All's Fair (Fair Folk Chronicles Book 4) by Jeffrey Cook, Katherine Perkins Page B

want to take a deep breath in this, let alone try to follow a scent."
    "We won't get so lucky next time,” Lani said. “We need to find the armories."
    Megan nodded and started moving opposite the direction the patrol had gone.
    Rounding a corner, Megan almost crashed into one of the slaves. She pulled up short, and ducked back around the corner. The slave remained focused on his task, carrying something towards one of the forges. The eyes, which weren't yellow, did not turn to see them. The face was covered in the black lines of Fomoire sadism-sorcery, as if they had long since scarred over. The figure didn't even have a hat. But as the creature's mouth opened to breathe heavily, there was no mistaking that particular desperate need for orthodontia.
    Redcap were the first fae to ever scare the living daylights out of Megan, to make her realize her situation was not only puzzling, but alien and dangerous. To see one with, well...the living daylights...long since drained out of him was bizarre.
    Megan shuddered, waiting with the group until the redcap, or former redcap, she wasn't quite sure, was further out of sight. "There's nothing left of these people, is there?” she asked.
    Justin set a hand on her shoulder. “They were dragged into a freezing watery realm more alien than any otherworld we have seen. They spent thousands of years surrounded by enemy god-monsters. Now, centuries later, those things still don't let them go. It's hard to know what can be left.”
     
     

Chapter 17: Tarnished Silver
     
    They passed numerous more slaves and dodged two more patrols. Thankfully, these didn't have one of the monsters with them. Progress was slow, especially when they neared the forge building, which had slaves coming and going from it steadily.
    Finally, they approached what Ashling assured them was one of the armories. A couple of slaves moved past their hiding spot, bringing a few more spear heads wrapped in cloth, with the redcap slave keeping the iron wrapped in the cloth to make sure it didn't touch his skin—which bore signs of several iron burns already. The human needed less care, but had numerous other scars, in addition to looking even closer to dead and desiccated.
    After the pair of slaves left, Ashling confirmed no others were approaching. The group carefully snuck into the room to start searching the spears, only to realize they weren't alone.
    A scrawny figure hunched over the table at the far end, cleaning a set of wrought-iron knives. She delicately clutched rags around each end as she laid them out, then carefully pressed one rag-covered handle as she ran the other rag along the relatively dull blade as if it were fire itself.
    Megan couldn't stop looking at the woman. The eyes were like tinted glass, but the hair looked a little like tarnished silver if it were very, very tarnished indeed, and between the black lines on her face were stripes that shimmered like mother-of-pearl.
    "Do you suppose that's Sorcha?" Though she'd tried to whisper it to Lani, the figure looked up anyway.
    For a moment, there almost appeared to be a glint in the black eyes, a silvery light.
    “Sorcha was little. She played with dolls,” Lani said, watching the slave carefully for any sign she was about to call out an alarm.
    “One thousand years ago. Who knows how growing up worked in the lake?” Megan said.
    “If that's her, then her mother may have been right about death never coming, but calling her living was kind of a stretch,” Justin said.
    “I always thought the tarnished hair and pearl-stains were physical reactions to her grief, not genetic,” Lani said.
    “A thousand years in kindasorta Hell probably makes you grieve, too,” Megan said. “Maybe the type of reaction was genetic. Or something. Blood calls to blood.”
    The woman sat still, head tilted, her black-glass eyes blank. But Megan still thought she'd seen the glint before. "Guys, going to try something," She looked at the woman, talking quietly. "Is