Hella found it half-endearing and half-irritating that MacKinnon automatically moved in front of her, shielding her from the fae they had stumbled across.
She stepped out from behind her wolf.
The black-haired male regarded them with curious silver eyes. He turned slowly to face them, his bare torso as pale as alabaster in the moonlight and his onyx trousers as dark as the sky. Water lapped at his naked feet, the only motion in a motionless world as she held her breath and was sure Kin was doing the same. Had the fae been about to bathe? His top and boots were a few feet behind him, on the mossy edge of the pebbled shore of the river. She spotted no weapon on him either. She wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Surprising an unarmed dark fae sounded dangerous to her. He might feel threatened by their presence.
Then again, he might not even have a weapon or need one to deal with them.
The pointed tips of his ears twitched as he stared at Kin, assessing him. He had to stand only a couple of inches shorter than her wolf, but his build was half that of Kin’s.
Not that it made him weaker.
The power that rolled off this male was phenomenal.
Dark and malevolent.
She held her nerve and her ground, unsure what to make of him but sure she should feel he was a threat.
It was hard to feel that when he turned his side to them again and bent back towards the river, clearly not that interested in them—or threatened by their presence. He cupped his hands and scooped up water.
And would you look at that?
He was holding the moon in his hands.
The reflection of it was gone from the river, now only existed in the water he held.
This was more than any old dark fae.
This was an unseelie.
And a very ancient and powerful one at that.
He looked right at her and opened his black-tipped fingers, and the water poured like diamonds from between them, and the moon was back in the river. How did he do that? Was it a power all unseelie held or specific to him? She wanted to ask him, but she wasn’t sure he would appreciate her probing into his powers. It would probably make her appear more like a threat to him.
He spoke to her.
In a language she didn’t know.
Kin glanced at her.
She shook her head. “I don’t speak his tongue.”
The fae approached them, which had Kin tensing and trying to pull her behind him again, but she stood her ground, refusing to let him shield her. When he was within ten feet of them, the fae held his hands out and tilted his palms towards her, his fingers pointing down towards the crystalline pebbles.
The lines of markings that ran from the black top thirds of his fingers to the edge of his palm glowed like the moon.
Hella peered at them, trying to make them out from a safe distance. “They’re fae. You’re fae. Right? Are they your lineage? Like incubus markings?”
“Incu… bus.” The fae frowned and then relaxed. “Incubus. I met. Fae.”
She glanced at Kin and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “I don’t think he speaks much English. He’s clearly local though. He might know of a portal. Maybe he might know the modern fae tongue?”
Kin gave her a look. “Go right ahead, lass. As you so gleefully pointed out before, I don’t speak it.”
She grimaced when she remembered how well that conversation had gone and wished she hadn’t brought it up. She didn’t want him remembering the terrible things she said or how she had acted back then. She had been hoping for a fresh start with him, one where they were both more honest about their feelings and less caustic towards each other.
“My fae isn’t great… not when it comes to conversational fae anyway… and I really don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us. A spell would make this easier, but that’s not going to happen.” She slid a worried look at the unseelie, who was already looking impatient, his black eyebrows knitted in a frown. Was she offending him by speaking English so much? Maybe he thought she was doing it so he wouldn’t understand her and was plotting against him. “But then, it’s risky for us to keep speaking English.”
Like, very risky.
The fae lowered his hands and his eyes brightened as he flexed his fingers.
“Um,” she said and tried to think of what to say as she switched to the modern fae tongue. “Do you know of incubi?”
The male arched an eyebrow and responded in stilted English. “Succubi? No. Incubus.”
He pointed to his markings and then raised his right arm before him, with his forearm across his chest, and trailed a finger along his underarm and over his biceps and shoulder.
“Incubus.” He uttered that word in the fae tongue and nodded.
She nodded too and responded in the same language. “Incubus. I meant incubi.”
She blew out her breath and glanced at Kin, who was looking worried now. She wasn’t sure she could pull this off either.
“I wish Fenix was here,” she muttered in English. “He speaks fluent fae.”
“Fenix.” The unseelie perked up, his silver eyes bright with interest. “Fenix of the Incubi.”
It couldn’t be possible.
“You know him?” She grimaced when he looked confused and repeated it in the fae tongue, hoping she got it right.
He nodded. “Fenix of the incubi. Bears my brand.”
“Bears your brand?” Her eyes widened and she gripped Kin’s arm as she looked up at him and switched to English. “He does. Fenix has a brand. On his arm.”
She looked at the fae and pointed to the area on her right forearm where she had seen the mark on Fenix.
He nodded vigorously this time.
She couldn’t believe it. Of all the dark fae to run into, they had found one who might be willing to help them. Things were looking up. All she needed to do was convince him to help them and they could be home before she knew it and she could be out of this awful dress and could find a witch to remove her cuffs.
“Fenix.” She patted her chest. “My friend.”
“Friend,” he repeated in English and gracefully touched his own chest. “Archangel.”
“Archangel are seriously not anyone’s friends,” she whispered to Kin and he grunted in agreement. “Why would he think they are?”
Kin didn’t get a chance to answer that question because she realised she had gotten it all wrong.
“You met him there?” she said in English and then tried again in broken fae when the male only frowned at her.
When he still looked puzzled, she scowled at the silver cuffs around her wrists.
“This would be so much easier with my magic. One translation spell and I’d be able to talk to him without fear of saying something that might upset him.” She cast a look up at Kin when he turned to face her and loved the soft look in his eyes as he gazed down at her, his brow furrowing. She knew that look. He wished he could free her of the cuffs. She would get free soon enough.
“Magic,” the fae muttered. His black eyebrows knitted hard as his silver eyes pierced her. “Witch.”
She nodded and pointed to her matching cuffs. “Bound.”
He didn’t look happy about that as he glared at her wrists, and part of her began to hope they had found an ally in this dark fae, one who really would help them get out of this realm.
“Fenix. Friend.” He pointed to the spot on his arm where Fenix had his brand and then at himself, and then he pointed at her. “Friend.”
“Friends,” MacKinnon put in. “We’re all friends here.”
The male looked confused again and began muttering in the fae tongue.
She caught snippets of it, but not enough to follow what he was saying.
Hella sighed.
They were getting nowhere.
As dangerous as it was and as much as she didn’t want there to be any misunderstandings between them, she needed to risk using his language. Ethyrian was bound to have his entire army out looking for them. They didn’t have time to waste. Every second they spent with the dark fae was a second that brought them closer to danger. If the nymph caught Kin, he would kill him, and the thought of him dying ripped at her heart. She couldn’t bear it. She had to get her wolf out of this realm and this fae was the key to making that happen.
She ran through all the fae she knew, dredging up things long forgotten since they were never used in magical texts. Fenix had taught her a few greetings over the years and a smattering of conversational phrases that she had never used other than to irritate him. She hoped she had enough to cobble together something that would convince the fae to help them.
Hella blew out her breath to steady her nerves and translated what she wanted to say into fae, hoping she got it right. “We’re in danger.”
The black-haired male changed before her eyes, growing infinitely more terrifying as his eyes turned crimson and his lips darkened towards black. She backed into Kin as the fae’s skin paled further and inky markings curled around his biceps to sweep over his shoulders and down around the square slabs of his pectorals, ending in a swirl near his collarbones. Kin seized hold of her arms as the male’s transformation didn’t end there.
His black nails became inch-long claws and his teeth sharpened into fangs that he bared, his canines longest but the incisors next to them growing pointed too.
His scarlet eyes locked on them, the jagged silver around his elliptical pupils glowing as bright as the moon suspended in the inky sky above them.
“Something I said?” she whispered, her voice barely there as fear flooded her and she pressed her back against Kin’s front.
Had she just told the fae they were a danger to him?
The words for danger and dangerous were no doubt very close and she had been feeling the pressure, was no longer sure her pronunciation had been correct.
The fae disappeared in a black mist that sparked with gold flecks.
Hella seized Kin’s hand, needing to feel it in hers and know he was there with her, and braced herself for impact.