Page 51 of Stealing Tink

“It truly is impressive that he held on to consciousness as long as he did,” muses Lars, standing over the Nomad’s limp body as he stares at the blood on the floor. “That has to be enough blood to fill a swine trough.”

I wait for Lars to examine the Nomad, but he simply shrugs and takes a vial of gray matter I assume to be my marrow, along with a few vials of my blood, over to his counter for examination.

Rather shaky myself, I slip from the table and allow my feet to touch the slick floor. Normally, I wouldn’t mind leaving the Nomad in a pool of his own blood. In fact, this would have been the ending of a nightmare I would usually long for.

But Lars is right. It’s a lot of blood.

I don’t know how easily fae bleed out, but I’d rather not risk it. Not when he’s the only one with an answer for how to get my voice back.

So when I kneel down beside him to check on him, it’s certainly not because I feel grateful for his helping me just now.

It’s odd—seeing the Nomad’s face still. I’d never noticed before, the effort it must take to maintain his carefree expression. One would think that asleep, his face would be peaceful. Instead, there’s a fissure between his eyebrows, a set to his jaw.

And for the first time I wonder about when the Nomad dreams. Whether he has nightmares too, and who haunts them.

I go to touch his face. The curve of his jaw is angular, but his skin is clammy, cold and slick. When I glance down at his hands, they’re still bleeding.

Strange. The fae usually heal faster than this. It’s not as if I punctured all the way through his hands.

I stand and go for the counter. In a drawer I find a roll of gauze and something labeled “antiseptic.” When I kneel and pour it over the Nomad’s hands, it sizzles. His entire body seizes, and I expect him to reach out and grab me, but instead, he goes limp once more. Once I’ve wiped the blood away and poured the antiseptic over his wounds again, I examine the wounds.

They’re deeper than I’d realized. I’d known I was digging into his flesh, but I assumed it was with the same force as I’d always dug into my own palms when Peter was bloodletting me. Now, I remember John telling me that our brains won’t allow us to harm ourselves the way they’ll allow us to harm others.

Guilt crawls through the slits in my ribcage. The wounds are as deep as the length of my fingernails. How the Nomad didn’t throw me across the room baffles me.

I glance at his face once more, searching it for clues.

People—fae or human—don’t simply withstand that kind of pain of their own volition. Not unless they’re used to it. Not unless they’ve been wounded like that before. My gaze crawls down from his face to the collar of his shirt, where a button is left undone. And for the first time, I wonder what I would find underneath that next button.

I’ve done my share of research on the Nomad. I’ve kept my ears peeled for the rumors, leaned in closer to gather the whispers. They all say the same thing—no one has ever touched him, not even to manage a scratch. The Nomad is as elusive as they come.

And yet.

“If you’re wondering, there aren’t any visible abdominals under there,” says the Nomad, startling me. “Believe me, I’ve tried, but they say it’s all in what your parents gave you, and I’m afraid to say that mine never gave me all that much.”

I jerk my hand away from the button and continue wrapping his hands, tying them off tighter than I probably have to.

“Owww,” says the Nomad, drawing out the word so that it sounds more like a disappointed command.

When I don’t react, he says, “You have quite the grip strength, you know. Although, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, considering your time at the circus.”

I wipe the blood on my hands on my pants, grab the notepad on the desk, and write, I did some of the acrobatics when someone else would break their ankle. But that wasn’t my main job.

“I know,” he says. “They kept you in a cage. For others to gaze upon you like you were some animal.”

Or like I was an insect to be examined and experimented on, I write, but I add an upturn of my lips to the note. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was better than being bloodlet. The circus master might have been cruel, but he didn’t want my appearance to suffer, so he never laid a hand on me. I roll my eyes to go along with that last part, and the Nomad watches me carefully.

“That’s where you met Peter.”

Is that a question, or do you already know everything about me anyway? I write.

It’s meant as a quip, a way to shut down the conversation, but something about the way the Nomad stares at the paper for a long while makes my heart skip a beat.

When the silence becomes so long that I find myself afraid of what he’ll say when he finally responds, I write, Yes, it’s where I met Peter.

The Nomad sits up, wincing as he does and trying to keep the weight off of his hands, and leans against the shelves of the counter. “Tell me about it?”

The way he asks is strange, so I lift an eyebrow.