Chapter 7 #2
“Do you have a proper name?” I asked. “I cannot imagine you like being called Devil.”
“Your concern for my feelings is touching,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest. “Most of my captives simply refer to me as ‘you bastard’ or ‘you demon’.”
I swallowed, unsure if he was taunting me. “So…you do have a name?”
“Call me anything,” he replied, stopping short and pinning me with an intense look.
“I am yours to command by whatever epithet.” He pressed his thumb over my lips, silencing me.
I tried to pull away, but the rest of his long fingers wrapped around my neck, holding me in place.
“But do so quietly, or you will upset the trees.”
He released me and I sucked in a breath, looking around as if a face might appear on one of the trunks.
The Devil turned and began walking again, but it took me a moment to catch up with his long strides, since the top of my head barely reached his shoulder.
The difference in our heights made me realize I had another question for him, but I battled with myself for a few minutes about asking it.
Finally, I decided information was more important than my pride.
“All those stories about you, about how you rob travelers and wield poison arrows—they are generations old.”
“And?”
“Well, you were only a boy when we made our bargain, and you still do not look much older than I am.”
“Was I only a boy?” A smile split his strange features. “Or did I merely take the appearance of a child so you would not be afraid?”
I had not considered this possibility, so I asked the thing that was really on my mind, “How old are you, actually?”
“The fay do not measure age as you do.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Yes it is.”
I huffed loudly and fell silent again, until a few minutes later when I asked, “How many of you are there? The Fair Folk? Why have we not seen others?”
“If you want those answers, you shall have to make your peace with staying in the Arden,” he said, smiling patiently. I balked and stood still for a moment before following him again. Make your peace. Tuck had said similar words to me only the night before.
“I’ll be missed, you know,” I told him. “Will, and Friar Tuck, and the Sisters. They’ll be worried for me if I don’t return soon.
Not to mention all those people at the tournament who saw your little performance.
It’ll cause an uproar. Johar might even send the Iron Fist into the Arden if he thinks you’ve been causing trouble in town, kidnapping innocent young women. ”
“Innocent?” the Devil asked with a smirk. I opened my mouth to issue an angry retort, but he just waved a hand and said, “No one at the tournament will remember that ‘performance’. My magyk obscured what they really saw.”
“What sort of magyk? Does it have something to do with the fireflies? They do seem to like you a great deal…”
The Devil stopped and let out an exasperated but amused sigh. “Would you like to see?”
“I would—” I caught the bubble of eagerness rising in my chest and stamped it out. “No, I would not. Just tell me where we are going. The faster I pay my debt, the faster I can get out of this forest.”
“Ah, yes,” the Devil chuckled. “And return home to your handsome, golden-haired archer who worked so hard to win the kiss of another woman?”
My face burned and I tripped on a rock, barely catching myself. “He was not going to accept the kiss,” I muttered. “He planned to refuse her, but you interrupted him with your…theatrics. He panicked.”
“Liar,” he said again. “Besides, did I not also declare my affection for you?”
“What affection could possibly live in that cold, empty heart of yours?” I snarled. “Or do you even have a heart at all?”
The Devil stopped walking, reached down, and seized my wrist again, forcibly pressing my open palm to his chest. For a moment, I was intensely distracted by the spot where my iron medallion had branded him.
The mark was still red and raw, but had already begun to heal faster than anything I had ever seen, even wounds I touched with my own magyk gift.
“Feel that?” he asked, inching closer. I pulled my attention away from the brand and focused on the faint thumping beneath my fingers. There was a beat—an irregular, wild thing that did not seem to have any particular pattern, but a beat nonetheless.
“Like a frightened rabbit caught in a snare,” I sneered up at him.
“Only when I am close to you, my darling May,” the Devil said, batting his eyelashes and letting out a harsh laugh like a bird call as I yanked my hand out of his grip. He turned away, folding his arms and surveying the trees, which seemed to stretch on endlessly in every direction.
I planted my hands on my hips. “Now what?”
“Now, I think I ought to fly away and see how far you get armed only with that sharp tongue of yours,” he replied.
“Fly?” I breathed, all but forgetting everything else.
“Of course,” said the Devil, looking over his shoulder with a grin. “What’s a faerie without wings?”
As he said it, the air around his cloak shimmered and moved in a wave pattern, then pulled apart slowly like a pair of curtains, revealing a pair of enormous, elegantly feathered wings.
They sprouted from slits cut in the shoulders of his tunic and stretched above his head before dipping to the forest floor in a cascade of vivid red, patterned with faint streaks of brown and gray.
I couldn’t help but gasp and moved closer, brushing my fingers over his feathers without thinking. “I have dreams about flying…all the time.”
His wings shuddered, then stretched out to their full span, forcing me to take a step back. “Come here,” he ordered, pointing to the space in front of him.
“Why?”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“Only when I’ve been kidnapped by strange faerie creatures.”
“It isn’t kidnapping if you called for me.” He stretched out one of his wings, putting it around my back and using it to push me into the place he had indicated. Then, he stepped closer and wrapped both wings around my back, enveloping us in a tight pocket, face-to-face.
“Is this how you bewitch your victims?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from his.
He winked. “So, you do find me bewitching, then? And here I was, thinking I’d lost my only talent.”
“I am beginning to think your only talent lies in being a complete and utter menace,” I grumbled.
“Normally,” he said, ignoring the insult, “I beguile my victims with faerie wine, or magyk, or both. But for you…I would lift the veil.” He gently settled his fingertips on my cheeks, then brushed his thumbs over my eyelids.
“What veil?” Even with my eyes closed, I could sense his lips hovering close to my forehead, his breath hot and gentle on my hair.
“The veil of righteousness that keeps you trapped in a life you never asked for,” he whispered, “believing that you are nothing if you do not sacrifice for others.”
“That is what the Holy Family wants,” I answered, “for us to be…unselfish.”
“To martyr yourself by healing people who believe your gift is an abomination?” the Devil hissed, and my eyes fluttered open in shock.
“How do you know that?”
“I brought you to the Arden to free you, May.” He took my shoulders and turned me around so I could see nothing but his feathers. “Shed your veil, pious girl, and see the world for what it truly is.”
His wings parted, and the breath left my body, pulled out into the endless void suddenly stretching out before me.