“Oh shut up,” I snapped, darting around the frozen fae even as they struggled to free themselves of the ice. I knew it wouldn’t hold them for long, so I put on a burst of speed, disappearing beneath the cover of the forest. Einar followed, and we ran as fast as we could, until we’d reached the edge of the lake once more.
“We can’t stop here for long,” I said, panting as I leaned my hand against a tree trunk. “They’ll track us here.” I held up my left wrist, flashing the bracelet Mavlyn had clasped there. “We need to get to Talamh and find Lady Mossi. It’s our only hope.”
“You meanyouronly hope,” Einar retorted, eyes flashing. “You’re asking me, a dragon, to fly you into one of the three fae seats of power. They’ll slaughter me on the spot.”
I eyed him up and down, taking in his long hair, his tattoos, and his golden eyes. “Yes, they will. But I think I have a solution.”
He eyed me warily, no doubt seeing the wheels turning behind my eyes. “And what solution would that be?”
I grinned. “We’re going to turn you into a fae.”
12
Einar
“This is never going to work.”
Adara frowned. “What are you talking about? Of course it’s going to work, as long as you behave yourself and stop touching your ears.”
She smacked my hand down as I was reaching up to touch the pointed tips—again—and I scowled. “I can’t help it,” I snapped, my hand stinging. “It’s strange, having putty stuck to my ears.” I glanced down at my arm, which she’d covered with some kind of powder. It blended into my skin perfectly, hiding my flame tattoos. “And do you have any idea how disrespectful it is to cover these flames? It’s the equivalent of spitting on my ancestors’ graves.”
Adara rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure your ancestors are okay with a little grave spitting if it means you get to stay alive,” she said. “Now be quiet for a minute. I need to check on this potion.”
I snapped my mouth shut as Adara knelt down by the fire. She picked up the wooden spoon I’d fashioned and stirred the contents of the clay pot—also made by me—then dipped a finger into the piping hot liquid and licked it. The sight of her pink tongue darting out as she drew her finger into her mouth, lush lips puckering closed, sent a shot of heat straight to my groin, and I gritted my teeth against the unwelcome lust.
I would not give in to the mating bond. No matter how tempting this female was.
I had to admit she was intriguing, though. Aside from the fact that she could wield fireandice—an impossibility, according to the laws of elemental magic—she was clearly a skilled fighter, and on top of that, she seemed to have herbalism skills. She was a pretty package wrapped in a shroud of mystery, and despite myself, I wanted to penetrate those layers, to solve the puzzle she so clearly represented.
The two of us had fled Fenwood, making it most of the way to Talamh before the sunrise forced me to land. As the last dragon alive, flying was risky enough at night, but during the day it would be suicide. We’d landed outside a grove of trees growing just a few yards from a riverbend, and had taken shelter there. Adara had fallen asleep beneath the trees, and I’d kept watch, my eyes and ears on alert for any threat. There were no predators, but I had managed to catch a few rabbits, and the smell of roasting meat had woken her.
I’d expected her to go back to sleep after we’d eaten, but instead she told me to make her a pot using the clay from the riverbed, then disappeared into the woods. She came back several hours later with an armful of herbs and berries, then set to work grinding them up and adding them to the pot, which I’d hardened with dragon fire while she’d been gone.
The ears, she’d shaped with riverbed clay, using some kind of viscous additive from one of the leaves to make them pliable, almost rubbery. The powder was dirt, mixed with some ground up petals that mimicked the shade of my skin. This potion she’d been working on for the past three hours would supposedly change the color of my eyes.
“How do you know how to do all this?” I asked her. “None of this is healing magic.”
Adara glanced over at me. Her cornflower blue eyes deepened with sadness even as a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. “When I was a child, I used to love to dress up and pretend I was one of the forest creatures. My mother thought she could tempt me into loving herbalism and potion making by introducing me to what she called ‘pretend magic’—using plant extracts to change my appearance. At first, I loved it,” she admitted, pushing away from the fire so she could sit on a nearby rock. Her gaze grew distant as she relived those childhood memories. “I could make my hair and skin any color I wanted, and I did. I wore different colors of the rainbow every day, and all the other children were jealous. They used to beg me to dye them too, and for a little while, I was the most popular kid in the village.”
“But then?” I prompted, noting the shimmer of pain in her eyes, at the clear sign that this story did not have the happy ending it should have.
“But then one day, a girl whose hair I refused to dye snapped at me, and told me I was a pretender, that everyone knew I was just trying to fit in. And even though I knew she was just trying to get back at me, her words still hit me hard… because she was right. I’d been coloring my hair green, and making my skin dark, so that I could look like an earth fae and blend in with the others. But no matter how much I mimicked them on the outside, on the inside, I still didn’t have a drop of earth magic. I wasn’t one of them, and I never would be.”
Her shoulders dropped, and then lifted again in a shrug. “So, I stopped dyeing my hair and my skin. I went back to looking like a water fae again. And I lost my love for potions and herbs completely, much to the disappointment of my mother.”
Her lips twisted in a mirthless smirk, and she turned back to the fire. I stared at her as she worked, watching the way her lavender-blue hair shone in the dappled sunlight. Her pale skin shimmered with a sort of moonstone iridescence when it caught the light just the right way, and my fingers ached with remembrance at how smooth it had felt during the few times I’d touched her.
I wanted to tell her she was breathtaking, that she should never feel the need to hide or change herself for the sake of pleasing others. That she was perfect just the way she was.
That’s just the mate bond talking,I told myself. I’d come across many beautiful fae females before—usually on the battlefield—and never once had I felt the urge to tell any of them they were breathtaking.
And yet, a nagging sensation persisted, forcing my mouth open, for words to spill from my lips unbidden.
“I think you’re beau--mmphhh.”
Adara’s head snapped up, and she blinked at me. “What?”
I removed the hand I’d clapped over my mouth and cleared my throat. “I said you should hurry up,” I grumbled, turning my head to the side so she couldn’t look into my eyes and see the truth there. “We’ve still got to walk all the way to Talamh and gain entrance to Lady Mossi’s stronghold.”
