An Embrace of Citrus & Snow (Fallen for a Fae #1)

3. Everil

Chapter three

Everil

By the ninth day, Everil was too tired for dread. Drained and soulsick, he sat on the parlor settee, watching as the ceiling spun gently above.

Not much longer, now. Dawn poured its watery light through the windows, and Protocol gave them until midnight. Midnight. Then Nimai’s messenger would arrive to take them back to Faerie. Everil would be bonded to Nimai again. His tattered, starving soul would give him no choice. They would swear their oaths to Talia, and Everil would settle back into the life he’d fled.

“Eritrea,” Talia said, her voice interrupting Everil’s pathetic self-pity. “We could go to Eritrea.”

It wasn’t her first suggestion. She seemed determined to believe this a fairy tale in the mortal style, complete with a last-second rescue.

Powerful or no, Talia wasn’t fae. Being fae meant recognizing the old stories as lies. There were no heroes, no hidden secrets that led to happily ever after. Rumpelstiltskin did not chant his name to the air for all and sundry to hear.

Your mother died, and you didn’t even grieve her, and you waited, patient and pathetic, for your world to come to an end.

“What’s in Eritrea?” he asked. She’d only try again if he didn’t.

“No extradition policies.”

Everil laughed, though he shouldn’t encourage her. It made the ceiling spin faster. “Where did you hear that?”

“Oh. Around.”

“Don’t play with the humans. Please. It’s cruel. ”

Talia sulked on the chair beside him, nestling down into her hoodie. “I was only watching. Not whispering in anyone’s ear.”

“Just–”

The sound of knuckles on wood cut Everil off. He sat up too fast, making his stomach twist and the world go white. It was too early. They were meant to have until midnight. It wasn’t like Nimai to breach Protocol.

Be grateful , he told himself. Less time spent starved and suffering. It was a mercy, of a sort. Nimai liked it when Everil was grateful.

“I’ve got it,” Talia said, bouncing to her feet before Everil could catch her arm. “They’re early. I’ll tell them to fuck off until it’s time.” She looked back at him, worrying her lip. “I can give you that much.”

“Talia, none of this is your fault.”

Too late. She was already striding toward the door, intent on making her first words to Nimai’s proxy an argument. Everil had to intervene. He pushed himself to his feet, reaching the entry of the parlor as Talia pulled the door open.

Everil was braced to face Suire or whomever Nimai had chosen. Prepared to send them away lest his nine days of fading be put to waste. Well, he thought he was, at least. Few things could have prepared him to discover a human on his doorstep.

But this was, quite definitively, a human. Tall enough that Everil could see him over diminutive Talia and wrapped up for the late autumn chill. Even with all the layers, Everil could tell the stranger was solidly built, with that human roughness about him that fae always lacked. He held a mechanical, vaguely familiar device loose at his side.

The man looked past Talia and spotted Everil, those tired blue sizing him up in silence. Vanilla and fresh citrus flooded Everil’s senses. Orange sweet and lemon sharp, soothing and tempting all at once. Everil locked his knees, grabbing the doorframe to keep from falling.

“Oh,” Talia said. “I hope you’re not a present.”

The man opened his mouth, as if to speak, but Everil didn’t give him the chance.

“He isn’t. Go upstairs.”

Both human and Gate watched him. Talia’s eyes were wide and worried, the human’s narrowed with suspicion. As if he were the one who had the rights to this place, and Everil the intruder. This was Everil’s fault. He’d been too weak to maintain the wards that usually kept the curious at bay.

“Everil,” Talia said, rocking back on her heels .

“ Please .” He didn’t have an argument in him. Not now.

Blessedly, it didn’t come. Talia turned with a final worried look before disappearing up the stairs.

The man, unfortunately, stayed put. He was leaning against the doorframe now, watching Everil from just beyond the threshold.

“You look like shit,” the tired-eyed human said, his voice a middling tenor, pleasant and untrained. “You okay, man?”

Was he? All Everil could think of was the man’s aura. A sweeter, darker note beneath the orange and vanilla. Honey. The man’s aura surely shouldn’t taste of honey. Everil shouldn’t have been able to taste it at all. But his soul yearned for the stranger, like he was a river waiting for Everil to dive in.

The call of a bond. The eager need of his tattered soul, waking at the promise of a union.

It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible . Nimai had been his only potential bond in over a century of looking. A scruffy, rude human invading his home couldn’t possibly be a prospect. Still, Everil tightened his grip on the doorframe, not daring to move closer. Depleted as he was, if he touched the man, he wouldn’t be able to stop the bond from forming.

He had to get rid of him. Quickly.

“Don’t concern yourself with me,” he managed. “Please, you must be lost. We don’t offer tours.”

“Yeah, no fucking kidding.” The man’s laughter was sharp, and he leaned further in as he spoke, setting the device he held on the table beside the door.

Careful, the way he did it, as if he valued the device. A video camera? Was the man a videographer? Why was a videographer in Everil’s home , tasting of sugar and temptation?

“I’m not generally known to kid.”

“Seriously though,” the human said. “Might be lost, but– You need a doctor? I can call a doctor.”

“No,” Everil answered, meeting the human’s abrupt, abrasive concern with level cool. “I’m not ill.”

The man stepped forward, across the threshold. Everil felt his potential approach as a fresh rush of sweetness. He stepped back accordingly, his hand leaving the doorframe.

The man was staring. Lingering there, just within the doorway, and watching Everil, his gaze shifting between his hands and his face. Odd, that look. As if he were trying to remember where they’d met before.

The house, unfortunately, appeared to have decided the stranger was a guest. While not so responsive as Faerie, Brookhaven had been Everil’s home for the past century. It had basic awareness, including a sense of hospitality. The air warmed, waking a breeze in the hallway that tugged at the stranger’s short, dark hair.

If the house wished to be hospitable, Everil had no choice but to do the same.

“I’m afraid you may come in if you wish. Though, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m in no state to offer protection.”

“Uh,” the man said, trailing off into silence. But he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. His brows were knit in confusion, his gaze searching the hall. “It’s a very nice house. Recommended or not. Is this Brookhaven?”

“Yes.” It’d been some time since Everil had heard someone else refer to it thus. “I’m surprised anyone remembers.”

“It’s in the records.”

Everil struggled merely to stand, to keep his distance and composure, while the man’s sweet aura dragged at his depleted soul. The room swam, and if Everil only allowed it, only touched the human in this state, the dizzying misery would recede, replaced by orange and vanilla.

No. He’d done this to force a bond with Nimai , to override his mind’s revulsion at reestablishing a bond he knew to be poison. This wasn’t Nimai. It was a human, blue-eyed and brief, looking around in wary curiosity.

The man raised an eyebrow, his gaze roving the walls and fixtures, lingering on Everil, then exploring the parlor with unabashed curiosity.

He needed to leave.

“What do you require?” Everil asked. “Food? Refreshments? I cannot offer shelter.”

Or perhaps he could. In a few hours, they’d be gone. The man could have the house. The thought surprised him into dark amusement, a faint, exhausted smile finding its way to his lips.

“I didn’t come for shelter,” the man said, his tone distracted. He was no longer looking at Everil, and that distraction was a relief. His attention only made the thrum of the bond stronger.

“Food then? ”

“I came to look around.” The man advanced toward the parlor as he spoke. “It’s what I do. Go to abandoned places. Look around, try not to piss myself when I get too close to a family of raccoons, and record it. They call this place the Phantom Stallion House now, for the most part, ’cause it’s supposed to be haunted.”

That made very little sense. But Everil didn’t have the attention to spare to puzzle over it, not with the human approaching, too sweet and too close, forcing Everil to withdraw. A fae, a kelpie, cowed by a human.

“Pathetic,” murmured Nimai’s remembered voice. “You’ve made yourself pathetic, Everil. You’re nothing without me to look after you.”

“Apt,” Everil managed to say. He took another step back, nearly stumbling, surprised by the lip of the carpet. “But I’m afraid you’re to be disappointed. I’ve no ghosts to offer. I could locate some mice? But raccoons tend to be opinionated.”

He’d retreated past the settee, his back nearly to the bookshelf. Pathetic. Pathetic, ill-mannered, and weak. He hadn’t even fetched the man the refreshments he’d offered.

“Fucking right? Mouthy bastards. I’d only sic raccoons on my worst enemy, and you’re not them.” The man was smiling, but the expression had a brittle edge. “It’s always disappointing. Shit’s not real.”

“I don’t recall saying that,” Everil murmured in mild correction. Ghosts weren’t his remit, but there’d been a time when his closest friend had been Declan, a sluagh. He knew not all spirits rested. He simply didn’t expect to be permitted their company.

The man didn’t seem to have heard him. His gaze was on the coffee table and the little box resting there.

Oh. Winter’s curse, Everil was a fool. Talia had left the courting gifts she’d received scattered about the room. The one that’d caught the man’s eye was a particularly pretty bit of magic. A bit of Faerie, concentrated and bound to the box, meant to allow the human realm to similarly adjust to its owner’s tastes. All it required was a bit of attention, and…

Quartz and dark wood unfurled, first petal-like, and then petals in truth, a flower opening toward the sun of the stranger’s regard. It smelled, oddly, of long closed rooms, of dust and forgotten things. The lighting shifted, as the curtains and furniture lost their rich reds, and the first chords of an unfamiliar song played through the air.

The man watched the box in silence, a crooked half-smile on his lips. His breathing deepened, some of the tense wariness appearing to leave his shoulders.

“The fuck,” the human said as he stepped closer to the table. Quiet and wondering. “You make this? ”

Everil couldn’t think . There were answers he could offer. Should offer. He might fool the man with talk of technology, which Talia claimed capable of endless impossibilities. Or a glamour to hide the room’s shifting, though he hadn’t the strength for it.

The room spun. Each breath drowned him further in honey and citrus.

The man stepped toward Talia’s toy, captive to that harnessed bit of Faerie. And Faerie was so very unpredictable around humans. It might crown him in oak or fill his lungs with rose petals. Set him dancing or put him to sleep for a hundred years.

“Wait.” Did he speak the word aloud? All Everil could hear was the music and his own beating heart.

A step, then another, through the dizzy blur of colors, not thinking of why he’d been keeping his distance. Only thinking of Lawrence’s blood and Nimai’s smile. Faerie’s relentless cruelty and the man’s guileless curiosity.

Everil made his way past the settee, stepping between the man and the table. Too close. Much too close. The man’s aura dragged at him like a current.

He needed to get away. Now . But he didn’t dare move back and leave the man at risk of the box’s enchantments. Instead, he wavered, caught between impulses, lips parted to better taste the summer-sweet honey in the air.

The man glanced up, his eyes widening in surprise. He looked ready to speak, but whatever he intended to say was replaced with a startled, “Fuck!”

Because Everil was falling. Too much, too fast, too dizzy, and when his knees gave, it was almost a relief. Hitting the floor would be better than wavering there, unsure.

The floor failed to materialize. Instead, there was an arm around his waist. Another on his shoulder. The man was holding him. Keeping him from falling.

There was no time. No chance. The man caught him, and the world ended. Again.

The world dissolved on his tongue like candy. Baked oranges, rich with honey and vanilla, served on a summer night. The distant call of crickets and nightbirds. The dance of fireflies.

And Everil should have been able to fight it, to tear himself free, as he’d done when he’d found Nimai covered in Lawrence’s blood. But there was so little of him left, and he needed this stranger, needed him down to his soul. To draw him closer, drown in him, taking in selfish desperation even as he collapsed, half supported, to the ground.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. “ The man was swearing, breath warm and close.

The human somehow managed to settle on the settee, while Everil knelt before him, clinging to the man’s legs with all of the fresh bond’s desperate desire for contact. His forehead rested on the man’s knees, and the man still held him, his hands on Everil’s back and shoulder. He could feel the human’s confusion and concern, just as he could feel his own panicked heartbeat.

There was no Protocol for this.

Or anyway, the Protocol was simple. You did not, under any circumstances, form a soulbond with a human. You certainly didn’t spring one on a stranger, taking all you could of him while clinging shamelessly, shivering at his touch.

Everil took a shaking breath and carefully pulled away, sitting back on his heels. The distance hurt , a pain deeper than merely physical. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. He couldn’t let this happen.

(It had already happened.)

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking up, his long, dark hair falling into his face. “I’m afraid I’ve done you a grave disservice.”