Page 76 of The Moorwitch

His cheeks flush again; for all his sternness, how easily he blushes.

“That’s not the issue,” he growls. “What do you do for this Lachlan Murdoch?”

“I fetch things. Run errands.” Even as I say the words, growing more confident in them, a feeling like eels crawling through my body makes me squirm. I have all the answers. They come so easily now, every lie carefully packaged in truth, smuggled through the web of the knot strung above me.

As if that had been the plan all along.

As if my cover story had been particularly craftedjustto pass this test, purely to satisfy Conrad North.

“Why were you in Elfhame?” he asks.

“I followed you. After the fire, I was curious where you might be going in the middle of the night, injured as you were.” I find if I speak slowly, I have more time to think, to pry up enough truth to satisfy his questions. “I went in and those wolf-spiders chased me and ... it’s a blur after that. Didsheheal your hands?”

He brushes aside my question, not to be distracted. “And what are your intentions toward the fae?”

“Toward the fae?” I laugh. “I intend to have as little to do with them as possible, of that I can assure you. I have quite had my fill of immortals.” That, at least, is the pure truth. “Why do you guard the faerie queen’s door like a dog? How thoroughly under her thumb are you, ohGatekeeper?”

Conrad tugs me closer, his hand gripping my hip. His face is inches from mine, his eyes probing me. Does he imagine I am lying, despite his truth knot? “Are you acquainted with a faerie named Manannán?” he asks. “He is also called Oirbsen, and Mac Lir.”

“I’ve never heard any of those names.”

“The Briar King?”

I shake my head. “No.”

A crease deepens in his forehead. I wait in silence, clutching my ridiculous skirt, wondering if he’s satisfied. If Lachlan’s defenses have held firm.

Then he relaxes, letting out a breath, and I know it’s over.

“Is that all?” I ask thinly. “Are there any other intimate details of my life you’d like to pry out of me? Or are you going to take your hand off my hip?”

“I apologize,” he says. “But I have one more thing to check. May I touch your hair?”

“My ...?” I realize then what he means. “There are no spells braided in my hair.”

He gazes back impassively. “May I?”

“Oh, help yourself, then!” I have nothing to hide. At least, not there. And it’s not as though he hasn’t already helped himself to my lips.

As if you didn’t offer them up to him like ripe berries in your palm,a traitorous voice whispers in the back of my thoughts. I brush it away, irritated and flustered all over again.

It was only for show. We were literally kissing for our lives. Conrad made it clear that it didn’t mean anything more.

His free hand slides up the back of my neck and into my hair, his fingers cradling my skull. Even with warning, I find I am not prepared for the intimacy of his touch, and I go rigid, my spine rising off the doorframe.

“Easy, lass,” he says, as if I were a restless mare. “I’ll be gentle.”

His eyes stay locked on mine as his fingers conduct their search, carefully and thoroughly examining every strand by touch.

With his other hand gripping my hip, I have no choice but to endure. Unable to withstand the accusing heat in his eyes, I lower my gaze and find it snagging on the warm pink cushion of his lips. Fates. I’m not makingthatmistake again. Defiant, I meet his eyes, unwilling to let him see me flinch.

The sensitive skin of my scalp prickles under his fingertips, shivers racing down the back of my neck, running straight to my core. Mynerves light like threads flooded with magic. I find myself glancing at the thick dark waves ofhishair, wondering what it would feel like to ...

I wrestle my thoughts back to safer ground, glaring harder at him.

His fingers move to the hair behind my left ear, softly riffling through it as if he were thumbing the pages of a fragile book. If I had tied any spells in my hair—counter-wards against truth knots, for example—he would have found them.

There are, of course, none.