A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [41]
Of course they can.
The Worth of a Sylph
L. J. McDonald
To everyone who has a place in a good family, whether formed from blood ties or not, and especially for those without. And to Oliver, who’s always been my family.
~L. J. McDonald
Chapter One
“I hate you! I never want to see you again!”
Mace paused on his way up the front walk as he heard the boy scream through the open front door. Lily would be very annoyed to learn it wasn’t closed. It was the start of the long Winter Festival, and though it had been a mild season, there was half an inch of snow on the ground and the bushes were frosted with a clean coating of white. That didn’t stop the humans from trudging out to visit their neighbors, though, mimicking some old legend about a strange old-time man who went door-to-door throughout the entire world, giving the people he met gifts of food and healing. Mace had never cared for it. It made the humans he was charged to protect move in patterns he wasn’t used to and distracted the hive. More, this year he resented the idea that anyone would be coming to this door. Mace didn’t feel the cold, but he knew that humans did, and Lily wasn’t as young as she used to be. Fire sylphs supplied heat to all the homes in Sylph Valley through underground vents, but the Blackwell house was far from the main furnace rooms and a sudden draft could be dangerous to an old woman.
He went up the porch stairs, careful not to stomp, though there were no babies to wake in the house and hadn’t been for years now. While the argument continued inside, he took off his boots, shaking them to rid them of snow before he set them neatly beside the others and closed the door behind him. There was no lock. No one was stupid enough to try and break into any house in the Valley, especially not one in which a battle sylph lived.
Lily’s voice echoed down the hall toward him, almost as loud as Jayden’s had been. “Are you prepared to be on your own already?” she yelled, her famous temper at its peak. “I really don’t think so!”
“I’m going to Crem’s!” Jayden screamed, and appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. He stopped at the sight of Mace. There wasn’t any fear in him, not after having lived with the battle sylph all his life, but the boy stood for a moment, staring at him with an expression Mace couldn’t be bothered to interpret.
“I’m going away,” he said suddenly, boldly.
“And?” Mace replied. Lily should never have taken Jayden in. At fourteen, he was by far the youngest child she still fostered, and she didn’t have the energy to keep up with him. Jayden always seemed to want something, and now was apparently no different. He stared at Mace with a great hunger in his eyes, waiting.
Whatever it was that he wanted, he didn’t get it. Mace continued to stare back at him. Finally, Jayden flushed red and ran past, grabbing his coat and boots and rushing out the door, his mind nothing but anger and that stupid morass of emotions all young humans seemed to go through before they finished growing up. Mace hadn’t bothered to keep track of the number of boys he’d felt undergo this struggle while in Lily’s care. The girls he’d try to help through the changes, but the boys could take care of themselves. Jayden’s had always been an especially thick soup of feelings, but maybe that was because the boy forever seemed to be around. Anytime Mace was home, Jayden followed him.
Putting the youth out of his mind, Mace continued into the kitchen, set at the back of the house with a window overlooking the snowy garden. The stove was currently stocked high with wood and pumped out a great deal of heat to supplement what the fire sylphs provided, even though it was nowhere near a mealtime. Nor did Lily bake. It was the Winter Festival and everyone else in the Valley