Chapter Six
Six
He kicks in the door to the kitchen, where the familiar scents mingle with his own cologne of moss and sage.
Safe. I repeat the word in my head. These smells mean I’m safe.
I try and imprint the fact on my very soul.
My heart is beginning to slow, though I feel his still racing against my cheek.
I clutch his shirt lightly, though I can’t tell if I’m doing it to reassure myself or him.
Back in my room, he lays me down on the bed. I keep my eyes pressed shut. I won’t disrespect his wishes, especially not after he saved me.
“I need to go and see if Oren is all right. But first…how are you?” he whispers.
I can almost feel his hands hovering over me, like he wants to touch me. The phantom sensation of his fingertips on my cheeks races through my mind. I try to stay focused but everything that’s happened has scattered my thoughts to the wind.
“My shoulder hurts some. My head is splitting.” As I say that, I feel two fingertips run lightly over my temple. He gives in; his touch so small and gentle, it sends a jolt through me. “I’ll be fine. Don’t leave Oren out there alone with that thing.”
“ ‘Thing’ indeed,” he repeats with a snarl and pulls away. I hear him move through the room.
I almost call out to him. I don’t want to be alone.
But I keep my silence. Oren needs him more than I do.
And based on what the creature did and said…
there must really be some kind of ward or protection around this house.
They just need to hold off the beast long enough to get back behind the wall. It must be safe in here.
It must be…
It’s twilight when I open my eyes next. My shoulder is stiff and screams as I try to move it.
But I can wiggle all my fingers and bend my elbow.
I think it’s just a terrible sprain. My head is splitting, but my vision is no longer blurry.
I sit up, rubbing lightly at where my temple met the rock.
My fingers come away bloody. I’ve bled on the pillowcase too.
I curse under my breath. Fortunately for me, one upside of womanhood is that I’m well versed in getting blood out of linens.
I pull the case off the pillow, swing my legs off the bed, and stand slowly.
The world does a little tilt but nothing too alarming.
I’m stable enough to make my way to the bathroom.
I look a mess. After I wash the pillowcase, I wash my face, which is a significant improvement in getting me back to feeling human again.
Pillowcase cleaned and hung to dry, I emerge back into the hall feeling refreshed. I notice a note has been pinned to the door that leads to the main central tower. I cross over and read the elegant script that I can only presume was penned by the strong hand of Lord Fenwood.
K~
There will be an exception to the rules tonight only.
When you wake, if it is before dawn, you may come out and access the dining room and kitchen. Take whatever you need to care for yourself in body and spirit.
My stomach is still too unsettled from the events of the day to be particularly inclined toward food. But my curiosity is far too intense to turn down this opportunity to wander at night. I crack open the door.
The main hall looks…normal.
I don’t know what I was expecting. There’s been such a fuss made about me not emerging at night that I thought perhaps the entire castle somehow changed, that beyond the door was a portal to another land. I laugh softly at myself.
The sound of dishware clinking in the dining room stills me.
My heart races as though I am back in the forest. I take a deep breath.
I am safe here, I repeat to myself. I’ve lived here now for over a week.
For over a week, that monster has been in the woods, I’m sure.
It attacked me only when I ventured too far.
Within these walls, I have nothing to fear.
The golden glow of candlelight illuminates the doorway of the dining room. I pause at the side of the door, not looking in. There are two possibilities for who could be eating late, and I’d rather be safe than sorry.
“Lord Fenwood?” I say. It’s my turn to have my back against the wall, shoulder barely exposed. “Is that you?”
There’s a long stretch of silence. “Just a moment and I’ll be done.”
“Don’t rush on my account; I’ll come back.”
“No, no. Stay.” Is that longing that I hear in the unfathomable depths of his voice? I don’t move.
“What are you eating?” I ask, before the silence can become awkward.
He chuckles. “Nothing particularly fitting for a lord. A hunk of cheese I cut mold from and a knob of bread that I couldn’t let turn stale.” He hates wasting food. That similarity between us, however slight, softens my stance. “But at least the mead is good.”
“Oren didn’t make you dinner?” Dread fills me at what this might mean.
“He’s had quite the day, so I gave him the night off.”
“Is he all right?”
“He is.”
“Thank goodness.” I heave a sigh of relief.
“Though he very well might not have been.” Lord Fenwood’s voice shifts into the realm of disappointment.
I pick at a string on my blouse, tug on it. It’s then I notice that the string comes from a gap at the seam of my shoulder. That monster nearly ripped my sleeve clean off.
An idea strikes me. I tug and pull off the sleeve the rest of the way. I continue ripping at the seam down to the cuff. I’m left with a long, rectangular piece of fabric that I tie firmly over my shut eyes.
Fingertips resting lightly on the doorframe, I step into the dining room. At least, I think I do; it’s impossible to be sure. The heavy cotton of my blouse over my eyes nearly blots out all light.
“What are you—” His chair scrapes over the floor.
“I can’t see anything, I swear it.” I hold up both my hands, trying to calm him.
“I just thought it might be easier to talk this way.” He says nothing, which sets my nerves ablaze.
I know I must look a mess in my still-soiled clothes, one sleeve missing.
“I wish I could look you in the eye so you could see how sincere I am when I say I’m sorry.
But since I can’t do that, I thought this might be the next best thing. ”
Unless he has figured out a way to leave the room completely undetected, I can only assume he’s still standing there, utterly silent.
I wonder what expression he has. Is he upset?
Or maybe he’s amused, or even impressed that I thought of a blindfold as a solution…
A harmless fantasy of him being delighted by me runs away with my thoughts for a second.
But the memory of Oren fighting that monster in the woods alone so the lord could save me sobers me right up.
“My lord, I never meant…I didn’t intend to go beyond the edge of the wall.” I stare in what I hope is his direction. I think I hear him sit down. For some reason, I imagine him sitting in the same chair as I did, at the head of that long table. Made small by this empty room.
“You swore to me you would not. I should have known better than to trust you.” Frustration seeps into his voice, bleeding from a wound I never intended to make.
“Please hear me out. I never meant to betray your trust,” I say quickly.
“I saw a crying girl among the trees. I was afraid that someone had brought her into the forest and something wicked befell that person. She had blood on her. She looked…the girl looked like one of my sisters when she was no older than seven. I was trying to help her. I didn’t step beyond the wall, but I did reach out my hand and she used that to pull me the rest of the way.
Before I knew it she had become that thing. ”
“A fae.”
Those two words shake me to my core. I realize I’ve never really believed in the fae until now.
I spoke about them. I warned my sisters of them.
I think I even tried to look for them during those misty morning rides.
But in my heart of hearts, I never believed the old tales that the woods were filled with them, the wandering folk of a long-ago war between humans and magical creatures.
“They’re real,” I whisper, and stagger forward.
I hold out my hands, searching for the chair at the opposite end of the table.
I hear his footsteps as he rushes to me.
My hands don’t meet the wood of a chair back.
They close around his soft, warm fingers.
The lord is before me in an instant, stealing my breath with his presence and preventing me from awkwardly bumping into something. “Are the fae truly real?”
“You doubt your own eyes?”
I shake my head. My knees feel weak. He must sense it because I hear him pull out a chair, and he eases me into it. Lord Fenwood sits next to me.
“Yes, that thing you saw in the woods today was a fae.” He scoops up my hands. There’s not a tinge of smoke in my nostrils. He’s telling the truth. Or at least he believes it’s the truth. But after what I saw and heard…there’s no other explanation.
“They are as monstrous as the stories say.”
“Fae can be,” he agrees. “That’s why I told you never to go in the woods behind the manor.”
I shake my head as a chill rips through my body. “Fae can shape-shift?”
“Not quite. All fae are born with innate abilities. Most have wings or claws they can summon on command and various other inherited traits from the beasts of the forests. But one ability all fae share is the gift of glamour—fae can make themselves appear as anything they like. Mind you, it’s just an illusion, a magic trick of the senses, and very hard for them to continue once they are touched. ”
I clutch his hands tighter on the word touch. They’re soft, callus-free. The hands of a lord who spends his days in a tower. Not like my hands, rough and scarred. Or like the clawed fingers of that monster.
“Is there any other way to tell a glamour from real? Other than touch?”
“Pure water will wash away the glamour of a fae.”
Right as rain. I wonder if the expression is a holdover from some ancient advice for dealing with the fae.