So far, anger had been the strongest emotion I’d been able to evoke in her. If given a choice, I’d prefer something else of course—affection, adoration, awe maybe? But if she felt any of those toward me, they weren’t nearly as strong as her anger. So, I took what I could get.
Right now, she seemed more stunned than angry, however.
“How old are you?” she asked, gaping at me in astonishment.
“I’m a hundred and twenty-one, which brings me well outside of your silly, arbitrary range. And since I can’t wear clothes myself, you will have to wear the sea foam color for me.”
She remained staring at me with her jaw slackened and her eyes wide open .
“One hundred and twenty-one...” she muttered under her breath, then rubbed her eyes. “How can it be?”
She swayed on her feet, and I stepped away quickly, afraid she’d fall and I’d try to catch her, inevitably killing her.
“A fae’s expected lifespan is five hundred years,” I said. “Many live even longer than that, if they’re not actively trying to get themselves killed with reckless behavior, that is.”
“A-are you a fae?” she managed, stunned and tripping over her words.
I believed that fact was clear from everything she had witnessed in my palace. But then again, most humans had no idea about our existence. And if no one had sat down and explained anything to her yet, she must be feeling pretty confused still.
“All of us in Nerifir are fae. Sirens, gargoyles, werewolves... All inhabitants of the three planes of existence in Nerifir are beings with magic. As opposed to humans.” I gestured to her with a flip of my hand. “The creatures void of magic, like yourself.”
“Somehow, I was still hoping for a more logical explanation than that,” she groaned, spearing her fingers through her hair in anguish.
A pinch of a feeling I didn’t immediately recognize twisted deep in my chest somewhere.Compassion, I finally found the name for it. Just like this woman, I knew the devastation of having one’s life changed drastically in the blink of an eye.
“Let’s make a deal,” I said, considerably gentler this time. “You’ll take a bath and get dressed. Then we’ll have dinner, and I’ll answer as many of your questions as I can.”
There wasn’t much I could do for her at this point. But at the very least, she deserved to know more about the world that had become her home now.
She looked lost, her gaze darting from me to the tub, then to the servants who were setting up a dining table in the next room. Finally, she stared through the wall into the ocean. The sunedged down toward the horizon, spilling the brilliant colors of sunset into the ocean. But she didn’t look like she was admiring the view or like she even noticed it.
“This isn’t a dream then,” she muttered, as if to herself. “Not a movie set... There is no history of mental illness in my family. My mind is too sound to suddenly go crazy like this, isn’t it? But magic? How can it be true?”
For someone who had no idea about the magical River of Mists or the many worlds it connected, I imagined, it’d be hard to comprehend and accept it all at once.
When the very foundation of everything I knew about my existence was shaken, when my life as I knew it ended and my world was turned upside down, I screamed. I punched. I killed. I broke things and turned everything around me to glass in a chaotic fit of rage.
Yet here she was, this small, supposedly weak little human, looking utterly lost but still quietly keeping it all together somehow. The strength of her composure was impossible not to admire.
“Listen...” I winced, scratching along my jaw while thinking of something soothing to say to her. “This palace might’ve lost most of its grandeur over the past century, but it’s safe. You’re safe here, and I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”
She sighed, glanced aside, then brushed her hands down her pants that must have been charcoal gray originally but now looked marbled with salt stains and sand streaks.
“Fine,” she uttered before heading to the bathtub. “It’s not like I have much choice, do I?”
“Not much,” I agreed.
She stared at the water in the bathtub for a moment, then unbuttoned her pants.
“Are you going to turn around at least?” She glanced over her shoulder at me.
“What for?”
Frankly, I was very much looking forward to seeing her legs, which were currently hidden inside those hideous pants.
She shook her head. “Are you seriously going to stand there and ogle me while I undress?”
“That was my plan, yes,” I admitted.
