AN: This is my entry from Holly Black's contest about what Kaye said to make Roiben smile in Valiant. It was intended to show how Kaye's fey nature is beginning to come through; how she's beginning to think like one of them. I never actually turned this in. In fact, I wrote it after the contest was over. Me and a friend were going to write it together, but it never happened. So I went ahead and did it on my own, and this is what came of it.
On a dais of dirt, a white-haired knight sat on a throne of braided birch, bark as pale as bone. He leaned forward and beckoned to a green-skinned, winged girl who regarded Val with black, alien eyes. The winged faerie leaned down and spoke softly to the knight on the throne. His lips twisted in what might have been a smile. --Valiant, pg. 286.
Kaye laughed softly to herself as she looked up at Roiben, gazing with detached , almost cold superiority at the two mortals: a girl with a light growth of reddish fuzz on her head , a sword that seemed to be made of glass and a look of both burning determination and sick suffering, similar to that of an addict going through withdrawal symptoms. There was also a boy with several bleeding wounds on his face. Piercings, maybe? Had he been seeking to protect himself in this place? Kaye noticed that he had the Sight as well. One of his eyes was milky and unseeing and the other was sharp and cynical. It seemed that one of the Folk had been trying to teach him a lesson.--a lesson he obviously hadn't learned.
To her, the situation seemed not unlike that of a cat bringing the unwanted carcass of a rat or a bird to lie at its master's feet, with the vain hope that it might please him. Or was the prize simply a plaything for the hunter's amusement? One could never tell.
Come to think of it, were felines and fey really so dissimilar? Both were fickle and unwilling to adhere to the wishes of others, conscious only of their own desires and motives. And oftentimes cruel , tossing their catch about with wicked glee, enjoying the pathetic shrieks of terror emitting from the victim as its entrails are violently torn from its body to be strewn in the path of the killer. This was especially true of the Unseelie Court, and Kaye's grin vanished at the likelihood that such events might commence at any moment.
But as Roiben beckoned to her to join him, all notions of death and pain vanished just as quickly as they had begun. She ached for his long, slender fingers to run through her hair., for the cool touch of his lovely hands on her throat., for anything of him at all. As it had been since the first time she had looked upon him, he made her weak with desire.
When she had set herself comfortably beside her king, Kaye leaned close to him, inhaling the appealing scent of his hair, his flesh, overwhelmed by his perfect presence. She glanced thoughtfully at the pair of mortals, and then at Roiben's pale, silvery eyes. For once she saw them as something different from herself: they were mortal and she was not. They wouldn't last long. She would. She had forever. They didn't. It was so strange, but it made them seem as if they had something precious that would soon fade. She found this quite pleasing, for some strange reason.
She spoke softly against the silk of his skin, her lips brushing gently just under his ear. "This looks like a fun game. Should we devour their fleeting loveliness or let them keep it while they can?"
Wait a second, hadn't she just been pondering how faeries could enjoy such suffering? Oh well. She had changed her mind after all.
Roiben's face broke into a beautiful expression that was too sinister to be a smile, yet too full of delight to be anything else.
