“Thank goodness.” I heave a sigh of relief.
“Though he very well could not have been.” Lord Fenwood’s voice shifts into the realm of disappointment.
I pick at a string on my blouse, tugging on it. It’s then I notice that the string comes from a gap at the seam of my shoulder. That monster nearly ripped my sleeve clean off.
An idea strikes me. I tug and pull off the sleeve the rest of the way. I continue ripping at the seam down to the cuff. I’m left with a long, rectangular piece of fabric that I tie firmly over my shut eyes.
Fingertips resting lightly on the doorframe, I step into the dining room. At least, I think I do, it’s impossible to be sure. The heavy cotton of my blouse over my eyes nearly blots out all light.
“What are you—” His chair scrapes over the floor.
“I can’t see anything, I swear it.” I hold up both of my hands, trying to calm him. “I just thought it might be easier to talk this way, rather than around a door.” He says nothing, which sets my nerves ablaze. I know I must look a right mess in my still-soiled clothes, one sleeve missing. “I wish I could look you in the eyes so you could see how sincere I am when I say I’m sorry. But since I can’t do that, I thought this might be the next best thing.”
Unless he has figured out a way to leave the room and pass me completely undetected, I can only assume he’s still standing there, utterly silent. I wonder what expression he has. Is he upset? Or maybe he’s amused, or even impressed that I thought of a blindfold as a solution… A harmless fantasy of him being delighted by me runs away with my thoughts for a second. But the memory of Oren fighting that monster in the woods alone so the lord could save me sobers me right up.
“My Lord, I never meant… I didn’t intend to go beyond the edge of the wall.” I stare in what I hope is his direction. For some reason I imagine him sitting in the same chair as me, at the head of that long table. Made small by this empty room.
“You swore to me you would not. I should have known better than to trust you.” Frustration seeps into his voice, bleeding from a wound I never intended to make.
“Please hear me out. I never meant to betray your trust,” I say quickly. “I saw a crying girl among the trees. I was afraid that someone had brought her into the forest and something wicked befell that person. She had blood on her. She looked… The girl looked like one of my sisters when she was no older than seven. I was trying to help her and before I knew it she had become that thing.”
“A fae.”
Those two words shake me to my core. I realize I never really believed in the fae until now. I spoke about them. I warned my sisters of them. I think I even tried to look for them during those dusky morning rides. But in my heart of hearts, I never believed the old folktales, that the woods were filled with them—the wandering folk of a long-ago war between humans and magical creatures.
“They’re real,” I whisper, and stagger forward. I hold out my hands, searching for the chair at the opposite end of the table. I hear his footsteps as he rushes to me. My hands don’t meet the wood of a chair back. They close around his soft, warm fingers. The lord is before me in an instant, stealing my breath with his presence and preventing me from awkwardly bumping into something. “Are the fae truly real?”
“You doubt your own eyes?”
I shake my head. My knees feel weak. He must sense it because I hear him pull out a chair and he eases me into it. Lord Fenwood sits next to me.
“Yes, that thing you saw in the woods today was a fae.” He scoops up both of my hands. There’s not a tinge of smoke in my nostrils. He’s telling the truth. Or at least he believes it’s the truth. But after what I saw and heard… There’s no other explanation.
“They are as monstrous as the stories say.”
“Fae can be,” he agrees. “That’s why I told you to never go in the woods behind the manor.”
I shake my head as a chill rips through my body. “Fae can shape-shift?”
“Not quite. All fae are born with innate abilities. Most have wings or claws they can summon on command, along with various other inherited traits from the beasts of the forests. But one ability all fae share is the gift of glamour—fae can make themselves appear as anything they like. Mind you, it’s just an illusion, a magic trick of the senses, and very hard to continue once they are touched.”
I clutch his hands tighter on the word touch. They’re soft, callus free. The hands of the lord who spends his days in a tower. Not like my hands, rough and scarred. Or like the clawed fingers of that monster.
“Is there any other way to tell a glamour from real? Other than touch?”
“Pure water will wash away the glamour of a fae.”
Right as rain. I wonder if the expression is a holdover of some ancient advice for dealing with the fae.
“The creature wanted you.” My voice cracks a little as I think of what the woman had initially asked of me.
“I bet it did.” He chuckles darkly. “In the end, it got me. It just didn’t live to tell the tale.”
“Are you a fae hunter?” I dare to ask. A man, alone in the woods, holed up in a house warded from those magic beasts. A man who doesn’t let others see him, perhaps out of fear that they could use the information against him. Because if I saw him, I could identify him. I would have knowledge the fae would want and would clearly kill for.
“I do hunt some, from time to time,” he finally admits.
I inhale sharply. My fingers tighten around his. I am married to a man who hunts the most dangerous game in this world.
