Page 98 of A Touch of Poison
He eyed it for a long beat, then huffed and opened the door. “I was gearing myself up to venture out again, but…” He grimaced at the door as I shut it behind myself.
This time, as I put food away for him, I obeyed the fae rules and told him my name first and let him give me his. Kaliban.
“Why don’t your neighbours pick up food for you?” I asked as I stood up, swaying. This time there’d been more blood, and I was woozy, swaying side to side like a landlubber on a ship.
“Oh, like they helped me when I was keeling over on the street, you mean?”
The irony. I had Rose, Ariadne, and, most recently, Faolán trying to help me connect with the magic inside, and they’d all failed. While Kaliban needed a much simpler kind of help that no one would give.
“Would you sit down,” he grumbled. “You’re making me seasick.”
I slumped into a chair, pressing my hands into the table in my search for something solid.
“Your magic is still uncontrolled.”
“You said you wouldn’t read me.” I shot him That Look, like Morag when she told me off for drinking too much.
“It’s hard when you shove your thoughts in my face so hard. You have a powerful mind.”
I scoffed and opened my mouth.
“Don’t say it.” He eyed me sidelong as he rummaged through the fruit bowl to see what I’d brought. “You think you’re powerless. I think that’s bullshit. The way you pushed me out the first time you came here…” He shook his head as he buffed an apple on his shirt. “Powerful.” He took a bite, with a satisfying crack of the apple’s flesh. “I’m not trying to read you. I only caught a glimpse.”
I winced and rubbed my temples. “Certain thoughts have been very loud recently.”
He watched me a long while as he chewed. “You have a lot weighing on you.” His voice was softer than I’d ever heard it before—he tended towards Faolán’s gruffness combined with Bastian’s sarcasm.
His eyes twitched, telling me I’d thought that too loud.
Smiling sweetly, I batted my eyelashes at him. “You aren’t like anyone else. You are a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
With a wry smirk, he wiped his hands clean, the apple finished. “Let’s clear your unpleasant memory, then I have a suggestion to calm your mind. Perhaps you can quieten those loud thoughts.”
We pulled two chairs opposite each other, and he hovered his hands an inch from my temples.
I held still, forcing my breaths to slow, conscious that if I turned my head, we’d be touching.
“Ready?”
“Ready.” Biting my lip, I pushed my thoughts towards Elthea’s treatment room. Bright and bloody. The coppery tang in the air. My cries. Leather straps biting into my arms as she poked and pulled at parts of me that were never meant to be prodded.
Kaliban’s presence was a cotton swab wiping it all away.
No blood, no fear, no…
I blinked. Kaliban’s home. How had I…?
He sat back, nodding slowly.
I’d left the Hall of Healing. There was something in there I wanted to forget; I had no idea what. Rubbing my forehead, I nodded. “It’s gone. Thank you.”
“No thanks needed. You brought your payment.”
“I thought fae liked politeness.”
He chuckled. “It’s preferred, but not required. Come.” He led me to the two chairs before the fire.
Although I’d never seen anyone else here, a pair of tweed slippers sat before each chair—one dark purple, the other the same blue-black that Dusk’s guards wore.
