Page 24 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

I t is deeper than I anticipated, though dark shadows of the bottom are visible.

Anything could lurk there. Resurfacing, I wipe the water from my eyes and find Aidyn closer than expected. He still has the same smile, his fingertips gently holding mine.

I realize what about it feels so strange. “ We ’re finally the same height.”

Grin widening, he relinquishes my hand to swim backward toward the waterfall.

Again, I think perhaps I should not follow, but I am already in the water.

A small bit of swimming won’t do me any harm.

I follow him under the gentle, slow stream of the falls, feeling strangely undressed in just my shift, even with the water to cover me.

Dipping up on the other side, I find Aidyn propped on some of the partially submerged rocks, pleased with himself.

It’s dark here, the air frigid and crisp, smelling of cold stone and something sweet.

Moss clings to the walls. My toes find smooth rock, and I look at the cavern roof.

Ice crystals coat the stone. Even in the dead of spring, or summer here if the weather is any indication, there is still ice.

“ Well, this is a fine place to ensnare me,” I say lightly.

Niamh, you don’t know what’s good for you.

With a widening grin, he slinks into the water, pushing himself toward me. “ Don’t tempt me.”

A nervous giggle bubbles up, and I swim backward, knowing that if he meant any harm, it would be a useless endeavor. Both Una and Niall would be appalled, but I don’t mind.

“ Are you really twenty-three?” I ask, for the oddity of it has stuck in my mind a long while.

He laughs. “ That is very disconcerting for you, isn’t it?”

“ Well, of course.”

“ Yes, I am twenty-three. My father is several hundred years old. You can imagine how young I am to him .”

The casual nature of the statement catches me off guard.

I sit on the nearest stone, still in the water, aware of my shift clinging to my skin.

Something about the situation has me thinking perhaps he is being a little childish—I imagine an ancient faerie whose very young son (relatively speaking) is hiding out in a library, evidently not wishing to be found.

He must read my funny expression. “ What are you thinking?”

“ Does your father know you’re redecorating an old library?”

I say it with a tease in my voice, but some of the genuine happiness falls from his expression. I wish I hadn’t spoken. “ No. He would be appalled.”

Momentarily, I consider pushing the topic, but he has already looked away, toward the falling water, and I hate when the light falls from his eyes. It seems oddly incorrect, as if his pretty face should not bear the weight of unhappiness. I can ask later, little bits at a time.

It is not as if I am giving him all my troubles either.

I try a different approach, bobbing into the corner of the cavern and touching the ice crystals. “ What is it you love to do?”

“ How do you mean?”

It’s difficult to tell, but it seems as if his hand may be under his shirt, against his middle. Swimming was his idea, but I wonder if I should try to coax him into the sun. “ I could cook all day and never grow sick of it. It makes me happy. I have a friend who loves her sewing. What do you love?”

That gets some of the crinkles back around his eyes.

He opens his mouth, then pauses. His eyes flicker to the wall of the cavern.

I glance over my shoulder but see nothing save the cold damp stone.

I can never tell if his expression should be judged on how humans act, and I don’t know how to react to his sudden stillness.

“ What is it?” I ask.

His expression turns cold, and he drifts toward me, eyes still on the wall. Putting a finger to his lips, he bobs close enough I feel the heat from him even in the water. I’m suddenly much more aware of my lack of clothing and dress clinging to my skin.

His intensity has my stomach twisting.

Conspiratorially, I whisper, “ What do you see?”

He shakes his head, opens his mouth again—

A sharp yip of a bark breaks the gentle rumble of the water. My heart leaps into my throat, all joy turning to cold dread.

It’s broad daylight, nothing can be out here.

He promised I was safe out here with him . . .

I turn to him, intent on saying as such, but his wide eyes match mine. He’s considerably better at hiding the fear, but it’s there. It cannot be an intentional trick, then. It cannot be.

Get ahold of yourself, Niamh.

We must be safe back here, mustn’t we? Thinking of his sword buried beneath his blankets, I wish very suddenly that I had mentioned it to him so perhaps he would have brought it on our little excursion.

His hand returns to my elbow, and he puts a finger to his lips. No more questions, then.

Another bark.

I can’t help but flinch. The water is unpleasantly cold. Aidyn’s eyes follow the dips in the rocky cavern, and he shakes his head slightly.

Annoyed with the other fae who didn’t come?

For a long time, I hear nothing else. Then he’s releasing me and slipping toward the waterfall.

“ Aidyn . . .” I hiss, snatching at his arm.

He shrugs me off, waving his hand as if to shush me, still about to swim out of the safety of the little cavern, leaving me here. Catching his sleeve, I attempt to drag him back. Why he wishes to go out there is beyond me, but he’s not leaving me in here alone.

He’s the one who brought me here—against all my better judgment, no less—and I’ll be damned if one more person leaves me in these woods.

I may as well be fighting a statue. Attempting to drag him back only succeeds in plastering me against him as he refuses to budge even in the water.

Scowling, he unwinds my hand from his sleeve. “ Let go, and be quiet .”

“ What are you doing? Don’t go out there!”

“ Shh! I’m getting rid of it ,” he hisses, his voice so suddenly and unnaturally low it has me frozen.

Weakly, I say, “ You said they don’t come out in the daylight—”

“ They do not. And the others should have arrived by now. Apparently, I’m not the only incompetent one here.”

There’s more behind that statement, but he’s pulling away again. Panic leaps into my throat, anger along with it, and I grab his shoulder for better purchase.

I give him as solid a pull as I can in the water. “ Don’t—”

An angry inhuman noise rips from him, his hand wrapping like iron around my wrist, yanking me off as if my fingers are made of paper.

Only his shirt tears a bit under my grip.

With a shove, he pushes me back through the water, away from him.

When I surface, coughing, he is already disappearing onto the other side of the falls.

And I am alone.

Clinging to the nearest rock, I wait, attempting to catch my breath, my wrist stinging where he shoved me, though there isn’t a mark to be seen. My breath hitches, and I bite down on my lip hard enough that the pain distracts me.

Seconds pass. What would I do if something happened to him? Would Faerie not let me find my way back to the library? Would the hounds come through the water?

Cursing myself, I swim to the edge of the falls, to the little sliver of light between the water and the cliffs of frigid rock, and attempt to peek through the mist spraying my eyes.

A tendril of warmth from the outside air slithers across my cheek, but the light has gone, as if twilight fell all at once.

Darkness fell early again.

I dare to press myself out enough to see, praying not to glimpse a pair of bright rabid eyes meeting mine. Aidyn will have left, I’m aware. Much easier to return to the library without attempting to drag a human along behind him—

The first thing to meet my eye is a shadow.

A shape sits among the brambles and bushes wrapping around the little woodland pool.

Again, my breath hitches, my eyes burning.

It is not clear even in the brighter twilight, a strange patchwork of blending into the undergrowth and standing as a stark contrast against the light.

Even from here, I cannot quite make out its features.

I do not have to. I remember vividly the scent of it, the cold of its claws, the rabid intelligence of its eyes.

I do not need to see them to know it is looking directly at—

Aidyn .

It is looking directly at Aidyn, poised on a rock in the center of pool, standing on a ledge I do not see, one hand on the sun-dried stone, barely his shoulders out of the water, watching it in return.

He is utterly still, dripping black hair plastered against the bright white of his shirt, a frozen guardian in the middle of the water.

I’ve held my breath so long my entire chest burns. I cannot convince myself to release it.

The hound slinks through the brambles, circling above the edge of the pool.

My eyes cannot discern each of its movements—only every few seconds can I catch up to where it is.

Aidyn’s head tilts to follow it. His voice sounds gently across the roar of the water, a series of words I know are not my language, but I cannot grasp at them, just as I cannot with his books or his songs.

A rippling growl slithers across the empty trees.

A third bark.

One of its massive paws touches the path down to the water.

All the trees rage at once, a twirl of wind stronger than any winter storm I’ve witnessed swirling down upon the slinking monster.

Aidyn’s hands rise from the water, and that is all I see before the force of the gales drives the waterfall into a frenzy and I am swimming back in a desperate hurry.

Water hovers sideways, drawn by the air, and I glimpse the hound with its paws off the ground for a split moment before a deafening crash.

All at once, the water returns to normal.

I take a gasping breath in the ensuing silence, merely the roar of the falls to break it.

“ Flower,” comes Aidyn’s soft voice through the falls. “ Bluebell, come, hurry now.”