Page 10 of The Moorwitch
I obey, if only to order the person outside to leave at once. As the door swings open on its creaking hinges, I summon my most authoritative schoolteacher’s voice.
But my voice tangles into a knot at the sudden sight of that face. It is the summation of all my nightmares for the last twelve years. It is a face I have glimpsed a hundred times in shadowed corners and bustling crowds, only to blink and find my eyes have been tricked again. How cruel a face it is, with its delicate, almost feminine angles and lovely cold eyes, lips bloodless and sly, high cheekbones angled like a cat’s, so that his features draw to a narrow point at his chin. He is carved out of winter itself, a creature of snow and ice.
Itwashim I glimpsed through the school window.
My body goes rigid. The world shrinks away. The pain in my heart suddenly stabs like a knife, piercing my lungs through.
“Hello, Rose Pryor,” says the faerie. A slow, thin smile spreads his pale lips. “How I have missed you.”
Chapter Three
I step between Carolina and my surprise visitor, shielding the child from his roving silver gaze. He looks about my room with an air of bemusement, as if he has never seen a place so shoddy and humble and cannot fathom why anyone would endure it.
“You,” I choke out.
His gaze drifts back to my face, and he spreads his hands elegantly, as if to say,Me, obviously.
I stare at him as my heart flutters in panic, feeling all of eight years old again.
He is real.
He ishere.
“Carolina,” I say softly, and though I do not turn my gaze from the faerie, I feel her big brown eyes on me, “go back to the school.”
“Sister Rose?”
“I will be all right. Go, and say nothing of this to Sister Agatha or anyone else.” I give her shoulder a weak squeeze, and into her hand I press one of my embroidered kerchiefs. The spellknots on it ward against minor injury, discourage ill intentions toward the bearer, and distract watchful eyes. It should help her sneak into the school unnoticed. “We wouldn’t want them to know you were sneaking out, would we?”
She nods, frowning slightly at the kerchief but gripping it tight, and slips by me. She doesn’t argue, thank the Fates. The faerie’s hand flicks as she slides past him, his fingers tracing her unruly red braid. Ichoke on a breath until the end of her braid slips free of his touch, and she vanishes down the stairs.
“She reminds me of another little Weaver,” he says. “One of surpassing cleverness, who summoned me to her side with an ancient moorwitch spell.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
He smiles. “Come. Let us take this conversation somewhere warmer. We have much to discuss, my clever little witch.”
We go to the Red Finch, a public house across the road. There I sit in rigid trepidation, in a hard wooden chair near the fire. Half the tables are full, with patrons brooding over empty tankards or halfheartedly gambling over dice. A tired musician fiddles for his supper in the corner, receiving more curses than coin for his trouble. The place stinks of smoke, burnt bread, and spilled beer.
The faerie sits across from me, his spine straight as a poker, his hands folded one atop the other on the table, his black gloves beneath them. His fingers are bony and very pale, his nails long. I stare at them so I do not have to look at his face, frozen to my chair like a block of ice. My skin feels too tight, and I fidget with my sleeve, where I keep a skein of thread always hidden for emergencies. The fiddler switches to a new ballad, his tune as sharp and callous as the winter wind, and every scrape of his bow sends a chill rippling over my skin.
“You have grown up,” the faerie says, eyeing me brazenly. “And grown lovely. But I cannot help but wonder if the young woman is as clever and bold as the little girl?”
The faerie appears to be not a day older than when last I saw him. A stranger might guess him to be twenty or even younger, but I know he is a good deal older than that, perhaps far older than I can imagine. He seems at ease in this humble environment, despite his expensive black tailcoat and blue silk cravat, which would be more suited to somehigh-society dinner than a saloon barely outside the Devil’s Acre. His hair—frosty blond—is shorter than it was twelve years ago, but still long enough for him to tie at his nape with a black silk ribbon. His eyes are the chilled, light blue of aquamarine, with darker cracks running outward from his irises, so they seem faceted like diamonds; when he turns his head, the light plays over those hard angles, making his gaze glint. Against the alabaster paleness of him, the black of his lashes is almost startling, their long fringe luring attention to the ageless jewels of his eyes. The more I stare, the less he fits here, in this human place.
I gaze around to see what the others make of him, but curiously, no one else gives him a second look. Then I notice the glamour knots embroidered on his collar and sleeves, which must make him appear more human to them than he does to me. Glamour knots are like that—they cease working on someone who has seen one’s true appearance already, as I saw him twelve years ago—but even so, when I glance away, he shifts in my periphery. Lines appear in his face. Golden highlights soften the shocking white of his hair. He remains handsome, beautiful even, but not unnaturally so.
The effect makes me shudder.
Emma, a serving girl who has waited on me here before, brings us hot tea. She gives me a little frown, her lips pursed in judgment, as she glances from me to the wealthy stranger I’m with. She, at least, seems to recognize he is not her ordinary sort of patron. I read her suspicions easily enough, and blush even though nothing could be further from the truth.
“Dinner?” she asks, the word sounding like an accusation on her lips.
“Bring my companion a plate of your best,” says the faerie, looking at me while he says it. “And for me, fresh strawberries dusted with sugar.”
“Fresh—” Emma’s eyes bulge. “It isMarch, sir.”
“Check your stores, my dear,” he returns coolly, and he dismisses her with a flick of his hand.