Not Quite Human

Chapter 4

Neil entered the palace with cold feet, not remotely excited about his uninvited new occupation. He hadn't pictured his life going this way — though the pay was, admittedly, a surprise. His eyes had nearly left his head when he read the contract, but he'd kept quiet. Who was he to refuse a prince who either loved throwing money away or simply had no concept of its value?
Security, it seemed, was not taken lightly here. Guards patrolled everywhere, permanent scowls etched onto their faces. It almost made Neil laugh — the collective expression was genuinely absurd — but he thought better of it. He didn't want his escorts, Big Nose and Ugliano, using him as a ball. He was rather attached to his limbs.
The palace reminded him of a giant anthill. There were the warrior ants, strutting about with great self-importance; the worker ants, scurrying in every direction; and somewhere in the middle of it all, the queen — the king, rather, and he didn't even lay eggs.
Big Nose and Ugliano delivered him to what appeared to be some kind of office. Damien was there, naturally, but he was accompanied by a woman who put Neil immediately in mind of Voldemort. She wasn't unattractive, and she did have a nose — she simply had the look of someone who would drown a perfectly nice cat and then dangle the evidence in front of your face. First casting choice for a psychotic villain, no question. He made a mental note to never let her anywhere near Spots.
Nerezza gave the boy a measured look. Had Damien not told her whose son he was, she wouldn't have believed it. He was pretty. She wouldn't have put Belladur and pretty in the same sentence under any circumstances. She noted the indignant expression that crossed his face when told she'd be accompanying him from now on, and felt a flicker of genuine amusement. He wasn't scared yet. This might actually be fun.
Neil followed Nerezza to the library, mildly sulking. He couldn't shake the feeling of a petulant child being marched to his room, and the fact that he was apparently being babysat did nothing to improve matters. The sickly sweet smile she wore was the final insult.
Then he saw the library, and forgot to be annoyed.
It was simply beautiful. He had never seen so many books in one place in his entire life. He abandoned any pretence of dignity and made straight for the shelves, running his fingers along the spines. Nothing was going to keep him from these. He found, sitting at various heights and in no particular order, virtually every book he could think of — and dozens more he'd never heard of.
One shelf, however, gave him pause. Its contents were obscured behind fogged glass. He pressed his face against it, squinting. He could make out titles: Fey: Kingdoms and Allegiances. Must-Know Spells for Classic Pranks. He recalled Damien mentioning something about feys. He turned to Nerezza with an expectant look, waiting for her to produce a key.
"I'm afraid that shelf can't be opened manually, little one."
Neil deployed his most effective puppy-dog expression. He was fairly confident that even Satan would soften at that face.
Nerezza, apparently, operated on a different tier entirely. She laughed — openly, without any attempt to conceal it — and laughed harder still when his face turned the colour of a ripe apple. "I'd love to open it for you, I really would," she said, composing herself only slightly, "but the remote's gone missing, you see."
She watched his face fall with considerable satisfaction. There was no remote, of course — just a simple spell. But that was not information she intended to share anytime soon. She had agreed not to kill the boy. She hadn't agreed to make his life easy.
The rest of the day passed without incident. Nerezza kept giving him the sort of smile that made him feel like a particularly interesting insect, and he couldn't quite shake the sense that she hadn't stopped staring at him since they arrived. He eventually decided it was harmless — the woman simply enjoyed making people uncomfortable. He would never admit to Damien that, all things considered, it hadn't been a terrible day.
Nerezza, for her part, was not bored either — which was unexpected. The boy had no shortage of sharp remarks, and his inability to stop looking at the shelf he couldn't access was quietly entertaining. She had taken to thinking of it as the Forbidden Shelf. It had a nice ring to it. She chuckled to herself. Humans and their fascination with all things forbidden — the forbidden fruit eaten, the forbidden temple entered, the forbidden stone sought. A species that never quite learned from its own history. Then again, neither did feys, nor any other creature capable of thought. She didn't hold it against them.
Curiosity wasn't a flaw. It was curiosity that defined thought, and greed that sharpened ambition. It wasn't curiosity that killed the cat — it was incompetence. Stupidity, perhaps. But not curiosity. That phrase had always irritated her: the refuge of cowards, of people too afraid to take risks, too comfortable to grow.
It was a good thing the boy was curious.
She found herself considering, for the first time in a very long while, the idea of taking on an apprentice. She had never felt the particular need to pass anything on — immortality made legacy feel rather redundant — but this could be an interesting project. She doubted he'd take to her preferred recreational activities, but there were other things worth knowing. And she was, she realised, genuinely curious about what he'd become.
She was certain of two things: she was going to enjoy this, and after his change, the boy would be her apprentice whether he liked it or not.