“Did you kill him on purpose?” she asked.
He cleared his throat to win some time before replying, “Krin had the misfortune of stepping in my line of sight.”
She didn’t need to know that he’d managed to get Krin’s attention just before the brack was about to close the crate. Krin had been facing his way when Kyllen shoved his hood back and moved, clanking his chains. Sometimes a glance was inevitable, even if one knew it was deadly. At the sound of the chains, the brack couldn’t help but look up. Now, there was one brack less in the world—not a huge loss.
Sadly, it’d been just Krin who had glanced at him. Ghata had observed the scene through a large mirror, cleverly avoiding looking at him directly.
“Can you stop it? Your power?” Amira asked.
“Can you avoid looking at someone?” he retorted.
“Easily. I just close my eyes.”
“How long can you stay with your eyes closed? A minute? An hour? A day? Can you live your life like that?”
He heard her blow out a breath.
“It wouldn’t be easy, would it?” he said. “People often think it’s simple. Close your eyes. Turn away. Don’t look. Could you have a conversation with someone without ever looking them in the eye, not even once? It’s hard to do, even if you only have two eyes. And I have fifty.”
“But can you…like, turn it off?”
“Turn off the magic?” He chuckled.
Gods, she was naïve. Or maybe just ignorant. Humans didn’t possess any magic. How would she know anything about it? Obviously, no one here in Madame’s establishment had taught her about these things, either. No one had thought she’d ever need this knowledge.
“No, Amira. Magic cannot be turned off. A fae is born with it. One can strengthen it. Sometimes magic can be lost. But no one controls it enough to turn it on and off at will.”
“So, the only way for you not to kill people would be…” She paused, probably thinking about his little speech about avoiding eye contact.
He didn’t lie to her. It often was impossible not to look. One glance, no matter how brief, was all it took for a gorgonian to turn to stone any living creature outside of the Lorsan Wetlands.
“If we need to, we wear hoods that conceal the senties and cover our eyes,” he explained. “A gorgonian can’t turn to stone another gorgonian. Neither can our power harm the animals that live in Lorsan lands. We don’t travel outside of our kingdom that often. Our craft is valuable everywhere in Nerifir. However, gorgonians are not welcome outside of Lorsan. For obvious reasons.” He exhaled a humorless laugh.
“Others are scared of you, aren’t they? I’m sorry, Kyllen, but I can’t blame them. Your…um, gift is terrifying.”
She got that right. The gift often felt like a curse outside of Lorsan’s borders.
“It’s a good thing you can’t harm each other.” Her voice lifted.
“That is a good thing.” He smiled at her attempt to find something positive for him. “Procreation would be very difficult otherwise. No one likes stone-cold sex.”
She took another pause, then said with some uncertainty, “You’re teasing me.”
He grinned wider. “Just a little.”
It felt good to smile again. To jest, to flirt. All those things he had enjoyed before and had been deprived of for so long.
“Do you have a big family?” Amira switched the subject. Or maybe his mentioning of sex brought her to the topic? He was still figuring out how her mind worked.
“Not very big. Just my parents, myself, and my brother.”
“Tell me about them.” A rustling against the wood on the other side told him she must have shifted her position a little, and for a moment he wished he could see her sitting out there.
He made himself a little more comfortable, too, by rearranging his chains. The truck had been traveling along a relatively smooth road, with minimal jolting.
“My family? Well, my father is the High Lord of the Court of Ellohi. He’s honorable, brave, and beloved by his subjects, of course. My mother is a true lady—fair, kind, and elegant. A noble family. Boring in its perfection.”
It was true. His parents were perfect. The hardest part of his life so far had been to fit in and to prove himself worthy of their flawless legacy.
“And your brother?”
“Udren? He’s younger than me by over six decades. He was sixteen when I was taken.”
“How did you get taken?” she asked.
He winced at the shameful memory of his defeat. “They trapped me.”
“How? You said you have fifty eyes to look out for danger.”
She was sharp, throwing his own words back at him.
“In that particular instance, the eyes didn’t help,” he replied. “The bracks set up their trap underwater. My brother and I were at the Teal Stream, away from the palace. I was helping him select a water serpent to ride. He decided to test one.”
“Serpent is a snake, isn’t it?” she interrupted. “How do you ride a snake?”
“Water serpents are much bigger than regular snakes. They live in the wide, shallow rivers of the Wetlands.”
“How big are they?” She seemed to be drawn into his story, with eagerness in her voice and thirst to know more.
“Wider than you and me together and as long as the trees are tall. We ride them by sliding a harness over their heads and standing on their necks, right where their heads merge with their bodies. If you pull the harness up, the serpent will hold its head above water. But if you do it wrong, it will do everything it can to shake you off.”
She made a noise of astonishment. “Why on earth would anyone want to ride a monster like that?”
He smiled, thinking back to his training. “For fun. For sport. My father holds a tournament every year when the best of the warriors from his lands come to compete. I’ve won them all for the past decade,” he added smugly.
“But your brother is only sixteen. Isn’t there an age limit for when to start taming the giant snakes?”
“My brother has long started his training.” Kyllen himself had first tried to climb on a serpent when he was eight. Of course, that hadn’t gone so well. “I wasn’t angry with Udren for trying to ride a serpent. But I was upset when he fell off. I saw him splash into the water, and when I got to that spot, he was trapped in the net below. I dove in to free him, but my knife couldn’t cut the net. I managed to untangle it from around him. The moment the net released him, it coiled around me. Then, a thick, black fabric shrouded me. The bracks hooded me, chained me in iron, and locked me in this crate.” He couldn’t help a heavy sigh. “The rest you know.”
“That’s horrible. You sacrificed yourself for your brother.”