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A flush of pink warmed her cheeks, but then she asked boldly, “How did you get into Issos?” She waved a hand at my wings. “There is no way you simply flew into the city and people answered a shadow fae priest’s questions.”
I smiled. “You’re right. They’d never answer a shadow fae. But they would answer a noble Issosian’s questions, especially one who dropped a few coins in their pockets.”
She scoffed in disbelief, and I was grateful her tears had dried, even if her sadness lingered in the pinched lines around her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you know anything about the shadow fae?”
“Only what I’ve heard. That you’re the demons of the sky, enemies to all other fae, killers to all.”
I couldn’t help but laugh because she was actually serious. “Just because we prefer to live isolated from other fae doesn’t make us enemies. And we don’t indiscriminately kill others.” I sobered. “But we are territorial. We don’t like anyone on our mountain.”
For their own protection more than anything else.
“None of this explains how you got into Issos without alerting the palace guard and stirring a bee’s nest of trouble.”
I stood and pulled the rest of the roasted hare from the spit. “Are you still hungry?”
“No, and you’re avoiding the question.”
I pulled off one last piece and ate it, wondering if I should save it for breakfast. No.
She needed a proper meal in the morning. I threw the remains of the hare out into the night, hearing it break twigs on the way down.
“Vallon.”
Her use of my name jarred me. I turned to find her standing only a few feet away. Entranced for a moment by the way the blue light caressed her pretty features, I finally said, “I’m a novgala.”
“And what is that?”
“It’s probably easier to show you.”
“Then show me,” she demanded.
For a female who’d been raised to believe she was less than and forced to serve a father who didn’t treat her with an ounce of care or love, she was strong-willed and demanding in what she wanted. I liked it. Very much.
She needed to be both of those things if she were to be mine. And she would be.
Chapter
Eight
MURGHA
“All right,” Vallon agreed.
Then he whispered a command in another language. Demon tongue. I’d heard a few wraith fae speak it at the Borderlands when I’d brought my herbs to sell.
He was summoning magick. I could feel it tighten the air around us, a prickling sensation raising gooseflesh on my skin. A whimper escaped my mouth as I hadn’t expected the presence of magick like his to feel…pleasurable. It wrapped around me in a cocoon of warmth. Powerful energy sizzled through my body. No wood fae I knew possessed magick as strong as this.
I gasped as Vallon’s features disappeared, his form replaced by an Issosian Guard with blond hair, violet eyes, and golden fae wings. I gasped and jumped back.
He grinned, but it wasn’t Vallon’s striking face that smiled. It was a stranger in the sapphire and gold armor of Issos.
“You can transform yourself,” I breathed, taking a tentative step forward to peer closer.
“No. It is illusion only.” Vallon’s voice came from the Issosian’s lips. “I’m not transformed. It is glamour.”
I stared in astonishment, shaking my head. “It looks so real.” I reached out my hand then drew it back.
