Page 126 of Defy the Fae

Cove bursts into laughter. “Meaning, your former self?”

Indeed. A grin consumes my face.

For a while, I content myself to stare at her. Outside, the pond licks against the dock leading from our door. The curtains whisper across the sill in a repetitiveshh,shh,shh.

“And where is Lotus?” I wonder.

Sated, Cove nestles beneath me and runs her foot over the back of my calf. “Playing with the cobras in your den,” she says fondly. “Because he’s a mortal snake, I have a feeling they think he’s a prophet or something.”

A dry huff of amusement pushes from my lips. Cove’s serpentine companion has attracted many of the river dwellers, including the reptiles in The Pit of Vipers.

“So we’re alone,” I conclude.

“Mmm-hmm,” Cove hints while straying a finger down my chest and wiggling her hips.

I growl, that primal need rekindling swiftly. Explicit thoughts of what I could do to her in the next hour flood my mind. I’m grinning and lowering my mouth to hers when my senses attune to the lily pads floating outside, the cascade washing down the pond’s overhang, and something else.

My descent stalls, mouth hovering over Cove’s. A distinct stench poisons the air, tangy and charred. It’s emanating from leagues away, yet it’s intensifying, getting nearer.

I know that scent. I have never forgotten it.

Cove’s forehead crimps. “What is it?”

My bones sizzle with recognition. Gold fizzes in her pupils as they throw my ferocious reflection back at me.

A snarl curdles from my tongue. “Iron fire.”

27

I blast into The Pit of Vipers. My limbs cut through the terrarium, urgency biting its fangs into my bare heels.

To my left, a boa spirals through the crush of foliage, its body shaking the fronds. To my right, my ears cling to the reverberating tongue of a viper with saw-like scales riding up the cord of its body, the sound alone venomous to fauna prey. Several other quivering offshoots and rustling undergrowth alert me to the snakes gliding through their territory.

After the flood, I had leached this environment of the most pestilent toxins, though most of the reptiles are impervious to the pollutants.

Tragically, iron is the exception. The singular deficiency of Faeries. The one elemental chink in our armor, capable of diffusing our magic. The crawlspace leading to our weakness. Fatal to every living thing in this wild, a leviathan wouldn’t outlast the effects.

Customarily, I would nod to the vipers. Tonight, I sweep by them.

Past the terrarium, I stride through the water curtain and into my den. The central vat boils, spitting noise into the dome. Dankness clots the air, the environment soggy with moisture and stinking of the residual poisons that cling stubbornly to the dome’s walls.

Eons of brewing have infused my blood with the vigor to withstand these hazards. Like its dwellers, my serpentine origins have done the rest.

But that does not spare me from the pungent whiffs of iron. The odor peppers my senses, remote yet airborne and gaining traction.

The humans are getting closer. They have breached Faerie.

My teeth gnash. I do not bother threading my way across the expanse. I smash through the mesh of lush foliage girdling the den, my shoulders cracking a few branches in half like a sickle.

Gone are the crescent tables and the containers dangling from ropes. Instead, I prowl to the rocky mantle protruding from the wall and shove my hand into the collection assembled there. Stoppered jars, glass bottles, and smaller vessels clatter like bones. The skeletal noise attests to how few ingredients I have managed to accumulate since the flood.

My thoughts cling to Cove’s positive nature. Something is better than nothing.

Tendrils of flaming iron sneak under my nostrils. It percolates with the humidity and unsteadies my wrist, fingers shaking as I hunt through the cache. Anxiety and confusion crawl up my knuckles. I blink, unable to parse through the reserves, unable to find what I need—unable to remember.

For an instant, my lack of vision hinders me. Then my palm lands on a slender bottle ejecting warmth and a fizzing echo, these distinct features verifying my hopes. My fingers shackle around the vial and stuff it into the baldric under my robe.

Whipping around, my limbs carve across the den. In the atrium, the vipers’ movements have grown restless. They rattle their tails. They agitate the foliage as they shift sizes, shuddering from cords to columns. Forked tongues unspool and vibrate because, however distant, mortal fumes are slowly dripping into the atmosphere.

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