It’s been on the backburner for a while but I do have some snippets of future BYBBNYP installments.
Whenshe finds him, he is nothing. A slave, an object, a scrawny playthingto amuse the denizens of Summer. No one wanted or expected anythingelse from him. Nana is not sure, herself, why he catches her eye.It’s not just duty, or the instinct to protect mortal thralls andcaptives from the fae; she has felt that a thousand times before. Butshe happens to look at his face one day, at his deep blue eyesshadowed by desperation and misuse, and she sees something that shelikes.
Andso, she is the first person to learn his reason for wanting themantle, before he even learns of its existence.
“I’mhere because they’re powerful,” he tells her, when she asks himwhere he came from. She can tell by the look on his face that no oneelse has ever bothered to talk to him before. “Because they were soscared of the Fae that they thought a favor from them was worth morethan keeping me. It’s wrong,” he adds, probably because Nana ismortal and human and won’t punish him for it. “It’s wrong andit should change. I think if people were less afraid of faeries, thenthey wouldn’t be as impressive. Maybe mortals would stop sellingtheir kids to them. Or stand up for themselves more.”
“Isthat what you want?” she asks him that day. Something stirs deepwithin her heart. “For people to stand up for themselves?”
“Feargets used to control people,” he says simply. “Faeries use itlike a weapon. I’d like to disarm them, if I could.”
It’sa pipe dream when he says it. It’s a foolish dream, Nanaknows—especially from the mouth of a magicless child who has onlyever known servitude. She doubts that he ever expects to reach it,because the more heartless Fae like to teach their mortals tostrangle their hopes.
