Jennifer Ashley - Shifter Made

"No, I don’t suppose she was."

Shifter women tended to be as tall as the males. They were fast runners, wild in bed, and laughed a lot. Caitlin had laughed all the time.

"Piers, now. He likes to craft things. He’ll be a smith like me. He likes to watch the iron get red hot and bend into whatever shape he tells it. He’d love to have watched me make this sword."

Alanna said nothing, only looked at him.

Niall knew why he was saying these things. He was letting himself start to grieve.

Deep in his heart, he didn’t believe Prince Kieran would agree to release his sons. Fae didn’t play fair. Niall might be allowed to take Alanna’s life in vengeance for his sons’ death, but it would be an empty vengeance. He would have no one left. No mate, no cubs, no one left in his pride.

Niall lived here on the edge of this human village called Baile Icin, because the other members of his pride and clan had died out. Shifters married into other clans, but there weren’t as many females as males anymore, and other clans were few and far between. The Shifter race was diminishing.

"You’ll make the sword then?" Alanna asked, breaking his thoughts.

She didn’t have to sound so eager. "I don’t have much bloody choice, do I?"

Her eyes softened. "I am sorry."

Sympathy, from a Fae? Had the world gone mad today?

"You will be, lass. If my cubs are hurt in any way, you’ll be the first to be very, very sorry.

Your brother, now, he’ll be even sorrier still. So show me this damned silver and let’s be getting on with it."

Forging a sword was a different thing entirely from the usual practical ironworks Niall produced for the humans of the village. Niall never asked Alanna why he’d been chosen for this task, because he already knew.

Once upon a time, Niall O’Connell had been a master sword maker, before Ciarrai had been made an Earldom by the bloody English. He’d created beautiful weapons used for deadly purpose in the last Fae-Shifter war. The Shifters had won that war, though Niall knew much of their victory had been due to luck--the Fae had already been losing power in the mortal world, and the Shifters had only made their retreat into the Faerie realms inevitable.

It wasn’t often that Shifters from different clans and species worked together, but at that point, Lupine, Feline, and Bear had fought side by side. The Fae had conceded defeat and vanished into their realm behind the mists.

Well, conceded defeat was too strong a phrase. The Fae had gone, killing, burning, and pillaging behind them. Fae didn’t care whether their victims were children, breeding mothers, or humans who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Niall still had his sword-making tools kept safely in a chest at the back of the forge. He hadn’t touched them in years. He shook his head to himself as he laid out his tongs and hammer, grinding stone and chisel. This sword wouldn’t be good, strong steel, but soft silver, which was daft, even if she claimed it was spelled to work like steel. He could craft such a thing, but it would only be good as a trinket.

He briefly considered mixing a bit of iron into the hilt to debilitate any Fae who touched it, but he knew such a trick would make his sons’ deaths even more certain. Not that he believed the Fae prince would let Niall live either, in any case. But Niall would take out the Fae bitch when they came for him. Prince Kieran would watch his sister die before he killed Niall.

Niall glanced at Alanna as he pounded out the bar of metal she’d brought him. She’d found a stool and seated herself on it near the fire. She did look cold, the silly woman, probably not used to the harsh clime of the Irish west coast. The Faerie realms, he’d heard, were misty and soft all the time, which was why she wore flimsy silk robes and let her braids flow. Fae women didn’t have to bundle their hair out of the wind.

After a few quick looks at her, he realized that Alanna wasn’t staring sightlessly at the forge, or watching him beat the blade. She was studying him.

Her gaze roved his bare back and the muscles of his arms, as though she’d never seen a half-clothed man before. She probably hadn’t. Fae were cold people, not liking to be touched, preferring robes, jewels, and other fussy things to bare skin. They rarely did anything as crude as coupling, bodily seduction being almost as distasteful to them as iron. Shifters, on the other hand, loved breeding and loved children, children being all that more precious because so few survived.

"Are you a virgin, then, lass?" Niall asked her.

Alanna jumped. "What?"

"A virgin. If it doesn’t hurt your pristine ears for me to ask it. Are you?"

"No."

Interesting. Fae women didn’t lie with males unless they absolutely had to. "You have a lover then? A husband?"

"No." The word was more angry now. "It is none of your affair."

"You like to say that, lass. Did you have a gasun?"

"A child? No." Again, the chill anger.

"I’m sorry, love."

"Why?"

"That must have hurt you."

When a Shifter woman was childless it was an impossible sorrow to her. As dangerous as breeding was for Shifters, females were happy to risk it to bring in cubs. "I imagine ’tis different for a Fae woman." The Fae were so long-lived they didn’t bear many children. Fae women who did like children often stole them from humans, rather than bearing their own, raising them to be their doting little slaves.

"It did hurt me," she said.

Niall saw the pain in her eyes. She looked so out of place, sitting in his forge, her strange, elegant robes already soiled from the dust and soot. He never thought he’d feel sorry for a Fae, but the sadness on her face was real.

"Did your lover not want a child?" Niall asked gently.

"My lover, as you call him, died." Alanna’s jaw was fixed, rigid. "We tried to have a child, but I don’t know whether it was even possible."

"Fae do breed. I’ve seen your wee ones." Even crueler than the adults, unfortunately.

"My lover was human."

Surprise stilled Niall’s hands. "A human man? Let me guess. A slave?" He couldn’t keep the disgust out of his voice.

"He had been captured, yes." She met his look defiantly. "But not by me."

"Oh, that makes it all right then. Whose slave was he? You’re royal brother’s?"

"Yes. It was a long time ago."

One of her brother’s slaves, made into her lover. A typical story of Fae cruelty except for the grief in her eyes. He wasn’t imagining that.

He bent over his task again. "How long ago?" he asked.

"One hundred years."

"And you loved this man? Or pretended to?"

Her silence was so flint-hard that Niall raised his head again. She was glaring at him. "Did you love your mate?" she asked in a sharp voice.

"I won’t apologize for my question, love. You are the one coercing me into helping the bastard who stole my children. I’ll answer yours--yes, I loved her more than my own life."

"My answer is the same."

She met his gaze without flinching. The pain in her dark eyes wasn’t false and neither was the loneliness, and Alanna didn’t look ashamed of either.

Niall went back to pounding. After a time he asked, "So what happened to this human male so worthy of the love of a Fae woman?"

"My brother killed him."

Niall stopped. "The very brother who sent you here? Why?"

"Because Dubhan dared to touch me."

"The man was your slave, love. He wouldn’t have had a choice."

Alanna’s face grew cold again. "You see everything through Shifter eyes. Dubhan was my brother’s slave, so of course you believe I forced him to service me. I told you, I loved him. I freed him, I fled with him to the human world, and we became lovers. Until my brother found us."

"You sneaked out of the Faerie realms to become lover to a human?" Niall’s astonishment and respect for her rose. "You are an amazing and brave lass."

"I was foolish, as it turned out. I should have sent him off and not tried to stay with him.

Kieran would have forgotten about one slave in time, but he never forgave me for letting a lesser being touch me."

"Which is why he sent you here to become hostage to a Shifter."

"I am my brother’s prisoner and in disgrace. I am forced to do his bidding."

"Does he not fear that while you’re in the human world you’ll break away and flee him?"

Alanna shrugged. "I have nowhere to go, and unlike Shifters, I cannot pass for a human. The spell that lets me resist iron will wear off." She shivered. "And it is so cold here."

Niall rose, fetched the woolen cloak he’d thrown aside when he’d started to work, and draped it over her shoulders. She looked up in surprise, jerking her hand away when his brushed hers.

He’d thought her overly slender when she first walked in, but now he saw that this was a trick of the loose-flowing garments. Her bosom was round and full, her waist nipped in above strong hips. Her face was delicate, a little too pointed for Niall’s taste, but her dark eyes drew him in. Her braids outlined her pointed ears, but the ears didn’t look as strange and unnatural close up. She was flesh, not cold marble, her skin flushing as she warmed from the fire and the cloak.

"You could pass for human," Niall said as he went back to the forge.

"Unlikely. Look at me."

"I just did." Niall took up the heated bar with his tongs and tapped the rapidly cooling metal.

"If you wore your hair loose to hide your ears and dressed in human clothes instead of fancy frippery, no one would look twice." He considered as he flipped the bar. "No, they’d look twice, because you’re a beautiful woman, but unless you shouted it, I don’t believe they’d realize you were Fae. Most humans don’t believe in the Fae any longer, anyway. They pretend to--they avoid the stone circles at night and put out milk to appease the sprites, but deep down, they believe only in hard work, exhaustion, and God. Bless them."

"You care for them," Alanna said, sounding surprised. "But you’re Shifter."

"If you lived in the human world before, you might have noticed that Shifters are not all that thick on the ground. We might be stronger and more cunning than humans, we might be able to change into ferocious beasts when we wish to, but we need humans in order to survive."

"Do the humans in this village know you’re Shifter?"

Niall shrugged. "They know I’m different, but as I said, they don’t much believe in the other anymore. But they know I’m a good smith and that the villages round about get left in peace now that I live here."

"You’re good to them."

"It’s survival, love. We each have what the other needs. ’Tis the only way Shifters are going to last."

"The Fae chose to retreat." Alanna said it almost to herself, as though she didn’t expect an answer. "We sought the mists of Faerie."

"Aye, that you did."

She fell silent, but Alanna was difficult to ignore as he continued work, and not just because of the distinct Fae smell, which didn’t seem so terrible now. Perhaps he was growing used to it.

Niall sensed her presence like a bright light--her beauty, her sorrow, her courage in coming here when she knew she’d likely lose her life. Fae princes could be mean bastards, and the fact that she’d defied this Kieran about the human slave spoke much of her.

Once Niall had the metal thin enough, he heated it again, ready to shape it. As he set the blade on the anvil and took up his hammer, he felt her breath on his shoulder.

"Wait."

"Metal’s hot, lass. It won’t wait."

"I need to layer in some spells."

His eyes narrowed. "What is this sword for? For ceremony, I know, not fighting, but what sort of ceremony, exactly?"

"I’m not certain myself."

Niall’s grip tightened on his hammer. "Don’t lie to me, lass. If you’re putting in the spells, you know what they do."

"I cannot tell you. Please, if you know, then your sons will die."

"I think they’ll die anyway, and I think you know that too. Tell me this much--is the sword meant to hurt Shifters?"

Alanna said nothing, but the look in her eyes spoke volumes. He read guilt there, anguish, grief, anger.

Niall shoved the bar from the anvil with a clatter. He sat down on the floor, his hammer falling to his side. "You’re asking me to save my sons by forging a weapon against Shifters?