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I stared at him, breaths shuddering out of me. “Psilocybin? Magic mushrooms?”
He chuckled. “I do love that name the mortals have given them.”
Saliva filled my mouth as the pain in my arm sharpened, and I swallowed it down as I shook my head. “I don’t—I don’t want anything.”
He snorted. “Trust me, you do.”
I clenched my teeth, my face already clammy with sweat. “No I don’t.”
I wasn’t going to make myself any more vulnerable around these Folk. I was already weak with pain and blood loss. With what had happened to me in the Carlin’s palace.
The silver-eyed fae looked at me with a quirk of his brow. “Look, lad, either you have a little something to take the edge off, or you pass out the moment I cauterise that wound.”
The blood drained from my face as my eyes darted over to the metal pole sticking out of the warm yellow fire. I could see the glow of something red in the flames, nestled in the white core of the fire.
“Either way, you’re going to be a little out of it for a while,” he continued, as if he knew what I was thinking. He gave me a small smile. “You’re safe here, Ash. We’re not unseelie. We don’t work for the Carlin or follow her in any way. We just want to help you.”
I panted weakly, desperately wanting to believe him. He couldn’t lie, but I felt too foggy to work out if there was any way he could be twisting his words—making me think what he wanted. The Folk all did it. They could all make something sound truthful when really, they were lying through their teeth.
“Just because you’re full fae now doesn’t mean wounds won’t get infected,” Nua said, his raspy voice gentle. “Gillie needs to treat it, Ash.”
The man—Gillie—gave me another little smile. His silver eyes looked kind. Calm. They didn’t gleam with malice like the Carlin’s or Balor’s. His teeth were sharp, but they weren’t bronze and in a mouth that stretched too wide in a rabid, vicious grin.
I looked between him and Nua, feeling like a rabbit cornered by two wolves. I hated how helpless I felt. How helpless I had felt formonths. Ever since the Carlin sent her Folk to kidnap me and keep me all alone in that cottage on the edge of her land.
I didn’t want to be alone anymore. The ache in my chest was so sharp. Heavy. More than just the pain from my missing arm. It felt like there should be someone beside me, like I was missing something vital but I didn’t know what.
I stared at Gillie and Nua again, my breaths escaping me in weak, panicked spurts. Something was urging me to trust them, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t trust anyone.
But they were right. I couldn’t just let this gaping wound stay open. It would get infected so easily. I was sitting in a house made of dirt, for fuck’s sake. The air was warm and slightly damp, the heat from the fire strengthening the cloying scent of earth.
I licked my dry lips, shaking as I clutched above the stump of my arm. “Th-the whisky.”
Gillie smiled, setting down the bowl and pulling the cork out of the amber bottle. “Good choice, lad.”
He passed me the bottle, and I let go of my arm to take it with trembling fingers. It smelled like normal whisky, and I forced myself to tip the bottle to my lips. It burned my throat, making me cough, but I had another sip. Then another.
Gillie handed the bandages to Nua, who started unwinding the spool while the silver-eyed fae stood to retrieve the metal pole from the fire, wrapping a piece of cloth around his hand.
“The sooner we do it, the sooner you can recover,” he said cheerfully as I eyed the glowing red sheet of metal with terror.
“It’ll hurt, lad,” Gillie said in a low voice as he crouched. “Take another sip.”
The whisky was already loosening my limbs, making me blink slower as I raised the bottle to my mouth. How long had it been since I’d eaten? I had no idea how long I’d been kept chained up in the Carlin’s throne room. How long I’d been hanging there before I’d even regained consciousness and found out her plan.
Before I’d found out that one of her sons had murdered my parents. My body tensed and flooded with grief-stricken fury, but then searing heat made me spasm. I cried out in agony as Gillie pressed the metal to my stump, cauterising the wound. When I heard my flesh sizzling, my eyes rolled back into my head.
“Stay awake, Ash.” Nua patted my cheek and urged the bottle to my mouth, his green eyes tight with worry. “It’ll be over in a second.”
I was shaking too hard to bring the bottle to my lips, my entire body breaking out in a freezing cold sweat despite the searing heat burning through my arm and up into my chest. I couldn’t stand it—it was too much—
“There.” The relief was almost instant as Gillie pulled away. “I’ll make a salve to keep it cool and ward off infection. Well done, lad.”
In the momentary lull of numb relief, I brought the bottle to my lips with a trembling hand and gulped until Gillie pulled it away with a chuckle.
“Not too much.”
Then the throbbing started. It felt like I was holding my stump directly over flames, and I gritted my teeth hard as a pained whimper escaped.
