Page 15 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

Another half lie, and something about his sharp eyes lets me know he is aware of it.

Kind of him to not say so. Perhaps he is dancing around topics as much as I am.

I know him very little, though it seems we share a certain understanding.

Or perhaps that is simply whatever faerie magic clings to his skin.

His fingers tap at his leg as if he’s thinking of rubbing it but doesn’t want to draw attention. Feeling suddenly brave, I crouch near him and touch the back of his hand.

What is possessing you, stupid girl?

His skin smells fresh and sweet, his clothes like clean cotton, and his eyes crinkle with amusement at my sudden closeness. He is entirely the opposite of everything I imagined a faerie to be and yet precisely as other .

“ Can I help you at all?” I whisper, a gentle nudge of a suggestion this time rather than a shove of it as the night before.

As he promised, he does not yell again. In fact, his expression barely darkens, just becomes tired. “ How would you accomplish such a task?”

It is not mocking, but I am at a loss for words anyhow. “ I... don’t know. But I’d like to if I can.”

He shakes his head. “ I do not believe you can.”

It is such a straightforward answer I must believe he is telling the truth.

I nod, suddenly self-conscious of my hand on his, the cool metal of the rings beneath my fingers.

“ If you think of something, I would be happy to try. We don’t have much in our village, but we have people who can aid with healing. ”

His eyes flicker to my damaged finger, but he mentions nothing of it and gives another polite nod. I drop my hand, the awkwardness overwhelming.

“ No one should know I am here,” he says evenly. “ It is not a time for our kin to be near the human border. Your village should not know.”

Of this I was already well aware—not specifically for his sake, but certainly for mine. I am well loved but already born under the moonlight and strange. I am not afraid of my village, but neither am I a fool.

“ I know,” I tell him. “ If you think I was frightened, you ought to meet the village.”

His cheek twitches as if he wishes to smile but does not manage it.

Playing with a wrinkle in my skirt, I regard him as equally as he regards me. According to his own words, he will send help for the hounds—and whoever arrives can figure out which kind of monster they are—which is more than I ever expected.

I stepped into the trees with him, and nothing terrible happened.

I have done all I need to do in this place, and the sun is heading toward the horizon.

I would not like to be all alone in a crumbling library if I were wounded.

Una must be worried, and I promised her I’d be back soon.

Did someone he loves abandon him among the trees?

There is no reason to tarry here and less reason to return.

“ Might I return?” I ask.

He blinks, long and slow, and a few seconds of silence pass between us. “ Yes. ”

Una is glowering from the edge of the cottages when I wander back, my feet heavy, my head spinning, shocked with the interaction now I’m no longer in his presence.

There is still plenty of hot bright afternoon sun.

“ What happened?” she asks, scurrying up and taking me by the shoulders. “ You look upset. Did he hurt you?”

I shake my head. “ No, not at all.”

“ Did he yell again?”

“ No, he was lovely.”

She pauses, staring at me. Puckering her lips up, she asks, “ Lovely? ”

Her tone takes me out of my daydreaming. “ Yes? ”

She sits me in the long grasses as if I am a child in need of chastising. Plopping down before me, she holds up her hands. “ Explain.”

Giving her a long tired look, I glance over her shoulder at Niall chopping wood at his cottage. He squints but leaves us alone.

“ How’s the dress coming?”

“ Niamh. ”

Sighing, I repeat every bit of the conversation I can recall. It is twilight by the time I finish, but the air is still warm and the light enough that the fear of monsters does not yet drive us back to her cottage where there would be listening ears.

“ He says he can stop the monsters... ? ” Una whispers when I have finished.

“ Someone will. He will tell them... I’m not sure. He wasn’t giving many details. It may take a few days. He doesn’t seem to know what they are... or he doesn’t want to say.”

“ Do you think we will see them?”

Them. Other fae.

Will they come out of the trees to drive them back? Or will they perform their magic in the dead of night, as the hounds lurk in the dead of night, and we will never know hide or hair of them?

“ I don’t know.”

Glancing at the trees, Una is suddenly more skittish of the falling dark. She grasps my hand, hauling me up and back to her cottage.

“ My animals—” I begin.

“ I fed them for you. I don’t want to be out after dark.”

Hugging her around the shoulders as we walk, I let the door of her cottage close behind me.

Warm light from their hearth and lanterns brightens the room.

Suddenly starved and still tasting the sweetness of the honey on my tongue, I let Olivia, Una’s mam, shove supper my way—recently caught rabbit stewed with early-spring carrots and various garden greens—and am drawn into Cara’s game of making dolls out of old scraps of cloth not used on her sister’s new dress.

It is all very human and gentle and warm.

I sigh, relaxing into the cushions of their couch, comforted.

My muscles unclench. I hadn’t realized how nervous I was until getting home—or close enough to it.

Una and Olivia talk about Fiona’s new baby due in a few weeks, and I find my mind drifting to a lonely faerie sleeping in a library with no one to tend to whatever wounds he’s concealing.

A thousand reasons could be behind his hiding.

He could have performed some horrible deed, and for a faerie that would have to be a truly wicked thing—murder of someone innocent, or worse?

Does such a thing even occur to them? Perhaps he abandoned those with him during the fight he mentioned.

Perhaps others of his kind are hunting him as we speak, ready to stumble upon his hideout in an old abandoned library, and will find me with him.

Would a human in such a situation be put to death?

Try as I might, I cannot imagine him performing a heinous deed worthy of such secrecy. Perhaps that is what I shall do tomorrow—bring food, cook him something from one of their own books, and ask him why he is there.

He must understand why I would ask, if only for my own security. He was concerned for my safety in other situations. He must be capable of understanding. Even the wild noble folk of Faerie understand the act of protecting oneself from harm.

“ You are going back, aren’t you?” Una asks that night when we are once again lying safely in her bed.

“ Yes,” I whisper, a hum of a noise befitting the quiet night and the singing insects.

“ I know he is enchanting, but you know better.” There is no accusation to her voice.

“ Yes. ”

“ Do you think you can actually help him?”

It takes me longer to consider this, and I settle on, “ I don’t know. I hope so.”

“ Has he asked for help?”

I don’t wish to answer, because it makes me feel entirely more foolish. “ No. ”

The question hangs in the dark of the air between us. Why go back, then?

“ I don’t know, Una.” I sigh, though she didn’t voice the words. “ Wouldn’t you want someone to help you if you couldn’ t ask? ”

“ Yes,” she admits. “ But I should hope I would be capable of asking.”

“ Me too. Maybe it is much more difficult when you are a strange old creature.”

The night is dark and the moon is slim, and crickets and water bugs sing. I put my hand to my cheek where he touched an experimental finger to discover if I was lying. My heart is strange in my chest, and I see his eyes when I close my own.

Long after Una, I do eventually find sleep.