The Waterlord

Safety, her rescuer promised. But how could Becca feel safe? There was an eerie luminosity about him, a fluid silver aura like the lightning filling the night. And while his voice was deep, mellow comforting, like the music a stream made while rushing over pebbles it, too, held a hint of the otherworldly. Who was this strange savior, this displaced foreign nobleman who offered up his home and did not want her to leave? Long moonlit walks to the nearby waterfall, tight-lipped servants, a kiss unlike any other: everything about the Count was an enigma. Becca had heard myths of the Fossegrim: creatures driven to find ecstasy with human women and then vanish forever. From their world, humans never returned. This man, Becca was willing to follow."