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The ghoul had sliced through her skin down into the deep muscle, and I wouldn't be able to repair it. She would be stuck with this wound until we got to the capital, unless the guards brought a healer with them. I wrapped her arm tightly to stem the bleeding. At least the gash on her chest wasn't as bad.
"Want to tell me what you were doing?" I grumbled. We both knew what she was doing, but I wanted her to tell me anyway.
She sighed and seemed to slump down slightly. "You already know."
"Humor me."
"I was running away."
"And why were you running away?" I suspected I knew the answer but I still wanted to hear it from her, to confirm it before I jumped to conclusions.
She looked up at me as she spoke and the pain in her eyes was an arrow to the heart. "Because I don't trust you anymore."
"I needed your reactions to be real. If you'd known what was going to happen, you wouldn't have been as scared as you needed to be. Those guards would have known what was coming."
"If this was your plan all along, why couldn't you just kill them earlier?" She demanded.
I wrapped the extra bandaging cloth back up and tucked it into the box. "Do you think I find it that easy to take a life? Especially the lives of men that I've been working with for years."
"Sorry," she mumbled, dropping her gaze to her arm. She turned it this way and that, looking at my bandaging job. "Wyn could probably heal me," she said quietly.
"You're right. She probably could, but I want to show you something first, and I don't know if she can use her magic the same way as before she went into the veil. Going through that...it can do strange things to humans. Most of the time, it just kills them. Sometimes it warps them into things that don't bear mentioning. Other times, it just distorts their magic. Rarely they come through unscathed, just a little more powerful. I'm hoping that's Wyn's case, but I can't guarantee it."
Senara nodded. I knew she was exhausted. I was as well, and the adrenaline from being attacked by the ghoul was probably fading.
"Come on, up you get." I held my hand out to her again. When she grasped it, I noticed once more how small she was, or rather, how big I had become. It always made me laugh when the humans talked about fae being small. We were small in their realm. Once we crossed the barrier and didn't need to use our concealment magic we could return to our normal size, which was far from small, at least in human terms.
I led Senara to one of the horses and unlocked the stall. "This is Charmer. She and I go way back," I said as I released Senara's hand and stroked the side of her neck down to her withers before I slipped a harness over her nose and hooked reins on to the sides.
"Up you get," I said as I turned to Senara.
"That horse is massive. No it's not even a horse, it's a mountain. I can't get up on that! Especially when there's no saddle." Her eyes were rounder than I'd ever seen them as she watched Charmer warily.
"Fair. I can lift you." She nodded once. I wrapped my hands around her waist, my fingertips meeting and overlapping. I liftedher and placed her on the horse's back before swinging myself up behind her. Nestling her against my body. "Hold on." I gave the horse a small nudge in the ribs and she walked toward the door to the stables before taking off.
I said a few words to Charmer, ones that I knew Senara wouldn't understand. "Take me to the lake of the moon." Our horses were generally smarter than the ones in the human lands. They knew where different things were, how to get to and from places. I didn't know whether it was the magic or just really good training.
Senara would need to learn how to speak fae if she wanted to assimilate into our culture and live here. Most of us did speak human words, but it would be easier for her if she could speak our language, plus she would be more accepted, even if she was small and more human looking than most. Although that wasn't necessarily true once you realized how much her features had changed.
No one other than Ronan, Wyn, and myself really knew her from before though so I was sure that any strangers would find her more human than not. It made me wonder if she was a changeling, a fae that had been switched at birth with a human child. She couldn't be a direct changeling, but she could be a second or third generation changeling, unless somebody had been risking trips through the veil without us knowing, which I suppose was possible if they had a death wish.
Soon the rhythm of Charmer's hoofbeats had her practically falling asleep in front of me. I had to wrap an arm around her waist to keep her steady. When she snuggled into me, I couldn't help how my body reacted, especially with her ass rubbing against me like that, though that was my own fault for sitting so close.
Riding a horse bareback was more challenging, but also more satisfying to me. I felt a deeper connection with the horse since Icould feel its muscles moving under my legs, and I tried to focus on that instead of the way each of the horse's steps moved her against me.
Finally, when I knew we were getting close to the lake, I woke her up. "Senara." I whispered in her ear before nipping at the shell of it. She moaned and squirmed backward into me, which was the opposite of what I had intended. "Senara, wake up. We're almost there."
She snapped to, seeming to remember everything all at once, and pulled away from me. "Sorry, I guess I was more tired than I thought."
"Look through the trees ahead." Her breath caught and I knew she could see the lake.
The moonlight glittered on the water. The small waves reflected it. Their constant motion made the light catch on the water over and over again.
"Shouldn't we be worried about ghouls?" Senara mumbled sleepily.
"Ghouls are solitary creatures. They only come together to mate. Since we killed one it's safe to say that there are no others around this area, at least not until they catch the scent of its blood. Once they confirm the kill, another ghoul will take over. There'll probably even be a battle between the two strongest as to who's going to have the area."
Senara grunted, seeming to accept my answer as Charmer slowed to a walk. As we came to the edge of the lake the horse stopped and I swung off, before lifting Senara down as well. Her gaze wasn't fixed on me, she didn't even glance my way, she was too busy watching the moonlight and the night life that was around the lake.
