Page 41 of The Court the Fae Forgot
I didn’t want to let Zev see the way his hands, however gentle he tried to be, drove shooting pain through every place his fingers touched. From the look on his face, though, I knew I hadn’t hidden my pain well.
I almost didn’t dare take off my boots for fear that I’d never be able to put them back on again. They peeled off my feet like a second skin, the leather damp with sweat and river water that had never quite dried. I dumped out the stones lodged in the soles and laid them out beneath the rising sun as my hands reached to massage my tired feet.
The motion, however, pulled open the new scabs that had begun to form over my back. Finch, sitting beside me on the log, caught the way my face contorted with pain and moved to kneel beside me.
“Your back, can I see it?”
I shook my head on instinct, drawing away from the hands that reached toward the laces at the back of my gown.
“It’s alright,” I insisted, despite the fact that the movement once again stung so badly that I knew he saw it on my face now, too.
He pressed his lips together, the playful look that usually danced in his eyes fading for long enough that I ached for it to come back, too.
“I can help, you know,” he said, quietly. “If you’ll let me.”
So, despite the instincts inside me demanding I not trust these fae who claimed to be rescuing me, I agreed.
Still, I watched Finch carefully as he began rummaging inside his own bag for a vial.
Zev and Shiel were still busy unpacking their bags of provisions and laying out sleeping bags. It was obvious they didn’t plan on stepping foot in the town, but rather on sticking to the outskirts to avoid being spotted.
I’d assumed that was why they didn’t bring the carriage, that they didn’t want to draw any attention to themselves, but I still found myself looking longingly toward the carts as they trundled by in the distance. Would it be so impossible to hire one? It would be far more comfortable than the jolting sway of horseback.
Aside from the wounds on my body, my legs ached from holding myself in the saddle. I’d never ridden long stretches before, and my body was determined I constantly be reminded of that.
Shiel catches my glance and straightens up from where he’d begun laying out sleeping rolls.
Just the sight of the thin pads made my back ache too, in protest.
“We have to stay ready, prepared to flee if we run into trouble,” he said, nodding away from the town, deeper into the forest.
“Why not head straight into it, then?” I asked the question that had been plaguing me all through the night.
Shiel paused, his jaw clenching as he considered his words carefully. “Not all fae are welcome in the Wildness,” he said, at last. “We’ll have to enter it, eventually, but until then … it’s better to avoid it while we can.”
“Because of faerie beasts?” I asked, remembering Zev’s threat to my father, to call forth fiends from the forest that would devour him.
“No,” Shiel said. “Because of its lord.”
A cold chill settled over me.
“The lord of the Wildness?”
Shiel’s lips pressed together. “It’s better not to speak of him at all.”
“Because …”
Shiel was clearly becoming exasperated. He looked at the trees as if they were traitors.
“The trees in his kingdom lie. They’ll tell you what you want to hear, give you what you need the most—but they’re not true. They’re only illusions, but not the harmless kind of other courts. Because once he knows he’s caught our attention, it won’t be long before it’s not just our attention he’s caught. He will ensnare us, if he gets the chance. That’s why we have to be so careful.”
I followed his gaze one last time, that chill becoming an icy shiver.The lord of the Wildness.
“Is he one of the fae my mother was trying to protect me from?”
Shiel didn’t answer me right away. He watched the trees and their leaves shimmering in the morning breeze, looking, I imagined, for any sign that these were the kind that might already be listening.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But if anyone isn’t to be trusted, it’s Icarus.”
