Page 18 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

“

W hy didn’t I see them in the trees?” I ask when the constant fixation of his eyes has me feeling anxious and more than a little embarrassed.

“ Hmm? ” he hums while I crack an egg into one of the large and rather ancient wooden bowls we found under the cabinets. There is a water pump in the corner. Though likewise as decrepit as the rest of building, we got it to work, and I washed the dust off everything I needed.

“ I could hear the hounds,” I say, shivering at the thought of them but determined to learn all I can. “ But the forest is so open, and I couldn’t see anything for ages. But you knew they were there. Did you hear the barking?”

Absently, he nods, then adds, “ We have keener senses than humans. I could smell them long before I could hear them.”

I blink, unsettled by the idea he may smell when I enter the library. “ Is that how you knew I was here?”

He nods, flipping through an ancient leather tome and looking at me as if it is nothing unusual. I was successful in my scheme to get him to sit on one of the stools still stable enough to hold his weight, and with him leaning over the table where I’m working, he seems more comfortable.

Distracted, I ask, “ What do I smell like?”

“ Human. ”

I give him a look portraying how unspecific that is.

“ Well, you see how animals all have their own scents that don’t necessarily smell like anything else?

It is its own description. You could say something smells as a horse smells, and that would make sense to anyone who’s ever been near one.

Humans just smell... human. If you don’t know what I mean, I can’t describe it to you.

I had never been close enough to a human to smell one before, but I have been in contact with things they have touched.

Now that I’ve been close to you, I know. ”

It makes sense. In an odd way, but enough sense.

“ Though you also smell like hay,” he says conversationally, returning to his book.

His hair falls over his shoulder, exposing his ear, and I catch not only that it is pointed but is also slit at the top like twin knives. With the other still covered, I can’t tell if it’s natural or an old injury. It doesn’t look like a scar, but perhaps fae do not scar.

“ I milked our cow,” I mumble.

“ Our? ”

It feels dangerous to expand, but he could easily step across the border and know every single person I hold dear in our village. “ My mam and da. We have a cow and some chickens and a draft horse. I used to ride her when I was a girl.”

A smile dances across his lips. “ Do your parents know you are consorting with a faerie?”

“ No,” I say primly, unwinding the sack of flour. “ They are away for a few weeks. But they know I go into Faerie to collect berries. They’d probably be surprised you’re the first faerie I’ve encountered.”

He blinks. “ The first?”

“ Well, I’m not counting brownies and such.

Everyone has seen a brownie at some point.

We had a whole summer when I was twelve when a brownie made her home in the eaves and cleaned our kitchen in the night.

Then she left. They always leave in the fall—” I realize I’m rambling.

“ No, I mean I’ve never met a faerie like you.

” I wave my wooden spoon at him. “ The kind that sing you into Faerie forever.”

“ The Keepers,” he says. “ And we’re not the only ones. Beware anything you see in these trees.”

I nod, suddenly colder.

“ Don’t ever do anything in the woods of Faerie.”

His tone has me pausing to meet his eyes.

“ You said the trees were empty when you came here, but they weren’t.

They’re never empty, no matter what they look like.

Something is always watching you; it’s just a toss of a coin whether or not what’s watching you is interested in harming you or not.

Don’t ever speak of private things in the woods. Everything will hear you.”

It takes me a moment to resume my stirring, my stomach churning.

Silence stretches, but finally, he adds, “ You’re safe in here.” I give a doubtful eyebrow, and his serious expression falls away to a chuckle. “ I mean it. The places we build for ourselves are sanctuaries, even if they’re long abandoned.”

“ I hope so,” I manage, praying he doesn’t notice the tremor in my voice. “ Otherwise I don’t think those hounds would be deterred by a few old doors.”

“ They shouldn’t have much interest in us,” he says a little curtly. “ Certainly not with me, and so not with you whenever you are near me. But do not test fate.”

I try to match his earlier laugh. “ No intentions to.”

“ And you’re the first I’ve met as well.”

Blinking, I pause with a spoonful of sugar. “ What?”

“ A human. You’re the first human I’ve met.”

“ Ever? ”

His eyebrows quirk. “ Yes. I said as such. Is that a shock?”

“ Well ... I don’t know,” I say, comforted by the change in topic, finally realizing the implication of his words. “ I figured when you’re hundreds of years old you’d have plenty of time to go bring yourself down a few levels and interact with the little humans—”

“ How old? ” he asks, his calm musical voice rising so much it reminds me of Una when Niall brought her wildflowers.

I freeze, unable to stop a nervous laugh at the shock on his face. “ Fae are.. . old? ”

He pauses, staring, then gives off a laugh I’d describe much more like a giggle than any of the ones he’s given before. “ Well, not all of us ! We have to be young at some point, you realize?”

My face heats, but I put my hands on my hips. “ Is that so? How old are you, then?”

Snickering again and putting a hand on his middle in a way he probably hopes I don’t notice, he says, “ Twenty-three.”

Squinting, I look at his beautiful ageless face and realize I wouldn’t know if he was lying—but no, he cannot, can he? “ Truly?”

“ Yes, truly. How old are you?”

“ Twenty. But . . . how do you age?”

Dragging my bag of sugar toward him as if I will not realize if he does so slowly, he says, “ It varies by species. For us, we tend to age until sometime in our twenties, then it will slow down to nothing for many hundreds of years. Some stop aging by sixteen or seventeen, I’ve heard.

Some stop at thirty. Usually it’s more around where I am.

I may have stopped, though such a thing is too incremental to tell. ”

“ What dictates how long you live?”

He shrugs. “ Nothing, really. Or fate, if you will have it. It’s easier to tell by how long those in your family lived before you.

We creatures you humans all group into fae either grow long and slow lives or grow quickly but usually just as long.

We are all called the Keepers, sometimes, whatever form we take.

We Gentry, specifically, are adults in our second to third decade of life.

The Unblessed take hundreds of years to mature; a twenty-year-old human may be the equivalent of a several-hundred-year-old Unblessed—”

“ Unblessed?”

He blinks up at me. “ What you usually refer to when you think of fae who trick or kill with no provocation.”

“ There’s a difference?”

His eyebrow quirks as if in mild offense. “ We all can... enchant humans, but the Gentry, in general, are not malevolent. Unblessed tend to live solitary lives and are often unkind.”

I sift the flour absently while he licks sugar off his finger. I very much doubt Aidyn’s view of malevolent and mine are similar. Likewise, I wonder how terrible Unblessed fae must be that the others of their kind consider them so.

He is alone.

“ My point,” he says. “ The Gentry do not have many children. I am one of two offspring—we do not bear young well. The only thing that truly affects our lifespan is too long dwelling in the human world. Eventually, we can become mortal if we don’t stay in the magic of Faerie.

We’ll still live long compared to humans but nothing close to what we should. ”

My mouth opens. I’ve never heard Faerie itself having any effect on their age. Though I also didn’t expect this creature sitting before me to only be a few years my elder.

“ Wait, does that mean that any humans who live in Faerie... ? ”

“ Stop aging? Yes, after a few years of complete exposure to the magic here. If they ever return to the human kingdoms after spending centuries in ours though, well...” He makes a face and a waving gesture that says enough: immediate death, or something worse.

“ So, me being here doesn’t have any effects?”

He shrugs. “ Not particularly, though anyone who lives on the edge of Faerie will feel the pull of it. It is not so strange that you’ve been drawn to coming in here over the years.”

His eyes skim over me, and I wipe at the flour on my skirts, only succeeding in making the blue lighter as I spread the powder.

Something admiring sits in his gaze, and it makes me shrivel.

I am still very aware of the animal-predator nature of his eyes, though they seem to hold mostly kindness.

.. if not a little flirting when he thinks he’s been clever.

Eyeballing the honey and how his shoulders droop even as he sits with his elbows leaning against the table, I ask, “ What are you going to feed the kittens today?”

He spins the honey jar absently, digging pieces of the comb out and putting his finger into his mouth.

“ There is enough for today if you don’t use too much of it, and I have more.

At this size, they barely eat anything. They’ll mostly sleep for weeks, then become heavier eaters.

As soon as that happens, they’ll be competent at hunting on their own. It’s a born trait.”

“ So, you need more food for them?”

He eyes me. “ Eventually, yes.”

“ Would you like me to go get more from the hive?”

He regards me momentarily, something strange and knowing in his gaze, before his eyes rest on my hands around the bowl of batter. “ Tomorrow I will go with you. I have enough for today.”