Not Quite Human

Chapter 2

Neil sat at the café filled with unease. He was a tea person, through and through, and the dumb, fickle, terrifying jerk had gone ahead and ordered coffee for him. He stared again at the ugly dark liquid. Just the right colour for my mood, he thought. Apparently the prince hadn't forgotten about him after all — otherwise he wouldn't be sitting across from the man right now. And yes, calling him ugly was a lie. The jerk was unfortunately not ugly.
Damien sat at the other end of the table, quietly weighing pros and cons. A great deal was happening simultaneously, and a great many lives were at stake. He knew that Neil was powerful — or at least would be, once he came of age, which was fast approaching. The boy came from formidable bloodlines. His father had been one of the nobles of the Unseelie Court and had lived up to every expectation that carried — not a fair bone in his body. His mother was a Met: the offspring of a fey and a human, more human than fey, abandoned young and later adopted by the Gluttons. The boy could prove useful, provided he survived the change. Aroc was still furious with Damien for letting him live — the original plan had been to eliminate the boy long before he became a threat.
Damien found himself briefly wondering what kind of fey Neil would turn out to be. His father had been a Jermlain — a particularly vicious and fiendish type. But looking at Neil now, Damien doubted he'd follow suit. It was character, not blood, that determined what a fey became. Neil had the look of a leprechaun about him — mischievous, quick-eyed. Or perhaps a Killoren. A Sirine, even. A Pixie. Only time would tell.
Neil, meanwhile, kept sneaking glances at the prince. He was getting impatient. Very impatient. He began tapping his foot — loudly, deliberately — hoping for some kind of reaction.
It worked brilliantly. Which is to say, it didn't work at all.
Neil huffed and sat back, arms folded. That never failed to make his mother or his unhinged aunt snap. Apparently princes were made of sterner stuff.
"What do you think about fey?" Damien asked, after an excruciatingly long twenty minutes.
Good. So he hadn't been summoned purely to stare at the ceiling in agonising silence.
"Um... it kind of rhymes with gay?" What exactly was he supposed to say to a question like that? "Oh, wait — are you talking about María Fernanda Blázquez? Stage name Fey? I've never really listened to her, so I can't comment. Are you a fan or something, Damien — ugh — Your Highness?"
Damien blinked. The boy certainly had a pair of lungs on him. "There's no need for formalities. I suspect we'll be seeing quite a lot of each other. And I've never heard of this María person."
Neil looked vaguely ill at the first part of that. Seeing the jerk more often? He'd rather jump off a cliff. Or perhaps not — suicide was terribly out of fashion.
It didn't particularly surprise Damien that the boy had no idea he wasn't human. He had a few months before the change — enough time to tell Neil what he needed to know about feys. There was no great rush. As far as things stood, the fey world wasn't very aware of Neil's existence either. Socialising wasn't exactly a trend in the Unseelie Court.
Not that Damien was suggesting every fey in the Unseelie Court was evil. He'd encountered more than a few who were almost pleasant. But it was widely understood that Unseelie feys were considerably more prone to unprovoked violence than their counterparts. The Seelie Court wasn't entirely blameless either — most of them were deeply mischievous and delighted in tormenting unsuspecting humans — but their pranks tended toward the harmless end of the spectrum. Mostly.
In the meantime, Damien needed to keep a close eye on the boy. And what better way to do that than to put him to work? Damien allowed himself a small smirk. That was the sort of idea even Aroc might approve of.
Aroc had been his bodyguard for the better part of ten years and was almost unwaveringly loyal. He was a fey as well — a Thrute, in fact — an exceptionally strong and formidable type, with skin like carved stone. It was rather convenient that Aroc was also proficient in marskine, the art of altering one's appearance. One could only imagine how humans might react to his true form. They'd probably try to stone him — not that it would do them much good, given the circumstances. At present, Aroc was seated at the adjacent table, dutifully disguised as a spectacularly unfortunate-looking woman. The expression on Damien's face that morning upon seeing the day's chosen disguise had given Aroc no small amount of satisfaction.
"You're going to be working for me for a while," Damien said, watching the confusion unfold across Neil's face with quiet amusement.
"Huh? As what?"
Damien's smirk faltered slightly. He hadn't quite thought that far ahead. "An errand boy?"
Neil stared at him. The blood rose visibly to his face. His hands began to tremble.
"AN ERRAND BOY? SERIOUSLY? I don't recall attending any interview, and I sure as hell didn't burn all that midnight oil to—"
Damien silenced him with a look. He had a particular dislike of public tantrums — and if anyone at this table had the right to throw one, it was him.
"A librarian, then." His tone left little room for argument. "Think of it as a rather comfortable prison, for now. You aren't in a position to refuse — and besides, one needn't fear boredom in a library."
Something in Damien's voice made the consequences of refusal feel very vivid and very unpleasant. Neil swallowed. Cleared his throat. And said, in a pitch approximately an octave higher than usual:
"Librarian it is, then!!!"