Page 62 of The Witch Queen

Gavin’s face colors. “I’ve taken to calling him that. It’s after a character in a book I read.The Gilded Isle. It’s about—”

“Pirates,” I finish for him.

Surprise flickers across his features. “You know it?”

“Know it?” I laugh. “I pestered the Keepers for weeks, searching every map we owned for the island’s location.”

“And?” he asks, like he’s genuinely interested. “Is it out there?”

“Maybe,” I reply. “I can’t be certain, but there’s a small island in themiddle of the Western Sea. It seemed to match the description in the book. In fact, I went so far as to chart a course to the place. Told everyone I’d commission my own ships for the voyage.”

Gavin laughs at that. Dimples appear on either side of his mouth, which I find aren’t unattractive at all. But they just as quickly disappear. Gavin runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I’m beginning to recognize as his being flustered or nervous. But what’s he nervous about?Me?

“Well, I should get back to this,” he says, motioning toward the stag. Barnabas. “But you could…help. If you like.”

Aunt Margaret would have a fit if she saw me enter the stall, especially while wearing this gown. But tending Barnabas seems like the least I can do after he saved my life.

“Yes, of course.”

Gavin holds the stall door open for me. Barnabas snorts in what I interpret as a welcome.

“Take the stool,” Gavin offers. He overturns an empty bucket for his own seat, then dips a rag into the pail of water and wrings it out. “Here. Just dab this lightly on his wounds.”

Our fingers brush as I accept the rag and that same feeling from the forest skitters over my skin—a current of sparks that runs up my arms and tingles in my blood. I tell myself to ignore it, focus on the task and not on how close we’re sitting. On Gavin’s scent of clove and pine. Barnabas twitches his ears and I swear that he knows where my mind has wandered.

“Careful,” Gavin says. “Very gently.”

I adjust my pressure, working on the crusted blood around one of the stag’s gashes. Quiet settles between us, broken by the faint whicker of the horses and the crackle of torch flame.

“It was kind of you,” Gavin says at last, nodding to Barnabas, “to insist that he come to the palace. Anyone else would have his head hanging on their wall by now.”

Barnabas huffs.

“Like you would have?” I ask, swishing my rag in the water.

Gavin disappeared into the woods again not long after the incident with Barnabas. It didn’t take him long to return with a deer, and a gilded apple, of his own. A faint flush creeps up his neck, his grip tight as he wrings out his cloth.

“Yes, well. My father would have hadmyhead if I failed to retrieve a prize.”

Given what I’ve observed of Lord Warbeck, I don’t doubt him. Still, my sympathy only stretches so far.

“I won without killing,” I remark.

Barnabas sniffs, as if in agreement.

“Not all of us are like you,” Gavin says quietly.

“What, reckless?” I ask.

He pauses. “I was going to say brave.”

I blink. Does he really consider me brave? I dab at Barnabas’s wound again.

“You weren’t so bad yourself,” I reply, softening a bit. “And I never got the chance to thank you for your help earlier.”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“Blodwyn,” I correct before I can think better of it. “After everything that’s happened, you should call me Blodwyn.”