9. Chapter 9
Lunette
I could’ve given him some time to orient himself before healing him again. But the truth was, I’d pressed harder than necessary on his wound because the safest thing for me was to have him unconscious. I told myself it was the only sensible thing to do, even as guilt gnawed at me.
Yes, my stranger was obviously in agony, but pain had never stopped a person from being cruel.
If anything, it usually made them meaner.
I’d needed the reassurance that the giant with a battle wound and the unnerving ability to jolt my magic with a single touch wouldn’t be waking up fully before I had time to plan.
Fear was a stupid, persistent thing—like mildew and men with swords. It always snuck up on you in the quiet moments, whispering questions like, What have you done, Lunette? Who did you drag into your home?
I hadn’t expected him to wake up today. My gaze was drawn to the heap of his discarded gear.
I hadn’t yet found the time to inspect the pile of his bloodstained, battle-dirtied clothing and armor.
I had no idea who—or what—he might be. The priority since his arrival had been saving his life, but now that the stranger was lucid, I was itching to know more about him.
I quietly edged closer to the pile. The tunic was dark green and reeked of old blood, but the fabric was of fine make. The padding for his armor was made of a fiber finer than wool—the likes of which I’d never seen. Enchanted?
And his armor… My breath caught in my throat.
He was not a mere soldier in the royal caravan.
Every inch of the plate was covered in a detailed, engraved pattern that looked like it had been decorated by the steady hand of a master calligrapher.
The passguards on the pauldrons were in the form of a great wolf’s grasping claws, and the greaves featured snarling direwolves, eternally prepared to strike out at his opponent.
My patient had to be one of the higher nobility.
Benevolent gods.
This was looking more and more like something I shouldn’t have involved myself with. And yet, there he was—still breathing. Which meant I wasn’t done yet.
I shook myself to stop staring at the evidence of a life so different from my own. I crouched beside the old storage chest, rubbing my arms to chase away the lingering tremors of magical exhaustion.
I usually only opened this time capsule once a year, but the stranger’s arrival was forcing me to dig through old wounds.
Buried beneath spare blankets were the remnants of my parents’ lives.
I found three things I’d been searching for: the last of my father’s whiskey stock, one of his old tunics, and a pair of trousers.
The whiskey bottle was dusty from years of sitting in storage, but the cork looked intact.
I set it aside on the table along with a few clean towels.
I wouldn’t be drinking it. At least, not yet.
If this stranger continued to shock me like a lightning storm, I might have a small glass to calm my nerves.
But for now, his wound was still filthy, and the smell of infection told me I needed something strong to clean it—the whiskey would have to do.
The clothes he’d arrived in were covered in blood and dirt.
And I’d need to get him out of his trousers completely at some point so I could clean those too.
I lifted my father’s old tunic toward the thin line of daylight slipping through the shutters.
Yes. It was long enough, broad enough to fit.
The trousers would be too short, but that couldn’t be helped.
He certainly wouldn’t fit into anything of mine without ripping the seams.
I needed to stay busy—anything to avoid thinking about the man sprawled unconscious on my floor. About the rich and powerful trouble probably trailing behind him. Anything to avoid thinking about the way his eyes had softened when they’d met mine, even half-delirious.
Or the shadows I swore I’d seen around him. Had I been half out of my mind?
None of that was helpful to think about with so much to do.
I needed to make a broth. And clean the floors. And eat. All with a pounding headache from using too much magic for too many days in a row.
Apparently, the correct response to making horrible, life-altering decisions was soup.
I already felt steadier when I returned from the root cellar with the makings for a hearty broth.
I got to work. Still, my thoughts kept circling back to that bolt of something—lightning, magic, Fate, whatever it was—that had shot through me as violently as any spell.
I kept waiting to feel normal again, but my heart still wasn’t beating right whenever I was around him.
I didn’t like mysteries that lived under my skin.
He was most certainly a mage. Maybe the shadows I’d seen were part of some illusion he hadn’t meant to cast. I couldn’t be certain until I asked him.
There were a few magic-sensitive people in Selmont, but my family had always been the only ones with true power.
I’d met several mages in passing when I was a child but hadn’t spent more than a handful of minutes around one unrelated to me in more than a decade.
My family’s existence had always been a secret, along with all the other Fae-descended families hiding in the borderlands.
For safety, we didn’t even know where each other lived.
I looked over at the armor again. Gods, I was in so far over my head. The knot of dread in my stomach was growing larger with every breath.
I sat at the table and took up an old shirt I hadn’t yet finished mending, the rhythmic pull of the needle through the cloth a comforting sound. It quieted my mind as I listened to the soup simmering on the hearth and tried to ignore Muffin scratching at the door.
Little terror.
His reaction to my patient had been so overblown, I wouldn’t risk letting him in again for a while.
I was just finishing the last stitch when there was a harsh inhalation then a soft, pained grunt. My stranger was awake. His eyes were half-open, unfocused, but alert enough to lock onto me.
“Good timing,” I said softly, setting the shirt aside and wiping my hands on my apron. “I was just about to check on you.”
He didn’t call me a witch or interrogator again—though the accusation hung between us anyway—just watched me like he expected fire to burst out of my hands.
I reached for a wooden cup and ladle to pour him some broth. “Will you allow me to help you prop your head higher so you don’t spill half a cup on yourself this time?”
His jaw tightened. He eyed the cup with the kind of suspicion that would’ve been insulting if I hadn’t just realized how high the stakes probably were for a man like him. Since we’d already addressed the poison issue, his wariness had to be about something else entirely.
A muscle in his cheek twitched. At least he wasn’t glaring.
Fine.
I would treat him like a startled animal. Most creatures responded better to calm than force. Though that hadn’t worked out so well with his stallion…
“Stranger,” I said gently, “you’re running a fever. I made a broth to help.” I inched toward him. “May I?”
His silence and continued eye contact felt like the closest thing to permission I’d get. So I walked the rest of the way and seated myself by his head. “I’ll just prop you on my knee. Muffin isn’t allowed inside until he behaves, so don’t worry about being attacked again.”
His eyes narrowed at the mention of Muffin, but he didn’t object.
Carefully, gently, I slid one hand beneath his head, the heat of his scalp startling against my palm. He was trying to hide his pain, his weakness, his wariness. My stomach twisted in sympathy.
“I’m sorry for whatever happened to you,” I whispered.
He grunted as I slid my folded knee beneath the back of his head next, letting him rest against the fabric of my skirt. My hand moved without conscious thought to sweep a lock of long hair away from his forehead.
I immediately regretted it when his eyes shot up to mine.
Too intimate.
For him or for me, I wasn’t sure. A flush crept up my neck, but I forced my breathing to stay steady as I held the cup to his lips.
“Slowly,” I murmured.
As I leaned over, his breath ghosted across my ribs with every exhalation. He sipped until the broth was gone then sagged back against my knee, exhausted from the small task.
“You’re burning up. I need to clean your wound. It will hurt. A lot. Do you understand?”
A faint nod.
“Okay, remember rule number two: no killing your hostess,” I warned.
That caused a small smile to form on his lips.
I soaked the cloth in the whiskey and pressed it gently to the mangled flesh at his side.
He didn’t scream. Didn’t even grunt. But the breath he sucked in sounded like steel bending. He clutched the sheet I’d laid over one side, knuckles bone-white, a slight tremor in his jaw.
“Sorry for the pain,” I murmured, tapping lightly on the wound.
His eyes flashed open and locked on me again, but they weren’t dark purple anymore. They were black.
Storm clouds, like those out of a nightmare, rose in his eyes as they searched my face.
A ripple of cold brushed my skin, as if the door had just opened or Muffin had run past. And then more darkness pooled around us—not from the hearth, not from any crack in the shutters, but from him.
It lifted from his skin like smoke rising off coals, swirling out over the floorboards.
The encroaching darkness swallowed the light. The wild thyme and bulbs of garlic drying on the rafters above swung on their ties. A single wooden cup fell from the shelf where I stored them, shifted by the magic now crawling up the walls.
This was no mere illusion. It had substance.
So this is how I die—courtesy of my own bleeding heart and a beautiful stranger.
A tendril reached up toward the whiskey-soaked towel still pressed to his wound. The magic moved slowly, but my pulse began to gallop. I nearly knocked over the bottle when I pulled away.
I hadn’t heard of any noble bloodlines with powers like this. But I was too isolated to know for sure. I didn’t even know what my king’s powers were.
My terrified panting filled my ears. Gods, he wasn’t just any old mage. He was a deadly powerful one. And I’d dragged him into my home, stripped him, healed him, touched him…
The same tendril of living shadow found my wrist and slipped around it like a lover tying a ribbon in place. It didn’t strike, only rested there. Goosebumps broke out over my arm, and I barely—just barely—stopped myself from slapping it away.
Only to find that it was…warm and comforting? Which was, frankly, the last thing I’d expected from sentient darkness.
My breath hitched as the magic inside me suddenly surged toward the shadow, as if yanked by some unseen force.
With the speed of a lightning bolt finding its target, recognition slammed through me.
That same impossible feeling, the same bright pulse that had brushed my magic while I was strengthening the wards on the forest ridge.
It had been him.
“You,” I breathed. He’d been the force calling to me that day.
Then I did yank my hand back. My heart hammered as my magic stretched to tangle with his—without my permission. They rushed toward each other like old friends, driven by a deep need to reconnect.
He held my gaze…well, at least I thought he did—I couldn’t tell because the blackness had completely eclipsed his eyes. He didn’t move, only looked back at me like he was also confused.
Muffin, still locked outside, let out a low warning growl. My little champion scratched at the door incessantly, as if he tried hard enough, he could dig through the wood and save me.
A shiver, born of something far too close to thrill, ran through me as my gaze drifted down his muscled torso and across my shade-filled home.
I should’ve pulled away, should’ve run out the door or ripped a hole in his heart.
But I stayed because my magic clung to his, searching, weaving itself around and between the dark spaces it found in him, like it had always known how to navigate them.
Whatever our magics were doing felt incredibly intimate, like when one breathed out, the other breathed it in.
Something about the easy familiarity gave me a bit of courage.
“Dread Reaver,” I whispered past the awe and undercurrent of fear clogging my throat, hoping the title would stir him. “I’m only trying to help.”
But not a single flicker of recognition crossed his face. Still, the way he fought to stay motionless, to compose himself, decided my forgiveness before it was even asked for. His lips twitched down, a grimace of shame replacing the expression of concentration.
“Moonlight,” he rasped, the sound a dry whisper that seemed to evaporate before it reached me.
Moonlight? The fever must have him raving.
He breathed out steadily, ribs flaring as he fought to still the tremors racking his body and control his magic. The room brightened along the edges first, shadows dissipating slowly. Then, like a door had slammed, they pulled suddenly back into him, creating a rush of air as they vanished.
He gasped then went limp, eyes closed, with sweat beading on his temples.
Nocthel. I had no doubts about what he was now.
Again, I experimentally pressed the whiskey-soaked towel to his side, the powerful smell of peat and roasted barley filling the air, and waited anxiously for a reaction.
Nothing. He’d passed out again, but not before protecting me from his out of control magic.
Exactly what a Nocthel would do. And exactly why I wouldn’t abandon him now. Hope was rarely sensible, but it had kept me alive just as long as caution had.
I had a kinship with this man I hadn’t had with anyone else since my parents died. My foolish heart fluttered, already knowing what I’d do next, even if it wasn’t wise.
I finished cleaning his wound then prepared a simple meal of leftover bread, apples, cheese, and a mountain of salted butter. I’d need the energy to heal him until I passed out again. Tomorrow, I decided, I would ask him his name.
And I prayed to the gods that knowing it wouldn’t make everything worse.