A man stepped from a swirl of glittering snow.
I screamed. He was not a man, though he looked like one.
“Ah,” said the faerie. “I was not under the impression that I looked quite so hideous.”
He was tall and regal, as his kind tended to be, as striking and as wild as the sea—and twice as lethal. I knew the courtly faeries well, and I knew that to meet one meant to suffer misfortune. I curled into the corner, blood aflame with terror. I should have better concealed it; such fearfulness only delighted these wicked creatures. The faerie tilted his head and mustered me with a curious smile.
“Now, now,” grumbled Lorell.
He seemed not at all concerned about the faerie at his door, but he was odd and old and I came horribly to the conclusion that he’d fallen under a glamour. The faerie swept over the threshold, head bowed to fit through, and brushed the snow from his golden locks. His fair, sunkissed cheeks were flushed with cold, and so were the tips of his pointed ears.
“Adrik,” Lorell said with relief. “She is awake.”
“I can see that,” said the faerie whose name was not likely Adrik. To know their true name was to know their weakness and the faeries abhorred weakness.
Despite the thick furs that cloaked him—rich pelts of the finest sort, lustrous and dense—the faerie shivered as he closed the door. He handed Lorell a glass of tea and tenderly squeezed the old man’s shoulder, a disturbing sight. I’d never known a faerie to possess the patience for such utterly human things as tea and tenderness.
“Hello,” said the faerie to me, with a smile I found, despite my terror, painfully charming. His glamour must have weakened me, though I did not feel the telltale mindlessness that came with such magic. My thoughts remained sharp, my terror sharper.
“No need to be so scared.” His low, songful voice chased a horrible tremor through me. “I am onlyhalfof a wicked faerie.” His smile widened, revealing sharp, gleaming teeth. “If you insist, I will even let you have a taste of my blood. I have been told it is quite delectable.”
His tone was light with amusement and his face carved with such arrogance that I, faerie or not, longed at once for his absence. My gaze tangled with his. I gasped for how harshly his eyes pierced mine. As if to cut through the layers of lies and deceptions I wore like a cloak and to search for secrets written in my bones—
It took me three stuttering heartbeats to unravel my eyes from his. My gaze had taken root there, on glittering moss-green soil. He might have looked like a faerie at first glance, but he did not possess their dreadfully hollow eyes.
“I am Adrik,” he said, sobering a touch. Faeries could not lie—though I was not certain about thehalfkind. “How are you feeling?”
I did not know what to answer. I ached all over and I was terrified and I should have been long gone past the wasteland, high up in a lonesome mountain shelter.
“I am fine,” I lied. Though I was afraid to learn the answer, I asked, “What happened?”
There was a too-long silence. Adrik took a sweeping stride to the hearth and lit, with great care, a tightly bundled stick of incense. It smelled of sage and lemon and faintly of the tides, and it made me ache strangely for my mother’s embrace. The fire gave a sprightly crackle.
I could not bear to look at the hearth. I glanced instead at Adrik, careful not to meet his awfully alive gaze. He leaned nonchalantly against the armoire, but I thought there was a cautious tilt to his brow.
“I found you in the wasteland. You were unconscious and about to become a wolf pack’s supper. I arrived almost too late.”
My heart quickened with dread. A wolf pack’s supper? Or that ofhounds? He must have found me at the edge of the Wandering Woods. He must have seen the death I’d dealt to the plants and beasts. Had he seen the curse of my magic? I should have left. I should have run the moment I’d stumbled over that hillcrest. I’d valued my own life over that of the ancient forest. Had he witnessed my selfishness?
Adrik looked at me unflinchingly—with caution and interest, but not with disgust, nor with the ravenous gaze of a faerie on the hunt for prized collectibles.
“I feared we would not make it to Wildemire in time. You were among the dead rather than the living. Lorell here saved you.”
“Wildemire?” I tried to recall the map, but I’d only concerned myself with the shortest trek to Eldevale, not with villages strewn at the edge of the wasteland.
“A small town at the foot of Mount Briarfell,” said Adrik. “Welcome.”
“How far are we from Eldevale?” The question slipped from me too quickly, too keenly. Adrik raised a brow. How careless of me to reveal my intent, my impatience. There was a watchfulness to him that put me ill at ease. I used the traitorous heat in my cheeks to spin a lie. “Someone waits for me there.”
“Ah,” said Adrik with slight amusement. “In that case, I shall bring you paper and a quill. You can inform your lover that a ten-day ride keeps you from their arms.”
I jolted with a gasp from the cushions, croaking feebly as pain took me whole—the light dimmed and there was a crackle in my ears that did not come from the hearth. I pinched the knotted scar.
Sharp and awake.
Sharp and awake.
A ten-dayride. How could that be? I must have wandered for days in the wrong direction to have strayed so far from Mount Windrest.
