Child of Darkness-L-D-2 by Jennifer Armintrout

moment, she contemplated him, then called for Dika. The girl could not have been far, certainly not as far as the stew pot, for she appeared, as if a shade summoned from the Ether, at their side.
    The Dya pointed a gnarled finger to Cedric, and did not look at the girl. “Dika, Tom wishes to stay with us.”
    “Oh?” She tried to sound disinterested, either for the Dya’s benefit, or for his.
    “What say you in the matter?” The Dya turned and fixed a critical eye on her granddaughter. Her mind was made up, that Cedric could tell. But Dika did not realize it. Cedric saw the turmoil behind her eyes and almost smiled. But he did not wish to offend her, or the Dya. He could wait a moment to express his happiness.
    “I think that if…Tom…wishes to stay with us, it is not our way to refuse him.” She said it as though it were an answer she’d been taught.
    The Dya nodded. “That is what I thought, too.” She turned to Cedric. “Well, Tom, it seems we can welcome you into our clan. For now.”
    “For now,” he agreed. He had no doubts that, should there come a time that handing him over to the Enforcers became convenient, they would do so. But that time was not now, and he would deal with the Enforcers if they came for him.
    “I am tired, Dika,” the Dya said, rising to her feet. “Bring me my dinner inside.”
    The old woman held out her arm, and Dika helped her rise, casting a look to Cedric that implored him not to leave. He waited until they were gone, then rose, brushing the feeling of the iron from his body.
    When Dika emerged, she looked for him, held out a hand with her index finger raised, and hurried to the cauldron, where she dipped a dented metal cup into the pot. She rushed this back into the wagon, and did not emerge for a long while.
    As he waited for her, he settled into the curve of one of the ancient tree’s wide roots, and closed his eyes. If he ignored the cavern ceiling high above, he could almost imagine how it would feel to be outside once again, to feel the wind, to speak to the trees. He would have to live as a Human, but it was a small price to pay for the freedom so long denied him. And what of the price she will pay? the tree asked cheerfully, in the quiet way trees had of invading Faery thoughts. To give up her one life bound to a lover who cannot love her in return? Doesn’t seem fair, that.
    Then the tree, apparently pleased to see something passing through the forest above them, began to speak of rabbits. Dika emerged from the wagon, looked about, confused, until she saw him, and ran toward him, her face alight.
    Cedric forced the tree’s unsolicited opinion from his mind and met her halfway.
    “I can’t believe it!” She threw her arms around his shoulders, kissed his face. “I can’t believe you really are here.”
    “I am here.” He smoothed her black curls from her face. Unfathomable as it might have been to him previously, he wanted nothing more than to never return to the Lightworld, to stay here, with these strange people, to insinuate himself into their company. “There is something I have not told you about my life in the Lightworld.”
    Where to begin? Would he tell her how many years he’d existed? That he’d seen women as old as her grandmother born and dead ten, fifty, a hundred times over? Should he tell her of watching the Earth slowly shift apart, of walking the Human world and watching them
    “discover” the magic in plants to cure sickness, the sun to tell time?
    No. All of that could come in good time. Now, she needed to hear this, without any embellishment or Faery tales to dazzle her. “In the Lightworld, I am not an ordinary…man.”
    What a strange word when applied to himself. “I am an advisor to the Queene of the Faery Court. Her closest advisor. And recently she has charged me with a very important task.” He wondered if the stories of jealous Human women were true, and if this would seem to her as ridiculous as it did to him, or enrage