‘Forgive me, Faye.’ Finn’s voice was honey again. ‘It was bad news. I apologise if I made you feel uncomfortable.’
She was still tense; despite his soothing presence, her body had kicked into fight or flight response. Finn stroked her arm.
‘You…startled me,’ she protested, pulling away from him.
‘Please accept my deepest apologies, dear Faye. I would never intend to alarm you. My kingdom is in conflict with Falias, the realm of earth, and Gorias, the realm of air. That is something we must speak of. You will play a key part in it, whether you understand it or not just now. But I should not have shouted, my sweet one.’ He clasped her to his chest in a hug that felt tinged with desperation. ‘Dearest Faye, I should never have lost my temper. Please forgive me.’
Faye wondered at his changeable mood. ‘You frightened me.’ She felt that it would be politic to keep Finn happy, whether she meant it or not. He was keeping her here – when he wasn’t touching her, she realised that. But when he laid his hand upon her in any way, she was helpless, at the mercy of her desire.
Finn released her from his arm and, reaching past her, gently opened the door she had been struggling with. Immediately, a blare of music pierced the room.
Faye found herself looking down from a balcony onto a large, ornate hall below where a party seemed to be in full swing. Faeries of all kinds sat at long tables which were piled with food and drink, and a band played on a raised circular stage in themiddle of the room, which Faye recognised as the music she had heard distantly all the way through the castle.
It was a little similar to the music Dal Riada had played that night in the bar: a kind of fast, folky music with fiddlers and flutes, but this was performed on unusual wooden instruments and was faster and louder than Dal Riada’s, and the dancers who circled around and around the stage were frantic and crazed. There were no dance moves that she could discern in particular, just fierce running, jumping, skipping and howling along with the music. As she watched, one slight-looking female faerie fell down as she skipped wildly to the music and was trampled by at least ten others before she got raggedly to her feet again. Faye’s eyes widened in amazement.
‘Come.’ Finn took her hand and guided her to the top of some golden stairs which led from the balcony to the hall below. He was not barefoot, as he had been on stage at the gig, but wore some kind of gold slippers on which he walked soundlessly.
‘Oh, no. No, I couldn’t,’ she murmured, and stepped back into the room, but Finn held on to her hand.
‘Will you not take a dance with me in my own royal hall?’ he asked, and as he touched her again, that golden lightness entranced her, and the music outside filled her with a wild delight. ‘And I will answer all your questions. I promise.’
At that moment, the song came to an end and the musicians launched into something slightly slower. Faye certainly had questions, but her body had caught the rhythm of the new tune and she felt herself nodding.
Hand in hand, they descended the golden stairs and reached the ballroom. Finn bowed and clasped her around the waist and swung her into the outer throng of dancers that had formed around the wildest ones closest to the stage. Faye followed Finn’s lead as they danced in a much more stately fashion, though it still made her dizzy.
The other dancers made way for them as they circled and dipped around the room, and Faye saw that many of the fae nodded and bowed as they spun past.
‘What were you doing in that bar, in…in the real world? Your band. If you are…what you say you are?’ Faye asked him, trying to keep up.
‘You can hardly doubt that I am anything else,’ Finn replied seriously as they danced. ‘But you are correct. The fae sometimes go forth into your world. Not very often, now. Once, human and fae intermingled happily. It was a golden age; I remember it with such fondness.’ He sighed. ‘Now, everything is different. Everything is wrong, out of balance. We all mourn the passing of that time in the human world, where your kind knew us and honoured us in the correct ways. Even though we dance and laugh, sadness is in us all.’
The pipers and drummers paused again and commenced a much slower song.
‘My grandmother said we had a house faerie called Gussie, who kept the hearth swept for us and the milk fresh, but he was very particular about how we honoured him,’ Faye told him. ‘As a child I left a bowl of the creamiest milk and a slice of bread out for Gussie every night, but one night I wanted to put out a scone. Grandmother said no, Gussie would take that as an insult in the same way as if no offering was left at all,’ she said, feeling a blush on her cheeks as she looked up into Finn’s strange eyes. He was disquietingly beautiful. His hair was a dark gold in the light of the ballroom.
‘Your grandmother was a wise woman.’ Finn smiled. ‘The fae have their ways that humans used to respect. Now, they have all but forgotten us and built upon many of our dwelling places. Disrespected our sacred places.’
Dwelling places.Faye thought suddenly of Rav and his house on the beach. Was that what Finn meant? She wondered ifdisrespecting our sacred placesmeant that Finn knew what she and Rav had done on the beach. A wave of shame washed over her. No. Surely not.
Yet, she had felt eyes on her that evening. She had seen the fae in the waves, watching.
Faye blinked hard. It was very easy to forget the real world completely, but the mention of dwelling places had given her a key, a way to connect with reality, a reminder to keep her wits about her here. She was also still not totally convinced that she wasn’t dreaming especially vividly, and might wake up in her own bed any minute.
‘Grandmother taught my mother the old ways, and they both taught me,’ she said, instead. They danced slowly now, and the rhythm of the tune patterned her heartbeat in a delicious, sensual repetition. Finn’s face was close to hers, and their breath met between them. She was aware of breathing in when he breathed out, him following suit as she exhaled in an intimate synchronicity of air between them.
‘Yes, I know,’ he murmured, his lips so close to hers that she wondered if he was challenging her not to kiss him. She wanted to. The desire to lose herself in his kiss was so great that it took everything Faye had not to dissolve into him. He seemed to know it, and chuckled, grazing her lips with his softly. ‘And I also know what you desire, my sweet one. Have patience. Good things come to good girls.’ He cocked an eyebrow, then drew her around by her waist, smiling at the many dancers who called out a blessing or a greeting to him as they twirled around the dancefloor.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she breathed, desperately trying to stay focused.
‘I didn’t?’
‘About why you play music to humans. In the band,’ she panted. The dance was having some kind of hallucinatory effecton her, and she thought she was catching glimpses of things in the corners, in the shadows – gaunt bodies, hanging flesh. Like in the tapestry, it wasn’t what she noticed first, but when she blinked, echoes of a more threatening nature were all around her.
He gave a little laugh.
‘Youarepersistent.’
I’m not nearly as persistent as I should be just now, Faye thought. Her head was spinning.
