Page 89 of Demure
Sierra raised her eyebrows. She wanted to ask more about the powers these Fae locksmiths had, but realized they were all exhausted and now wasn’t the time.
Sierra made her way over to the sitting area, collapsing on the couch. All of this running and transforming and being imprisoned was taxing. She wished it would just slow down a bit, but she knew that until they found Aodhan, it wouldn’t.
As she thought his name, she jumped up from the couch and ran over to the main bedroom, twisting the door open. Only the empty bed greeted her. She mentally chastised herself. If Aodhan had been here, he would have already come out to greet them.
“He’s not here,” Aislan explained, as if Sierra couldn’t have already deduced that herself. “Otherwise, the rope wouldn’t have been down. Especially if he was hiding out.”
Sierra knew he was right, and now she was feeling pretty dumb that she had hoped he would be here.
“Don’t worry, we will find him. But first, we need to find out what happened to Kaye.”
Sierra’s hand flew to her mouth as she realized she had forgotten all about her during their escape. What had become of the human woman?
“I’m going to do some dream reading and see if I can get any information.” Braan said as he sank into a chair at the table.
Sierra glanced outside to notice the setting sun.Time flies during escape attempts, she supposed.
“I’ll take a look around the forest,” Aislan volunteered. “Sierra, why don’t you see if the bird on the porch knows anything.”
Sierra nodded, heading to the kitchen. “Let me get it a snack. I promised I would.”
The small kitchen didn’t hold much, and Sierra figured that without a fridge, they probably consumed a lot of dry foods. She pulled open the curtain to reveal some baking supplies sparsely occupying the shelf behind it. Unfortunately, she didn’t have that kind of time.
“There should be some dry fruit over there.” Aislan pointed as he headed toward the door.
Sierra found a small sack of unidentifiable dried fruit leaning on the countertop. She shook some out in her hand, tossing it in her own mouth, before shaking out a second handful for the bird. As she headed to the door, she watched as Braan grabbed some for himself as well.
Back on the porch, Sierra couldn’t help but glance around at the rest of Teach Crann as the setting sun cast beautiful shades of pink and yellow all around them. The bird was impatient, however, and it quickly flapped its wings, taking off a few feet only to settle on Sierra’s shoulder, dipping its head down to nudge at her closed fist.
Mine.
Sierra opened her hand, allowing the bird access to the dried fruits, which it ate one at a time in quick succession. As soon as it was finished, Sierra focused her mind on her question about Aodhan, referring to him both by name and as the man of the house, in case names weren’t a thing in bird speak.
We hear rumors.
“What rumors?” Sierra asked quietly, afraid to hear the answer.
The bird seemed to hesitate, maybe looking for a way to say it, or maybe not having a word for it at all. When the answer finally came, it was just two words.
Snake human.
Chapter Fifty-Four
AODHAN
7 DAYS EARLIER
With every step that Aodhan took away from the house, he felt like the whispers in the trees grew louder. While he couldn’t exactly make out what they were saying, it sounded like a combination of the words ‘danger’ and ‘turn-back’ in his language.
Aodhan had heard rumors over the years that the trees in this forest were enchanted, and the forest itself was named after that fact, but if that truly were the case, he wondered why they had just now decided to start whispering to him. Concluding that the whispers he was hearing were simply his own subconscious wishing for him to turn back, he blocked them out and continued on his way.
Aodhan kept the whispers out by thinking of Sierra. He meant what he had said to her back in Teach Crann; she was unlike any woman he had ever met. Sure, his father had tried to introduce him to various Fae females over the years, but none had ever caught his fancy like Sierra. Mostly, they just threw themselves at his feet, as if they had no self-respect and were just waiting for a male to walk all over them in exchange for a stable future.
For a while, Aodhan had thought this was just what females,Fae or human, were like, especially when he had first journeyed to the human world at the beginning of the year. He had liked Kaye from the moment he met her, and for a second he had thought that maybe Fae women had been his problem, but after spending some time on campus, he had quickly learned that many human women were just like the Fae ones, willing to do anything to get a man to date them— even sacrificing their own values. Kaye had been a diamond in the rough that Braan had been lucky to find.
It was these experiences that had led him to treat Sierra so terribly the first few times he had met her. He had assumed she was just another dumb woman that he would easily be able to coax into coming back to Sidhe with him, and he hadn’t thought he would need to put in too much effort.
The reality, of course, had been so far from what he had imagined. Not only had Sierra stood up for herself, and the value she saw in her time, she had even gone on a rampage to try and knock him down a peg. While her attempt was admirable, it had just made her all the more attractive to him, and he had found himself falling fast.
