Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Do not torment me too much.
Almira let me go with a cackle as soon as we’d thawed our frozen feet by her hearth.
“He will be fine, girl,” said Almira as I hurried to the door.
I blushed fiercely. It was true that my gaze had often slipped to the forest, but I did not think I’d been so obvious.
“Here,” she said, shoving a little pouch at me.
“This is a calming tea. Take it to the castle. He goes there to brood, and the wind tells me already that he is brooding.”
I stood for a while at the foot of the castle hill, staring at the towers gilded with sunset.
It was much less grand than the castles I’d seen from afar, but much too grand still to open its gates to something like me—something feral and hardened, with calloused hands and thorn-scarred fingers and a voice that lent itself better to silence than to song and spirited conversation.
Twilight descended over the lantern-lit path, painting trees and towers black against the snow. My nervous fingers chased the remnants of warmth deeper into the pocket of my coat, where they came across the still-warm pebble.
I laughed, startled from my spiraling thoughts by the faint echo of a mischievous laugh. Had I not learned of myself in these past weeks that I quite enjoyed an evening of fireside conversation? Had I not proven myself capable of eloquence and, on occasion, even of banter?
I hurried with renewed spirit up the path.
Silence had fallen over the town, its people gathered around hearths and well-decked tables.
There was nothing far and wide save the crunch of my steps in the snow and the caw, caw, caw of a crow, whose red eyes tracked me as I passed under its sweeping tree and through a silver-wrought arch.
I came into a little courtyard, lit only by the candleglow spilling through curved galleries and tall windows.
At its heart, draped with withered roses and ivy, stood a fountain whose spout had frozen into a sculpture that reminded me, horribly, of a hound’s muzzle.
From the stables peeked a tall white doe, observing me with cunning eyes as I laid a trembling hand against the wood-carved door.
It was as tall as a tree, but it opened with surprising ease.
I stepped into the hall as if slipping into a lake of silver.
Starlight dripped from the skies and spilled through open arches, over polished floors and moonstone pillars.
It gathered like fireflies in the chandeliers and in the tall mirrors lining the marbled walls.
I stole with clipped steps through the hall, quiet breaths echoing like a whispered song over the vaulted ceiling.
The stone hummed with warmth, with magic.
Through the arches, I caught a glimpse of the town, sprawling like a sea of lights through the vale.
I did not feel unwelcome in this hall, but its grandeur frightened me.
As if I might shatter the gilded flowers and delicate trimmings if I just breathed too harshly.
Tucked into a corner stood a throne of tangled roots, dull with a coat of dust. I slipped through a small door nestled into the wall beside it and up, up, up a winding staircase.
At the top of the tower was a warm reading room.
Firelight painted long shadows over darkwood floors and velvet furnishings.
Night had fallen quickly and there was far and wide no torchlight among the trees.
Draped in a blanket, I opened the winged balcony doors and leaned in the frame, scanning the forest for movement.
Nothing stirred save two twisted elms at the far edge—
I tensed, aware for a horrid moment of what was about to happen. I strained against the urge to slip between the trees, to follow the curl of woodsmoke into the frozen forest. Something pulled me gently closer, closer—
I stumbled over a cracked rock. The wind hissed in my ears as if angered by my slowness. The little fox was quick and nimble, and though I was not yet old, I was not quite as sprightly as I used to be.
It was going to the far hill, that fox. To the pond amid reeds and birches. To the ancient oak. It would wait for me amid its roots.
I buried my hands in the bright moss draping the cliff like a soft, billowing cloak.
The crevices in the stone shifted. It laughed at me, that stone, with whispering mouths full of sharp teeth.
I chuckled as I pressed my hand firmly to the freezing rock.
It hummed with dark pleasure. The stone-faces twisted into bearded men and cratered women.
Let me see you, they chanted. Let me taste you.
I sank my rigid fingers—coarse and cracked around the knuckles, wonderfully grey—deeper into the moss. I ached to join the choir of stone-faces in watching time slip past, forever unmoved and unchanged. The wind whispered lullabies into my stone-clad ears.
You have brought me whom I desire.
From the mist between the trees came a shrouded figure. A rider on a tall-antlered stag. The wicked King of the Forgotten Lands.
He had come for me.
Soon, I would come for him—
The world tilted and I slipped, tumbling onto polished floors. I shrieked, limbs and fingers stiff with cold and something else—
Just a dream. Just a vision.
I sat trembling on the floor, back pressed to the wall while I drew aching breaths.
Down in the town, the lights began to fade one after another.
Adrik was still deep in the forest, on the farthest hill beneath a moss-draped cliff, much too close to the churning mists.
He was out there, and the wild hungered for him.
You have brought me whom I desire.
I flinched when torchlight spilled over the near hill; first one lone flame, then two, then four.
I had not expected their return so soon.
The group was slow to mount the final crest. As they passed under the lantern-lit towngate, relief swept like a summer tide into my veins, unfreezing the fingers I’d buried into the knotted scar.
A great fox led his stag and his riders back into the town.
He carried a lifeless figure on his back and he limped slightly on his hind leg.
I hastened to stoke the fire. Adrik would be freezing when he returned.
To soothe my restlessness, I hurried down, down, down the winding stairs to find a kettle and glasses for tea.
I learned quickly that this was a hopeless endeavour.
I knew nothing about castles and though this was a small one, its stairs seemed always to end in a corridor I’d not discovered before, and its doors never led to the same chamber twice.
I must have been somewhere near the kitchens—I’d just passed a store room brimming with sausages and smoked ham, ripe with the stench of cabbage left too long to rot—when the sound of quick, self-important steps came from behind.
“Adrik!” I called with relief.
It was not Adrik who stepped from the dark.
I shrieked. For one dreadful breath, as I looked at the man before me, I feared death had come. He wore a stern, displeased face and where his eyes used to be were only two ill-healed wounds, as if carved from the sockets by a long-clawed beast; the work of a lesser faerie, perhaps.
“I apologize, miss,” he muttered. “I meant only to gather the king’s meal.”
He wore the deep red cloak of a servant, and though he held his head high, his back was bent with age.
I did not know what had frightened me so—perhaps the mean tilt of his mouth or the ghastly wounds.
A flush of shame came over me. I gave him a wavering smile.
He smiled back, lips straining with effort.
“Oh,” I said meekly, pressing my back to the frigid brick wall.
The man stepped near, to hasten past me to the kitchen, I assumed. As he passed, his icy finger slithered over the flickering pulse of my wrist. He flinched and hurried off, leaving me to shiver with dread.
“Evana?”
A small sob broke from me. “Adrik!”
He leaned in the door at the shadowed end of the red-bricked corridor, and though he tried to appear casual, I noticed as I hurried to him that he was loath to put weight on his leg. I must have mustered him so warily, he laughed and bowed low to murmur, “Were you worried for me, Ana?”
I was about to fervently deny it, but I paused. Ana, he had said, tenderly. No one had ever called me such a thing, and I wished he’d say it again in that low, silken voice of his.
“What happened?” I asked, keen to divert him before he noticed my delight.
A darkness came over him. “We found Marin,” he said grimly. “More stone than man.” He drew a sharp breath through his teeth as he shifted his weight.
“You are hurt.”
“I’d prefer to call it slightly inconvenienced.”
“I’d prefer if you sat down and let me take care of you,” I snapped.
I had little patience tonight for his lightheartedness. Adrik led me without argument back to the reading room, undeterred by the maze of winding stairs and shifting doors that led nowhere.
“Sit,” I ordered as soon as we’d entered.
“I will be fine,” he insisted. “I am half of a faerie, remember?”
But he sank with a quiet groan onto the settee and watched through soft, tired eyes as I searched aimlessly for something to ease his pain. In the drawer of a polished redwood desk, I found a roll of bandages and a pouch of tinctures.
“Put your leg up on the stool,” I ordered.
Adrik complied, surprisingly, without question. Voice low with amusement, he said, “I have, it seems, a weakness for your bossiness.”
“Good,” I said, a little breathless. “You will hear much of it tonight.”
“Do not torment me too much.”
I shivered under his teasing gaze while I inspected the tear in his breeches, the deep cut carved into the sun-kissed skin of his thigh. “You need stitches.”