Blood Faerie Read Online Free Page A

in her lifetime.

    “You need to lie back, Miss. You’ve taken a tumble. An ambulance is on the way.” To a few people crowding around, he said, “Give her some room to breathe. She’ll be just fine.”
     
    Eilidh reached up behind her head and tugged at her hood to make sure it covered her ears. Munro stared into her eyes, investigating their strange colour, drifting in the swirls. Even for a faerie, Eilidh’s eyes were remarkable.

    A screeching siren approached. She could not let herself be taken. “Thank you, Munro,” she said, twisting the English words in her mouth. He crouched beside her and looked up as the vehicle turned onto the nearby side street.
     
    Eilidh’s mind was weary from her encounter with the blood faerie, but her body was able. As soon as Munro’s attention moved away, she sprang to her feet and darted south, dashing through traffic. She narrowly avoided a passing car, and she cursed. Normally, her perception would allow her to flit through the moving cars before drivers saw her. Today she felt like a lumbering cow. A sounding horn startled her.

    She ran down Canal Street until she came to the River Tay. Without glancing back to see if she was being pursued, she ran to the water’s edge and dove into the tidal river. Although in earth magic, her season was the first, and air her primary element, she also had some small influence with the second. She allowed herself to feel the natural flows of the cold water. Without coming up for air, she let it carry her the short distance to the far side of Moncrieff Island and downriver, away from the city.
     
    Recent rains made the swollen river flow swiftly to the east, so it took less than half an hour for Eilidh to reach the place where she intended to cross into fae territory. The cold Highland melt mixed with rainwater, and by the time Eilidh emerged from the river, she felt restored from her contact with the blood faerie. It disturbed her that she’d come so close to the humans. In twenty-five years, she’d managed to speak to them only on a handful of occasions. Most of those were in the early days before she’d grown accustomed to being alone.

    Although she was not particularly strong in any of the Ways of Earth, fire was Eilidh’s weakest element, so she opted for a simple spell of air magic. Her white hair danced on end as a gust of wind swirled around her, blowing frigid air over her clothes to dry them.
     
    She sat on the bank of the river and took off her leather shoes. Still damp, she laid them aside and stared at the flowing water. She recalled the times when she and Saor had snuck away from their home boundaries and swum in the moonlight. It hadn’t been too far from this spot. Using a shameful amount of effort, she mustered a little heat into a whirlwind she held in her hand.

    Rather than continue, she decided to leave her garments slightly damp. It would be a mistake to approach the ever-fluxing kingdom boundaries at night. That was when the borders would come closest to the city. The Watchers would be more awake and better able to see her. No, she would do well to travel further, and meet the barriers when they were weakest. She should not delay.
     
    Eilidh turned toward the hills and ran, fighting the fatigue that came from being awake in the middle of the day. She’d shaken off her earlier encounter and felt more herself with every step toward her former kingdom. She came upon long dirt roads that led through plastic-tented berry fields. Without missing a beat, she ran through them, not even bothering to shield her presence from the hunched field workers. Early on, she’d spent a great deal of energy trying to conceal her presence from the humans. That was before she’d realised they rarely paid attention.

    Beyond the farms lay wide fields, separated by centuries-old stone dykes. Eilidh easily jumped the walls and dodged the sheep dotting the landscape. They scurried away as she ran, forcing her to acknowledge that