Page 2 of The Last Heir of Elsewhere

“What?” Scion asked sharply.

I glanced briefly at him, then dug my heels into the sides of my horse’s flank. “I’ll be right back.”

“You can’t be fucking serious,” Scion shouted after me. “You might not care about wasting your own time, but do not waste mine.”

I laughed. “Go back, then. No one is holding you captive, Sci, least of all me.”

The snap of twigs and panting breaths grew louder as I urged my horse forward. My ears pricked up.

“Put me down!” a soft female voice whispered.

“What’s wrong?” a man replied.

“Shhh.”

“Bael!” Scion said again, his impatience evident. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He might not have time for anything other than exactly what was expected of him, but he would get to leave again as soon as the hunts were over. I would be stuck here for another hundred years, miserable and completely alone. I’d been bored for so long it was the small things that broke up the monotony. Who was here breaking the rules? Who might I get to punish?

“Patience,” I said. “I want to check on something.”

I swung down from my horse and strode forward at double the speed any human could have walked, my hair blowing back from my face. My gaze skimmed over the trees, searching for whomever was speaking too loudly, doing such a terrible job at trying to be quiet. Even if we’d been human we would have heard them. As Fae, they had no chance of hiding from us.

My eyes landed on the couple in the trees. I glanced at the male and immediately forgot his face—one guard looked much the same as every other to me at this point. My eyes traveled to the girl and my lip twitched.

She was pretty for a human. Pretty generally, I supposed. Her wild red hair was falling loose from some vain attempt at taming it, and there was a flush across her pale, freckled cheeks.

Not enough of a flush, in my opinion.

It was plain to see what she’d been doing with the guard, whose unremarkable face was becoming uglier by the second. Unbidden, the image of shoving her up against that tree myself flitted through my mind. Tearing that hideous dress off her and putting a real flush on her pretty face.

Fuck. What was I thinking?

I had no qualms about human lovers—preferred them, in fact. They were easier to talk to than high Fae, oddly more honest and forthcoming. A good quality in a sexual partner. Still, I didn’t know anything about this woman. I’d never noticed her before, and there was no reason to be standing here now, as if bewitched.

I shook my head slightly, as the sound of Scion’s boots hitting the earth sounded behind me. “As I said, I don’t see why you have to waste our time chasing after…what? Shadows?”

He was being intentionally obtuse, now. I glanced back at him sharply to show my displeasure. I opened my mouth to retort, but before I could the girl moved out of the corner of my eye. I turned back abruptly, and froze, watching her. Beside me, Scion seemed to be doing the same. None of us moved, as if frozen in an odd sort of standoff.

She was staring right at me. Or rather, she was staring at the clearing where she probably heard the hooves of our horses or felt some disturbance in the wind. She couldn’t actually see me, as Scion’s illusion kept us invisible from the eyes of mortals. Except, as I watched, she reached slowly for the hand of her guard, as if taking comfort in his presence.

That was…unusual to say the least.

Some humans had a sort of natural awareness of magic. Usually those who were either changelings—humans taken from across the veil as children and raised to serve the courts—or those who had some far distant Fae ancestor. This woman looked too young to be a changeling. We had stopped taking changelings before I was born, and the redhead couldn’t be more than nineteen? Twenty? Perhaps she had a great-grandfather who was Fae, and that was all there was to it.

“Fuck this,” Scion said sharply. “I thought you saw something interesting. If I’ve seen one guard fucking some Slúagh whore in these woods, I’ve seen them all.”

I laughed. He was right, of course. There was nothing remarkable about the woman aside from her pretty face. She couldn’t see us, it was merely an odd coincidence. I began to turn away.

“What are you staring at?” The guard asked the woman, his voice cutting sharply through my internal dialogue.

“Be quiet—” she breathed, softer than the sound of her own rapid heartbeat.

I froze again, the sound of her voice rooting me to the spot.

“Why?” her guard scoffed. He reached for her arm, pulling her around to look at him. “What the hell are you doing, Lon?”

She stared frantically between him and us, swallowing hard. I watched a bevy of emotions cross her face: Confusion, terror, realization, and then her skin went so pale that whatever color had been in her cheeks looked as if it might never return. “I?—”

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