Ironskin

The fey that hadn’t been seen in five years.

 

The fey that would destroy you to claim your form—and you with no way to kill them in their natural shape.

 

There was little Jane could do without a weapon. No way to even protect herself without iron. She knew this in her bones like she knew how to breathe. And yet she staggered to her feet, stumbled into the clearing, her human instinct sure she should do something to protect her little girl. The shimmers of blue-orange fey coalesced into one form, a form with a heartbreaking female face that curled in the air around Dorie.

 

The fey looked at her. And then a wall of black fear swept over Jane, swept in through her face, and it was the nameless terror of her nightmares.

 

It was a fey attack, though she had never heard of one like this.

 

There was a strange feeling all through her—fear and attack all mixed up together—and Jane felt as though her thoughts were being scrambled away from her and into something else, some other thing.

 

No, she protested, no—and she recoiled from it, while simultaneously it seemed to be recoiling from her. Disgust—revulsion—distaste—ugly, ugly—pull back, pullbackpullback … The attack of fear fell away, and Jane still stood, as the fey surrounded the translucent Dorie.

 

Jane made her shaky legs go forward, heart galloping a mile a minute. She groped in her pockets for a nonexistent feyjabber, pushed her way into the clearing. Dorie stood in a circle of grey stones, a circle with a wall of hard air that Jane’s fingers would not go through. “Are you all right, Dorie?” Her voice was remarkably steady.

 

Shimmering, Dorie came loose from the fey’s encircling light, bounced through the hard air past the stones to Jane, sweeping through her. Jane felt the touch thrum through her body like the pattering of rain, a distinctly opposite feeling from fey invasion. “My pretty lady,” Dorie said, and Jane felt those words like a smile deep in her body. Dorie bounced back to the fey, cradled herself in that light.

 

The fey’s imaged face was calm after that first attack. Disturbingly calm, like the destroyed porcelain doll. She observed Jane. Studied the war-torn face that her people had caused. Her voice, when she spoke, was high and throbbed somewhere in Jane’s skull. “You. Must leave us. It is my child.”

 

“No,” said Jane. “She is human.” She remembered what Edward had said. “Just because you stole her mother’s body doesn’t make Dorie yours.” She didn’t know why, but again she tried to take a step forward, as if trying to fight a fey without shielding or feyjabbers—madness. The fey had weapons with which they could destroy her in an instant. Wasn’t her cheek a reminder of that failed attempt?

 

The fey said, “My small part-of-me,” in a voice that Jane felt rather than heard. The fey blazed up hot and gold and shaming, and Jane despaired, felt herself being frightened from the clearing by the sheer force of fey emotion. Before she could master her own emotions, she was huddled in the brush outside the clearing, weeping at her inability to act.

 

Steps behind her—Edward coming up, coming past her. Her tears blurred her sight as the light dimmed, died, faded away to nothing. Jane sprang up, temper rebounding high, pushed into the clearing—but the fey was gone.

 

Dorie lay on the ground inside the stones, a crumpled heap of silk dress and tangled curls. One hand curled around a broken foxglove whose orange petals were lit with fey glow.

 

“Dorie,” said Edward, and his voice broke on the word. He knelt beside her, but Jane was already there, checking, waiting, dying—finding that slow pulse fluttering in Dorie’s neck.

 

“She’s breathing,” Jane said, and the tears ran down her ruined cheek. She gently wrested the poisonous foxglove away from the curled fingers, threw it. “Dorie? Can you hear me?”

 

Dorie mumbled something and scrunched her eyes tighter.

 

“Dorie, sweetheart.” Pleading. “Wake up.”

 

Dorie’s breathing became stronger, more regular, and her pulse strengthened under Jane’s touch. But she did not open her eyes.

 

Edward cradled his daughter to him and stood. The shadow was dark on his face as he raised his eyes—and looked straight at her face.

 

Her bare face with no veil, no mask.

 

Jane swallowed. She knew what he saw. She felt his shock like a whiplash against bare skin. She crushed Dorie’s tiny hand in hers—could not let go of the charge she cared for, even though that meant she was standing a handsbreadth away from Edward.

 

How could she have thought simply—he can’t love me as he’s never seen my face?

 

Because he had. If Nina spoke true, he had made her face. Sculpted it, to see her as she should have been.

 

So no, what she meant was—I’m not normal. He couldn’t care for her when she wasn’t normal. Even the fey had rejected her. Edward and Dorie were not her family. Ugly ugly unclean …

 

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