Page 138 of Defy the Fae

But no one else is listening. No one else is paying attention.

I focus what remains of my senses, tapering my ears toward where the boy is standing. I hear combative footfalls getting near him and the whoosh of a swinging torch bursting with iron fire. He has placed himself in the line of the fighting.

The filly centaur crashes into the child, thrusting him out of the flame’s path.

The nearby figure—who’d been wielding the torch against what sounds like a dryad—staggers to a halt. Both the figure and dryad freeze, registering what almost happened.

Quickly, more and more fighters notice. Their motions falter, slowing in place.

Cove tells me, and I envision it in my mind’s eye.

The young centaur and boy fling their arms around each other. They huddle together, entwined like shields. Their heads cast about while trying to keep one another safe.

Two souls, neither of whom have ever met. One of Faerie, one of humanity. Yet there they stand, protecting each other.

One by one, the battle sounds ebb. All movement stops. Like a brushfire, the surrounding throng goes still.

Just like that, it ends.

30

Bowstrings relax as fighters lower their archery. The steely ring of blades subsides. Screams whittle to a collective hush.

Only three sounds remain. A belt of wind coasts through the field, treetops along the border shiver their leaves like cymbals, and the distant stream where I’d nearly drowned nine years ago eddies though the plain.

The echoes of nature harmonize like the strings of a harp. It is the melody of nature. For once, it is impossible to tell them apart from the resonances of my home.

The battle falls into a trance. Seconds filter through the quiet.

Slowly, another noise projects itself—the whimpering and wheezing of the striplings trapped amidst the crusade. I listen as the centaur and boy cling to another like caged creatures at the hub of this battleground. They sway, fenced in by three sides of a war.

My eyes stray. But at this point, and with this much iron contaminating my system, I can only sift through certain movements.

I lean into my lady. “Tell me.”

“They’re still holding each other,” she whispers, spellbound. “They’re peeking around, gawking at everyone, but they’re not letting go.” Cove’s tone is slippery, like she might trip on her words. “They’re protecting each other.”

Now I recognize the emotion clotting her throat. It is the halfway point between empathy and memory.

Nine years ago, three sets of children crossed fated paths. The males came from a world of dark magic. The females hailed from a place of natural fortitude. Knowing so little about one another, these pairings found a connection, a crawlspace that existed between hate and love. Our feelings had varied, but the links nevertheless formed, steering us from one extreme to its opposite.

Cove and I share a hostile past. But there had been a sliver, an unbidden connection fusing us together. She does not know this, but I had wanted to retaliate against her as much as touch her face. And as much as she wanted to drown me in kind, her eyes had sparkled when she first beheld me.

I think Cove would have been tender, if I had allowed it then. At least, I did eventually.

If that can happen three times, why not once more? The centaur filly and mortal boy have no joined history. They do not know one another. Yet here they are, banding together like shields.

No malice. No magic.

No intolerance. No revenge.

In my recent past, I would have sneered at the display. I would have called the striplings mere fools—obstructions. I would have seized them by the scruffs and tossed them to the margins, then continued shoving my daggers into my prey.

Tonight, I disarm. As do the figures in our midst. Confusion and astonishment carry heavily in the air.

To bear arms takes strength and courage. But to defy three warring fronts takes a different sort of power—a true kind of sacrifice. It is both a reflex and a decision. I cannot say if there’s a name for it, but I feel this enigma loosening the furious crick in my neck and cooling the vicious temperature behind my eyelids.

“Heroism,” Cove utters into my ear, as though hearing my thoughts.

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