Page 58 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

H eart hammering, I back inside the safety of the cottage, tripping over my sore ankle before shutting the door with both hands. My breath stutters, and I keep my hands where they are, taking strength from leaning against the stable wood, staring absently at the handle.

From the corner of my eye, I see Una watching with a mixture of questioning and concern.

I stare at Aidyn over my shoulder. He’s where I left him, draped along one side of Emma’s couch, a little too long for the pillows, one leg folded up beneath him, long hands curled together as if he must cling to something or flee from the human world entirely.

His eyes drag over me, then to the door, then out the window overlooking the kitchen.

.. toward where the Gentry have arrived.

Something knowing sits in the lines around his eyes and the set of his mouth.

Does he know his kin have arrived? Does he know the creature whose eyes found mine?

“ Emma? ” I ask, and my voice rasps more than I wish it would.

“ I heard screams,” she says, voice grim. “ Have they come out of the woods?”

Her eyes are out the other window, that which points vaguely in the direction of the festival.

“ I saw your grandchildren go inside with their parents,” I tell her, and her shoulders visibly relax. “ The Gentry are here.”

“ The what?” Niall asks.

“ The ones who protect our borders. Emma?” I ask again. “ Do you have a way onto the roof?”

“ No,” Aidyn says before she can answer, and I start at the sound of his voice, as if I were not intoxicated by it less than an hour ago. “ Stay inside. You can do nothing but endanger yourself.”

I open my mouth to argue, for what reason I’m unsure. Because I must see what is happening to those in the village. Because I must see what the Gentry do to the hounds that haunt my nightmares.

Because I wish to call out to the man who shares Aidyn’s eyes the moment he may walk past?

Foolish woman. Weeks ago I was terrified to even glimpse a hair on Aidyn’s head, and now I wish to call out to strange fae?

Still, I glance at Emma’s bedroom—her cottage is laid out a little like Una’s, and there is likely a set of stairs to the attic as well.

“ No ,” Aidyn says again, his tone reminding me very well what complete and utter control he could have over anyone whose name he holds.

Una and Niall flinch, shoulders hunching, Niall edging in front of Una as if there is a threat to be had.

He glances at me as if for confirmation this is the creature I’ve been speaking of so kindly the last few weeks, even if his tone is meant to keep us all safe.

Only Emma is not cowed, her eyes sliding to mine with a strange understanding.

Wobbly, I walk to the back of the couch and lean against the wooden supports, both hands finding Aidyn’s uninjured shoulder and tidying his hair back from his face.

He gazes up at me with such intensity I wonder if he will simply use magic to pull me back if I try to venture outside, even as his hand rises to mine.

“ Do we simply wait?” I whisper.

It is what we did last time. It didn’t seem so very long a time until both the Gentry and the hounds were gone.

This time, something is different.

This time, perhaps I know what is happening.

Someone should tell him.

“ What is his name?” I ask, and Aidyn looks up at me with a mixture of knowing and likely false confusion. I never did learn if fae can lie with their eyes. “ Your father. His name?”

The cottage is so quiet with the weight of the other three humans’ unasked questions crushing us and the faint sounds of music and calling out and a few barking hounds. Something else howls, and it sounds afraid.

Do all creatures of Faerie fear the hounds as we do? It seems a strange thing we should all fear creatures of their lands.

Aidyn whispers something so soft that I frown so he will repeat.

“ Tynan. My father’s name is Tynan.”

I mouth the name to myself, committing it to memory. I’m surprised he told me, what with his fear I’ll step outside.

“ Beautiful name,” I say offhandedly, as if names are not precious to fae and he has not imparted something of utmost importance. I cannot do anything with it, not the way Aidyn could with mine, but it feels important anyhow.

“ You do not understand,” he says, a long whisper of breathy words I barely hear, as if reminding me that what I think he should do is not the same as his own convictions.

That their love is not the same as ours.

“ I know,” I tell him, then wince when another howl echoes outside.

There is the softest comfort that they are not, this time, angry with me.

No one stepped on a mushroom. I did not enter their territory.

Someone else and his greed enraged them, and if they are likely to hunt anyone down, it is more likely Blain and his father.

Perhaps this should make me sick, and my stomach turns, but I cannot convince myself to be grieved in this moment. There are hounds on our side of the trees, and it is their fault; whatever fate they reach has nothing to do with me.

“ It was probably that day that he realized,” I say without meaning to.

“ What?” Niall asks. Una leans out from behind his protection to peer at Aidyn.

I clear my throat, and Emma stops her pacing to frown.

“ That night when the hounds attacked the first time. It obviously scared him, but he probably realized how to lure monsters out of Faerie. We don’t take anything here, all those little trinkets they sell in the city.

.. We didn’t even think anyone really would. ”

The ruined half of my hand hurts, though I know it isn’t real. Aidyn’s fingers tighten between mine with the utmost softness, as if he knows, his thumb ghosting over my littlest finger. The cool of his many rings is becoming a strangely familiar comfort.

To my surprise, Niall comes close enough to sit on the other side of the couch. “ He was sniffing around you because you go into Faerie so much.”

“ Possibly,” I agree.

“ It was the Haskel boy, was it?” Emma says blandly, and all three of us stare at her in shock. Aidyn raises an eyebrow, and I see his lips make the sound of the family name without speaking it.

“ What?” the old woman asks in the same tone, then goes to the kitchen to peer out the window.

I finally mutter, “ We think so,” as if she were actually asking the question.

Aidyn makes the same gesture of whispering to himself.

“ Stop it,” I tell him, and he shuts his mouth, not looking remotely chastised. With a long breath, I say, “ They have a lot of family—not all of them can be to blame.”

He presses his lips together but does not argue. I am correct—there are more innocents with the name Haskel than guilty—and he realizes.

Joining Emma at the window, I lean over the counter and squint as far out the glass as I can.

Nothing unusual is to be seen, save for wisps of something on the dark horizon .

They are flying, so it cannot be the hounds.

My heart picks up either way. Hounds are not the only dangerous things in Faerie, especially during midsummer.

“ How did they know?” I ask Aidyn. “ The Gentry came tonight. Why?”

He shakes his head. “ Perhaps they have been keeping watch. I am not precisely certain.”

I wonder if he’s managed to work a lie into that. He isn’t precisely certain but has a theory he isn’t telling me. We make strong eye contact over the back of the couch until I give it up.

“ How did they know the first time?”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. At the time, he told me quite dismissively that he had his own ways, but we did not know each other then, had not lain in the grasses together with our arms tangled around one another.

Finally, he gives a little twirl of his hand, a gentle breeze picking up even within the stuffy air of the cottage. Niall backs off the edge of the couch but doesn’t make for the door.

I let off a long sigh but nod. Somehow, his magic told them. I do not need to know the details. Perhaps it made them suspicious enough to return, if they know the magic of their kin who should be dead.

That same long haunting wail of a sound begins once more.

We all jump, the image of the woman from that night, with her long shadow of hair and familiar countenance, still fresh behind my eyes.

I can picture her perfectly now that I hear her strange voice echoing across the trees and meadows.

Aidyn’s expression droops, his eyes flickering out the window with a faraway gaze, eyebrows pulling together.

Something about him sitting there, a long pale shape near the lantern Emma set beside him, his hair fallen over his shoulders as if he can disappear into the dark shadows of the room, makes me see it.

Did Aidyn not mention a sister?

Aidyn is resting his temple against the pillows.

Slowly, I step around Una and Niall clinging to each other and watch him.

His eyes have fallen closed, his chest taking short labored breaths.

The wound wasn’t too deep on its own, but it is another weight upon a body already too heavy.

Perhaps whatever poison that shred of claw contained had already taken root before I could remove it.

“ Aidyn,” I whisper, not certain what I am asking for, watching his eyes flicker open only briefly. Sitting on the pillows beside his curled-up legs, I murmur again, “ Aidyn.”

His hands are uncomfortably cold, and I drag one of Emma’s quilts over him, though it’s much too hot even in the whitewashed walls of the cottage.

Offhandedly, my finger rubs against his rings. I glance down, looking at the pretty little band he let me wear when I went hunting for plums. It did not work well because I had been immediately found by that strange creature.

He gave it to me. A gift.

And never actually asked for it back.