Page 76

Then he stuns me anew: He was born from a seed. Excluding the fauna, who procreate in the traditional manner, all woodland Solitaries are born from seeds. Moreover, all are born in the same place, in a dell called The Seeds that Give.

He averts his gaze, his profile a landscape of inclines—sharp and steep in their depths. “It’s different from mountain and river, where the Folk hatch their babes the usual way, however infrequent. Lucky devils, they are.”

“Lucky?” I repeat, but Puck doesn’t expand on that adjective.

The satyr talks about growing up with the other Solitaries and Sylvan.

“She and I used to play hunting games,” he says, fondness threading through his words. It’s a sound I’d like to grab ahold of and tuck in my notebook for safekeeping.

“The doe back home loves to race me across our property,” I say. “She always wins.”

We trade appreciative grins. For someone so ruthless, this satyr has a tender spot for things I recognize: the flora and fauna of our lands. I’ve always known that as a fact, because all Faeries worship the nature in their environs. But until now, this idea hadn’t been tangible. It hadn’t felt real, nor on the same level.

Puck adds, “Years later, when I was a strapping young buck, I met Cypress. He became another friend.”

“What about Cerulean and Elixir?” I inquire. “You refer to them as brothers of history and brothers-in-arms. Technically, that constitutes a family.”

Puck’s eyebrows vault into his forehead. “Not sure if you want to hear more about them, luv.”

He’s correct. I don’t want to know a thing about the rulers who have my sisters in their clutches.

Yet he’s wrong. I want to know everything, down to the last weakness.

A noxious mood threatens to infest our surroundings. With one slip of the tongue, this could easily turn into an argument.

Puck probably senses it because he proceeds tentatively, seizing on a less destructive topic that has to do with his and his brothers’ ages. He’d been a tad older than me when we met—the equivalent of a twelve-year-old. Certainly, he had looked that way, small and scrawny.

Yet after The Trapping, Puck had developed swiftly until he’d possessed the physical, mental, and emotional maturity of a male in his prime. He tells me his brothers had experienced the same transformation. They’d all been children during The Trapping, but after rescuing their kin, Cerulean, Puck, and Elixir began to change that same night. Literally, they grew into their newfound roles as leaders.

Instead of aging slowly like Faeries, they’d aged rapidly like humans.

In both looks and psychology, Puck’s advancement became proportional to a mortal man of twenty-one years. At which point, the process slowed once more, and he resumed the normal pace of immortality.

None of the rulers know why any of this had happened. The catalyst remains a mystery.

That’s all I can handle. I’ll ask more about them later, when I’m able to swallow what I hear. I will ask when I can stomach the idea of Puck connected to Cerulean and Elixir in any manner, pledged to them in any capacity. In other words, when I’m able to reconcile this without the impulse to lodge a bolt in Puck’s chest.

The satyr takes note of my expression and circles back to the centaur. “You know, when I met Cypress, he showed up at a rather inconvenient time.”

Puck gives me a devilish look, and my gasp turns into a coughing fit. “He did not!”

“Oh yes, he did.”

Just like that, a weight lifts, and the mood lightens. Puck feigns wistfulness. “The faun had been a fetching male. Older, with elk antlers as big my ego and a cock just as—”

I shove his hip with the sole of my boot. “I don’t need a visual, thank you.”

Puck chuckles. “When Cypress happened upon us, he’d been hunting his supper and accidentally misinterpreted the faun’s groan for a howl. Needless to say, my partner ended up with an arrow lodged in his ass. The look on Cypress’s face when he realized his mistake? It was precious as fuck.” Puck shakes his head, rueful. “Shit. I can’t believe I just told you that.”

I chortle. “A satyr, aghast by his own admission?”

“Shh, don’t tell anyone. We have our limitations, after all.”

Yes, but very few. On that note, how many bed partners has Puck had? Is sex different for him between males versus than females? With Faeries in contrast to humans?

The notion chafes. I fall silent, mulling that over, blistering in silence for far too long.

I catch Puck surveying my reaction and snap, “What?”