Faebreaker

10: Pooka

Isla thrived in darkness, but with only the skin on her bones protecting her and no way to defend herself, a fear she hadn't felt in years bled into the core of her being. She hid inside the trunk of a gigantic oak tree, thinking, alone and hungry. People feared her kind, their magic and what they did, but what would they do when they found out she was powerless? That she was just a little girl hiding in the night and no longer the monster they feared her to be.

The cold bit at her skin, and a metallic taste still lingered on her tongue from when she'd bitten at Feena's nose. Blood, something she'd become all too accustomed to over the years. Without the wild spirit alive inside her, however, that taste was all except satisfying. Spitting off to the side, she'd started to detest it. Fruit. She wanted fruit. And she knew with certainty that there was some in this forest. If only it weren't so bloody dark, then she might be able to find something to eat.

Now, though, was a matter of survival. Isla knew the dark forests of Westerland better than most, and she knew that as uncommon as they were, other creatures lurked about besides herself. She was merely one of the fae folk, part of the gentry fae that made their courts and kingdoms outside of human realms. Kelpie, sure, one might consider her that, and perhaps she was in a way...but it would be a grave misinterpretation of what she actually was.

If a wild, independent spirit like the one inside her had made its home in that lake instead, it would have eaten both Charles and Feena without so much as a rational thought. And its ensorcellment would have been all the more potent as well as its savagery. As to whether lust would have been its chosen tool or not, she could only speculate. It just seemed convenient, Isla thought, thinking back on what she'd done to Charles. Human men seem so...easy.

Isla let out a breathy chuckle. She liked the little tree-trunk home she'd made for herself. She closed her eyes, drawing in the dirt like she'd done back in her little basement in Ettinsburgh. A small choir of crickets chirped through the night, and the wind picked up outside, Isla happy she wasn't caught out in it to feel its tender assault.

  She thought about the boy, and how he'd looked at her not with contempt, but with a true admiration for her beauty. I'd barely ensorcelled him. The other immortal folk back at her home of the Unseelie Court treated her as though she were some prize to be won. Over and over to the point where she thought that somehow, she'd begun to accidentally ensorcell her own peers. "Isla, take me!" She cringed. Sex was nothing to her folk, even at a very young age. To have a fae child was nothing short of a miracle, it sometimes taking hundreds of years for fae women to even have their first child.

The result of her own birth, father had told her, was a court-wide celebration, the Seelie Court of the faes even going as far as to give their own congratulations in the form of a dead crow with the congratulatory note tied to it. It'd been a jab, but Isla's mother, Morrigan, took it in good humor, sending a dove with its head chopped off back in return with a note of her own.

Isla smiled. She wanted to go back to the chaos that was her home. Minus mother, however. And a few other reprobates she didn't particularly like.

"Lads! This way!"

And then suddenly, there came MacGregor, and Isla stopped breathing.

A horse clopped along the forest floor, and a thousand angry footsteps followed. Had he roused the whole town to go looking for her? The burns across her body still stung. If she'd looked beautiful to that boy before, she'd most likely give the impression of an overcooked piece of meat at this point...or at least a string of dried beef. She wasn't quite sure which. Either way, doom fast approached, and Isla wanted nothing to do with it.

"Halt!" MacGregor had stopped outside—a good way off, however. Peeking out of her trunk, torchlights ran in straight line behind MacGregor. Twenty men trailed behind him, shuffling about the forest floor with their feet. He dismounted, giving the line a good pass before he started speaking.