Forcing his muscles to relax, he stares at her fingers, bare and as dark green and black at the tips as rich paint. Iohmar doesn’t know if it’s natural or a way she’s decorated herself.
She stares at his horns—at least, her featureless face is tilted as such. Of the many odd features of the fae, these are not the strangest, but they are eye-catching, heavy enough he struggled holding his head upright as a child.
A trophy any human would kill to attain.
Her fingers twitch as if she wishes to touch them, but she remains at rest. Iohmar relaxes further. He doesn’t wish the hand of any whom he does not know with intimacy to be near his face but does not wish to flinch from her should she reach for them.
“Your name, my sweet lady?” he asks.
“Not important,” she says, flicking her fingers. Her face tips as if her gaze travels down his fine robes to the lump along his chest created by the child.
“You know mine,” he says.
Doesn’t she? Time may pass even stranger here than it does in the above lands. Names may be lost to her in a place such as this.
“I have none.”
He smiles. “You mean you won’t tell me.”
“I mean I have none.”
Iohmar blinks. Names are sacred. Some of his kin refuse to acknowledge their own, to keep it for themselves alone, but he can’t imagine lacking something so basic to life and magic. Her sightless gaze challenges him to ask, but he does not. He doesn’t wish to ignite her anger. He wishes to charm her.
And to plead for her help.
Nodding, he uncurls the babe from his robes. She leans onto the balls of her feet, toes gripping the roots of her floor, and her featureless face ripples.
“Quite unremarkable,” she says.
Iohmar bristles but doesn’t react.
Didn’t I believe the same?
Her face is turned to his. She cocks her head in a sharp, sudden movement, mimicking the songbirds that flutter outside his windows, her ear resting to her shoulder. Long locks of brown hair and smoky shadow spill around her, curled in a messy, unkempt fashion. She is not so vain as Iohmar and the rest of his kind dwelling within the Halls.
Her presence is so familiar, a memory he cannot grasp.
“And you wish something of me?”
“The child ails . . .” He pauses at the way her head perks, then continues his tale, explaining the circumstances of his taking the child, the ways he’s tended to him, and the worrisome symptoms. She folds her fingers, resting them atop the place her upper lip should be. Iohmar is accustomed to slowness. His people may be quick of emotion and ready for adventure, but long lives make for patient creatures. Often has he waited long stretches for answers.
After a time, she asks, “Why do you seek me out? Surely your magic is millennia stronger than this?”
“It is . . .” Iohmar hesitates. “But this is strange to me. There is nothing to heal, you see. I cannot name what sickens the child, and so I cannot . . . I cannot fix a wound I cannot see.”
She nods, face tilted toward the child. “And why?”
“Why?”
“You venture to these halls beneath your own, places you never wander, to save a worthless human child you should have left alone by the word of your own decree.”
Iohmar glances at the boy, uneasy.
“I wish to save him,” he says, hoping the words will suffice.
“I knew as much without requesting. That is not what I asked.”
Iohmar bites back an indignant response. He is not an unreasonable king, allowing his people their freedom in all but the most extreme circumstances and encouraging them to speak to him with openness. But he does not appreciate her excavating his emotions. In the silence, her head tilts from him to the child, and the mischief fades from the air.
“You’re not as fun as I hoped,” she whispers, words so soft he isn’t sure they were meant for him.
“Do I know you, sweet lady?” he asks, shaken by the idea his presence was expected.
Her face twitches to his level, the movement angry, but there are no eyes for him to read, no expression among the smoke and shadow.
“Forgive me if I do,” he says. “A life so long as mine, not every face can be recalled.”
Her fingers return to the space of her upper lip. Tartly, she says, “N-n-n . . . ugh. I knew your son. It is not of importance.”
Iohmar recognizes the stuttering. An attempted lie.
But his son?
She believes I am my father, he realizes. She believes I am my father, and she knew me a long while ago. How strange . . .
His chest constricts. She knew my parents. Acutely aware of his own age and Galen’s, her knowledge of his family line takes the breath from his lungs. He opens his lips to pursue the topic, but she gives the same defensive twitch.
“So, you’ve come to ask me to save this little human?”
