CreationInMyBlood

My eyes were old and cunning, and though they were the eyes of a wolf, I was still a faery.

Always a faery.

Born a faery.

I'd die a faery; today.

I was old and cunning.

I had teeth for ripping, claws for running and mauling, and terrible terrible eyes. But I had all those things already, for I was truly and always a faery. My mouth, now filled with horrid jagged bones for wild vicious means, that now spoke in huffs and howls used to speak in horrid jagged vicious means instead of house them. And I needed not think before I spoke, for I was a faery and my mouth always knew what to say, when to and how.

I saw her. With my wicked, horrid eyes. She was young. She was no woman.

No she was a gangly ugly child. But she was perfect. Small and starved. Her eyes held no malice. Just fear. Understanding and fear.

*Shoot* I commaned with my wicked eyes.

*Be my end* I begged.

I was old and cunning. And I knew many truths.

Tamlin would never fall for a human, much less one who stole a faery's breath.

He would never love a woman, he always found a greater appreciation in the masculine, but he would never find love in a human man who drained a faery of their blood.

But what he could do. Nurture and play.

The High Lord of the spring court. It was all he knew to do! He could nurture a fiddle who's strings were old, play it though it was worn and any other hand rended agony from its strings. But Tamlin? He coaxed a tune from it. That instrument laughed with him as he played.

If he could coax a tune from a dying violin. He could coax love from this starving child's heart. It wasn't even a question of if she would coax it out of him.

She looked like him. Bright eyes, though dulled with survival and fear and hunger. Long light hair, though matted and tattered. Fair skin, though winter's deathly embrace held her soul. Intelligent from what I could see here alone.

The understanding in her eyes. Tamlin would enjoy raising her. Teaching her. She would grow a quick wit under him. Lucien might despise my decision. My choice of a child. He was too stubborn to see my view. But he perhaps would enjoy bickering with her. Teaching her the words of our kind. She was perfect.

The curse never said Tamlin must fall in love with a human. But that he must coax it from a human heart who had spilled faery blood. And that heart must do the same to him.

*Shoot me* I huffed. I did not growl. She feared me enough.

But she did not. She drew her breath. And her bow. And she aimed for the deer beside me. I took the deers place. I saw the arrow approach. I could have moved out of the way.

I did not.

It was quick. I did not register the hit. Nor the fall to the ground as I collapsed. Nor my last breath. I registered hands in my thick wicked fur. I registered tears and an apology, a beg for forgiveness.

Tamlin would love her.

And I forgave her for my death. For it was not her fault.