Kiss the Fae (Dark Fables: Vicious Faeries Book 1) by Natalia Jaster

Author:Natalia Jaster [Jaster, Natalia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-05T06:00:00+00:00

20

I sit there, whiplashed by his words. The hairs along my arms prickle, and my joints lock, and I can’t budge. The one who helped him escape was a mortal. He was locked in a cage, in Reverie Hollow, and a mortal girl set him loose.

This is no coincidence.

Standing beneath a blaze of white clouds, Cerulean watches my reaction. His features cinch in confusion, then tighten into skepticism as an invisible cord tugs between us, straining from my chest to his.

My intakes. His outtakes.

A connection. A memory.

I’ve kept it cloistered away, stashed in the compact shell of my heart. Now that pod’s got a crack—and it’s widening.

But this can’t be. It’s impossible.

He can’t be the boy from my past. That was less than a decade ago, and the Fae don’t mature as quickly as mortals do. Immortality means it takes longer to develop, so although I don’t know Cerulean’s age, he’s fully grown and physically too old to be that boy.

More importantly, that boy was skewered through with iron by my people. Faeries don’t come back from that. Immortality aside, they don’t rise from the dead if slain in battle.

Disjointed noises rush through the peak, the Fae fauna as nocturnal as the rest of their kin. A raptor’s call scratches the welkin. A smaller bird pipes from a tree. Leaves swish around the shaggy limbs of a wandering mountain goat.

Cerulean’s bare chest lifts, the ridges contorting. “Don’t fall off the edge, precious Lark.”

That snaps me out of it. “Don’t push me there, evil Cerulean.”

He tosses me a mild smirk that makes no promises, then prowls around the tower’s hip while plucking his flute from the quiver and playing his music. The animals trail him, trotting and fluttering in his wake as he travels into the park. The music coils around the bend and bleeds into the shrubbery.

My ears strain toward the melody whispering from the haven. Silvery notes glide over the current, which caresses the trees and billows the hem of my nightgown. I break from my paralysis and flop backward onto the grass. My palms cover my mouth, and my eyes clench shut. A vision assaults me: a girl inventing a bunch of professions that should exist in this world but don’t, and a boy listening, convincing her that she has the power to become any of those experts.

But that boy had died. He can’t still be alive.

My fingers shake so badly that I scrub them against my thighs, failing to quell the tremors. The flute trails off, then begins anew, stroking from his end of this crest to mine. The tune changes, spiraling into a lullaby that softens the bulb in my throat. Though it’s a long time before I stop trembling, even longer before I muster the strength to open my eyes.

A gust of wind tickles the flowers and tousles the grass. Stars dust the landscape in serene white and fanciful teal.

I listen for traces of his flute, pondering if that lullaby isn’t solely for the fauna. Cerulean hadn’t been making a grand exit.

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