Leira was 19 when she entered the fairy ring and was swallowed by Ain’asel.
She was the only daughter of the leader of one of northern Avras villages. Her mother left her father for another man and Leira never could get through the wall her father made between himself and the others. She felt alone very often, but when she found her love, Mira, she was meeting with him often in the woods. He was older than her, and was a hunter, living more in the forest than in the village. Leira very often waited for him in a place which they both knew. Mira loved the woods and Leira learned to love them too.
One time Mira didn’t appear. Leira waited long. Later it turned out that wandering robbers attacked Mira and beat him, taking furs he stripped off the animals and thinking he was dead from their blows, left him on the path.
They would find Leira too, if she didn’t hide. They made a camp just near her hiding place, boasting how they killed the man. Leira listened to it and boiled inside from anger and fear.
Leira never deciphered how it happened. If she fell asleep, or not, if was dizzied by a spell or just eaten by the tree in which roots she hid. But Ain’asel knows what prey is most vulnerable and how to use it to feed its lords’ will.
She woke up under a sky that didn’t belong to her land. Everywhere there was only snow, and cold stars and loneliness. She was obviously scared, very, but Leira was always strong. She started to search for any hiding.
And that’s how she was found by the fae.
Most specifically, Lorian himself.
He was on the hunt with a few other lords, and Nymre. They hunted on aragners, the animals taken down only for sport by the fey, as they are most dangerous and almost impossible to kill by any other than a High Fae with strong magic.
Lorian was amused, so much, when Leira stumbled under his feet. It was always thrilling to find new slaves, who accidentally were swallowed by the portal.
Nymre proposed that maybe they will use her as bait for the aragner, not liking the captive’s beauty, but Lorian just took Leira for himself.
First few months in the Dal’coler were very hard for Leira. Lorian assigned her to really serve him, not as a toy, but watching him do atrocities were at first too much for her. Lorian was curious how much she could take, he was so so curious of her. It was a game he played with her, but when life in Dal’coler was hard and merciless, she just wanted to survive even harder.
Lorian thought that she would look better with tail and horns and she passed that too, indifferent at them, every day a fight.
She was always strong. She never was backing off. So Lorian slowly, very slowly started to respect her. At first only by not overburdening her too much. Later, giving her servant status. And then, he just gave her fae life span. In Dal’coler, there is a stream, beaming from under the rotten tree. If a human drinks from it, they will be eternal.
After time, something started to change in her. She stopped being moved by the darkness of Dal’coler. She assimilated, grew into the flesh of the fae realm. And started to care more for her current life, than her past one. More for her own one, than other humans.
She became darker, and started to feel things she never would dare to even think of. She grew closer to Lorian, desiring him and hating him at the same time. She feels so many conflicted feeling towards him, hungry want, attraction, hatred, fear, attachment, all mixed in a dangerous brew.
She lived for thirty years in the palace of the fairies. Making many enemies, the most important of them being Nymre and Lord Alnam.
She became more fae than she would admit. Long-living, with otherworldly attributes, she stopped being a human and became a child of the fairy land. And there is something boiling between Lorian and her, something dangerous and hot as white flame.
Mira searched for her for so long. Never finding, never knowing what happened with her. And she… forgot about him, just as all she left behind.
