Half Wylde | Book 1

Sixteen: Small Truths

The washrooms, like everything else in the palace, were polished and grand. The room next to them was a large female bath, open for anyone to use. I peeked in while Schula took a turn at her business, and it may as well have been a pond for as big as it was. Fragrant steam misted the room, adding an air of mystery to the dark corners where I couldn't see. Small trays of candles floated on the water's surface, flickering and dancing with each ripple.

"Welcome to the bath, may I get you a towel?" A water nymph stood attendance near the doorway.

"Oh, no I was only looking. Sorry I'll go." I muttered and began backing away.

"Wait." A commanding voice echoed off the polished stone room. "I smell something interesting. Please, come closer."

I looked to the attendant, who seemed cautious, but nodded me in. My footsteps rattled around the room as I skirted the pool and went to a flickering corner of candles. That smell of damp wood, the one after a summer rain on the forest floor, perfumed the air. The sole bather in the grand bath was a pink woman, with black hair no longer than the boys' of the mountains. Her eyes were solid white, and she didn't follow my movements with them.

"What can I do for you, Lady?" I hoped I wasn't calling her the wrong title, though other than the King there only seemed to be lords and ladies. No barons or dukes like I'd seen in the human cities.

"You are the one they have been murmuring about all day. The youth." She tilted her head back against the side of the bath, stretching her arms out with no care of her nakedness.

"Yes." I said quietly. She gave off a dangerous aura, not unlike Thain when I first met him. Something feral. Maybe something just a little bit like the wraith.

"I wonder if I could taste your sire on you..." She wondered out loud. I shivered despite the humid room.

"Wren, there you are." Schula had found me in the bath. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed.

"Wren, is it?" The female's lips curled upward and she licked them. "Wren."Schula froze when she spotted the fae in the bath, then nodded to her. "Lady Krissaph, if you'll excuse us."

"Ah, the frigid bitch is here. Run along little Wren, I'm sure we'll meet again." She stretched, letting her breasts leave the water, glistening.

I didn't need to be told twice. A wicked laugh trailed behind me, bouncing off the walls as I walked as quickly as I could without slipping. Schula let me out before her, and the water nymph bowed us out.

"What were you doing?" Schula hissed at me.

"I was just l-looking at the bath!" I stammered. "I didn't know anyone was in there."

"It wasn't your fault." She sighed, taking her fingers through her hair. "I'll take you to a bath house later, a nice one without Spring court rubbish in it."

"She was Spring court?" I shivered. "I thought the Spring court would be..."

"Warmer? Pleasant?" Schula began walking us back to the throne room. "Krissaph is a succubus, one of the unseelie fae."

"Unseelie?" The word tickled at the back of my mind.

"No matter what kind of fae you are, from sylph to high fae to wraith, you can be classified into one of two categories." Schula said. "The seeley are mostly what you've encountered so far. Fae who are essentially good. Well, by the standards of nature at least. We don't have the same morals as the humans, but for the most part we could get along."

"The useeley though, are all made of something just a little darker. Disrupting the balance of the Wyldes is in their nature. Death, and violence. That wraith you encountered in the mountains with Thain, that was something unseelie."