The dreadfully familiar bulky frame of Leslo rose from under the tree behind her where thebrackhad been sitting, chewing on a blade of grass and looking bored.
The reality of why we had all gathered here this evening hit me full force. I’d been so absorbed by Kye’s excited anticipation, I’d forgotten what it really meant forme. It was so easy to get lost in everything Kye—his life, his voice, his curse, his sorrow—that I struggled to hold on to anything of my own.
Just a very short while ago, I used to have my own hopes and plans. I hadn’t been thinking often about them since coming to Olathana. Instead, I’d been drifting with the flow of time in Kye’s glass palace, hiding from reality behind the magic of his voice while trying to survive the attacks of the monsters.
What was to come of it now? What did the future hold for me in this world?
Two women followed the former royal hag out of the woods. Dressed in long, midnight-blue robes, with silvery veils draped over their hair and glowing moonstone crescents hanging on the long cords around their necks, I assumed they were either the nuns or the priestesses of the Moon Goddess from the monastery where the hag was staying in Sarnala.
The nuns held a long, thick roll of shimmering white silk between them, and my heart thudded with excitement for Kye. That was what he wanted, even at the expense of making me his captive.
Odine gestured at the silk. “As you ordered, Your Majesty. The silk is ready. It will take any thread to sew clothes or anything else you may desire. The magic in the cloth will make the thread impervious to the curse too.”
With his eyes on the silk, Kye walked to the women with slow steps, as if needing time to absorb the whole enormity of what that bolt of fabric represented in his life.
The nuns shifted as he approached, but not in fear. Unlike the sirens of Olathana, who largely ignored Kye’s nudity, the werewolves’ customs on that seemed to be different. The women were clearly flustered, casting furtive glances at Kye’s crotch while trying very hard to appear as if they weren’t looking at all.
“Are you sure it works, Grandmother?” Kye asked.
Carefully, as if accepting a long-awaited newborn, he took the roll of fabric from the nuns. I exhaled in relief and wonder when the silk retained its white color. It didn’t turn to glass, and Kye’s posture relaxed a little.
“So, it does,” he muttered, running a hand along the smooth surface of the fabric.
For the first time in one hundred years, he touched something other than glass, and he wouldn’t stop touching, stroking the silk reverently as if it were the skin of a lover.
“But can I touch others through it?” he asked next.
“I did what I had to do to the best of my abilities, my boy,” the hag replied. “But onlyyoucan test it fully.”
Leslo’s patience proved thinner than the silk.
“Well.” He sauntered toward me. “If I have your word that our deal is now complete and my goddess will getwomoraevery month, I’ll take this one here and be on my way.”
He grabbed me under my arm. The gentle wonder I experienced while watching Kye finally get what he so fervently wanted disappeared with thebrack’srough touch. Irritation zapped through me, making my eyes roll and my fingers curl like claws.
Kye’s diamond-sharp eyes sparked cold and lethal, but his posture remained casually relaxed. He unwound a length of silk from the roll while sauntering toward Leslo and me.
“Oh, but I can’t close the deal yet, my simple-minded friend,” he drawled with lazy elegance.
“Why not?” Leslo scratched the back of his bald head, with a dumbfounded expression.
Kye smirked. The focus in his look narrowed, darting over thebracklike a viper selecting the best spot to strike. If he ever looked like that at me, I’d run for my life. But Leslo couldn’t read Kye as well as I did. He let himself be fooled by the king’s smooth voice and his casual stance.
“I can’t accept the wares without testing them first,” Kye said with a sly smile.
With a gesture as fast as a snake bite, he shot out a hand wrapped in the silk and grabbed thebrackby his thick, tattooed throat.
Leslo croaked, barking out choked, unintelligible sounds. His tanned face turned red, the thick muscles in his neck bulged, and the veins on his forehead protruded. But he remained alive and breathing.
“Huh, what do you know?” Kye mused. “It works. Onbracksat least, it does. Now, about the rest...”
Letting Leslo go, Kye pivoted around, turning his attention to the row of sirens who’d gathered by the water’s edge, watching the proceedings in stunned horror.
With the bolt of silk under his left arm, Kye played with the loose end of the fabric in what looked like an absentminded gesture, but I believed he was very aware of it. He couldn’t stop touching the silk, relearning the sensation of something other than glass in his fingers.
“I wonder if the same holds true for other kinds of fae, even those not protected by the divine power of a fallen goddess?” he asked gently, sweetly even, tipping his head to the side with a charming smile. “What do you think, Sagara? Hm?”
He hummed casually, cheerfully.
