Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fae may have healed faster than humans ever could, but this might have been one of the worst injuries I’d ever secured in all my six hundred and fifty-two years. I had never felt this incapable and the more I pushed through the pain, the dizzier I became.
Climbing the stairs had been the first task and doing so had threatened to see me back on my knees.
I’d managed to run a hot bath into the pale blue clawfoot tub and gritted my teeth through the agony as I stripped out of my clothes, but I hadn’t yet made it in.
Someone with the Art of water manipulation must have created the system here to pump water around this castle.
It was something only the largest of the Fae households were privy to in Rivenspire – outside of those who possessed the Art themselves.
I had been well-used to these luxuries in my old life, but the outcast existence held far less delights.
My fingers knotted around the side of the tub, the pain like wildfire in my flesh as I tried once again to enter the bath without passing out.
I made it into the water but a roar of pure torment escaped me as it washed over my wounds.
My eyelids drooped, too heavy to keep open against the cloying grip of darkness that was draped in my own agony.
Between the chaos of waking pain and unconscious nothingness, I found the past. The smiling faces of my family and the soft lull of my mother’s laugh. I felt her fingers on my cheek, her kiss against my brow.
“Hendrix,” she whispered. “You cannot brave the world alone.”
“You’re not dead, are you?” Ferris’s voice called me back to the land of the living and I cracked my eyes open. The water had turned red with my blood, tainted with a murky swirl of dirt too.
“Not yet,” I grunted, looking to the washcloth I’d left by the basin with a huff of frustration.
“It’s just, there was an almighty scream and then you went all quiet.”
“I didn’t scream,” I grunted.
“What was it then? A shriek?”
“I did not shriek, you insolent creature,” I griped, then groaned as my muscles tensed and jarred my injuries.
“Great. Well, fuck you. And good luck with the bath.” Her footsteps started padding away and I chewed my tongue, trying to fight back the word that was already forcing its way past my lips.
“Wait.”
Silence. But no more footsteps.
“Human,” I growled.
Nothing.
“Ferris,” I tried, my tone softening the slightest amount.
“Hendrix?” she questioned dryly.
“I have left my washcloth by the basin. Be a lamb and-”
“Mehh,” she baaed like a lamb, then her footsteps thumped away again.
I released a stream of curses, then gripped the sides of the bath, hauling myself to my feet with pain flaring across my chest. But all went black again and I crashed back down into the tub, sending water flying across the floor.
I hit my head for good measure and dizziness settled over me thickly, making it hard to remain alert.
The door opened and light illuminated the hazy silhouette of Ferris as she entered the bathing chamber, the silvery cloud of her hair making her appear as some ethereal being.
All I could do was stare, lost to a muted daze where she seemed to be the only thing in existence besides me.
Those violet eyes held me hostage, choking away my ability to speak, but I managed to grumble an incoherent insult as she passed me by, retrieved the washcloth and tossed it at me.
It slapped against my face and I peeled it off slowly, offering her a cold glare as my vision sharpened on her.
The hardness in her gaze wasn’t going to serve me any good.
I felt helplessly weak in front of her and I despised the fact.
Her gaze dipped to my wounds as I propped myself up in the bath and dabbed the long slice beneath my collar bone, tensing from the contact.
“This is all wrong.” Ferris shook her head at me. “You’re going to get an infection washing yourself with that filthy water.”
“Well, what do you suggest I do instead, lightwing? Hail down a healer?”
She strode forward and snatched the washcloth from me, rinsing it in the basin and wetting it with clean water.
She returned, hesitating for a second and then kneeling beside the bath and dabbing lightly at my wounds.
I stared at her face, rendered silent by the sudden contact, the closeness of her somehow making the pain more bearable.
Her eyes never left my wounds as she worked, washing then rinsing and repeating, and my gaze never wavered from her in kind.
Her fingers grazed the uninjured skin beneath my right pec and a low growl rose in my throat, the sound both a warning and an invitation.
She made no comment on it as her fingers continued to roam across my body, cleansing the shallower cuts.
A fire started up in my skin that had everything to do with the way she touched me and there was no denying how enraptured I was by her.
“Who waits for you back home?” I asked, wondering if some forlorn human man was awaiting her return.
“Family,” she muttered, not meeting my gaze.
“Children?”
“No.”
“A husband?” I looked to the finger she might wear a ring on but it was empty.
“No.”
“Betrothed then? I hear your kind wed young and breed early.”
She slapped the wet cloth onto the slash across my ribs and I snarled in pain.
“Watch it,” I warned.
Her eyes flew up to meet mine. “Watch your mouth and I’ll watch my hand.”
“It was a simple statement.”
“No, it was rude.” She pressed harder on my wound and I grabbed her arm, yanking her close so that her free hand slapped down on my stomach to stop herself from falling right into the tub with me.
“If you want my help, then you’d better start speaking to me with respect,” she hissed, unperturbed, though her pupils were wide as she stared at me, her words washing over my mouth so that I might taste the ire on them.
Light stirred within her silvery hair but I wasn’t sure she noticed it, or the way the Dragon amulet glinted with promise. The spirit was close, but she didn’t know how to wield it. Not unless I showed her. And I needed her on my side if I was going to use her to wield the Dragon for my own gain.
She pulled away from me, the air taut with tension and the imprint of her hand on my skin still burning hot.
“I meant no disrespect,” I muttered, and she narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“No, there’s no intent to hurt my feelings behind your words because they’re not aimed at me as an insult. They’re a sign of your true beliefs about humans. And honestly, that’s worse.”
“Tell me about your people then. What am I getting so wrong?”
Her suspicion heightened but I gave her a patient look and hid a smile when she cracked and began to open up to me.
“We’re strong. Stronger than you think and in ways you don’t understand.”
“I see.”
“You don’t see,” she scoffed. “You’re Fae. You walk this world with the air of a god, not a creature that breathes and feels and truly lives.”
I frowned, seeing her belief in those words, and it made me crave something I couldn’t even put a name to. “What am I missing then, lightwing? Explain it to me as best you can.”
She slapped the cloth against my wounds again and I cursed, my fingers tightening on the edge of the tub. “There you go again with the patronising tone.”
“Fine. Forgive me,” I said through gritted teeth, and she went back to tending my wounds more gently.
“I don’t think life has meaning without death,” Ferris announced, and my throat tightened, her hammer striking the nail a little too close to my heart.
“Immortality is too safe a game to play. Have you ever lost anyone, Hendrix? I mean really lost them? Before it was their time to go?” Her voice wavered, only a fraction, almost imperceptibly, but true pain lay there.
A clue to her weakness. A thing I needed to dig out if I was going to learn the best way to control her.
But there was more to it than that. I wanted to know, despite my better judgement.
I was curious about this human, more so than I had been about anything in countless years.
She confounded me, made me question things which I had long ago decided were fact, and I had to know what experiences had moulded the soul of this intriguing creature.
I thought on her question, my mind moving automatically to my past. Days of carefree joy with my family.
“No,” I growled, harsh and firm, blocking out all thoughts of the history I held onto.
“Then there’s no point in me trying to make you understand. Your life is void of all the injustices that ours isn’t. We have to face the unfairness and find a way to move forward, to live for those who can’t.”
“You think I know nothing of unfairness?” I gritted out, knowing it wasn’t the right response. Not when I was just trying to earn her trust. But I simply couldn’t keep my mouth closed. “You think my life is a dream that never ends? Well think again, girl.”
“What could possibly be so bad for a Fae? Even an outcast one. You have forever to right your wrongs. You have eternity to find peace again.”
“Peace?” I scoffed. “Peace is for sinless souls, not those like mine cloaked in misdeeds. You are so very na?ve, you cannot see what I am.”
“What are you then?” she demanded, drawing the washcloth from my skin. “Because all I see is a privileged creature who has boundless time on his hands. He has no remorse, no conscience, just greed and power.”
“Privileged?” I barked a callous laugh, all plans of winning her over currently abandoned as my anger took centre stage. “You wouldn’t last a day in my shoes. If you walked one mile in my life, you would beg for your simple woes to be returned to you.”
I felt well enough to stand, so stand I did, stepping from the tub and glaring down at her, dripping wet and stark naked.