I sit down, and Therin waves for one of the servers to bring more ale and food for me. “She finally joins us. I was starting to think you’d sworn some kind of oath against company.”
“Therin.” Vessara shakes her head.
“What? I’m just saying.”
A serving girl brings food, and another pitcher of ale.
“You did well today,” Therin says. “Another few weeks and you might actually start looking dangerous to trees.”
Sorel snorts.
“High praise.” I roll my eyes at him.
“Be thankful I only threw stones at you. Cairn used to shoot arrows at my head while I was practicing.Realarrows. He said if we couldn’t focus through fear, we’d be useless in a real fight.”
“That’s horrifying.”
“That’s Cairn.” Therin grins. “He once made me run from one end of Silvermoon Bay to the other because I complained about being tired.”
“Silvermoon Bay?”
“Where we lived in Underhill.”
“You were being dramatic,” Serath says before I can ask any more.
“We’d just come back from dealing with Methusalan. I had a broken rib.”
“You had abruisedrib.”
They bicker with an easy familiarity that makes me smile, and I eat and drink, soaking up the warmth of their friendship as they talk about something involving Sorel, a stolen chicken, and an angry farmer. Vessara disputes the details, while Serath laughs until she cries.
“What was it like?” I ask during a lull in the conversation. “Before. When you were—” I gesture vaguely, not really sure how to phrase it. “Where you lived, I mean.”
The table goes quiet.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have?—”
“Underhill is beautiful and terrible. Wild in ways your world doesn’t understand.” It’s Serath who answers me. “There are places where the land itself sings.”
I think about the stories I grew up on. The Wild Hunt riding through the darkness, fae bargains that never worked out for the human involved.
“The stories always make you sound like monsters. Especially the Wild Hunt. They’re always linked with death.”
Kaelith smiles. “We are death, sometimes. When it is warranted.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your stories always have some truth to them, enough to twist anyway.”
“The human stories talk about the Wild Hunt and the hundreds of fae who ride. But the Nightwild Guard only has twelve of us, bound by oath and blood.”
I look around the table. “You five, Vel, Caelum and Cairn make eight.”
“Cairn isn’t counted. He’s the Eldráfn. Twelve plus him.”
“That still leaves five. Where are they?”
The silence that follows is answer enough. They don’t know.
