10 Fae Marriages (2/2)

She shrugged. ”What did you want me to call you? It's the first word I could think of. It's not like we're friends.”

”Fair enough. You can drop the glamour now by the way. It's strange seeing you as an elf.”

Ruby laughed and did as he said, returning to her original human glamour. ”Happy?”

His eyes narrowed. ”You look human again.”

”I always look human,” she said evasively. She didn't want to get into her reasoning behind always having a glamour on. She was regarded as enough of a freak already. It was better to look like a human than a mutant fairy.

Ash put on a show of being dramatically wounded, his long raven hair swishing as he posed. ”And here I thought you were actually starting to trust me! No matter. It's starting to get dark. We can head into town for our errand soon.”

He headed back inside and Ruby followed him rather confused by his teasing. Vampire humor really was weird.

As she went, she surveyed the rooms that had been taken care of today. The kitchen was sparkling clean and there wasn't a rat in sight. She had known the Breezes were good but this was far beyond her expectations. It looked like a completely different room!

They also managed to clean one of the bathrooms, two empty rooms with ripped up canvases hanging on the walls, and what appeared to be some sort of drawing room.

Ruby was impressed. They managed to do all of that with three wind fairies and two water fairies!

She knew the Gales fairly well because they were one of the only other fairy families in this area. Elements were genetic. If two different elemental fairies gave birth to a child, it would have one of their attributes.

Wendy's parents had been wind and water fairies; she got wind and her sister got water. She and her two children joined Wendy and her husband in this area after she broke up with her boyfriend of fifty-seven years.

Fae marriages were somewhat rare because people didn't want to be tied down for eternity. Her parents and aunt and uncle had been married but about half of the fae she knew didn't bother making that kind of commitment.

Marriage in fae society was a bit different than it was for humans. They didn't have to go to a government office and fill out paperwork. They cast a spell that constituted a binding magical contract that they swore to spend the rest of their long lives with the other person.

Out of all the races, werewolves were the most likely to get married because they had a special bond with their mates. The least likely were either elves or witches because they couldn't be bothered with long-term emotional attachments.

Ruby saw the sun go down through one of the broken windows and briefly wondered if it was possible for her to use her power to create glass. It was made of superheated sand, which originally came from rock.

Maybe she wouldn't have to hire a human to fix the windows after all. But she wouldn't be able to test this theory until the sun came back up and Ash went to sleep.