Page 47 of The Court the Fae Forgot
There was no sign here of the terrible end we’d nearly met.
Not even the great bear that Zev had shifted into, because by the time I’d rolled over to gasp my thanks, he was in his normal form again.
But he was blinking back at me with as much surprise as I felt.
“What … what was that?” he whispered at me, his eyes wide and unbelieving.
I spluttered back my response. “You’re the shifter! You tell me.”
His mouth worked in silence for a moment until, at last, he just rolled over and fell onto his back. I did the same beside him, my chest heaving as I struggled to catch my breath. My heart was still beating so fast that I felt as if it was going to explode. It only began to still when my hand brushed Zev’s lying beside me.
The moment our skin touched, he reached for my hand, fully encasing it in his.
I felt his heartbeat begin to slow then, right alongside mine.
“I’ve only ever shifted into a fox,” Zev said, quietly. I dared a peek over at him, and his eyes still scanned the sky as if searching for an answer. He must have felt me looking at him, because he met my gaze then.
“It must be the glamour,” I guessed, immediately regretting bringing up the subject when Zev was quick to pull his hand from mine.
“What?” I asked, sitting up as he did, too. “Am I not allowed to even talk about it?”
Zev pressed his lips together, his gaze shifting to the town barely visible through the trees. “Shiel …”
“Shiel isn’t here,” I said.
Zev had started to stand, so I did too—only to immediately regret it when pain exploded in my ankle. I fell over, again with a gasp that drew the fae directly back to my side.
“Lucky for both of us,” Zev muttered as he reached out a hand to help me settle back down onto a log.
Together, we examined my ankle. Bruises had begun to form where the roots had grabbed hold of me, but despite the tenderness, Zev seemed pretty confident that it wasn’t broken.
“We’ll have to rest for a day or two,” Zev said, “but it could have been worse.”
I didn’t want to imagine the look on Shiel’s face when he heard the news, but it was better than thinking, even for a second, about how close both Zev and I had been to not coming out of that forest at all.
A dislocated ankle was more than a fair trade for our lives.
“What do you say we don’t tell Shiel about our little run in back there?” I asked, relieved when the same emotion softened Zev’s features as he looked up at me from where he still cradled my foot.
“I’m usually not one for hiding the truth,” he said, carefully, “but I think, in this case, that’s best for everyone involved.”
Zev’s hands worked deftly and carefully to set my dislocated ankle, but that wasn’t what drew my attention and made it impossible to look away. Faded marks crisscrossed his skin, evidence of tattoos that had long since begun to fade until they were barely recognizable as anything other than scars.
“What happened?”
I reached out, absentminded tracing the lines that had been so clear the day I met him. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until my hand had started disappearing into the front of Zev’s shirt, his breath catching as my eyes lifted to meet his.
“Oh, gods, sorry,” I blurted out, snatching my hand back.
His face had turned bright red, as I was sure, had mine.
He started tugging down the sleeves of his shirt.
“Now that the glamour is back, I’ve been healing too quickly to keep up with them,” he said, a pained expression crossing his face. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I reached out a hand to still his.
Once more, I could feel his heart beating beneath my palm. Rather than slow at my touch, this time, I felt it quicken.
“Can I see them?”
