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Basil sighed. Naturally, his secret heritage turned out to be that of a paranoid people who didn’t play well with others.
The pull he felt deep in his bones became stronger and stronger with every step he took on the path. Any human would have been compelled to turn around by now, courtesy of the repellent aspect of the border magic. His pulse sped up, his mood lifted. This was real. He was fae, was more than human. How often had he wished for this? Had dreamed of some shocking revelation that would give him the kind of powers he craved? After Maeve’s abduction uncovered the truth behind her apparent lack of magic—that her powers were actually bound inside her, a tightly kept family secret that not even Merle had known—Basil’s hope that he, too, was somehow more than the weak, powerless male descendant of a witch line had been infused with new strength.
Excitement pounded through his veins. Magic crackled in the air. He was getting closer.
One more step—and he felt it. He passed through an invisible wall, its energy sizzling over his skin, raising the hairs all over his body. He stopped right beyond the border and took a deep breath of the chilly, humid night air.
A fairy flitted past him, leaving trails of sparkling magic behind her. The tiny, winged fae creatures were more common outside of Faerie than their larger, wingless counterparts. Culturally, they seemed to be closer to pixies and brownies, and thus often lived close to those colonies in the human world.
The fairy flew to a tree a couple yards away—which was illuminated by garlands of gently glowing light bubbles, highlighting tiny platforms, walkways, and entrances to what appeared to be a fairy tree house.
Basil grinned, breathless with joy. This was amazing. The tree and its illumination hadn’t been visible from outside the border, a testament to Faerie’s glamour skills. The dirt path he’d been following was now neatly paved with cobblestones, and much broader.
He started down the road with a spring in his step.
Five minutes into his journey into Faerie, a muffled scream sounded from somewhere to the left of the road. He tensed, paused, listened into the dark. Beyond the sounds of a nightly forest, there was the distinct noise of a struggle.
He only hesitated a second, then veered off the path and into the underbrush, toward the sound. Taking care to remain as quiet as possible, he moved quickly over the moss-covered ground, and, almost as an afterthought, noticing his night vision was far better than it used to be. He could discern twigs and stones and holes in the ground when before it would all have been steeped in shadows. Courtesy of his new fae powers?
Thanks to his apparently heightened senses, he managed to approach the sounds of struggle while staying inhumanly quiet, moving through the woods as silently as a nighttime predator. Close to the source of the noise, he drew one of the arrows from his quiver, nocked it on his bow.
There.
On the ground a few feet away, two shapes seemed fused in a fight. He could make out the form of a person, pinned to the forest floor by…a mountain lion? Holy crap.
Basil blinked, and stealthily moved closer. The person uttered another muffled cry, convulsed in obvious pain. The mountain lion had its claws sunk into the torso of its prey, its jaw clamped over the person’s neck in a feline predator killing bite.
He’d seen enough.
Exhaling, he released the arrow. With a lethal swoosh, it shot toward the puma, and it pierced its head with a thunk. The big cat twitched, its slackening muscles loosening its grip on the prey, and collapsed.
He rushed over to the injured person. A female fae, dark skin, pointed ears, black hair pulled into a braid. She was still convulsing, as if caught in an epileptic seizure. Her armor seemed to have partly saved her from the cougar attack—through the holes in the leather and fabric of her tunic-style clothing ripped by the puma’s claws, some sort of metal shimmered, like a chainmail. Her neck, which should have been mauled by the lion, only showed minimal injuries from the puma’s fangs. Apparently, the cat had only just positioned its jaws for the killing bite when Basil interrupted.
Carefully, he turned the fae on her side so she wouldn’t choke, then made sure no sharp objects were close to her. From what he learned in first aid, there wasn’t anything more one could do to help someone having a seizure except wait it out.
But damn if it didn’t make his blood boil to see someone in pain like that and be unable to give them relief.
He crouched down next to her, balled his hands to fists. After about another minute, the convulsions subsided. The fae calmed, except for her heavy breathing. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, but her face lost its expression of agony, and her features softened, revealing a stunning beauty.
It struck Basil like an electric zing to his heart. The lines of her face—elegant, quintessentially feminine—would have inspired artists of all eras to immortalize her in stone and canvas and song. When she opened her eyes, luminous gray met his gaze, aglow in the dark of the night.
He forgot to breathe for a heartbeat, for an eternity.
She asked something in a language he didn’t understand. Dammit, of course. He’d forgotten the fact that fae would have their own language—which he didn’t speak. Having a fae guide to interpret definitely would have been smart.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t understand you. I just… Are you okay? That bite wound may need stitches. I have a first aid kit in here…” Stop babbling, idiot.
The fae frowned, sat up and touched her neck. “Bite?” she asked in English.
“The mountain lion. It got ahold of your neck, was going to crush your trachea.”
The fae cringed and turned to where he pointed, and when she saw the dead cat, her shoulders hunched, and her mouth turned down. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“Um, she was going to kill you.”
Laying a hand on the puma’s head, behind the arrow protruding from between its eyes, the fae muttered something in her language. “You could have shot at her in warning,” she said in English. “She would have fled.”
“I…” Great, now he felt miserable for killing the cat. “Sorry, I guess. Well, at least I saved your life.”
