Folks Of Fury (#1; Tales Of Elysia [COMPLETED])

fourteen.

I dreamed about my father. It was a most peculiar thing, to subconsciously create something... someone I'd never seen before.
But maybe I was dead and had found his spirit in the Ether.
He was standing in a grand hallway of the Doges Palace in Venice.
It was one of the places I wished to travel and see. I could see the the faint shimmer of the canals through floor to ceiling stained glass windows.
He had on a flowing black coat, velvety but with tufts of hair as if made from actual animal skin.
Bright molten bronze hair ending in fiery gold feathers curled over the shoulders and down his back. So long it reached down to the back of his knees.
I could see his ears tapered to finer points than mine and they pricked up, hearing my approach.
His face was harshly bright... too bright to make out features but his voice was chillingly familiar.
It rang clear and hard, a tone lathered in battles and pain.
"The blades choose their wielders."
And his hands unsheathed two broad swords from their scabbard at his waist.
The one in his right was as blazing as his face if not more so. It was like a sliver of the sun had been made tangible.
Compared to its brilliance, he was a shadow.
The other I recognized instantly. As dark as the first was light, double edged and runed.
Angurvadal. Instinctively I reached forward for the sword I'd gotten so used to holding.
" 'and when Siegfried struck Fafnir in the heart, the blade turned black with the beast's dying agony; the metal burned with the song of screams and was born anew to grant naught but anguish'" My father quoted like an enlightened wordsmith.
Agony that sliced through to the soul. "Senoy baby, look at me." Ezra's pained voice gave me a new meaning to agony.
My father raised Angurvadal, its obsidian black blade ringing a melody as his aura glinted on it.
"I'm sure you're looking to me for answers."
"Perhaps a few."
He chuckled, the sound like a concerto. "Just like your mother."
"I'm nothing like her." I retorted back.
"Senoy, you have to wake up...you have to live." Ezra called again, psychological threads knitting into my brain and pulling this vision apart.
"Trust him... Trust nothing but your sword and your alfakyn." And he offered me both swords.
I frowned at the word he'd used. It wasn't Fey speech not as I recognized it but it rang a familiar note.
The sky outside the window was darkening rapidly, flashes of lightning like a giant was taking unnecessary camera shots from above.
My hands closed around the hilts of the swords and looked down at them.
One pulsed a scintillating heat while the other hummed sonorously.
"A blade of night to rule the day and one of sunlight to command the shadows."

"Dymvvyn."
I stirred. Sheets tangled around my body. Dull scents of hellebore, mandrake, and clover fading in the air, rosewood ceilings with wolf paw engravings illuminated by round lights.
I was home. This is my home.
I blinked fervently, gathering whatever strength I could summon.
A table had been pulled to the bedside, piled high with strips of bandages and poultices.
The room smelled of burning and blood. The latter more than the former.
It was dark and cold even as my body quivered with a fever.
"Sen?" I turned weakly to the incredulous voice.
Eloise, sitting a few feet away with hunched shoulders with bandages and scissors in her laps.
What is she doing here? But my best friend jolted to her feet, throwing it all to the floor and rushing to pull me into an embrace.
She sobbed at my shoulders, arms tightening in relief and sadness at the same time.
"Not too much, hurts like shit." I murmured, feeling the stretch of stripped flesh and raw muscles on my back. It was almost like being flayed.
Not that I have been before.
Eloise pulled back with an apologetic smile on her tear tracked face.
"Oh Senoy, please tell me you aren't going to die. Do you remember everything that happened?"
I shifted a bit, testing my locomotive ability beyond the ache and bites of pain in my spine.
My throat hurt and I hoped it wasn't from screaming as I wouldn't want to give Johann the pleasure.
"Can...Can I have something to drink?"
"Of course." And she left my side and the room entirely to get me something.
I pushed forward, swinging my legs to the side of the bed and dropping my feet down.
I lifted from the bed and grunted at the slice of pain down my back which made me stumble for a moment.
"Fuck!" How many times did they whip me?
"Jesus, you shouldn't be out of bed. You might rip the stitches and something else." Eloise cursed and hurried to help me.
I sat on the bed and took the glass of water from her hand. It was cool and tasted sweet with a faint acetic aftertaste.
"Lionel explicitly said you had to drink that the first thing you woke up."
I swallowed, emptying the glass which she took back from me.
"Lionel was here? Wait, where's Ezra and why are you here?" I asked, feeling stamina rush to the extremities of my body.
"Ezra and the boys are at Legion House, emergency attendance compulsory meeting or something. Ezra called me to stay with you."
I looked down at my hands, clenching and unclenching them. My entire body was stiff as if been unused for decades.
"So you know what happened?"
"All of the Agnate knows. Thanks to the witch plague that the Fey Queen has inflicted. It's monstrous, what they did to you."
I snapped up my head with a confused look. "What?"
"You must've blacked out before it happened. The covens are trying to pin it on you as a way to justify what they did. But Ezra told his father and your great aunt Henrietta supported him."
"What did he tell Eleazar?"
"It was some sort of pact between your mother and Queen Mab, that should your blood be spilled on Agnate land by her hand then the Court would revisit a punishment tenfold."
I could barely breathe. Was this what Mab had told my mother years ago when I was just a week old?
"The way Ezra described it, it was like the four horsemen of the apocalypse had rode out of the Moors. I mean the witches deserve to pay for what they did but...scores of witches have died since the last three days and even more are falling sick. Your brother, Jean-"
"He's not my brother." I snapped hotly but felt like crap at the flinch in Eloise.
"I'm sorry." I murmured.
She shook her head. "You shouldn't be. What kind of brother would put his own flesh and blood through that."
She took my hands and squeezed affectionately. "Is he dead?"
Eloise shook her head. "No, I think because the Fury sisters are using all their magic to save him. My aunt says they're only prolonging the inevitable."
I sighed heavily. How do I feel about causing all those deaths? Because of course I'm the cause of it.
Mab had promised cruel retribution if I was harmed. But I've been tormented for all of eighteen years.
They never shed my blood until now.
"So there's no cure for this witch plague?"
"Not yet, which is why the Agnate has been meeting for days now. Senoy it's not just Redwood, but witches everywhere in the world."
I paled. The Fey serve their vengeance sweetly but severely.
"Help me up." I asked her.
Eloise raised a brow at me. "What, no. You need rest to heal faster."
"I'm not healing any faster hearing that the Fey Court is using me as an excuse to get back at the Agnate."
"What the fuck are you saying? The covens deserve it, I'd shift into a T-rex and eat the lot of them for what they did to you." She defended hotly.
I smirked, "Why haven't you?"
"Toby likes to do all the heavy lifting. I'm waiting for him to get back." She turned up an amused smile.
"Seriously Eloise, I can't feel right with this. You know me. I have to go and see the Fey Queen."
Eloise sighed. "Please don't make me. Ezra is really scary when it comes to you these days. Just stay in bed for a while at least."
I would've argued with her more if I didn't hear the opening of the front door and a flurry of familiar voices and scents.
Eloise perked up, also picking up the voices of the guys in the living room. She stood and smiled softly at me before leaving.
The door bolted open, a moment later it seemed and Ezra was there. Saturating the room he was barely inside, eyes widening as they shone on my face.
They were all I could see. Deep hazel now toned with light flecks of amber and they sucked me into another world.
One where I could love him freely, without suffering or contempt.
"Senoy." His voice was rough like the briars of a cliff, cracked.
He was wearing dark jeans and blue flannel shirt, with a few days worth of stubble along chin and cheeks.
He's always clean shaven. "Ezra... are you alright? I-"
But Ezra had blurred out of sight for a second and suddenly he was at his knees, arms around my lower back and his head at my stomach.
"Oh the Saints!" He gasped out like he was Atlas and the world had been lifted from his shoulders.
"Senoy." A softest whisper of shock and despair.
He raised his face and I looked down at wide hazel brown eyes misted over.
"Don't ask if I'm alright. I haven't been... I thought you'd never wake up...that the cursed iron had gone too deep. I..."
My hands felt at his stubble and I strained a flare of pain to lean down and silence him with a kiss.
"I'm here. Hexes and iron and a thousand witches' malice couldn't keep me from you."
I hissed out more loudly as the flaring pain reared its ugly head across my back.
And Ezra was suddenly on his feet. He checked my back and cursed.
"You need a change of bandages. I'm so stupid, should've been the first thing I checked."
"Ezra..."
"Don't worry it'll take only a sec." And he moved to bring the table of cut cloth from the other side to where I sat.
He sat as I turned my back to him and he used scissors to cut at the cotton white bindings around my sternum and stomach.
They tugged away and I shivered at the cool tingles of the breeze on scourged flesh. I wondered how it looks back there.
"How does it look, doc?"
"Don't make jokes about this, Senoy." Though I could hear him smile behind me.
First he cleaned the raw skin with some sweet smelling ointment that stung like a bitch before he dabbed with another poultice.
"What's all that?"
"Just a few things to help. Fiona says the covens must've cursed the skin not to heal as they... as you were whipped. So you'd have to be treated like a human."
I swallowed and asked with shut eyes as he wrapped fresh clean bandages around me.
"So I'd always have the scars."
"Yes and I'll still love you with them." He intoned softly.
I blinked and steadily turned to look at him, stunned at the confession.
"Ezra, you don't have to-"
"I love you, Senoy. I felt every one of those lashes and my heart as it cracked under the weight of not saving you from it. It made things clearer, more vivid than it ever were. I love you, Senoy Halfborn."
I pulled him to me with a hand at the back of his neck and he kissed me.
This time forcefully and possessively, and I could feel the fear he had felt when I hadn't woken. I could taste the hope that I would survive and be with him.
He drew back but kept his forehead on mine, his eyelids shuttered dreamily as we controlled our frantic breaths.
"I love you too, Ezra Khan." I always have.
He sucked in a hard audience breath as if I'd knocked it out of him a moment ago.
His eyes opened and shone with a broad smile, he rose to his feet and taking my hands drew me up with him.
And he crouched low, knees bending and expectant tension.
"What are you doing?" I asked truly confused.
"I need you to come with me and seeing how you reacted the last time I carried you. How about a piggy back ride?"
I laughed but gingerly climbed onto him, his arms sliding to the back to secure my legs around his waist before he straightened.
My arms dropped around his neck and I heard him chuckle before he started walking.
We were met with shocked eyes of Chris, Micah, Eloise, Toby, Dinah and Emily even Lionel was there.
All gathered in the living room, the guys playing the PlayStation.
But Ezra veered the other way, leading down a narrow corridor past the kitchen which had all the works of still-in-constructiom.
Boxes of tools and wood planks piled, paint buckets and ladders.
He stopped at a closed door that looked out of place in the disarray of unfinished building in the corridor.
He shifted my weight and pull out a key to open the door and turned on the lights.
It was a circular room, as finished as the bedroom with varnished floorboards and walls from which hung paintings- tacked up sketches in charcoal, pastel chalks and oil smears.
An easel was set up holding an unfinished work.
The smell of turpentine soaked the room.
But I froze because every canvas had my face to it.
"Holy shit, I knew you were a fucking creep." I said wide eyed as he dropped me down gently.
Ezra chuckled. "I never get your eyes right. I thought I'd have to use the same shades of russet and gamboge with titanium white to make them glow like your hair. But your eyes are so much more than sunset of your hair."
I drew closer to what looked to be the largest painting in the room. It was half finished but I knew where he had gotten the scene from.
The Bridge, on the night he probably first saw my true Fey form.
I was incandescently burning from the flaring reds of the feathers in my hair to my arms and feet.
It was like looking at the last spray of the ocean at sunset, when the last moments of daylight turned the water a brutal unforgiving molten lava.
My arm raised, Angurvadal glinting darkly in my grasp and demons fleeing from me.
It reminded me of my dream. Maybe I do look like my father as I recalled him standing as thus; beautiful, fierce and terrible like a forgotten sun god.
"What do you think?"
"I didn't think you had a single creative bone in your body."
Ezra rolled his eyes, lips bared by a grand smile. "Is that all you can say?"
I shrugged. "The others look far older than when we started talking."
He drew closer. "That's because I only ever dreamed of sunset hair and black ravens like yours. I didn't know till we met."
"That's cheesy, even for you." I joked and he gave a short laugh.
"But why keep them here?"
"I didn't want anyone to see them. I'd stopped painting for years and when I picked it up again was when I started building this." He gestured to the house.
"When your mother died." Ezra nodded. Another anger management technique.
A knock came on the door which I hadn't realized had been shut behind us.
"Hey you two better not be screwing in there? Ezra seriously, give Senoy a break and let the rest of us have him."
I chuckled at Dinah's not so subtle words. She was just like Chris.
Ezra shook his head and said when footsteps could be heard leaving. "By the way, Dinah has this weird fantasy of us in a gang bang with her and Emily."
Wait what? That shut me up immediately and Ezra grinned before opening the door and taking my hands.
It was like I was the broken favourite toy come back from repairs. Everyone wanted a hug. Except Lionel which was awkwardly apart, only watching me with cautious eyes like I'd dissemble like a wrongly screwed up toy.
I wanted to thank him for his help which I gathered was a lot since none of the others knew much about Fey healing. And I wondered how he knew.
Chris had brought takeouts from Rita's and thankfully Micah had gone with him to remember my favourite.
I was so hungry that after finishing mine, I practically had at Ezra's dinner to the surprise of him and everyone.
I paused as I swallowed spicy chicken pastrami and found all their eyes on me, amused.
"What? Do I have something on my face?"
They laughed and Lionel answered with a cool grin. "It's just...I doubt we've seen you eat this much."
"I could spare with half of mine, Senoy." Chris offered.
"Oh hell no! The only food my boyfriend's going to eat from, is mine. Keep yours to yourself pal."
I gulped loudly, nearly choking and stared wide eyed. He'd just called me his boyfriend.
What, after he's fucked you miraculously in the woods, confessed his feelings and showed you a room full of paintings of you? You need a flashing neon sign?
"Are you okay?" Ezra asked handing me a glass of mulberry juice, concern lathering his tone.
I gulped a mouthful and relaxed in the familiarity of its taste.
I nodded just as Dinah quipped. "Oh we know, the idiot hasn't exactly defined your relationship till now. I'd been surprised as well."
Damn she was perceptive.
"Would you really?" Eloise asked dryly. It was a tone she used when sue was trying to chill down her irritation.
What's up with you and Dinah?
"Nope."
After eating, they started to leave- first it was Micah and Toby who seemed to have really gotten really close to which I noticed annoyed Chris.
Even when he had his arm draped over Toby's sister's shoulder.
Then Emily and Dinah left after the former had shown how worried she was about me and threatened Ezra to keep me bedridden till I was fine.
Emily was like a mother hen- fiercely protective and sweet. While Dinah was vivacious.
Lionel was the last to go and I gave Ezra the stink eye to leave us to talk alone, to which he begrudgingly stepped outside to catch up with Chris.
I watched him for a moment, jogging as he called out to where they'd all parked their bikes.
"How are you feeling?" Lionel asked.
"A bit sore, but I'll be fine. Thanks for your help, Eloise told me most of my recovery was thanks to you."
He nodded and stepped closer, reaching to take my hand, "It was all I could do. I'm really sorry...it's completely vile what they did."
I squeezed bis hand, hearing his deep concern for me although misplaced with his feelings was kind to hear.
"I'll be fine. I'm a survivor."
And Lionel mumbled something as we embraced, in a language I was sure I understood but couldn't hear them well enough.
"Senoy, you have to know that Ezra wasn't the only one distraught. There's no one else like me out there. Only you."
And then he held my face in his hands and I was just gaping at the obvious fact that he was going to kiss me.
Which he did before I could react. His hard mouth framed mine and pressed a beseeching kiss.
He tasted of burning sugar and bile, the latter like a wave of acid down my throat, with an after tang of his dinner.
I shot out of his grasp, the instant movement causing strips of pain from my injuries.
"Shit." I moaned out.
"Are you alright?" Lionel started forward but I raised a hand to stop him thankfully he did.
"You shouldn't have done that, Lionel. I'm sorry but I love Ezra. And you're one of his best friends."
He raked back his hair, "Doesn't mean I can't want what I want."
His harshness stunned me but I straightened and looked him dead in the eyes.
"I'm grateful for your help, truly but I can't give you anything else but freidnship."
"You will because Senoy, you have a dark heart which Ezra cannot hope to understand. No one but me can understand." And he walked towards the stairs, leaving me puzzled and frayed.
I was standing there for minutes still apprehensive about Lionel kissing me, on the porch of the wood house.
I leaned against the wooden railings, looking to the night skies and billowing leaves of the forest.
Amidst the hoots of owls in their hollows, I heard familiar caws.
"Mölr." I called out quietly into the airline and an outstretched arm.
Fluttering of wings and responding calls as Tromos and Apelpi soared from somewhere in the forest and both perched on my arm.
Their conscious topaz eyes turned to me as if asking the same question as everyone had been since I'd woken up.
I stroked their feathers and said to them. "I saw my father. When I was unconscious, he's like nothing I'd seen."
Apelpi cawed and raised his wing to pick under at the feathers.
"Do you think you can deliver a message for me? To Queen Mab, I need to see her urgently."
Tromos nudged my cheek with the side of his head before spreading his wings and taking flight and a moment later, Apelpi followed.
"Why do you need to see the Fey Queen?" Ezra was coming up the last of the stairs and he ambled towards me.
"The witch plague. I don't think I can have all those people dying on my conscience."
Ezra sighed weightedly and muttered with an amused smirk. "Guess Micah won that bet."
Great another gamble? "Ezra you know it isn't right."
"What isn't right is the people who are supposed to protect and love you unconditionally, strung you up and whipped you till you were almost dead. If it were up to me, I'd take my Hounds and tear that Manor apart."
I moved closer to him and wrapped an arm to his lower body, pressing my body to him.
He twisted a bit and dropped a shoulder over shoulder, permitting even more closeness and warmth.
"I also have to see her because I made a bargain with Mab."
Ezra looked down at me buy I stared off into the forest.
He might as well know sooner than later. I didn't want to have any more secrets with Ezra.
"What sort of bargain?"
I kicked my lips and told him. "I've always wanted to be named a knight in her guard. It's the highest honor in the Fey Court but only given when one has succeeded in a quest. It was the only way I could think of to escape the St. Ours. Last month when you followed me to see Aina and Aristyl came to take me to the Queen."
"So something did happen that day? You're really not a good liar, Senoy."
I nudged him. "Of course I am. How else would I have deceived the lot of you, this long?"
He chuckled and ran a hand up and down my arm. "So what happened?"
"I didn't meet the Queen. Aristyl was only a messenger. He said I'd finally become a knight, Mab had granted a quest to prove my worth. I'd have to solve the murders, catch the killer and bring him into Faery to be tried and punished."
Ezra shook his head in exasperation and disbelief. "That's impossibly dangerous. Even if you did catch him, the Agnate...my father wouldn't let you take a criminal to the Fey Court."
"I know. But I agreed to do it." I leaned away from him though his arm was still on me.
"You don't have to anymore." He peered meaningfully at me.
"Ezra, you've seen what happens when one breaks a deal with the Fey Queen."
"Then we get you safely out of it, no repercussions whatsoever. We're not getting in between the power struggle of my father and Queen Mab."
I sighed deeply. "It's been the only way to find where I belonged, where I wouldn't be judged because of who my father was."
Ezra brushed the back of his hand down my face. It was a soothing sensation that I leaned into it.
His voice was a deep husky and velvety tone. "You belong with me, Senoy and I with you. I said it before, none of them deserve you."
"Except you."
He grinned and dropped his hand to take mine. "Come on, we need to get some sleep. You most of all."