Page 5

GRUDGING BANDAGING

T he kitchen turned out to be in the next room, which seemed like an odd layout choice until she saw the Malediction’s expression, equally surprised. The magic house moves , she thought, swallowing.

Just focus on the Plan .

The kitchen was empty, and, on reflection, no one had come to investigate the earlier commotion either. Where were his servants? This house was far too large for him to live alone. At least there was no gold in here.

The Malediction went over to a copper sink and washed the blood off his arm, but the wound continued bleeding as soon as he removed it from the flow. He scowled at it as if it were being highly unreasonable and repeated the process, with much the same results.

“I have several books on poisons in my library,” he said conversationally as blood continued to drip.

“I don’t suppose you could give me a hint?

Magical, chemical, or organic in origin, that sort of thing?

I don’t feel poisoned, but possibly it’s rather hard to tell through the general sensation of being stabbed . ”

She wasn’t going to feel guilty. She wasn’t. But she couldn’t stand and watch him be so completely useless at first aid; it went against everything she’d learned from the Leafling Sisters in the palace. And what she’d said before was true: she needed him conscious to explain his obstinacy.

Putting down her pack, she stalked over to the kitchen door and flung it open.

An overgrown and entirely disorganised—really, what were his gardeners doing?

—mass of herbs, shrubs, and weeds bushed up at her.

She surveyed her choices and fixed on the shepherd’s purse closest to the door.

Right. That would do. She strode into the warm soup of the outside.

“What are you doing now, you madwoman?” the Malediction muttered behind her.

She ignored him, quickly pulling up a generous bunch of the little weed.

“It helps with bleeding,” she told him matter-of-factly when she’d returned to the kitchen. “Where do you keep bandages?”

A drawer helpfully sprung open. She jumped.

“Um, thank you,” she said to the house at large.

The Malediction put out his good hand to stop her approach.

“A moment. Let me get this straight: you’re refusing to give me the antidote to a poison you claim to have stuck me with, but you also want to tend to my wounds?

Surely you should be using this as an opportunity for extra leverage, not helping me? ”

She quickly stripped the weedy plants of leaves.

Another drawer opened, helpfully revealing a mortar and pestle.

Warily, she lifted them out. “Surely you shouldn’t be complaining, unless you like bleeding everywhere?

I don’t need extra leverage, in any case.

I told you before: the poison will kill you without the antidote.

Which I will give you as soon as you stop being so unreasonable. ”

He went quiet. The kitchen filled with the grassy scent of the poultice as she mashed up the leaves.

“You said I ruined your life,” he said abruptly.

“But…I haven’t done anything. This is the first time I’ve even met you.

You’ve been free to live your life however you liked.

Why don’t you just…go back to it?” He gave an odd jerk on the last words, as if he’d had to stop himself taking a step towards her.

She stopped pounding the pestle. “Free,” she repeated flatly. “What did you think would happen, leaving a child fae-touched and growing up under the expectation of being taken at any moment? Did you think her life would be perfectly normal?”

From his expression, that was exactly what he had thought, if he’d thought about it at all. The burning coal of anger in her heart turned cold.

She pulled out a section of gauze from the open drawer and carried that over with the poultice. “When you didn’t turn up on my first birthday, everyone assumed that of course you were waiting until I turned sixteen. That’s traditional, in fairy tales.”

“That’s not?—”

She silenced him with a glare. “Everyone said how lucky it was, really. Lucky that the firstborn was only a girl and not the heir, lucky that you probably weren’t planning to kill me out of hand if you were going to all the trouble of waiting for me to reach adulthood. What a lovely young bride I’d make.”

He reared back, horrified. “I never— Is that what they think of me in Isshia?”

She put the mortar down on the bench beside him. “You cursed a child. Did you expect people in my kingdom to say nice things about you?”

His anger deflated, tail wilting with it.

“I didn’t think it would matter! In all the stories, mortals always find a way out of firstborn bargains!

It was supposed to be sorted before you were even born!

” He lurched towards her, splattering blood across the bench, his hand briefly grasping her shoulder before he yanked himself back. “Damn it. Sorry.”

The touch reverberated through her, an echo of the same strange sensations from when the house had jumbled them together. A wash of emotions came with it, chief amongst them a panicked denial. She took a step backwards, unsettled. “What?—”

He gave a hollow laugh. “It’s the unfulfilled debt.

So long as I intended to fulfil it one day, I could stay away.

But if I think about not claiming the debt at all—” He twitched towards her again and argued hastily, “But I’m fulfilling it now, aren’t I?

You’re right here, in my house, under my wards. ”

She stared at him. She’d felt the unfulfilled magic pulling at her her entire life. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might too. “That’s why you moved onto my dagger so foolishly before,” she concluded. “The magic pulling at you.”

He grimaced but gave a small nod.

This had to be an act, didn’t it? Him trying to appear more sympathetic?

Perhaps this was how an evil sorcerer mastermind operated.

She didn’t trust him. Perhaps he wasn’t taking her threats seriously because he thought he could manipulate her into doing what he wanted. Still, he wasn’t pretending to bleed.

“Sit down and push your sleeve up,” she ordered.

With an expressively raised eyebrow, he sat down on a kitchen stool and rolled up his sleeve. There were freckles on his forearms too.

Heat rose in her cheeks. She ignored it.

She wasn’t a maidenly princess—she’d made sure of that, years ago, when she’d still been able to touch other people—and this was only a man’s forearm, for goodness’ sake.

She’d seen far more scandalous body parts.

It was just… It had been a long, long time, and they were very close, and he was far from hideous no matter how much she wished otherwise, and that hum of recognition between them made the situation horribly intimate, even though this was a purely practical task and she despised him, of course.

His gaze stayed fixed on the ceiling, but his own blush betrayed him. It disconcerted her; terrible fae sorcerers weren’t supposed to feel embarrassment.

Gisele began to smear the poultice onto the gauze.

There was no avoiding touching him as she fixed it in place, her fingertips brushing lightly against his skin.

Each time, the magic between them flared, and that same jumble of sensations and unfamiliar emotions came through.

Were they his emotions or merely a reflection of her own?

The absolute worst part of it was that the sensation, though strange, wasn’t unpleasant.

Instead, it woke a craving in her for more, the same mad urge she’d had on the doorstep to fling herself at him.

It had been literally years since she’d been able to touch anyone without causing discomfort.

Unless this was unpleasant to him—he was stiff-upper-lipped enough that it might be.

“It doesn’t hurt you when we touch, does it?” she asked after wrestling with her conscience for a moment. Why should she care if it did?

He started at the question, swivelling to face her, eyes wide. “No. Why would you ask— Wait, does it hurt you?”

“No.” She kept her gaze fixed on her hands.

“What happened, after your sixteenth birthday?” he asked.

“People started to wonder if there might be something wrong with me. But we decided that perhaps you were waiting to collect until my twenty-first birthday. I mastered every skill a good princess should have, in preparation. I can differentiate between seven different kinds of forks. You should see my embroidery. I also know how to handle a knife, of course.” Her voice sounded bitter even to her own ears as she realised all over again how pointless it had been.

“And after your twenty-first birthday? Was there further embroidery study? Or is that when you turned to poisons?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Since my education was complete, I was left to my own devices. A princess who might be carted off at any moment isn’t useful for politics or marriage or anything else that princesses are for .”

He had the grace to look sheepish. “Did you want those things?”

She carefully began to wind the bandage to secure the dressing. “I wanted the choice.” She pressed her lips together, the regrets about what might have been running too deep to elaborate further. “But perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been able to pursue literally anything else properly.”

He turned to frown at her. “Why couldn’t you? You said you were left to your own devices.”

Was he truly that oblivious to the effects of his own actions?

Grimly, she put her bare hand on his skin again, and this time she left it there, letting that tangle of sensation build, certain he must feel it too but wanting to test the theory.

His eyes widened. The magic shivered between them, and she had the completely inappropriate impulse to climb into his lap.

The turbulent emotions coming through their connection were shifting too quickly to identify, and she took her hand back, afraid she was projecting her own.

“That is why,” she said. “Did you think that powerful a magical debt would have no effect on the people around me? No, clearly you never gave it a second thought,” she added bitterly. “My making people uncomfortable was the least of it. And it got worse over time.” Gold twisting into vines…

Horror dawned in his eyes, and she couldn’t even be satisfied that she’d put it there because he was looking at her as so many others had for so many years.

“When you asked if your touch hurt me, was that because it has hurt others in the past?” he asked.

Her heart thundered in her ears. “It didn’t used to; it used to just make people feel vaguely unsettled.

But of late, yes. I told you it got worse over time.

” She shrugged. “Anyway, eventually it became clear to me that nothing was going to be resolved unless I took matters into my own hands. So here I am. Resolving matters, since you apparently were never going to.”

His frown deepened. “Forgive me, but surely your family didn’t plan to simply give you over even if I had turned up? Why did they send you here alone?”

Oh, that hurt, and she lashed out. “To face a murderer, you mean?”

His ears flattened against his skull. “I have never killed anyone.”

“I suppose it was just coincidence that the old king turned up dead the day after the straw-into-gold business?”

His eyes flashed. “I doubt it was coincidence, but it wasn’t me . Your mother certainly emerges from this story as a blameless victim, doesn’t she, despite being catapulted to queendom by it?”

She carefully tied off the last bandage, put the rest down, and walked out of the kitchen.