"I didn't know you had a talent for true naming." She looked at him, and I saw the pupils of her eyes widen past her changeable irises until her eyes were as black as a starless night.
And then her glamour went all funky.
I've seen fae drop their glamour before.
Sometimes it's cool, with colors sliding and mixing; sometimes it's like when I shapeshift--just blink and the man in front of you suddenly has antennae and six-inch-long hair growing from his hands.
But this was different.
It reminded me of an electrical appliance shorting out, complete with quiet fizzling noises.
A patch of skin appeared on her arm that had been covered by the sweater she wore, and on the patch of skin was a little scar.
Then there was a sound and the sweater reappeared and there was a six-inch-by-four-inch section of skin revealed on her thigh, but most of that space was taken up by a horrendous scar that looked deep and stiff--a wound that healed badly enough that it probably interfered with her ability to use her leg.
After an instant it disappeared, and three scarred areas appeared on her face, hand, and neck.
Her skin tone around the scars was darker than the one she wore to hide from the world.
The color was nothing outlandish, a few shades darker than mine or lighter than Darryl's, but to my eyes the texture was softer than human skin.
It appeared as if the old wounds were presenting themselves to us--or rather to Samuel, because she never took her attention off him.
Jesse reached out and grabbed my knee, but her face didn't change as the fae woman slowly stood up.
She began to breathe hard as she took several steps back, sliding her chair behind her until it bumped into the shelving in back of her, and she couldn't retreat anymore.
Her mouth opened and she began panting, and I realized what I was seeing was a full- blown panic attack done fae-style.
Zee had said her panic attacks were dangerous.
"Ariana," Samuel said, in a voice like Medea's gentlest purr.
He didn't move from the door, giving her space.
"Ari.
Your father is dead and so are his beasts.
I promise you are safe." "Don't move," Zee told Jesse and me in a low voice, his eyes on the fae woman.
"This could go very badly.
I told you not to bring any of the wolves." "I brought myself, old man," said Samuel.
"And I told Ariana that if she ever needed me, I would come.
It was a promise and a threat, though I didn't mean it that way at the time." Alicia Brewster--whom Samuel had apparently known as Ariana--hummed three notes and started to talk.
"A long time past in a land far from this one," said Alicia in a storyteller's voice, "there was a fae daughter who could work magic in silver and so she was named.
In a time where fae were dying from cold iron, their magics fading as the One God's ignorant followers built their churches in our places of power, the metals loved her touch, her magic flourished, and her father grew envious." "He was a nasty piece of work," said Samuel, his eyes on the woman's wrinkled face that sometimes wore scars on her cheek or at the corner of her eye.
"Mercy would call him a real rat-bastard.
He was a forest lord whose greatest magic was to command beasts.
When the last of the giants--who were beasts controlled by his magic--died, it left him a forest lord with no great power, and he resented it as Ariana's power grew.