Page 57 of The Forbidden Fae King

I blink as branches unravel and re-twist, not believing my eyes as a humanoid shape forms from them.

Twigs wrap around each other until two perfect calves form, a blanket of fuzzy moss sprouts around full hips of vines and a stomachcurves out from brambles. Branches grow from the torso to form arms and moss to create full breasts. The branch still connected to the tree resolves into a head, the wood thinning and trailing away into twigs that fall like hair and snap away from the mother tree. Leaves immediately bloom across them.

I stare at the beautiful tree nymph with my lips parted.

Another transforms into a full humanoid figure, with blunt woody spikes jutting from his elbows, knees, and spine and cascading horns of curling branches on his head. His entire body is modestly covered in spongy, yellow lichen.

A female appears, with a twisting trunk giving way to multiple thick roots where a human’s legs would be. The last two males remain connected to the mother trees, showing only humanoid faces of wood peering out from coiling branches and leaves.

I can’t drag my eyes away from these majestic creatures. Tree nymphs. And to think we humans dare to steal their heart-stones, their souls, and condemn them to death. Again I am flooded with the realization that we are as much the villains as the fae who steal brides.

“Aldrin. Aldrin. Aldrin. Aldrin.” Their voices sing like the wind, rippled over the top of each other.

“The golden hope of spring. We heard you had been exiled. You are not here to plan a rebellion, are you?” One almost wails.

“And if he is?” another responds. “And if he is? We do not follow the whims of the council. We could not deny him. Would not deny him.”

“The golden hope of spring. Bring us hope. Bring us salvation.” That singing, over and over.

“Aldrin. The protector of all fae. High and low. High and low. Your brothers and sisters have forgotten us.”

“Is this war? Rebellion? Retribution?”

Those voices overlap and repeat in my head, ringing in my ears, around and around.

Aldrin holds up his hands. “Good Fair Folk, I simply ask for shelter for one night in your watch tower. I do not come here with the intent of war. It has not come to that.”

“Welcome.”

“Welcome golden one.”

“Welcome.”

I knead my temples, trying to release the pressure from those voices laden with emotion.

The branches of the gates groan as they retract back into the trees, opening a narrow portal through the gate wide enough for us to walk through in single file, with Aldrin at our head.

I try not to touch the curling and swaying tendrils of thin creepers as I pass under. The thorns of the brambles are as long and thick as a carving knife, and I bet they would turn into weapons against an enemy trying to penetrate this gate.

The space inside the trees could easily fit a camp of a thousand men, dwarfing our tiny band of eleven high fae, three kelpies, and me. I turn around in a circle, taking in the meadow within, the impenetrable wall of trunks around us, and the wooden staircases and platforms that scale the fortifications to the canopy above.

“What is this place?” I ask half to myself.

“This is a Watchtower Tree.” A tall figure stops beside me.

I turn to Silvan with shock. The man rarely speaks. I can’t help feeling unnerved around him. His words are always bitten off and there is a constant whipcord tension within the muscles of his lean build, as though he is permanently ready to strike. The coldness of his narrow gaze that never seems to warm, like it promises death alone.

“What does that mean?”

“They are watchtowers,” Silvan offers most unhelpfully, then stalks off, bellowing orders to a group in his path setting up a tent. I stare after him.

I find myself utterly alone within a crowd of people for the second time today, idle while they busily set up the camp and rush by me. I don’t know how to make myself useful and am too intimidated to approach some.

“Hey, Keira, if you’re looking for something to do, you can help me skin and gut this.”

I whip around toward Drake, who has an entire deer hoisted overhis shoulder, with two arrows extending from its back. Well, not quite a deer, but close enough.

He gives me a wide, mischievous grin as though he expects me to balk at a bit of blood. His eyes dance mischievously while he waits for me to take his bait.

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