Chapter 19 #2
Lars looks at him, perturbed. “You expect me to fix these without touching them?”
“Are you fixing them right now?” asks the Nomad.
“No.”
“Then I suggest you keep your hands off of her.” There’s a sharpness to his voice that I’m not used to. One that replaces his typical nothing-bothers-me tone.
Odd.
“They’re in terrible shape. You were correct to assume I wouldn’t want them as part of my collection.”
I’m not sure whether to be offended or relieved.
“But can you fix them?” asks the Nomad.
Against my better judgment, I find myself hanging on Lars’s response.
“Of course, I can fix them,” he says, sounding offended.
“Great,” says the Nomad, clapping his hands together. “Then let’s begin.”
I start, and Lars actually laughs. “You can’t think I can repair them today? No, I’ll need time. And materials, of course.”
“What kind of materials?” asks the Nomad.
“Oh, nothing too terribly difficult to procure,” says Lars.
The way the Nomad twitches gives me the sense he doesn’t trust Lars’s judgment on what is and isn’t difficult to procure.
“But I do have one condition,” says Lars.
“Which is?”
“I want free access to studying her.”
I blink, my wings going rigid.
“Eh…” says the Nomad, glancing warily back and forth between me and Lars, which has me wondering which one of us is more important to his plan. Although, if the Nomad needs me to be able to fly, and Lars to fix my wings, then I suppose we’re a package deal.
I cross my arms and shake my head. There’s no way I’m giving this creep free access to anything.
“I see,” says Lars. “Well, it was good seeing you, old friend. Feel free to visit me, but please make it a time when I’m less busy, or when you have more to offer.”
The Nomad pulls his lips under his teeth and glances at me with what looks to be a pleading wince.
This time, I simply glare.
“You don’t want to fly again?” he says, his voice low, though it doesn’t matter. Lars doesn’t seem to be paying much attention anyway.
I take my notepad and write, Faeries have been hunted for our dust my entire life. It wasn’t as if I got to fly much anyway.
A divot forms on the Nomad’s brow. “It was never special to you?”
My heart gives a lurch as I remember my joyful squeals as my father tossed me off a rock into the ocean beneath. It had been our special place—the roar from the ocean protective against anyone hearing us, the water below protecting me from the times I fell. And I fell often.
But then there were the times I didn’t fall. The times my wings caught the wind, and the sky whisked me away, and I was weightless.
I don’t remember the last time I felt weightless.
The Nomad is watching me carefully, and I wriggle underneath his gaze.
When I take my quill to the parchment again, it’s with reticence, and the fact that I can sense the Nomad’s excitement building next to me only irritates me, but I write all the same.
You may study me, but I have conditions.
You may not be alone with me, and I choose who else is in the room.
You also must explain everything you plan to do before you do it and give me ample time to refuse.
And this agreement isn’t for life. You may have one session, lasting an hour at most.
Lars’s eyes dart over my note, and when he gets to the end, he scoffs. “I couldn’t discover enough in a single hour for it to be worth my time. I require at least three two-hour sessions.”
One two-hour.
Lars glances up at the ceiling, his monocled eye still filling most of the glass. “Fine,” he says.
Then without speaking to us again, he goes back to dissecting a wing.
When it makes a crunching sound, I consider that my cue to leave.
* * *
By the time we get back to the Nomad’s office, to say I’m fuming would be an understatement.
What was that? I write on the pad.
The Nomad looks up from his desk, now donning his own spectacles, though I’ve never seen them before and can’t imagine why he as a fae would need them. “What was what?”
Back there. You knew Lars would want to experiment on me.
“Were we not in attendance at the same conversation? Because what I heard was that Lars wanted to study you.”
We both know the two are interchangeable for someone like him.
“Eh,” says the Nomad, tipping his head to the side in concession.
I roll my eyes, then spin on my heel to leave.
“Oh, come now,” he says from behind me. “You act as if I forced you into it.”
I spin back around and yank the quill from his hand. You knew I wouldn’t be able to turn down the opportunity to have my wings healed. You knew
I stop mid-sentence, my hand lingering over the parchment.
“Is that what you’re upset about then? That I know you?”
The Nomad watches me carefully before folding his hands in front of him and speaking.
“If I knew of another who I was confident could heal your wings without mangling them or causing further damage, believe me, I would have gone to them. As I’m sure you’ve surmised, Lars can be rather difficult to work with.
And that’s putting it politely. Not to mention, he makes a dreadful dinner guest. But as it stands, he’s not only a genius, but steady enough with his hands that you don’t have to worry about suffering unnecessary nerve damage.
And if I’m remembering correctly, I gave you the option to say no. ”
Maybe, but that doesn’t change the fact that you use what others have lost to get what you want.
“Like you did with Acel?”
When I don’t answer, he cocks his head to the side.
“That’s what I thought.”
I saved Acel from public shame and offered him the opportunity to be eligible to marry the woman he loves.
“Which conveniently benefits you,” says the Nomad. “Would you help him steal from a Fate’s lair if it didn’t?”
I shove the quill and pad back into my pockets and make for the door.
I already have a foot in the hallway when from behind me I hear, “You’re right about one thing. I do know you.”