He lifted his head, lofting a heavy eyebrow trisected by slashing white scars. His arms showed evidence of the wounds as well. Finger-knives were such deadly vicious weapons. It had been so long since she’d lived in the Pixie Lands, she’d almost forgotten. The damage they’d done to Damion hurt her heart. Not that she would’ve allowed anyone to know she had a heart—a heart never did a Pixie Rae any good.
“I’m not flattering you.” His eyes flashed as if insulted.
“What are you... ?” She pursed her lips. It was a stupid question. If Damion was here, there could only be one explanation. He, too, had been exiled. She cleared her throat. “Alanna?”
His gaze lowered. “Taken the High Road.”
“How?”
When his eyes rose to meet hers again, they burned with cold steely light. “Lavana. Ten months ago. I would’ve come sooner, but... I was gravely wounded. I almost didn’t survive. And it took a long time to find you.”
“Lavana let you escape alive?”
His brow plunged. “When it was clear the battle was lost, my mistress bade me to flee. I entreated her to allow me to die by her side, but she ordered me to save myself. I could not defy my mistress.”
She stepped forward and grasped his scarred face in her hands. He flinched, his eyes widening. Fear, anger, anxiety, shame, she could feel them all ebbing off his skin, seeping through her palms in waves—cold, hot, stinging, painful.
“I feel your grief,” she murmured, tears pricking her eyes.
The hard luster in his gaze faltered. “You honor me.”
Hands sliding back, breaking their connection gently, she could see the fierce light in his eyes flare back, stronger than ever. A swell filled her chest. A smile tugged at the edges of her lips.
“I’ve missed the sight of a true Pixie warrior,” she said to him. “Come in, please.”
She moved back into the messy little living room. Overhead, a ceiling fan chugged away, cooling the midday heat. The air conditioning had cut out last month during the heat wave, and she barely made enough to pay the lot fee, let alone fix the A/C.
Seeing Damion again was good, but it was also disconcerting. It had been so long since any new arrivals had come from Alfheim, which was the whole of the old world, including the southern archipelago islands of the Elves, called the Realms, and the northern Lands of the Pixies. Suddenly, she saw the cluttered house as he must have—flimsy, dirty, alien. How strange the human world had seemed to her seven years before when she’d first arrived, barely alive herself after her own lost battle.
Damion edged in. The screen door screeped as it swung and then slammed shut behind him.
“You’re welcome to stay, of course,” she said, closing the empty pizza box left on the coffee table. “My home is yours,”—she grinned apologetically—“for whatever it’s worth.”
“I have come to offer my fealty to you, cousin,” he said, voice a steady solid rumble deep in his broad chest. “Unless you think it unworthy.”
She sank onto the creaking, cracked white leather sofa that had been left by the previous owner. “I’m afraid you’re the one who might find me unworthy of your great skill and loyalty.”
His expression darkened. “Not so great.”
“I’m sorry about Alanna,” she said.
His eyes narrowed.
“I am,” she insisted. “She may have won the right to the family, but I don’t begrudge her. Her victory was fair. She could’ve chosen to kill me, but she allowed me to go into exile instead.”
“Only because you were a child,” he said. “Not because she was magnanimous.”
She laughed. “I only hope you remain so forthright, cousin.”
The smallest of smiles played at the edges of his lips. “So long as you wish to hear the truth.”
“Please,” she said. “No one in our family has ever been served by all the lies.”
“No one?” he asked.
Her smile faded. “Their way is not my way anymore. I’m not the girl I was all those years ago. I’m not a Rae. I’m just...”—she sat back, kicking her heels up on the nick-ridden coffee table—“a lifeguard who lives in a trailer park.”
He glanced towards the open sliding doors, where there was a small deck facing the ocean. A warm breeze, scented of sand and salt water, trickled in every now and then. Over her neighbors’ rooftops, the Pacific cut a swath all the way to the horizon. Blue on blue.
