“They were very nice,” Declan admitted, quiet.“I’d break either of them, Mother.You said there was a third?”
Plates of food slid into existence on the counter.Aisling nudged a plate toward him, head shaking, eyes large and depthless.“He’s unsuitable, precious.I told you that too.”
Unsuitable, and Declan didn’tcare.Everil had said much the same about Bo, the first Declan met the human.Declan himself fit the definition as well as any human if the rest of the world had anything to say about it.
Sluagh were the dangerous and toxic fascination of Faerie, acidic and rotten.Few wished to bond a thing others calledmonster.Declan’s father was one of the rare sluagh to find someone willing to share his soul.And he’d been selected for his bond as a child, raised up to be a proper companion to a seelie.As much a bodyguard as anything.
Now he was busy with his wisp bond, Yomore, and House duties more often than not.But at least they liked each other.That too, was rare, for sluagh.
“Unsuitable how?”Declan picked up an impossibly small pie between index finger and thumb, studying it with narrowed eyes.“If he’s a public figure like Bo, I insist on meeting him.”
“No, precious.He was a fae’s pet, once.Put away when no longer entertaining, I imagine.He seemed quite put out about the whole thing.And I gathered that his opinion of the fae hasn’t improved since.”
Aisling shrugged, the picture of nonchalance.Declan’s attention focused in on her with a raptor’s intent.Aislingnonchalantsat at the same level of alarming as did her smiling sweetly.
“Oh?”
“He mentioned an encounter with a kelpie a couple years past.Apparently, the kelpie took up with a mortal.When he attempted to warn the mortal off, the kelpie cursed him.”
Cursed by a kelpie.Even if Declan weren’t clever, it didn’t take a genius to work outwhichkelpie; not many fae took up with mortal lovers.Certainly no kelpies, as far as the fae gossip network was concerned.
Only Everil and his Bo, crowned by Faerie and confirmed by the Council.
“He was upsetting Bo.I didn’t eat him.”
“Well, Hollow are rare.Too bad I wasn’t there.Would’ve given him a proper fright.”
“He’s a Hollow?”Declan asked, flat as the kelpie in question might.
“Yes,” Aisling answered, soft.So damned soft.She didn’t look at him.“He’s a Hollow, lovely boy.”
Hollow, the scant number of humans who couldn’t see fae glamour.Declan hadn’t studied the specifics, but he knew that as well as anyone.Rare, as he told Everil.
Hollow, and what hope stubbornly attempted to wriggle into being dissolved once more.Oh, it would be ideal, having a partner who knew of the fae already.Less of a jolt.But a Hollow?
Fewfaeknew what sluagh looked like without the niceties of glamour.
Eyes like a bird of prey, but pale, nearly white from pupil to lashes, bright against the dark circles that spanned eyebrow to zygomatic.Conical teeth made for crushing and rending flesh.Monster’s teeth, blunted at the ends than the shark razors of Everil’s kelpie form.Gaunt.And the wings, bat-like and bones only.Claws that would bury several inches deep into flesh, though Declan kept his trimmed.Midnight purple at lips and those claws and matching bands at his wrists, with cracks up the length of his arms and torso and neck, legs.Starting black to purple and fading to pale gray.
Everything sharp.
“Ah,” is what Declan said.The pie tasted neither of oilskin nor sugar.Only ash.“What did he do?”
What had the Hollow done when he sawAisling.Banshees, all teeth and eyes, angles and pitch black, smiles fit to split their own skull.Declan thought it a lovely combination, but Declan thought a lot of things others disagreed with.
“He told me to leave, then helped me find Puck.Very polite about it, or as much as I imagine he could be with the circumstances.”Her lips twitched in wry amusement.“To his credit, it was more on me being fae than a banshee.”
“Ah.”Voids and starshine, when did he stop being able to speak?
“There’s– Sweetness, there’s no chance he’ll say yes.It’s why he’s unsuitable.”She said it so softly.Declan loathed that softness, as if he were about to break over a single rejection.“Not because of you.Not anything about you.He doesn’t want to be a part of this world, hummingbird.He’s amechanic.He surrounds himself in iron.It’s kinder to leave him be.”
The Hollow would say no.Declan knew that.If anything in the worlds was certain, it was that.A no or a look so filled with disgust and fear as to be a rejection without words.
If he saidyes, though–
He wouldn’t.But if he did, it would be a bond with a human who knew how dangerous fae were.One with survival instincts, or at least enough brass to face Everil, knowing what he was, to help Bo.
At least a rejection would be familiar.It’d not sit the way knowing he threw two possible bonds together for beingtoo niceandtoo soft.He had standards.(So did the mechanic, from the sounds of it.Another reason Declan would return home without.)
