Page 48 of Shadows and Flames (Twin Blades #2)

Tomás was about to cover the food, but Fenix appeared beside him, knocking the cloche away so he could smell it even more.

Back turned toward the window and fingers forming a dome around his nose, the Vyrkos pulled down his mask.

Just slightly, but enough for him to take a pointed inhale of our supper.

He was the one to cover it before stepping back beside Tana. “Smells fine to me. More appetizing than our mortal food back home, which is…strange.”

I watched Tana’s gaze swim somewhere between us, running over this new piece of information. Because of their dead state, Vyrkos were removed from their mortal reliance on food to the point that consuming such yielded no nutrition. From the few I’d talked to, they described food as dead, spoiled.

“Do you think that difference has something to do with you being a changed mortal?”

“Ah, I think it’s likely.” The Vyrkos startled at Tana’s attention, clearing his throat and stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Considering our race differences, that seems the likeliest of explanations.”

Tomás gave a long eye roll, wherein his irises and pupils disappeared completely.

Meline’s snort shook us both. “So, they are born immortals and have shit food. We’ve packed enough dried meat and fruit to last us a week at most. And that’s if we are bordering on starving.

Unless you want to hunt us their version of a deer,” she nudged me gently with the back of her head, “we have that long to find Francie.”

“And this schoolmarm could be anywhere,” Fenix concluded.

TOMáS

What a shit place with disgusting food.

The buttery sunlight finally died a few hours after the staff at the lodging house brought that wretched supper. I could still taste it in the back of my throat, like they were choking me with it. Or, perhaps that was the cloying aroma permeating every nook and cranny of the city.

Pyrestan, they called it.

Wherever we were, it did not sit well. The tree they constructed their home out of was magnificent, yes, a true feat of engineering.

The rich yet airy fabrics they used to dress their tall and slender forms ought to have been painted.

Recorded in artwork that would still not capture the celestial beauty of it all.

But I’d been alive long enough to know when I was being presented with lip color slapped on a hog.

“They do a good bit of staring here, don’t they?”

“We are from a different world. Would you not be staring?” Now that darkness had descended, the Vyrkos boy did not have to cover himself from head to foot.

He waved affably at a set of female Folk, and they giggled in response.

They both had wings that fluttered behind them, throwing the light of the lanterns hanging on the shopfronts.

Nogón’s queen and her cousin were speaking quietly as we walked, heads together, and my brother was on my other side. We had no true destination, other than to explore and see if we caught a whiff of a Lylithan named Francie. One who another mercenary suspected was kidnapped to this realm.

Instead of cursing myself again for going along with this fool’s errand, I sniped back at the Vyrkos. “Perhaps a bit of flirtation would bring us closer to finding her whereabouts, but before you go and fuck one of them, perhaps decide if that will bring you closer to your end goal.”

Elián snickered, or his version thereof, and the Vyrkos turned a curious shade of white tinged with pink. Almost like some of these Folk, here. His fangs dropped like an ill-trained child. “I’ve no end goal aside from making you gossiping schoolgirls pay for what you did to me.”

“Oh, please, spare us.” I lowered my voice because I wasn’t a complete arse, “You want a taste of the witch there because she saved your hide from meeting the Mother. You’ll be getting no apologies from any of us.”

He grumbled more insults, more denials, but I quickly lost interest. Music was playing in the streets, some Folk ate outside, drinking honey-colored liquor from elegant glasses.

My stomach rumbled, but I pushed my hunger out of my mind.

After slyly chucking our supper out the window to join whatever awaited at the bottom of the mountains, we mutually decided to not eat what was given to us.

Of course, upon checking on their employer, Meline and Tana found he was retiring early after ingesting all of his supper and his ordered seconds. The Vyrkos boy said to his formerly mortal senses, the food smelled pleasant. To the very mortal Walter Blackwood, that appeared to be the case as well.

Curious.

We proceeded past stores, past places for dancing, but aside from cursory looks, we didn’t indulge in what these people had to offer.

But I did notice more of the staring. Outside of a tavern where patrons drank and laughed jovially like the plucking of a harp, they also cut glares at us as we walked past. Wrinkled their noses or grimaced before hiding it with a smile or turning away.

Fenix, on the other hand, garnered a different sort of interest.

His way, these Folks’ smirks took on a note that could only be labeled as rapacious. They leaned forward, wings tightening. Some even approached, introducing themselves by names such as Clover or Sebastian. Blushing and taking drawing inhales too close than was proper.

To Fenix’s credit, he didn’t incite a predicament for us by insulting these creatures who may or may not have been powerful enough to pose a threat.

But I’d wager those fangs weren’t for appearances.

Whilst we browsed a small shop, he glanced at the witch with longing glazing his red eyes.

At the same moment, a particularly handsy Folk with a gossamer slip of a dress placed a hand on his shoulder.

He politely declined their offer of spending time with him, but as he worried about an unaware Tana’s reaction, I saw the Folk apply pressure to their hold on him.

Their nostrils flared with something other than lust, and their charm slipped.

“Well, how about your name, handsome? May I have at least that?”

Fenix’s brows furrowed as he used a bit more force to wrench his shoulder out of their grip. He opened his mouth, but I pulled him along with us before he could answer.

“They looked as if they wanted to eat you, mate. And not in a manner that yields release.”

He twisted his neck, looking back with no finesse at all, and the Folk waved, eyes crinkling and dimples showing. “I think they were just interested?”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

He swallowed, knot in his throat bobbing. “No. Bloody strong, though.”

We steered even clearer of the Folk, ignoring all offers to come inside because we just needed to see the wondrous jewels mined in their very own mountains, or the music that seemed to draw Fenix’s feet without his leave.

The first time it happened, his drifting toward the sound of lutes and lilting voices coming from a tavern sporting pillar-like branches around the entrance, I’d assumed it was incoordination on his part.

Not everyone was trained to become masters of their own body, I knew this, but the third and fourth times it happened, I suspected it was outside of his control.

If this was how he responded to this place, these people, did Blackwood stand a fucking chance of gaining the upper hand in a negotiation? How had our former mark accomplished such a lucrative arrangement?

As I steered the Vyrkos away from yet another musical invitation to imbibe and dance, having to go so far as clamp my hands around his shoulders and push him to follow the queen and witch, for some reason, I thought of the lad back at the Well.

We’d sent a letter to inform him and Nor about where we were going—as if they would be any help in a place like this with the only entrance being a random fucking tree trunk in a forest—after his last was filled with his typical cheery anecdotes.

The one addressed to me asked some terribly na?ve questions about how to get in someone’s good graces, and because I couldn’t have him embarrassing himself or me, I’d spent nearly an hour in the Vharan pharmacy drafting a response.

“Oi, when is that summer ritual?”

The witch had already been eyeing me and the Vyrkos, question in her stare that we mutually decided to leave unanswered with all of these fuckers with pointed ears in hearing range.

But my question had her perking up. She gestured to the pack slung across her front and bumping against her hip by jostling the strap.

“It’s technically today. I was hoping we could find somewhere suitable to burn these, but if we don’t, we can use one of the hearths back at the lodging home? ”

She looked to Elián then shook herself, refocusing ahead as we meandered the dark streets. There were some grassy areas, somehow built into godyx-damned tree branches, even recreational areas lined with wooden benches and floating lanterns to light the way.

No idea how the fuckers didn’t fly into them, seeing as they barely watched where they were going as it was. More than a few times, a Folk person with wings clipped one of our shoulders or sprinkled some sort of dust over our heads as they flew above.

We walked the length of the city, save for the palace grounds which were heavily guarded, and returned to the lodging house with our pouches of protection still unburned and sealed in Tana’s pack.

I’d not done the ritual before, obviously, but it seemed a terribly intimate thing.

To so blatantly ask the Mother and Her children to protect those you cared for.

In front of an audience of Folk, who I was fairly certain wanted to consume Fenix, did not seem the best choice for such a thing, and the witch had agreed.

So, we were back in her room, where the waterfalls that I now knew glowed in faint blues and greens, lit the room. Until, after peering at one of the small orbs hanging beside her bed, the witch caressed it with the curious tip of a finger.