Page 47 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

“ Show me what’s wrong with you. I’m only a human, I know, but you’re going to tell me.

” Carefully, limping more than before, I gather all the silly little human herbs and jars off the window and deposit them onto the bed, sorting for whatever I can attempt to use to soothe the remains of the stings and all the many cuts and scrapes.

His bright eyes follow my movements, low lidded and strange in the dying firelight.

“ You should not go back tonight,” he murmurs, glancing at the window. “’Tis too dark. I cannot walk you back.”

Nodding, I frown at the salve I’m smearing across my shoulder, ignoring the sting. “ I’d rather not walk again for a little while, certainly. This is going to ruin midsummer.”

“ Midsummer...” he mumbles, half a question, half a breath of a thought.

“ Yes, the festival,” I remind him. “ When the faerie world is closest to ours. We dance all night, and the fae come out to dance with us. Well, not fae much like you , but the little ones. Sometimes bigger ones, but they’re only shadows in the trees, you see?

It is a lovely time. I will bake a pie and win the contest this year.

If I bake you a plum pie, will you taste test it for me? ”

I’m aware I’m rambling, but my mind is still spinning, and I feel like crying.

“ A pie contest?” he asks, amused by the concept.

“ Yes. And we wear masks. Some we make ourselves, some we all make, but that’s usually for the children. There’s much eating and drinking and dancing. If you are in love, you put flowers in the hair of your love, and they dance with you. My friends shall put flowers in each other’s hair.”

I think for a long moment of telling him more about Niall and Una, but I have not even told him my name, not yet, so I put the thought from my mind.

“ Who will you dance with?” he asks. His eyes are oddly intense, as if this worries him greatly.

Who are you dancing with, Niamh? I wrinkle my nose.

“ Well, I’m not certain with anyone now .” I gesture to my ankle. “ But no one in particular to begin with. Just my friends. If my parents were here, I’d dance with them. They may return home in time, but it is a long journey on those roads, and they are often delayed. Next year, perhaps.”

“ Hmm,” he hums again.

I stare at him in the dim light, the soft red orange of the dying embers painting the side of his face and catching in the wrinkles of his clothing where he lies against the pillows.

He is draped like a soaked cloth across the side of his bed, gazing at me in equal measure, and I am suddenly having none of it.

I survived being lost in Faerie, and a great deal of it is owed to him.

He came searching for me when I did not return, and in his condition.

He may be grumpy with me all he likes for my pushy nature—he does not mean it.

Scooting closer and grimacing at how each movement annoys my ankle, at how fragile my skin feels, I tell him, “ Take your shirt off.”

He blinks. “ Pardon? ”

“ That woman did not hurt your ears—you heard me just fine. Come here.”

I take hold of the front of his shirt and tug him up until he is sitting in front of me, albeit slumped.

His expression is somewhere between amused and uncomfortable.

I do not mind. As if I were not uncomfortable with his little administrations for my injuries.

I do not know who he is or why his pride prevents him so deeply from allowing help, but I’m having none of it—not after tonight.

Working at the few laces at the front of his tunic, I ignore his glaring eyes. My fingers are not moving so well, but they are warming from the fire, and I will not be dissuaded.

“’Tis a little presumptuous for so early in our friendship, is it not?” he asks, teasing in his voice.

My cheeks turn red-hot, but I raise my chin, undeterred. “ Your mouth was on my neck.”

He laughs but tugs his shirt tight when I attempt to remove it. Glowering up at him, I find his face quite close to my own, eyes fixed on mine.

“ I want to help you,” I say gently, carefully, a strange and sudden quiet across the room. “ Are you truly going to tell me I cannot?”

This appears to flummox him considerably, his eyes flickering away to the fire, a distinct downturn to his lips. He mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “ not proper.”

I snort and give his shirt a gentle tug. “ Aidyn. ”

“ Are you going to tell me what happened tonight?” he asks.

A weak distraction. Still, I scowl. “ I might. If you let me help.”

His mouth pops open, brow furrowing, offended. I raise my brows, attempting not to laugh at his expression.

“ I think...” he says, casting his gaze back at the fire. I hold my breath, not wanting to interrupt any sort of truth I might be pulling from his chest. “ I think... an infection has possibly settled. Some of the pain... is only staying, worsening sometimes.”

My stomach twists. Infections are tough to fight, tougher still when he declares his kind are not susceptible to our medicines.

“ Yes? ” I encourage.

“’Tis on my back,” he says, still avoiding my eyes. “ I cannot reach it well. I am quite capable of caring for my own injuries.”

I nod. I wouldn’t doubt such a thing even if he could lie. “ Yes. Show me.”

His lips turn down further at the corners. My own are tugging at a smile. I grasp the hem of his shirt and carefully, carefully , ease it over his head. He does not resist this time, though there is a definite tightness to his shoulders.

A few of the kittens wobble over to sit against our pressed-together legs, having finished their meal.

With the log on the fire, it is warming again, my arm closest to the flames growing hot under the thin fabric of my dress.

Carefully, I drop his shirt aside and brush the hair away from his shoulder.

He has bandaged himself quite neatly about his torso and his shoulder where I accidentally tore at his clothing.

“ Your.. . leg? ” I ask, not suspecting he will have me unbuckling his belt.

“ It’s healing,” he murmurs. “ Slowly, but ’tis not the worst of it.”

I nod, glancing at his leg but leaving it be, my eyes drifting back up. He is as much a man on the rest of him as he is in the face and arms, and I ignore the heat in my face.

Remembering what I am doing, I tell him, “ Stay,” then get up unsteadily and limp down to the kitchen.

I scrub my hands as best I can with nothing else to cleanse them, then take a pot with a little water back to set on the fire.

Aidyn gazes at me morosely as I do so, back to leaning against the pillows, one hand tugging absently at the edge of a bandage.

Holding my fingers back to the fire to rid them of the ice cold of the water, I mumble about not having proper anything to help him.

But I cannot take him to the village, and he has been doing well enough here on his own.

Well, he is not resisting me, so I may as well speak.

Sitting, I scoot carefully beside him, feeling his eyes on me while I find where he has tied off the strips of fabric and work the knots loose. Nothing seeps through the cloth, but I have not yet looked at his back.

“ That... strange little creature that eats emotions?” I start, wondering exactly how silly I will sound telling this tale.

“ Hmm,” he says with much less lightness, as if someone has tracked mud upon his bed.

“ It was hanging in the trees trying to upset me, I suppose. It was saying this weird little poem, and it made its voice sound like Un—like my friend’s voice.

It made me angry, so I turned around to throw a plum at it, and it jumped at my face.

I tripped on one of the brambles. I suppose I must’ve closed my eyes when I fell, because when I sat up, I was in those dark woods and it was nearly night. ”

He nods slowly, thoughtfully, helping me unwind the cloth from about his chest. “ I did not know they could do such things. It must have been watching you to pick up your friend’s voice. There are no other humans in Faerie anywhere near here. I do not precisely know how its magic works.”

“ It went with me when I got lost. I don’t know how. But it showed up a few moments later.”

“ The same way I found you, most likely. It knows your smell now. Besides, those trees are not terribly far from these. I heard you scream.”

I nod as well, wishing to ask him more about how he came to the clearing. I can ask after I finish my story. I made a deal, after all. Most of it is told, anyway.

“ I tried to find my way back like you told me. What... What was that creature?”

He moves a shoulder. “ An Unblessed. I did not get a close look. I know more about the creatures of Faerie than the species of the Keepers. Unblessed, though, certainly. There are enough of them in this realm.”

I shiver, glancing again at Aidyn’s cane. It sits along the floorboards, beside his sword in its scabbard, with the dried blood on its end. He follows my gaze and wrinkles his nose.

“ You’re lucky,” he says softly, like a breath he doesn’t want to let be heard.

“ Lucky I have you,” I say. “ But yes, I know. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

He shakes his head slowly. “ It was not your fault. I should not have let you walk out there.”

“ You shouldn’t have had to follow me out,” I counter.

“ Hmm.”

“ You say hmm every time I say something you either don’t like or don’t want to answer.”

“ Hmm.”

I’d put my face in my hands if I weren’t trying to keep them clean. Unwrapping the bandages as best I can, I tug them gently away from the dried wounds while Aidyn gives a weak flinch.

“ Sorry,” I mumble. I’ve taken care of minor things before, but never this. “ Oh.”

Something has raked its claws across him.

All down his middle, from collarbone to hips—and I’m assuming farther given the state of his cane—is a large mess of deep wounds.

A smaller one marks his shoulder where I pulled the bandage off weeks back.

The tips of those along his shoulders and down his back are visible from this angle.

For the most part, they appear to be healing, puckered and red and certainly painful, but none of them remain open.

Gazing at them for a long moment, I consider why they appear quite so familiar, with the jagged way the wounds healed at the edges and the space between them.

I hold up my damaged hand with its withered pinkie, looking at the awful matching decorations, which shouldn’t seem as if they can harm both human and faerie.

“ Yes,” he agrees sadly. “ Oh .”