Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Six

As Dain had promised, I had more freedoms.

Those freedoms bit me in the arse more often than not.

Everything in that house definitely wanted to kill me. Including, no doubt, the only four sidhe I ever encountered under that roof. Every corner I turned, faces and teeth and claws sneered and reared at me from other fae-kind. Most of whom I hadn't even heard of. They sniffed at me, and I saw the drool pooling in their mouths as they thought about their preferred way to eat me.

Their rustling voices would whisper at me. A lot of it was unintelligible. Enough of it was intelligible.

"Mm... Human blood."

"Eat it."

"Taste it."

"Hurt it."

"Savour."

"Bind it to the dark."

"Num num."

Despite what they clearly wanted to do to me, they were obviously confined to the shadows because they never stepped into the light. Neither did they manipulate it to get to me. Not since the bottom of the stairs. I hoped it had something to do with Dain's pronouncement, rather than biding their time.

But it wasn't all terrifying. Comparatively.

I also saw the other three sidhe more often. It seemed that they lived there with Dain. I wondered what kept them from the dining room at breakfast and lunch, but presumed it was Dain's obvious egomania and control issues. Perhaps he felt it was the only time he could actually speak words to me, to converse. If bickering and insulting each other could be considered conversation. Because he certainly didn't say anything to me except vulgar insinuation and innuendo around the others.

Not that he was much better without them.

After my morning blood bath, I wasn't quite brave enough to wander the residence. But I dawdled between my room and the dining room and the antechamber. I took my time ambling the halls between and looking at the paintings on the walls, the sculptures in their alcoves, the marbling patterns of the stonework underfoot.

The pictures seemed to dance as I watched them, rustling as though with a breeze or movement out of the corner of an eye. So many different vistas. Places I felt I recognised from other paintings in Aclad, from books I'd spent hours pouring over in the archives. Others were totally foreign, but I could almost imagine I knew what they were.

Nephinae appeared beside me. I slid my eyes to her and watched as she took in the painting in front of us. There was a wistful longing on her face, and I wondered what memory this vista evoked in her.

"I've often wondered if your human artists have some fae in them," she said softly. "Perhaps a very long way back, so far that even a fae-kind would be unable to detect it, but enough that their art is blessed for it."

"Are any of these by human hands?" I asked.

She nodded. "A few."

"Can you tell by looking at them?"

She looked around. "I can. You can't?"

I shook my head. "How would I know?"

"The precision of the brushstrokes and vividness of the colours. Fae work...shines with glamour."

I frowned. "So, if I try to feel glamour, I could tell?"

Her head cocked to the side. "You can feel glamour?"

I shrugged. "Can't all hybrids?"

"Not even many halfbreeds."

"Huh."