Page 12 of The Court the Fae Forgot
And yet, despite that, his words still echoed within me.
He could have let the Wildness take me, and yet … and yet, he hadn’t. He’d stopped me.
He seemed to be waiting for words that refused to claw their way out of my throat.
He stepped closer to me then, his tall frame towering over me. “Only fools or favored dare enter here, so which are you?” His voice was dark, like the shadows in winter. When I again found myself unable to answer, he cocked his head to the side as if trying to read me. My body shook beneath the weight of his gaze, and I moved to step back from him, to put as much space as I could between our bodies before nearly falling over myself as pain once again shot up through my leg.
Only then did his gaze tear away from mine. His eyes roamed my body—slowly, calculating, scathing—until they came to land on my twisted foot.
Without a word, the great creature kneeled in front of me and before I could stop him, his hands reached out to grab me. I flinched back, expecting to feel more pain, but instead his touch was surprisingly gentle. His hands wrapped around my ankle, a tingling heat radiating from every brush of his icy skin on mine.
By the time he once again straightened up to stand like a statue before me, the pain in my foot was entirely gone.
“Fool, it would seem,” he said, though there was little malice in the way he said it. He cocked his head at me a second time. “Though, I suppose only time will tell.”
He began to circle me then, eyes never leaving me as he regarded me more closely. I kept pace with him, never allowing the creature to see my back. He only stopped when he stood between me and the Wildness, his shape now melting into the shadows without the light to frame him.
His chest rose with a deep breath, the hardened muscles expanding as he took in the earthy scent of the rotting forest.
He was in every way a predator. His every movement was practiced, perfected by the hunting of prey. I didn’t need to ask him if he knew the way my heart threatened to beat out of my chest with every second that stretched between us. If he couldn’t hear my fear, I had no doubt that he couldsmellit.
That was why his next words came as such a shock.
“Don’t continue this way,” he said, gesturing behind me, his eyes leaving my body once more to scan the forests that began to thin behind me. “Beyond these forests is the Wildness where great fae beasts roam, hungry for meat. They would eat little humans like you in a single bite.” The sound of his voice crawled along my skin, sending nervous shivers down my spine. His warning was very clear.
Beasts likehim.
“Go on, now, and don’t bother looking back,” he said his voice dropping to a whisper. “I can’t promise to deny the invitation if you do.”
As if the spell of the Wildness was at last broken, I finally found the strength within me to stumble back. Every instinct in my body screamed for me to keep an eye on this predator, but I heeded his words and forced my gaze away.
I felt him watching me as I fled, even long after I’d broken through the cover of trees and stumbled out onto the rutted dirt of the road beyond.
Night was on the verge of falling already.
I must have wandered for hours in the wood, lost to the Wildness before the fae found me.
Before the fae rescued me.
The thought sent a new kind of chill down my spine, mingling with sick feeling of his warning still ringing inside my head.
His words turned over and over in my mind as my hurried feet carried me home. Only when I turned the last, familiar bend leading to the mill did they finally leave.
And only because I’d come face to face with a far more immediate threat.
Our cart was already home, my family having passed by me in the hours I went wandering. But it wasn’t that, nor remembering all the coin I’d lost that made me freeze, a new fear washing over me.
No, it was something else. Something far worse.
Beside the cart was an all too familiar carriage.
The first fae—the very one whose presence began my ill turn of fate—was here now, too.
CHAPTERSIX
Lead filledmy shoes in the final, excruciating steps that led up to our cottage.
Try as I might to come up with a reason the fae from the village would be here, now, I couldn’t come up with a single one. Not one that that didn’t immediately fill me with dread, anyway.
