching. Sun above, had she already inherited my fae hearing? It would happen eventually, but the full manifestation of magic in a mortal usually took a while, sometimes years. After a moment, she kept walking.
A few steps later, I sensed it—the presence of another animal in the field. Large. Hungry. Eyes sharp and ears alert, I scanned the field. One of my beasts had escaped his confines and was searching. Slinking faster now, I sniffed the wind, the ground, the grass. Where was he?
Stars, Talia was still far away and completely oblivious that she was being hunted. Did she even have a knife on her? I started running, loping at full speed toward her.
There. On the wind, as subtle as the smell of a steel blade, I caught the scent of dragon.
Sun forsake me. The dragon had gotten loose.
The wingless creature, once a fearsome beast that had been cursed and cursed again, had been twisted from a true dragon to that of a slithering monstrosity. He moved like liquid wax, burning his path with the fire in his belly that could never again produce true flames. I charged, finally spotting the place the grasses rustled. Friend or not, I would kill him if he touched her.
Talia! Curse this useless tongue!
Gathering all the magic I could, I screamed into the dragon’s mind. Leave her! Return at once!
The dragon slowed, hissed, and watched her flee. The anger rolling off his scales soured in my nostrils. His diamond-shaped head jerked toward her, and the ground rent beneath me as my claws ripped up dirt and grass. I roared. The dragon shrank back. Then he curled around and slithered back toward the massive barn that housed the cursed creatures.
Talia wheeled, dropping into a terrified crouch. Her eyes scanned the field, locked on me, and then blanched with fear. She must not have seen the dragon in the tall grass. She breathed quickly, shallowly, but her eyes remained fixed on me from a short distance across the field. I waited for her to scream. Instead, as soon as my eyes met hers, she gasped.
Her voice shook as she called out. “Wait… Are you…”
Great sun above, she knew it was me. I stood to my full height, not that I could pretend to be a man in this furry flesh, but I hated to remain on my paws as she studied me with those piercing eyes. I came out here to make her fear me—for her sake, she needed to.
But as I stood there, inhaling and exhaling my great huffing breaths, I hungered for her gaze, for her to see my cursed flesh and not flinch in fear.
She stepped back as I rose, her eyes widening. Was that a smile forming on her lips?
First and Last, forgive me.
For in that small smile, I tasted my own freedom, and with that taste I knew nothing else—nothing—save the intoxicating desire to drink in her approval.
27
Talia
A massive grayish-brown bear stood before me. The bear breathed loudly as he returned my gaze, giving me a chance to study his beastly form. His head was enormous, his arms thick, and his paws the size of dinner plates.
When he’d turned toward me a moment ago, I’d frozen, pinned under both fear and wonder. I wasn’t afraid of him, not the way I’d been afraid of the Wild Hunters, but his size and his nearness and even the way he’d moved and growled sent little waves of panic down my exposed skin. He was utterly terrifying and, also, hauntingly beautiful—the way a dagger could be both lovely and frightening.
Staring into familiar brown eyes, realization dawned on me like a map spread out for a wayward soul: the bear’s claws matched the scratch marks in the library. Sinsorias had assumed Rafael lived in a cave. He disappeared during the day, and when he’d roared in the entryway that night, it had sounded entirely like the throaty growl this bear emitted as it charged across the field.
I stared long and hard, from the enormous hind legs to the way the fur clumped around his chest, his snout, his claws, and his…eyes. They were Rafael’s without a doubt.
