Chapter 9
NINE
So, what are you hiding?
“Oh, but I bring wonderful tidings, girl.”
Sleep must have overcome me at some point, for I snapped awake from a loud purr and the sting of claws through the blanket. Bahra looked with a pleased expression down at me. She was sitting on my thighs, painfully.
“You must know that I spared myself no pain to fulfill your wishes. The rooster—,” she shuddered, “—oh, a vicious beast, that one, but I persevered and brought you its proudest feather. The moonstone caused me even more trouble and I promised the faeries not to say where I found it, but you had better know that the bargain cost me a full meal of cheese. Good Almira, though she suffers so, was generous to provide a flask of the spring water, and she sends it with her dearest wishes.”
“You are exceptional, Bahra,” I said with honest admiration as I beheld the treasures she’d placed in my lap. She lifted her paw graciously to my lips. I planted a loud smack on it.
As I listened to Bahra’s tale of the battle of wits and claws she’d waged against the rooster, I became faint with dreams of distant shores and summer-sweet forests, and with an aching longing for a season of respite.
A seed of hope had taken quietly root during the storm days, and try as I might, it refused to wither.
Bahra had just left me to hunt mice in Emond’s forge, when Almira swept inside.
“Spring will come soon,” said Almira. Indeed, the snowfall had thinned to sleet. “You should walk around the house a little. The boy will be glad to have help in the workshop. It’s time you put those young legs of yours to use, girl.”
She was pale as frost under her wide-brimmed hat, and she did not even seem to notice the withered garden as she led me to a washroom behind the kitchen.
I dared not ask her to revive the flowers, remembering her weakness when she'd last wielded her magic. I still had time, while the snow remained, before I needed the belladonna flower. Inside the bath, the air was thick with steam, and it smelled sweetly of pine needles and almonds. The scent was achingly familiar—our bath in the Ravenwoods had smelled just like this, in my earliest winters. The steam would linger even in the absence of hot coals, as long as we left an offering of a pine twig and a piece of soap in the basin after we’d bathed.
I washed my face and scrubbed my body with a rich soap, and I tamed my curls and glossed them with an oil Almira had brought.
When I looked into the misted mirror over the basin, I could not recount a time I’d looked as lovely.
A week of rest and warm meals had restored some health to my hollow face.
“Zora sends these,” said Almira as she thrust a pile of clothes at me. “She has excellent taste.”
I glanced suspiciously at her hat and braced myself for the worst. I need not have worried.
I emerged from the washroom in a fine blouse, embroidered at the cuffs with flowers, and in a skirt spun of wool and silk.
I felt noble for a fleeting moment, until I almost stumbled down the stairs into the workshop.
My muscles were withered and feeble and the wound throbbed like a second heartbeat.
Adrik, alerted by my undignified cry, hastened up the stairs. For a moment, as he came into view, he froze and swayed on the steps—as if I’d startled him. I felt frantically for my heated cheeks. I must have forgotten to rinse the soap or committed some other embarrassing blunder—
“You look well,” he grumbled.
“You are very tall,” I replied tersely. We came face to face though he stood two steps below me.
I’d seen the beauty of faeries only ever as a warning—something so startling, I knew in my bones not to trust it.
The trouble with Adrik was that he possessed just enough humanness to lull these instincts.
To make me forget that such beauty was designed only to numb the mind.
He glowed softly in the gloam of the stairwell, as if the sun were so drawn to him that a sliver of its light followed him wherever he went.
He parted his lips as if to speak but said nothing.
He only tilted his head, eyes bright as his lips curved into a slow smile.
We stared at each other with a strange newness—as if we had not quite seen each other before.
I might have remained frozen for another while, had Almira not, with a fiendish cackle, squeezed past me and slammed the front door.
“Shall we?” asked Adrik roughly.
I cautiously took the arm he offered. His skin blazed through the linen shirt, rolled up to reveal forearms veined with muscles.
A wall of herb-scented mist met us on the lowest step.
I stepped through with a cough and into a vaulted, red-bricked cellar.
It was dim down there, as if a sliver of dusk lingered between ebonwood shelves and potion cabinets.
In the cobwebbed corners swayed stacks of ancient tomes, held upright with faerie magic.
In the tight spaces between vials and cauldrons danced peculiar lights—like motes of dust adrift in the sun.
This, too, was faerie magic. The wondrous kind.
Adrik ducked under well-used pots and ladles dangling from the ceiling beams, under bundles of dried flowers filling the air with aching sweetness.
The scent reminded me of a meadow in the spring near the creek, a bed of wildflowers.
I lay in my mother’s arms and listened with dread as she sang madly to the wind.
She was not quite right in the head, never had been.
As strange as a hag and twice as mad.
A clatter tore me with a flinch from my memories.
Adrik had gone to relieve a steaming cauldron of its lid.
A thick, satin-red smoke crept over the pot’s ledge, shimmering as it sprawled through the cellar and over the arched ceiling.
It smelled of sweet wood and, strangely, of midnight, scattering my pulse like the snap of a twig in the dark.
“Enough,” murmured Adrik, gaze locked with mine. The steam vanished with a hiss.
I sat in a cushioned chair while Adrik worked, plucking petals from dried roses as he'd instructed. He worked with deep intent and with a glint of passion that made me forget for a while about my troubles. I found, when I next looked to the side, a tome and a pencil on the workbench.
“I thought,” Adrik said, glancing up to brush aside the golden curl that often fell over his forehead, “that you might like to improve some of the sketches. You must be getting bored with me.”
I said without thinking, “I’m afraid I can never be bored with you.”
His gaze snapped to mine, bright and alert. “You should not flatter me like this, Evana.” The silkiness of his tone gave me a shiver. “You are treading dangerous ground.”
I dared neither to test nor to question this claim. A clatter came from upstairs, quieting his low, teasing laughter. A howl of pain—
“Stir gently for three minutes," Adrik said as he hurried to save Lorell, shoving a spoon at me.
The flower bundles rustled as he whisked past. I froze. A bunch of belladonna flowers dangled from the farthest beam.
I was swift, fuelled by a spark of wild hope and by the keen awareness that Adrik moved quietly and quickly. I did not know how I’d done it, given the feebleness of my legs, but I stood within a heartbeat on a rickety chair and plucked, with shaking fingers, a flower from the bundle.
I leaped back to the floor, biting the inside of my cheek to stifle a shriek of pain. I’d barely slipped the flower into the pocket of my skirt and begun to stir the brew, when Adrik came back down the stairs. He made a horrified sound.
“You are butchering the poor thing!” Indeed, the brew had begun to bubble as if under great duress.
“I said tenderly, Evana, not viciously.” He caught my hand mid-swirl, entwining his long fingers with mine to guide me.
I tensed, heart stuttering from the shock of his skin against mine.
His words stirred my curls as he asked, “Can you smell it?”
I shivered as tendrils of silvery smoke rose from the brew and grazed my jaw. “It smells like a forest.”
“Try again.”
“Like an autumn forest.”
He hummed softly. “You can do better than that.”
I glared at him. Now it was I who was under duress. In my mind I’d seen a moonlit meadow, heard a breathless whisper, felt a phantom brush of lips against mine. With a sweet smile I leaned close, stifling a shiver as Adrik’s breath swept over me. He smelled of fresh snow, of wood, and of peaches.
I sniffed and said, in my haughtiest voice, “It smells of conceit and a touch of presumption." I retreated quickly, half-proud and half-stunned by my own daring. He was half of a wicked faerie, after all. I’d become foolish and careless in his presence, mellowed by warm hours spent together.
Adrik laughed softly. “Is that so?” he murmured. “Tell me more, Evana. What else have you noticed so keenly about me?” I kept my lips sealed. His whispered laugh tickled my neck. “Or does it perhaps smell like a lover’s kiss beneath an autumn moon?”
For one fluttering heartbeat, I entertained the ludicrous idea of kissing him just to silence his teasing. Just to put his maddening lips to better use. I came quickly back to my senses when Lorell shuffled down the stairs. He grumbled thanklessly when Adrik offered him a slice of fresh bread.
“I see there is no need to make my way down to the baker this morning.”
He busied himself at the back of the workshop with a basket of dried herbs, working nimbly with fingers scarred from handling burners and boiling brews.
While Adrik focused on calming the brew I’d so viciously upset, I flipped through the tome he’d given me and began, with fine pencil strokes, to add details.
“Thank you,” said Adrik when he next looked up from the cauldron.
“You saved my life,” I said with a soft laugh. “I will draw whatever you ask of me if it makes you glad.”
His grin chased a flush over my cheeks. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
We sat, that final storm day, for many hours in companionable silence, absorbed in our tasks.
Here, amid simmering potions and ancient tomes, I felt a little like I belonged.
It was a thought as venomous as a wildwood spider—I trampled it fiercely before it sank its fangs into me and spilled hopeless, lethal longings into my blood. It kept crawling back.
The thought of what I’d have to do that night to secure Adrik's secret made me nauseous with dread. I was not keen to meet the silver spirit again. It had often fled my mind, in the warm hours beside the hearth, the favor and the spirit. I’d even considered asking for Adrik’s help without a bargain.
Foolish, to have become so soft and uncautious.
I was trembling from distress when Adrik announced that the weather called for a hearty stew.
Neither Lorell nor I objected. Though we tried our best not to fuel Adrik’s arrogance, we had not the heart to pretend he was not an excellent cook.
When I swayed on the steps, Adrik plucked me off my feet and carried me, with an amused glance at my outrage, to the parlor.
“There is no shame in needing help, you know?”
“No shame perhaps, but it is a reminder that I’m trapped here.”
He tensed and set me down quickly. “Right.”
I wished for a moment to lighten what I’d said, but was it not the truth? I was trapped, hopelessly, and every moment of warmth was no more than a dream that would fade come spring. I was living a lie—a child playing pretend.
“Here,” Adrik said with a cracked smile and handed me a vial of the horrid honey-like potion. “I made this for you. I know it tastes like the candied oranges you hate. I added heartflower extract to make it go down easier.”
A broken sound came from my throat—something that should have been a whisper of gratitude, a smile of appreciation. It tasted bitter and foul. I frowned at Adrik’s sun-tanned hand, at the long fingers wrapped around the vial.
“Why are you doing this? Why do you waste your time with me when you have much else to do?”
A sharp breath. “I care.”
“I know,” I said bitterly. “You care about everyone and everything.”
“You say it like it is a flaw.”
“I have no use for it.” A vicious thing that stung as it slipped out. Adrik’s face darkened, and I… I burned with despair and allowed the poison to spill. “I have no use for your tales. I have no use for your kindness or for your time.”
Without a bargain, I'd be gone with the thaw. In this life, I could not afford ever to have something to lose. Ever to falter again under the weight of the knife against my ribs when the hounds came.
“Then why do you come alive when I speak? If you have no use for these tales, why do you sit for hours listening with such heart and such spirit?” His voice was rough with anger.
It simmered in the space between us, that anger, burning whatever sliver of sense I’d retained.
I made to speak again, poison-lipped, but Adrik was quicker.
“I know, Evana,” he said with that soft, lilting voice of a faerie.
I shuddered with something primal, something between terror and intrigue—like a deer pricking its ear at the snap of a twig.
“I know well that those who only listen have either little to say or much to hide. I know now that you have much to say. So, what are you hiding?”
His eyes gleamed with greed, with the horrible, heartless hunger of a hunter. I was his prey. A cornered beast with nothing left to lose. So, I bit.
“You’d know all about hiding, no? Do you not cower behind your tales? Are you not just as scared to reveal something real? These tales are delusions. You’re mad to believe them.” Oh, but how the words burned me. “You’re mad.”
I caught a broken sob in my palm, lips pressed to the knotted scar beneath which twisted and writhed a horrible pain—
Adrik said nothing as he left. The front door clicked quietly shut. In his absence, hollowness shrouded the house. I did not allow myself to linger in my hurt and regret. I locked myself into the chamber and tore the laced sheet from the mirror.