Page 22 of The Queen and the Half-blood
He sat back. “They gave me shelter … and kindness and respect … when no one else would.”
Her fingers tightened around her cup. “How long have you lived with them?”
“Decades.”
Surprise rippled over her delicate features. “Really? You can’t be any older than thirty winters.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “You’d think that, aye … but I’m a half-blood remember. This is my seventy-second summer.”
Her face paled, panic flaring in her eyes. “Do you expect me to bind myself to a man who's literally immortal?” she rasped. “A man who’d rule for many centuries after my death?”
“I don’t have the lifespan of a Shee,” he assured her. “My blood is too diluted for that … all the same, half-bloods can often live up to three hundred years.”
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath and cut her gaze away. Alar watched her struggle.
“How did I not know this?” she asked finally.
“Likely because it never mattered to you before now.” He paused then before adding. “However,Iwon’t live three hundred years.” Once again, the strange urge to reassure her rose.
“And why not?”
“An aughisky stole a century from me.”
Lara jolted. “What?”
“Nearly thirty years ago, I journeyed to one of the crannogs on Loch Glass in the North. Tired after days of travel, I was resting, thinking how I could do with a sturdy pony to carry me, when I spied a fine garron grazing a few yards away … a grey pony with feathered feet, and a flowing mane and tail.” He pulled a face as he recalled the incident. It wasn’t one he spoke about often. “Of course, I shouldn’t have acted on impulse. The moment I swung up onto its back, my hand stuck fast to its neck, and I realized my mistake.”
Lara shook her head, clearly thinking him a fool. The vicious water spirits lived in the sea and lochs. There were few tales of anyone surviving an encounter with one. Once you touched an aughisky, you couldn’t get free. After that, it dragged you deep into the water and feasted on you.
“I had to think fast … for an instant later, we were lurching toward the water’s edge,” he continued. “Before we reached the loch, I called out … and offered up a hundred years of my life, if it released me.”
“And it agreed?” She was incredulous, and he didn’t blame her.
“Aye … aughiskies hunger for the lives of others. But few people know that if you give upyearsof your life willingly, it might spare you. Such agiftwill satisfy its appetite for a time. Luckily, my grandmother once mentioned this to me.”
The High Queen frowned. “That’s still a costly price when you’re Marav. Our lives are too brief as it is.”
“Aye … although a shortened life is better than a grisly death. I learned years later from the crannog-dwellers there that the Loch Glass ausghisky had been known to take several lives a year … it must for its survival. Lying in wait on the shore for someone ignorant or stupid enough” —he grimaced once more— “to touch it, is long, boring work. That’s why it took my offer, dumped me onto the loch shore, and plunged into the water … and didn’t take any more lives for a while after that.”
Lara arched an eyebrow. “So, you’ll livetwolives of a Marav now, rather than three?”
He shrugged, eager to move the conversation on. “Aye.”
“I suppose when you have so many years to play with … what’s a century?”
He barked a laugh. “So young and fair … and yet so bitter,” he teased.
She scowled. “So, are there others … like you?”
Ashes, the woman wouldn’t let this go.
“Aye … although we’re rare. In all my years, I’ve only ever crossed paths with two … and briefly. Like me, they were both outcasts.”
Silence fell once more, and Alar observed her pale, tense face. Her eyes were shadowed, and a muscle feathered in her jaw. She looked young. Out of her depth. Lost.
“I’m not planning to usurp you, Lara,” he said after a lengthy pause. “And if we have children, I am happy for one of them to take the throne upon your death.”
“And you’d swear this … sign a document before our handfasting?”
