Old Habits by Melissa Marr

welcome balm on his still injured pride.
    In front of him an unnatural wave rose up. Mortals pointed, and Keenan repressed a frown. Coexisting with mortals meant learning what was too extreme for them to explain away. A single twenty-foot wave in an otherwise tranquil sea was definitely too extreme.
    Atop the wave sat a figure. He’d call it a faery, but beyond that he knew no words to fit it. Bits of gray skin and solid black eyes were obvious, but the faery’s body was cloaked under strands of kelp that were crossed and layered in a great fibrous mass. The mortals didn’t see the faery; of that, Keenan was sure. There are no screams. On either side of the towering wave a kelpie pranced. The horselike beasts slashed the water with their hooves. At their touch the sea frothed. If he were easily intimidated, their entrance would be impressive, but he’d grown up under the watch of an overly dramatic mother—one who wielded Winter—and he was the embodiment of Summer. It made him difficult to impress.
    He waited while the sea stilled and the kelpies departed. The center wave delivered the creature to the rock where Keenan sat. In a blink, the amorphous water fey was a lithe mortal-shaped faery. Keenan couldn’t say for sure whether it was male or female, only that it made him think of both dancers and warriors. The faery folded its legs and sat beside him.
    “We do not speak to your sort. Not out here. Not often. Not as this,” it said. The voice rose and fell as if the sound of the water rolled into the words. “Why do you ask for speech?”
    “War comes. Bananach . . . the bestia. ” Keenan fought an unexpected urge to stroke the creature’s bare leg. It shimmered as the water at the horizon does when the sun seems to vanish at the end of the day.
    The faery turned its head, so Keenan was staring directly into its eyes. The depths of the ocean were in those eyes, the deepest waters where all was cold and dangerous and still and . . . Not tempting. He forced his gaze away. “If she wins, your faeries will die too.”
    “Mine?”
    Keenan folded his hands together to keep from reaching out to the faery. “You are not just another faery. You’re a regent, an alpha, one who commands.”
    “You may call me Innis,” it said, as if that answered the question implicit in his statement. Perhaps, for Innis, it did. “I will speak for those of the water.”
    Innis’ words seemed to fall onto Keenan’s skin, dripping down his forearm as if they were tangible things. His skin felt parched, too hot, painful almost.
    Heat that strong needs quenching, needs water. “I knew your parent,” Innis said. “My . . . parent?” Keenan fisted his hands, hoping that the movement would keep him from touching Innis. “Which? The last Winter Queen or the Summer King? Beira or Miach?”
    “I do not remember.” Innis shrugged. “Your forms are all alike. It was pleasant.”
    Keenan stared out at the rolling waves before him. The shimmering surface was mirrored in the flesh of the faery beside him. It was an odd similarity. He had sunlight inside him, but he also had traits other than light. Innis was as if water had taken form.
    He glanced at the faery, and as he did so realized that Innis now faced him. They’d been side by side at the edge of a rock a moment before.
    “You moved . . . or something.” Keenan struggled not to back away from the water faery. “How?”
    “You looked at the water. I am the water, so now you look at me.” Innis stared at him as it spoke, and the faery’s proximity made the air taste like brine. “We do not want to be dead.”
    “Right.” Keenan let sunlight fill him, remind him what he was. “We don’t either.”
    “The flesh creatures?”
    “Yes. Faeries who live on the land.”
    “You speak for all of you?” Innis had his hand now. “On the not wanting to be dead?”
    “I think so.” Keenan forced the words to his lips. “I am the king of a court. The Summer Court. I want to be