Page 3 of Of Pixies and Promises
A spark drew her attention to a blond, long-haired soldier wandering from the main group to light his cigarette. Dressed in dirty khaki and with his hair tied, the man looked like something dragged from the inkiest pits of the Well. He moved with the coiled danger of a predator. Probably thought he was entitled to do as he pleased because of his brute strength. She scoffed. All humans thought they were entitled to do as they pleased.
Nyra’s temper soared when the soldier flicked ash onto the ground. Didn’t he realize how irresponsible that was? She should burn his head to see how he liked his furry bits smoldering. Someone needed to teach him a lesson. Attacking this group was stupid on her own. But maybe she could pester this lone guard… just a little before heading back and sounding the alarm. If she couldn’t do this alone, how could she plan to rule the tribe without a harem?
Yes, this would be a good test, Nyra thought. If she failed, she would stop waiting for her wings to create dust and let Colt pick her consorts. At least Nyra’s mother would be happy.
Chapter
Two
Sid popped a lit cigarette onto his bottom lip and let it dangle. He wasn’t supposed to smoke. The digger’s diesel plumes were bad enough that the Tainted fae might learn humans were in their territory. Still, as he took a drag, he found he was out of fucks to give.
Sid was a Reaper—one of the elite squad of fae killers—until recently, when a Fae Guardian crushed his hand and destroyed half his motor function. Now Sid was relegated to patrol duty—glorified babysitting—and his perspective on everything had changed.
He inspected the surgical scars on his hand with distaste. He wasn’t sure he’d be let back into the field to hunt unless it was a suicide mission. Sid might be pissed off and bitter, but he wanted to live.
Part of the reason he became a Reaper in the first place wasn’t to kill fae but to get out of the stifling, crowded, diesel-soaked concrete city. Seeing gray every day did something to his head. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and scowled at it. He’d picked up the nasty habit while recovering. It occupied his mouth, so he didn’t have to talk to people, meaning uncomfortable questions remained unanswered.
Questions like, why did Silver—Sid’s ex-lover—leave humanity to be with the fae? Silver hated them as much as anyone, but as a “Well-blessed” human from the old world, she’d developed special abilities that both awed and frightened her. Then she fucked a vampire—the same fucker who broke Sid’s hand. Granted, at the time, Sid had just discovered Silver’s betrayal, and his emotionally stunted brain couldn’t process his feelings. It had confused him. He was about to clock her in the face when her vampire mate crushed his hand.
Sid had never raised his hand to a woman—unless she was the fae enemy. He didn’t think he’d have gone through with it. Not because Silver and he had bumped uglies or because she was a deadlier Reaper than him. It was because Silver hadn’t been attacking him at the time. His actions had sprung from a place of bitterness…
Silver’s betrayal stung. The hit to his pride hurt the most.
He wasn’t in love with Silver. Never had been. The entirety of their relationship was to scratch each other’s sexual itches, no questions asked. The hit to his pride came from the fact that he should have seen Silver falling for one of the fae. He should have protected her.
Ahh. Who was he kidding? That wasn’t the reason either. He wished he could place his discontent solely at the feet of Silver’s affair with the enemy, but before she’d even come on the scene, he’d started to see the holes in President Nero’s propaganda. Nero said the fae were tainted, poisonous feral beasts… but Sid saw a different story. He saw fae with families. Lovers. Friends. He saw them thriving where humans weren’t. The only way to deal with this discontinuity was not to feel at all.
He became a walking, talking killing machine.
Until Silver removed the wool covering Sid’s mind. If she—one of the most vicious Reapers he’d ever met—could have achange of heart, then what the hell was Sid doing fighting for an asshole like Nero?
A flying bug knocked his cigarette from his lips.Shit. He stomped on it before it caught fire. When he looked up, the bug flew at his face. He swatted, but it dodged his hand, circled, and targeted him again.
“Sid!” shouted one of his team. “Need help carrying this crap.”
He glared into the forest, waiting for the bug to attack again. Strange things existed out here. One could never be too careful. What seemed like a bug could be something else. But after one of the workers shouted again, he ducked under a Jurassic-sized fern and walked back to where they were digging up cobalt. His gut churned like the soil caught in the digger’s claws.
“Over here,” called Brian.
Sid had spoken two words to Brian since the start of the mission. Now, apparently, the science man thought they were friends.
“We need help carting this to the truck,” Brian said, wiping sweat from his brow. “The barrow broke. It’s rusted through, so we’ll have to bucket the load across.”
Rusted through. All the metal in Crystal City was old. It had been smelted, forged, and recycled a thousand times. The only way they’d found this cobalt deposit was through a freak coincidence, but getting out to survey the land had been difficult. And if fae discovered them poking around where they shouldn’t, returning would be hard.
It was a smash-and-grab situation.
Carting goods was not in Sid’s job description, but he supposed the faster they loaded the truck, the safer it was for everyone. Dumping his rifle, he hauled a bucket of rocks and trudged through the forest toward where they’d stashed their truck. They arrived in Elphyne through a human-built portalmachine that used faemanafor fuel. They only had enough fuel for one round trip. Everything had to be loaded on the truck, and the digger had to be ready to collect by a precise time, or they missed the portal home.
Sid emptied his load into the truck’s tray. He flexed his scarred fist, noting how it hurt less in the wild than in the city. When he returned to the dig sight, he found Brian discussing something with another worker.
“What is it?” Sid asked.
“There’s a lot of cobalt here,” Brian explained, gaze darting into the forest. “And I meana lot. If we return with more people, equipment, and soldiers… the supply would help us go a long way in this war against the Tainted Ones.”
Sid hadn’t taken the time to learn the second worker’s name, who wore spectacles and operated the surveying instrument.
“You’re saying it’s worth a battle?” Sid asked. “If the Guardians find us, it will get bloody. We might miss the portal home.”
