THE FAE ARE STEALING HEARTS [Wattpad Picks: Editors' Choice]
Many moons ago, a deal was struck with the fae by a young woman who wished to save her lover's life. Years later, Adalyn is called upon to repay the debt and tumbles into a...
The bird-seer straightened as well as she could, shuffling into the centre of the room as Ada and Raeph stumbled back. With a flick of an emaciated wrist, the rabbit heart went arcing through the air and landed in the cauldron with a splash.
"Come, come," the seer said. "What is it you ask of us today?"
The snake-seer absentmindedly drew a shard of rock from her pocket, followed by a thin bone that she turned over and over in the candlelight, before beginning to shave it down. Slivers of ivory floated down into the cauldron, frothing up with the bubbles like fallen gulls into ocean waves. The dust around the stalagmites swirled, and Ada stood rooted in place as the fox-seer drifted around her and Raeph. The scent of death and decay lingered on the old fae's skin, prising its way into Ada's nose and turning her stomach.
Raeph shifted towards the cavern shelves. "We've come to ask you a question."
The fox-seer snorted. "And how is it you'll see to pay us?"
"In the usual method," replied Raeph.
"The usual method." The three seers cackled as one.
"Will you exchange us another dagger?" crowed the bird-seer. "Your first was quite lovely, and the other in your belt is lovelier still."
Raeph flinched. "No. With a payment in blood."
A silence filled the cavern; the snake-seer stopped her whittling and the bird-seer's fingers turned white around the stalagmites. It was broken only by the third seer, a laugh choking up and out of her lungs until its echoes rang deep around the hollow.
"The blood tithe!" cried the fox-seer.
"It's a deal," the bird-seer said.
"A deal! A deal!" shrieked her sisters.
The rock at Ada's back felt icy, as if the world above had hurried on into winter without waiting for her return. The shadows danced too closely, and the candles burnt too low. Whatever creatures had crept through her nightmares as a child, they answered to the three wicked fae before her now.
For the first time, the man beside her felt like an ally, and she whispered up to him, "Raeph?"
His eyes didn't falter their watch upon the cauldron, each as dark as the bird-seer's beads that clattered against her empty sockets. But his hand darted backwards, reaching through the space between them and finding Ada's fingertips. This time, she didn't shrink away, feeling each of his fingers weave easily through her own and knit their bodies together. She almost returned his actions, almost pulled him closer, but didn't get the chance. Raeph lowered their hands, concealed behind the swells of Ada's cloak, and wrapped her fingers, one by one, around the hilt of her silver dagger.
His hand fluttered to the small of her back, tracing a small circle with his thumb before pushing her, ever so slowly, behind him as he walked one step deeper into the cavern. Ada's feet numbed, but she understood his intention, sliding her stare away from the cauldron and towards the iron blade in its bed of ivy. She faded back into the shadows and crouched beneath the shelves while the seers' attention was on Raeph.
"Ask us, then. Ask us," hissed the snake-seer, growing impatient as her hands worried together over the bubbling cauldron.
"Ask us your question and I shall see the one truth," continued the bird-seer. Her beads flared in the firelight like coals within a hearth.
Raeph cleared his throat and stepped closer to the sisters. "I want the name of the Saltsworn."
The words were barely past his lips when the fox-seer snarled, "Liar!"
"A liar, a liar," chanted the snake-seer, before spitting at the dirt beneath Raeph's boots.
"It's no lie," replied Raeph, his voice now murderously low.
"I hear your lies, Wolf," repeated the fox-seer, prowling around the cauldron. "The question you ask does not belong to you."
Ada froze, inches from the iron dagger, but sensing death poised behind her. She turned around; water boiling, dust dancing, light failing. Four faces stared back at her, but her gaze only found Raeph's, eyes of obsidian alight with a fire of fear and fury.
"The question is your own, young traveller," crooned the bird-seer to Ada, "and the blood tithe is yours to give."
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