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I’m so spent from the fear and the sickness that I remain bowed over, kneeling by the door, not even having the energy to pull the tray inside all the way. The blood rushing in my ears is deafening.
I find myself gazing at Wolf who’s still crouched by my chair, in front of the window, the blurry outline of him, the shine of his silvery hair.
Then vaguely I become aware of him getting up and stalking over to me. I brace a hand on the door in a vain attempt to get up but he’s fast and he’s right there, in front of me. He goes down on one knee and peers into my face.
His eyes fill my sight—gold and green, fields and forests and meadows with yellow flowers, strange upside-down mountains and cities on the backs of huge animals, dragons flying against the clouds and horned horses prancing on the streets—
“You didn’t give me away,” he says, shattering my vision of that strange world.
“I was afraid you’d attack Anton,” I admit, my voice faint. “He’s old and has been kind to me.”
He blinks. “Is that what you think of me? That I’d attack an old man?”
“We all do what we have to in order to survive,” I whisper.
I remember myself screaming and wailing, howling for Anton to get me out of here, to let me go, to never abandon me. I had felt like a little child, left in the woods. I had put him in such a hard position. I’m so lucky he didn’t ask for someone else to take over his task.
That would have broken my mind completely.
“You’re shaking,” he says. “Mina, are you all right?”
I’m not. Haven’t been in a while. I don’t know what to say. Dizziness sends black swirls over my eyes.
“I’ve got you,” he says, which makes absolutely no sense, and slides his hands under my knees, my back. He swings me up into his arms and the room spins vertiginously. “I’m here.”
It’s strange to be carried in someone’s arms. It reminds me of when I was little and my mother or my older cousins would carry me around—but that was a more utilitarian and rough procedure, especially with my cousins. The way Wolf is holding me... it’s unlike anything I have ever experienced. The power in his arms is frightening—he’s carrying me as if I weigh nothing, crushing me a little too hard against his chest as if he doesn’t realize his own strength—but his steps are measured and soft, not jostling me, and his gaze is on me, so bright and unreadable, yet softened by those long lashes.
I curl against his chest, his warmth, and don’t want to think. I don’t want to fight this, even as I don’t want to like it so much. Over the endless months, I fought so hard to accept the lack of touch, the lack of another person nearby, the crushing solitude. It’s so easy to get used to being touched again.
And it is impossible to fight it as he brings me to my bed and lays me down, so gently a sob catches in my throat. This is the most dangerous game of all, I realize. Falling for him would be so easy. I’m so vulnerable right now. When he removes my shoes from my feet and pulls the covers over me, tears leak from the corners of my eyes.
When he gets up, I reach a hand out to him instinctively and hate myself for it. I let it drop on the covers, turning my head away on the pillow.
It doesn’t immediately sink in that he has sat back down until he strokes my cheek, making me jerk. “Pretty Mina,” he says. “A firebird in a tall cage.”
“That’s what my name means,” I say drowsily as his rough palm comes to rest on my cheek, cupping it.
“What?”
“Firebird. I always thought it was my red hair. But my parents liked the tale. There is a legend...” My lids are heavy, so heavy. His touch seems to lift a weight off my chest, helping me breathe more easily. “About a firebird in a golden cage, and everyone who touches the cage, trying to steal it, is captured. A bird of bronze and gold...”
“Just like your hair,” he says, lifting a matted strand, gazing at it as if it’s something precious.
I close my eyes, fearing to find mockery in his gaze, and his touch on my hair echoes through my body like a bell. “The bird eats golden apples and brings forth warmth and light, so everyone wants to own it, but the bird cannot survive in the golden cage. When someone frees it, the firebirds gives him three feathers and with them it can be called to aid...”
“The humans have so many silly tales,” he says, his voice very quiet.
I grit my teeth—here comes the mockery as I’d expected, and wouldn’t it be nice to be proven wrong once in a while?—and open my mouth to tell him how little his opinions matter, when his hand returns to my face, this thumb feathering over my cheekbone, then my mouth, stealing my breath.
“Sleep now,” he says. “You’ll need your strength.”
“What for?” I whisper. “I’m never leaving this tower alive.”
“We’ll see about that. Do you want to live?”
Such an odd question. “Who doesn’t?”
“Tell me.”
“Yes. Yes, I want to live.”
“Good.” He draws back his hand, another grin tugging at his mouth. He grins a lot, I realize. It’s as if everything amuses him.
Then again, he’s a Fae. Everything probably does.
“Stay,” I whisper against my conscious will before he makes another move to get up. “Just for a moment,” I amend, trying to salvage my pride and sanity.
“Afraid of the dark?” he whispers back and that mocking tone in his voice should make me angry, but I’m too tired to care.
“I dream of strange lands,” I tell him, because it seems all it takes is a human-like person nearby for me to spill all my fears and crazy nightmares. “A place where the trees seem to grow upside down and their leaves are in reality butterflies and the sky is pink instead of blue, and I’m sure it’s the afterlife, and I...”
“Yes?” His voice is so quiet I barely hear it.
“And it scares me.”
“That is not the afterlife,” he says, just that, but he sounds troubled, and he doesn’t get up. He stays there, growing fainter and fainter behind the curtain of my lashes, until I fall into dark sleep.
***
Light stabs through my lids and for a moment I hang suspended between this world and the weirdly familiar, upside-down version of it where I wander in my dreams. I was running with a gray wolf, laughing, scented wind stealing the sound, clouds of blue butterflies washing over us like waves, then lifting again to spiral and swirl.
But this world insists on breaking up the dream—a rare, good dream, too—and returning me to my grimy bed, in the cold tower where I waste away.
I can hear birds chirping, though, which is unexpected. Songbirds rarely fly up so high. There is nothing for them here, no place to roost, no food.
Lifting my heavy lashes, I blink blearily at my window.
A man is sitting there, on the broad sill, a tiny bird fluttering on his upturned palm, maybe a robin, red flashing on its chest, black on its head. The man’s silver hair flutters around his head, and intricate gold letters seem to cover his bared forearm.
A dream?
No, it’s... I’m awake, this is...
With a gasp, I sit up in bed—and am promptly overtaken by a fit of coughing that smothers both my shock and my breath.
By the time I get it under control, his shadow falls over me and I jerk but I’m still struggling to get air into my lungs.
“Mina,” he says, sitting on the bed. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Not afraid,” I manage between shuddery inhales. Blood spatters on my hand and I stare at it, too numb to be horrified.
“Here.” He takes a linen kerchief from his sleeve and wipes my hand clean. “Is it getting worse?”
I shrug.
The thing is, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I’m listing where I’m sitting on the bed, and don’t even care when he sits beside me and puts an arm around me.
“Let me show you something,” he says, raising one hand and whistling—a fine note, like the trilling of a bird.
Another little bird flies through the window and comes to perch on his fingers. This one is white with a red dot on its head and gray under its wings and it’s one I have never seen before. It chirps and tuts and struts up and down Wolf’s forefinger as if on a branch, unafraid and smug.
“How are you doing this?” I whisper in a hushed voice, not to scare the bird away.
“Birds like me. And speaking of stories... do you know the one of the Firebird and the Gray Wolf? Want me to tell it to you?”
I nod, too aware of his arm around me, the warmth of him, the distant echo of his heartbeat going through me where I’m pressed to his side—and of the bird on his hand, the magic he possesses. It’s like cuddling with a lion or a panther, like cuddling with a sharpened sword, beautiful and deadly.
The bird doesn’t seem afraid, though.
“When the world was young, when Faerie and the human world were one, there was a wolf living in a vast forest. All the other wolves were black and he was gray, an outcast. When a death curse came over the forest, the king of wolves told him that if he found the firebird and let it kill him, the curse would be lifted.”
“That’s unfair,” I whisper. “And did he find it?”
“He searched for it for long winter months, and then through golden summer. He ran over plains and mountains, asking every creature he could find where the firebird was. But no creature knew anything about it except for a sparrow and the sparrow traveled with him, keeping him company as he searched.”
I close my eyes. He’s telling me a fairy tale as if I’m a child huddled in my bed, and it’s both breaking and mending my heart.
“So he kept looking and the months turned to years, the seasons changing and returning, always the same...”
...the seasons changing outside the tower while the princess slept inside and embroidered a world she could no longer touch...
“...until he realized he had been tricked. The firebird had always been by his side. The little sparrow hid the fire inside it, and when the gray wolf explained what he wanted, the sparrow turned into flame and burned the wolf to the ground. The curse on the forest was lifted and the wolves lived there happily ever after.”
“Poor wolf,” I whisper sleepily. “Why should he have to die for the other wolves to live? Why couldn’t their king die for his people?”
“Good question.”
I yawn. “Must be an old tale to be shared between humans and Fae, though in ours the ending is different.”
“How so?”
“The bird and the wolf find a small hut on a mountain and live there together, happily ever after.”
“Humans.” There’s laughter in his voice. “Always changing the ending into a happy one.”
“Or maybe into the right one. Who knows?”
“Yeah, who knows?” The bird flutters and flies away, out the window. “Who knows what brought me here, to the firebird itself...”