Page 32 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
“No. I don’t go to your world often. I find the smell disagreeable.”
She frowned. “You fae have sensitive noses, and you, Mr. High and Mighty, have gone to the wrong places. Most of it smells beautiful—the seashore, laundromats, pizza parlors. Anyway, according to my father, when he and my mother met, it was love at first sight. They married a few months later.”
Tyghan’s pace picked up. Sun Court seemed miles away.
“My older sister, Catalina, was born a short time after that. They named her after a ferry ad they saw on a bus bench. It’s an island. My parents weren’t too inventive when it came to names. I was named for a flea market in a city they were passing through at the time, and they named my little sister, Harper, after a magazine at the supermarket checkout. But my father had pet names for us too—nonsense names, really—but it was the way he said them, it made us feel undeniably loved. He called my older sister—”
Tyghan didn’t want to know more. He stopped abruptly, interrupting her before she could continue. “Why are you telling me all this?”
She glanced down, her dark lashes veiling her eyes. Her temples flushed with color. For all her bluster and demands, was she still nervous? Or maybe this was a ploy, and she was as devious as Kierus. But when her gaze rose to meet his, her pupils were earnest black moons. There was no guile in them. “You wondered if my father was worth the risk of finding him,” she answered. “I want you to know, he is worth it.”
Her eyes remained fixed on him, practically begging him to believe the way she did. He nodded like he understood, but he didn’t. He could never understand.
All he knew was he needed a drink.
Music thrummed the air, intoxicating, leaving a golden sheen on skin, scale, and horn. A sensuous scent hung in the air, heavy, like blossoms drunk with spring. Beltane was approaching, and no one was immune to its pull. Not lords or knights, nor ladies, ogres, or pixies. Not even kings.
Heat and restlessness stirred inside Tyghan.
He leaned back in his chair, sipping his drink, the goblin whiskey burning his throat as he watched Bristol from a distant shadowed niche. His words to Melizan doubled back on him.Keep an eye on her.He would. The way he should have kept an eye on Kierus.
She was settled on a stone bench, eating from a silver tray. He had followed close behind her at the buffet tables, looking over her shoulder, guiding her in her choices to avoid the bewitchment she feared. Now she ate the food leisurely, sometimes closing her eyes with pleasure. Braised boar shanks. Sometimes her brows rose with surprise. Spiced kumquats. Sometimes a small smile curled the corner of her mouth after she licked her fingers. Pomegranate cream pastry.
Tyghan took note of the things she liked and the things she politely nudged aside. She was definitely hungry, and he wondered when she last ate any real food. Eris had told him she lived in a run-down house and her finances were strained. The art she took would change that. She didn’t need to worry about her sisters—at least financially.
He watched her movements and where she gazed, trying to make sense of her. She obviously had Kierus’s talent for charm. And as Melizan noted, she was easy enough on the eyes—like Maire—though her features were different. Her hair had dried, and in the warmth of the torchlight, her long chestnut locks glowed. Her eyes were a warm gold, rimmed with dark lashes, making her gaze penetrating.
It didn’t take long for gentry of all stations to swarm around her, but they always did with newcomers. They were a novelty, at least for a short time. Just the same, he posted Cully to stay at her side so none would try to lure her away to a dark corner. It was only her first day, and while she appeared capable, her sharp tongue was no match for their magic.
Her foot occasionally tapped with the music, the tune difficult to resist, but then she crossed her feet and tucked them beneath the bench to avoid the temptation. She must have learned how music affected mortals—maybe from that book that mentioned pixie food. Most mortal books about fae were absurd, painting them all with the same brush, but they got some things right.
He had tried to get a sense again as they walked to Sun Court if she was fully mortal. It happened sometimes with these unions, and he still sensed no magic in her. Had Eris been fooled, or simply been too hopeful? Was she only someone who knew her way around a small town? Elphame was not small, and it was not tame. His expectations for training grew bleaker.
Several lords took turns showing off simple magics to her, mostly glamours that changed their appearance. She smiled, nodding her head, appearing to take Tyghan’s advice about making friends, but as the lords laughed, trying to top one another, he noticed her look away and focus on a circle of dancing faun, bracing herself before she had to look back at some new grotesque glamour.
She would have to get used to it. This was Elphame. This was the world she would have to navigate—one way or another. It was what she agreed to. If she couldn’t stand viewing the cackling boar head on Lord Csorba’s shoulders, she would never withstand a shrieking sky full of beasts set on her destruction.
And if, in the end, she couldn’t adjust or offer the valuable skill they sought, well, there was still the option of using her as a hostage. This morning, with his knights’ screams still ringing in his ears, their blood sprayed across his face and claws still buried in his back, it had been an easy thought, a strategic maneuver that anyone in his position would use. But now that he had struck a bargain to help her hunt for her father—a man he knew was already dead, a man she unmistakably loved—
He took another gulp of his goblin brew, his chest burning. He liked to think of himself as honorable, but knew he had stooped to far lower things. Honor was like glamour, useful only when it served a purpose; otherwise, it just got in the way of who you really were. Honor was for a time when the great gods still walked the earth and sat shoulder to shoulder around campfires celebrating their victories. These were not those times.
She shifted her position on the bench, pressing her hand to her spine. No doubt she ached. A mad gallop to Elphame was not the same as a bike ride around a small town, though he had never ridden a bike, so he couldn’t say for sure. Butfaint? No recruit had been that fragile before.
His gaze traveled back to her bruised lip, studying it, the full curve of her mouth, and then he slid his thumb along the side of his finger as he focused on the bruise. He didn’t need to actually touch such a small wound to heal it.
By the time his hand was lifting his whiskey again, her lip was healed. He owed her nothing, he told himself, not even this, and certainly not the art she demanded, but having her well fed and not distracted by a throbbing lip served his interests, too.
Her head tweaked to the side as if she was confused, and she lifted her knuckle to her lip, gently testing the flesh. She glanced his way. He was certain she couldn’t see him sitting in the dark, but somehow, she seemed to know he was there.
His skin burned again. He didn’t have time for this.
He gulped back the last of his brew and began to rise, but was intercepted.
“There you are,” Eris said, taking a seat opposite him. Even in the dark alcove, Tyghan noted the flush of Eris’s cheeks. No doubt his evening began with a visit to Madame Chastain’s private chambers. Eris readjusted his robe, like it was thrown on in haste. “What’s this about you promising to search for Miss Keats’s father?”
“I had no choice. After you told her that he was alive—”
“I didn’t tell her that.”
