Chapter 11
Cairn
I’M STILL NOT SURE IF I’ve made a bad choice. It feels like I’m treading dangerous water, knowing sea creatures are lurking just beneath my hooves. But for some idiotic reason, I refuse to get out of the ocean.
Lyra sits on my couch, her wrist held close to her chest, crimson eyes sweeping across my furniture and bookshelf and the herbs that are hanging upside down to dry.
I shouldn’t have brought her in here. It would’ve been better to sit her in the garden, like when we ate carrot cake together, and tend to her wrist outside. But it felt inconsiderate, somehow. So now she’s here, in my home, where very few ever are.
Basket full of the supplies I need, I walk into the sitting room to join her, my hooves thumping across the hardwood floor.
Her gaze flicks to me as I slowly sink onto the couch beside her, being careful to keep my tail away from her and maintain distance between us—though it’s somewhat difficult, seeing as I take up most of the couch on my own.
“You really don’t have to,” she says, but the fire has gone out of her voice. She doesn’t mean it.
“Let me see it.” I set the basket on the floor by my hooves, then hold out a hand.
Lyra hesitates. She assesses my hand as if determining whether or not it’s safe. Then, slowly, seeming to have made her decision, she settles her wrist into my grip.
“It’s warm,” I say immediately.
She shrugs. “I’m always warm. Fire magic.”
I don’t look up at her. It seems dangerous to do so. “I know. But this feels like inflammation. It’s already swelling.”
“Oh . . .”
“I don’t have ice, but I can wrap it. That’ll help support it and reduce swelling.”
She tips her head at me, but I still don’t meet her eyes. “How do you know all this?”
With a shrug, I reach into the basket and pull out a roll of cotton. Seems I’m using a lot of this lately. I’ll need to get more next time I go shopping in Wysteria.
“When you’re on your own,” I say quietly, “you have to learn how to care for yourself.”
Taking the roll of cotton, I start to slowly wrap it around Lyra’s wrist, noting how bird-thin it is, like one pinch of my fingers could crush it.
I’m careful, tender. And I try to ignore the heat in my stomach at the feel of her skin against mine.
For one whole week, I almost didn’t think of her. I thought I’d gotten it through my head that there can’t be—isn’t—anything here. I’m just doing what anyone else would do—helping someone who needs it.
“Do you like it?” she asks.
My mind having wandered, I can’t recall what she’s referring to. I glance at her. And it’s a mistake, because her vibrant red eyes are so close to mine that I can see the thin bands of gold around her pupils, can almost imagine myself falling into the galaxy that is her gaze.
I clear my throat and quickly finish wrapping her wrist, tucking the end of the cotton into itself so it doesn’t come unwound. “Do I like what?”
Her lips quirk up on one side. “Being alone.”
“Oh.” I reach up and scratch my beard—anything to distract my hands and my mind. She’s perched right here on my couch, her muddy boots are sitting outside my door, and this is starting to feel much too intimate. Inappropriate. Maybe even dangerous. “Uh, yes.”
The hesitation was a mistake. Lyra picked up on it, if the arch of her brow is any indication. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” I stand and grab my basket of medical supplies, fingers flexing around the handle.
“Hmm.” She regards her wrapped wrist, then looks around my hut again. “I don’t.”
It seems like she wants to keep talking, so I linger. “Why?”
The quirk of her lips falls away. A ghost of pain flickers across her face as she shrugs. “I get lonely.”
“Don’t you like your own company?” I ask.
Her laugh is lacking in humor. “Not particularly.”
Words rise onto my tongue, and they spill out before I have the good sense to swallow them down. “Well, I do.”
She lifts her eyes to mine. The power in her fiery gaze has my chest squeezing.
How is it that a tiny fire witch has me feeling so vulnerable? It’s been years since I felt so exposed, so . . . laid bare. And all she’s doing is looking at me.
“I find that hard to believe,” she says at long last.
Part of me wants to push back, to tell her that despite her whining and random flares of fire, she’s actually fun to be around. In a weird way, of course. But this time my brain catches up before I can make yet another mistake, and I shrug instead of speaking.
There’s the sound of claws clicking across my scuffed wooden floor, and the red fox appears from my bedroom, where he ran off to when I opened the door and he smelled Lyra. When he sees her, he freezes.
Her brows rise, her lips opening in surprise. “Who’s this?” she asks. Moving slowly, she gets off the couch and sinks to the floor—though she’s careful not to use her wrapped wrist.
“I found him in the woods a while back. Had a paw injury. I’ve been nursing him back to health. He’s almost ready to go home.”
The fox regards Lyra with a cautious stare.
She holds her fingers out, unhurried, letting him choose whether or not to approach.
And slowly, he does. He inches forward, one paw still wrapped in a bandage, and sniffs her hand.
Then he allows her to scratch him beneath the chin before whirling around and vanishing back into my bedroom once more.
Lyra sits back with a smile. And I wish she wouldn’t make that face around me. I think I prefer her scowls and eye rolls; her smiles are much too perilous.
“Wow. That was so cool. I’ve never met a fox before.” She tips her head thoughtfully. “Well, that’s not totally true. One of my roommates, Alina, has a snow fox companion, Yuki. I’ve never met a wild fox though.”
I lean against the wide doorway leading from the sitting room into the kitchen. “There are plenty around here. But they’ll only show themselves if they trust you.”
Her face falls, and she gets slowly to her feet. “Makes sense. I don’t think anyone trusts me.”
I roll my thoughts around for a moment, weighing them, then say softly, “That’s not true.”
“Oh?” Her brow arches again. She goes to cross her arms, then winces at her wrist and lowers her arms back to her sides. “Are you saying you trust me?”
A smile tugs on my mouth. I try not to let it out, but I fail. “You did transplant those sniffleblooms without a single sneeze. That’s worth something in my book.”
She laughs again, but this time, it sounds joyful. She’s so hot and cold, flickering between smiling and frowning, like a fire dancing, sending light and shadow twirling together in a mesmerizing display. “Well, that makes one person. And Juniper, I guess. She counts too.”
I remain there in the doorway, leaning against the wood, regarding the small fire witch standing in my sitting room, sweater and trousers smeared with mud.
And she regards me right back. What does she see when she looks at me?
A reclusive groundskeeper? A faculty member? A minotaur who’s much too old for her?
Somewhere deep in my chest, an ember of yearning flares to life.
A yearning for her to see deeper than that, past my cold exterior and into the truth of who I truly am.
But that yearning is forbidden. And I shove it down as quickly as it arises.
Problem is, I’m not so sure it’ll acquiesce to being buried.