Page 6 of The Wind and the Wild (The Keepers of Faerie #1)

A s Una teased me for, I nearly smash into the hawthorn tree, tripping over a root and tumbling to the leafy ground. Rolling over so quickly I make myself dizzy, I stare at the path and all around where I first found the kittens...

And find myself alone.

Huffing out a breath, I drop my forehead to the scratchy leaves, groaning.

“ Never again,” I whisper. “ Niamh, you’re a moonlight-born fool. Never again.”

Crawling to my feet, I wobble toward the edge of the woods before steadying, glancing back too many times in the dark. I will not be telling Emma about this, not even a hint—

“ Niamh—”

An undignified scream rips from my chest before I recognize Niall’s gentle voice.

He starts, gazing around as if we’re being attacked.

He’s coming up through the trees, from the direction of the village.

As soon as my heartbeat returns to normal, I’m fairly certain I frightened him as much as he frightened me.

“ Oh, fae help me.” I wave a hand at him, fingers on my throat. Then I punch him in his big shoulder. “ You scared me half to death!”

“ Me? ” he yells, then lowers his voice and chuckles. “ I don’t think I’ve ever heard you scream like that. Are you cursed?”

I roll my eyes, then hug him. With another laugh, he rocks me back and forth. I’m three months older than him and take after Da’s stature, but he’s still bigger than me. If anything, he’s much broader, which makes for safer embraces.

“ No,” I answer, “ just terrible at judgment.”

“ So I see. Una said you went wandering around in Faerie again, but you usually come back before dark.”

I lean my head back to look at him. He doesn’t go into Faerie, but he’ll come wander the border for me. “ I’m all right. It wasn’t dark when I went in.”

As I say it, releasing him, I can’t help another glance over my shoulder.

It wasn’t dark when I went in. When I turn back, I get the distinct impression Niall’s trying his best to inspect me in the low light.

Lowly, he asks, “ What did you see?”

I hurry him back toward the flickering lights of the village on the edge of sleep. “ What makes you think I saw anything?”

“ Other than the banshee screech?”

I wrinkle my nose, shoving into him as we walk. “ Don’t say their name.”

“ Sorry.” Likewise, he glances over his shoulder.

I sigh, dropping my face back to stare at the sliver of a moon, not nearly so bright as that in Faerie. Ours is losing the fight against the dark of the evening sky.

Dust in the moonbeams.

Bright eyes, a tall shadow, a long blade.

Suddenly too cold in the spring night, I drag Niall back to the cottage, intent on hot tea and the hearth.

“ Did Una go home?”

“ She wouldn’t until you came back.”

For no good reason, my throat gets tight, and I swallow lungfuls of night air.

Well, I suppose I won’t have to explain twice.

Una clutches two of the kittens, one in either hand, while Niall tries cold milk instead of warm with another one, his scruffy face scrunched in unhappy concentration at the animal’s lack of cooperation.

Or perhaps it’s the description of the faerie I encountered that’s haunting his expression.

Perhaps I made it sound worse than it was, but once I opened my mouth, I began rambling, voice rising.

Now Una is cuddling the kittens—who seem happy with the attention, purring as if they are indeed cats—while giving me uncomfortable and often rather severe looks.

She’s probably wondering if I gathered a faerie curse along the way. I don’t blame her.

I wonder too. I suppose by morning we’ll know.

At least she’s distracted from the idea of hounds on the border shredding me to pieces. I’m uncertain which I’d prefer she fret over—since she certainly must fret.

“ You are never going back in,” she says with a tone that is not to be defied, stroking the kittens’ soft heads with her thumbs. “ You’re lucky you’re even back with us. What is your mam going to say?”

I give her an even look. That threat hasn’t worked in ages. I’m not young enough.

Though I hope she doesn’t tell her.

“ Don’t worry, I have no plans to,” I say, curled on the pillows beside the hearth, tea in hand and an empty plate beside me where pie once sat.

With my friends on either side of me, the cottage warm, and my mind clear, I feel foolish for my overreaction.

After all, whatever type of faerie it was, all it did was stare at me.

And ask me why I apologized to a book —not even for my name so it could drag me away into Faerie forever.

Now that I consider it, picture the scene more clearly in my mind, I’m not certain it was a long blade in its hand. Warriors do not lean on their blades, gripping the top as if they are an old man gripping a walking stick.

Silly as it seems to consider, I know little of fae and the ways they dress, the ways they decorate themselves. Perhaps walking sticks are a common practice, such as gentlemen have in the larger cities. It’s a funny thing to imagine, but barely less threatening.

A faerie does not need a weapon to wound and drive us mad, after all.

“ I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about them,” I say, picking up the nearest kitten.

Its bony body seems to settle between my fingers.

I let it sniff my cooling tea, but it turns its nose up, wrinkled eyelids scrunched shut.

Sighing, I set it on my chest, where it settles with a flap of its tiny tail.

Una waves me off. “ We ’ll find something they’ll eat. Don’t worry about it, Niamh.”

“ And if you go back in, I’ll tell Emma too,” Niall adds, giving up on the cold milk.

I drop my head back against the pillows and groan.

They don’t need to, but Niall and Una stay the night, sleeping on the pillows with me beside the dying fire.

Restless, I dream vividly of waking with my teeth falling out, my skin dripping off my bones, and dancing until my toes break away.

Each time, I wake and tell myself to stop being so ridiculous.

But I find little sleep by the time the morning is graying.

Frustrated, I throw back the quilt, check on the sleeping kittens in their crate, and head to the kitchen. After dragging in logs for the stove, I get it started and roll out dough for fresh bread, then for a new piecrust.

If I hadn’t dropped that book, maybe I’d have more than a few licks of egg yolk for the kittens.

I know exactly where I dropped it. All I needed to do was retrieve it before I ran.

Why didn’t I just think enough to pick it up?

Whoever that faerie was, it certainly took him a while to find me. I must have been there at least an hour. He likely didn’t hear me come in until I was tromping around the top level in my heavy boots.

I pause, staring at the flour on my palms, at Una and Niall sleeping by the fire.

Their hands are close in the space I left, and my chest gives a squeeze—not with jealousy of them , but of the feeling, the sensation.

I remember it, but remember it more clearly turning bitter.

They fell in love, and deep down in my chest, I love it for them.

The strange faerie didn’t hear me come in, and I know exactly where I dropped the book.

By the time the sun has risen in full, the gnats swarming in the tall grasses in the cool morning dawn, Niall is up, stretching and gathering the eggs from our three chickens. I still have the extras from Emma, but they’ll be put to use quickly enough.

Yesterday’s bread gets sliced and toasted, and I stir porridge and sizzle salted ham over the stove. Niall yawns and steals one, nearly burning his fingers. I smack his arm with the nearest wooden spoon.

“ Sleep all right?”

I wrinkle my nose, leaning back onto my heels. “ No. ”

“ Bad dreams, or something else?”

“ Something else” being a faerie curse. “ Bad dreams. Plenty of them.”

He nods. “ Try again after you eat. Daylight can chase things away.”

Una comes stumbling in, hair unkempt. Someone in the village will have a good laugh about the three of us sleeping over together as if we are still children.

I eat, and food grounds me, makes my stomach stop churning. While Una pokes about in the garden, I milk Primrose, feeling happier with my forehead leaning against her warm belly. Frothing milk collects in the bucket, and I watch it, thinking of fae bribed by humans.

We have honey in the cupboard. I shake myself.

Sitting in the garden with Una, I dig my toes into the soil and feel the heat of the morning sun on my face and neck and shoulders and bare arms. I lie back and doze.

Una hums. Niall takes the pail of milk inside and calls goodbye before he runs down the path to his duties with his own family.

“ I’m all right,” I murmur. “ I’ll come down later and help with your dress.”

“ You’ re sure? ” Una asks, trailing her fingers through my hair where I still lie in the hot soil.

“ I feel perfectly fine, just tired, I promise.”

“ If you go back in, don’t let it be to the library.”

I glance at her.

“ The woods with these hounds are bad enough. Do not add another monster to the mix.”

“ I’m not sure about ‘ monster, ’” I mumble, squinting at a ladybug crawling over her toe. “ I keep remembering things differently... in the daylight.”

“ How? ”

It feels strange and silly saying the words aloud, but Una is accustomed to me by now. “ All he did was stand there and ask me a question.”

She huffs out a sigh, but the consideration is there in her eyes. “ Perhaps. That is all they need, isn’t it? A question answered.”

What is your name?

He didn’t ask.

“ I suppose so, yes.”

“ Still, if you go back in, it better be when the sun is high, or so help me, I will find out.”

I manage not to laugh, squinting at the heat of the day on my face. “ I am only sporadically that foolish. And now is not one of those times. I’ll pay more attention to the light, now I know it changes in such a way.”

“ Please keep your head about you, Ve.”

She sounds so uncharacteristically sober that I tell her in the same tone, “ I will.”