"If he doesn't care for you, for her, or for me," Ethine said, "then there is no one else I can think of whom he cares for, save himself.”
A blond knight strode toward them, his green armor making his body nearly disappear into the leaves.
"I really do have to go," Ethine said, turning away.
"He doesn't care about himself," Kaye called after her. "I don't think he's cared about himself for a long time."
Corny strolled through the woods, trying to ignore how his heart hammered against his chest. He tried not to make eye contact with any faeries, but he was drawn to their cats' faces, their long noses and bright eyes. Luis's scowl was fixed, no matter what they passed. Even a river full of nixes—cabochons of water beading on their bare skin—did not move him, while it was all Corny could do to look away.
"What do you see?" Corny asked finally, when the silence between them had stretched so long that he'd given up on Luis's speaking first. "Are they beautiful? Is it all illusion?”
"They're not exactly beautiful, but they're dazzling." Luis snorted. "It sucks, when you think of it. They have forever, and what do they do— spend all their time eating and fucking and figuring out complicated ways to kill each other.”
Corny shrugged. "I probably would too. I can see myself with bag after bag of Cheetos, downloading porn, and playing Avenging Souls for weeks straight if I was immortal.”
Luis looked at Corny for a long moment. "Bullshit,” he said.
Corny snorted. "Shows what you know.”
"Remember that cake you ate before?" said Luis. "All I saw was an old mushroom.”
For a moment Corny thought he was joking. "But Kaye ate one.”
"She ate, like, three." Luis said with such glee that Corny started to laugh, and then they were both laughing together, as easy and silly as if they were going to be friends.
Corny stopped laughing when he realized that he wanted them to be friends. "How come you hate the folk?”
Luis turned so that his cloudy eye was to Corny, making it hard for Corny to read his expression. "I've had the Sight since I was a little kid. My dad had it and I guess it got passed down to me. It made him crazy; or maybe they did." Luis shook his head wearily, as though he were already tired of the story. "When they know you can see them, they fuck with you in other ways. Anyway, my dad got the idea in his head that no one was safe. He shot my mother and my brother; I think he was trying to protect them. If I had been there, he would have shot me, too. My brother made it— barely—and I had to put myself in debt to a faery to get him better. Can you imagine how things would be without the fey? I can. Normal.”
"I should tell you—one of them, a kelpie, killed my sister," Corny said. "He drowned her in the ocean about two months ago. And Nephamael, he did stuff to me, but I still wanted ..." His words trailed off as he realized that maybe it wasn't okay for him to talk about a guy that way in front of Luis.
"What did you want?”
In the clearing ahead, Corny spotted a group of faeries tossing what looked like dice into a large bowl. They were lovely or hideous or both at once. One golden-haired head looked uncomfortably familiar. Adair.
"We have to go," he whispered to Luis. "Before he spots us.”
Luis took a quick look over his shoulder as they walked faster and faster. "Which one? What did he do?”
"Cursed me." Corny nodded as they ducked under the curtain of a weeping willow. Neither mentioned that Silarial had promised no harm would come to them. Corny guessed that Luis was as cynical about the parameters of that promise as he was.
A tangle of faeries rested near the trunk of the tree: a black-furred phooka leaning against two green-skinned pixie girls with brownish wings; an elfin boy slumped by a drowsy-looking faerie man. Corny stopped short, surprised. One of them was reciting what seemed to be an epic poem on the subject of worms.
"Sorry," Corny said, turning. "We didn't mean to bother anybody.”
"Nonsense," said a pixie. "Come, sit here. You will give us a story too.”
"I'm not really—," he started, but a faery with goat feet pulled him down, laughing. The black dirt felt soft and damp under his hands and knees. The air was heavy with the rich smells of soil and leaf.
"The drake rose up with wings like leather," intoned a faery. "Its breath set afire all the heather." Perhaps the poem was about wyrms.
"Mortals are so interestingly shaped," said the elfin boy, running his fingers over the smoothness of Corny's ears.
"Neil," Luis said.
The phooka reached over to touch the roundness of Corny's cheek, as though fascinated. A faerie boy licked the inside of Corny's arm and he shivered. He was a puppet. They pulled his strings and he danced.
"Neil," Luis said, his voice distant and unimportant. "Snap out of it.”