The rain hushed finally to a trickle as Fuiseog woke. Through disordered curtains, the sunlight laid itself in a tight beam over the slow rise and fall of Keir’s back beside him. Unbidden, Fuiseog felt a tightness constrict his chest. It wasn’t Oisín any longer he would wake to find under his palm. He traced the length of Keir’s fingers, and he noticed only as he reached the end of each that the nails on the knight’s fingers were sawed down to the quick, raw and pink like uncooked meat. His only answer was a small shiver as he imagined the discomfort of using fingers like that. With his palm, he stroked down the length of Keir’s spine, pausing only slightly in the sunbeam where the warmth was greater. To this, the knight released a satisfied sigh and nestled their face into Fuiseog’s side.

  “G’morning, my lord,” they sighed and stretched.

  Fuiseog merely hummed under his breath, continuing his pilgrimage over Keir’s body. Their shoulders, their mess of curly black hair, the space in the base of their spine where lumbar met hips. Keir stifled a snort as Fuiseog’s fingers cut across the space of their ribs, and they flipped over when Fuiseog motioned. He felt the small flat bones of their chest, down to the dip below their sternum, the soft down of hair around their navel, the sharp curve of their jaw, the pointed ears, the small round nose.

  “Should I be worried?” Keir whispered, “Are you looking for something in particular?”

  “I met another púca, a few years back, in a village far to the west beyond the redwoods. They’d been beaten with a switch and hung up in a cage for all to see.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was one of the few times, actually, that Oisín and I were of a mind on how I should use my power. I suppose…after you, he had a soft spot. We left the village in ash, and the villagers in chains. Now my on the other hand—”

  “I can imagine. What happened to them?”

  “She wanted them returned, I managed to work it up to a year and a day of service to the crown. It was the most berry harvest we ever had, ha.”

  Keir just rolled their eyes. “And the púca?”

  Fuiseog shook their head. “Disappeared into the night when we made camp the next day. But I remembered, when I took them down from the cage, their skin was…rough to the touch. Like tree bark instead of actual flesh. Yours is smooth. ”

  Keir grinned and bowed as elegantly as they could while half-propped up in bed.

  “All for you, my lord. It takes a lot of practice to mimic you.”

  “Are there limits to what you can become?”

  “A púca is only as limited as their imagination and memory. Fae and humans are the hardest, though it’s much easier if I keep… well pieces, I guess, of animals.”

  Fuiseog hummed again and raised an eyebrow. Keir blushed slightly, moving so they now sat up, and pulled the covers back the rest of the way. It was the first time Fuiseog had seen them without their armor. The knight’s legs, revealed to the knee, were lithe and black-furred, ending in thick paws. These too the king reached out to feel. The fur bristled outwards, but it was impossibly soft under his fingers. He looked to Keir for approval before handling their paws. Though the pawpads were rough to the touch, from what little Graystar had said about maintaining the delicate cushioning while constantly traveling, they were well taken care of. Keir jerked suddenly when Fuiseog ran his fingers up the sole.

  “Sorry.”

  “I just wasn’t expecting it. Anyway, you’ll have to take my word it goes up to my waist. I’m not undressing for you.”

  Fuiseog just shrugged. “So this and the black hound?”

  “Besides those, I really only use a nightingale and a hake. There’s no need for anything else.”

  The king nodded. He stood up and brushed the curtains aside the rest of the way. Clouds still dotted the sky, sprinkling the crops and bouncing drops off puddles, but the sun stood full force in the center. From what little of the town below he could see from his vantage, the streets were once again full as citizens celebrated the return of good weather for their morning errands. It was an odd feeling that festered in his chest then, his body preparing for the happiness he knew he should have felt yet nothing came. Still, he found he harbored no ill intent towards his own citizens at that moment. Let them be happy for a time.

  He heard Keir rise as well, clinking just audibly enough for him to guess the knight was redressing. Fuiseog made to summon his own servant, but Keir cleared their throat suddenly. They gestured towards the wardrobe across the room.

  “My lord?”

  Fuiseog nodded and joined them. He chose a set of pastel breeches that reminded one of spring flowers and a shirt the same aethereal blue as the chainmetal he slid on overtop of it. He did smile, an emptiness to his features, when he noticed his new pair of boots had come. Unlike his previous leather ones, these were mithril mail as well, heavy pieces that made a satisfying thud with every step. Aesthetics, Fuiseog understood, defined a fae. No longer could anyone say he was the silent lark. He would be the shrill shrike his heart demanded. To add the final flair, he fastened a long crimson cape to his lapel.

  “Well?” he said, turning for Keir to get a better look.

  “Quite the image, my lord. Your mother would be…well, more than likely disappointed, but regardless. I think you look commanding.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I hate to cut your ego short, but can we breakfast now? You might not have to eat, but I certainly do.”

  Fuiseog smiled and ruffled Keir’s hair. “Oh, you lesser creatures and your . Very well. Go on ahead, I have one last piece of business to take care of.”

  Keir just rolled their eyes, mirroring the same smile, and left towards the dining hall. The king waited for them to disappear before striding out onto the balcony. The sun felt good on his skin after the long rain, and he closed his eyes to take in the warmth. Something that Keir had said still irked him, that Cailey would never let him that close again. He reached out his consciousness, feeling for the duke’s distinctive energy signature. It was, he admitted, a cheap trick. Most fae, as he’d come to understand, teleported to a place based on their memory. There were even specific outposts in the major cities where large sigils decorated the central chamber that any visitor could memorize for later travel. Reaching for a specific person was a trick all his own. One his mother had forbid outright for fear of the consequences. It was risky. Unlike a place, telelporting to a person could put him anywhere. If they happened to be in tight quarters, he could even appear inside a wall.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  But it was his trick, one no one else could replicate, and so he persisted. He felt Cailey finally, somewhere far to the west. Based on the map in his head, Fuiseog estimated the duke to be just inside his duchy’s borders. He was tempted, briefly, to try and shift his being straight there again, just to prove Keir wrong. But the longer he looked, the more a sense of dread hammered itself deeper into his chest. The signature was Cailey, no doubt, but it was also pestilential and stagnant. He realized suddenly the energy was completely still, as if the duke was paralyzed, and there were no other energies nearby. Fuiseog only barely snatched his consciousness back to himself before he doubled over retching. To separate one’s very essence from themselves, discarded on the side of a road like a dung heap. What little hunger he had had was now gone.

  In the dining hall, he found Keir alone tearing into a plate piled high with breakfast. Eggs of different sorts, bread with jam, sausages, pastrys. The table was still laden with food, though there seemed to be nothing the knight hadn’t grabbed some helping of. Fuiseog merely took his own place at the head of the table. He helped himself only to a spot of peppermint tea, hoping to quiet the roiling in his guts. Keir continued unabated, shoveling in food as if it were the last meal they’d ever have.

  “Cailey didn’t feed you?” he mused.

  “Catch or be caught. I ate only what my jaws sunk into, and let me tell you, my lord. I got tired of venison fast. A real breakfast like this…it’s been almost…gods, fifteen years.”

  Fuiseog winced. Had it really been that long since the knight had left? One grace of fae liquor was a strong drunk but no hangover, and so the minute details of the night before flooded through him again. Fifteen years that he and Oisín had been self-sufficient, watching each other’s backs. Almost five years since he was coronated on his mother’s death. How many years had it been since he was human? He dismissed the thought for fear of spiraling into a depression again. Rather he forced himself to take an apricot from a nearby bowl and began to take small bites. It was true a fae had no need for eating, but it was still a ritualistic behavior all of them partook in, and Fuiseog had never broken the phantom sense of hunger his formerly-human body felt.

  He waited instead for Keir to lean back with a satisfied sigh before he discarded the remainder of the fruit. He finished his tea with a gulp. At his rise, the knight rose as well. Fuiseog realized it had been a long time since he had left the castle. Whatever distant fog had ridden through his mind before, he yearned now to walk through the market and sample the wares like he would have with Oisín.

  As the descended the long road down from the castle, Keir shifted into their hound form. It was strategic, they said, to best protect the king from his enemies. A dog was better able to sense any change in atmosphere or smell as assassin from a street away. Fuiseog made no comment other than to scratch gently behind the knight’s ears which illicted a light growl.

  If the townsfolk found it strange the king had come out at last, they made no sign. No one looked twice at their liege and his hound walking among them as they went about their shopping. Fuiseog stopped, of course, at his favorite stall first. The farmers to the East had long since bound themselves to growing whatever plant had captured the appreciation of their monarch. When it was his mother, they had grown long copses of yew trees and fashioned every part into something beautiful: long red-gold bows, berry jam, wreathes from the leaves. The handle of the spear his mother had long carried was hewn from a yew tree that had grown on the castle grounds for centuries, struck down by a rogue lightning strike and fashioned by the same family that owned the farms as a gift.

  Now, they grew lavender. From high up in the hills, Fuiseog knew you could look down on the nearly endless fields of purple. The farmers were proud of their work, cultivating their buds until they grew larger than their natural cousins. And those buds became resplendent whorled flowers that could be ground down for their oil or sprinkled into pastry dough. These were the small things he’d come to sample. A lavender parfum was the last piece of his aesthetic, a piece he’d been missing since Oisín’s passing. Now, though, where the scent before had been an indication of royalty and grace, he hoped it would be seen as devotion to his cause.

  In the midst of him biting into a lavender handpie, a servant appeared at his elbow. Keir bristled, baring his fangs at the sudden intrusion. Fuiseog merely held up a finger, and he finished his pastry quickly. He motioned then for the servant to continue.

  “A message, my lord, from a noble near the Great Shore.”

  The servant handed over a letter found by a strange red wax seal depicting a crest the king had never seen. He broke it carefully, preserving the strange design so as to look at it later. The writing inside was thin and cramped, the words nearly running into each other in their haste to be written.

  Fuiseog held the letter down long enough for Keir to read it as well. The servant bowed and disappeared again into the crowd, the king’s message clear that there would be no returned message. When the knight too had read it, they sighed. Kerres Va Kosh, it was a name that only just begun to grace the lips of the various nobles across the land. An empress from a foreign land far across the seas that no fae knew. The histories spoke of far lands, but no one in thousands of years had thought to travel off the Blessed Isles. Even Fuiseog, who had no need of seeing the lands to travel, could not stretch his mind that far. When a peoples had arose and how they had stayed undetected for eons was a mystery many gave up seeking. The various barons and dukes had simply acquiesced under the king’s decision to leave well enough alone.

  The empress had thus far caused little harm, seemingly on a sight-seeing tour in her wagon entourage to see Fuiseog’s lands. Some accusations had arisen of dark magics or people disappearing, but having read the reports himself, the king saw no reason to pin them on these strangers. Va Kosh did not, however, move unseen. Having an army behind her of at least five hundred armed soldiers, it was prudent if nothing else to keep tabs on her position. As she had said, the fae were unaccustomed to war, and so if she were to launch any kind of assault it would be a hard-pressed effort to countermand her.

  “I suppose she means for us to meet her where she is,” Keir said, shifting back to their fae form. “I see minimal harm. She’s unlikely to stop us if we need to flee.”

  “If nothing else, she’s piqued my curiosity. ‘Your choice is moot.’ How interesting.”

  Fuiseog purchased a half dozen more of the small lavender pies before retreating back to the castle to consider his options. It was true he saw little harm in meeting with her, if for no reason beyond ascertaining her purpose. And with Keir at his back now, he had little doubt they couldn’t fight their way out if necessary. Rather, Fuiseog spent the time only to find Graystar before he sent out a message to the steward of his estates on the Great Shore that they would be arriving shortly, and there might be guests.