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“Princess.” Anton pushes the tray under the door, the sudden noise startling me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I stab the needle into my embroidery and rush to the door. Wolf has been asleep on my bed, and now he stirs, sitting up and leveling a frown at me.
“I brought you more handkerchiefs. And an extra blanket.”
He pushes everything under the door and I kneel to pull it inside. “Thank you, Anton.”
“You sound better today, my lady.”
“Yes, I had a good night’s sleep.”
“That’s good to hear.” He’s quiet for a few heartbeats and just when I think he’ll go away, he says, “You always were my favorite little princess. May the Gods keep you, child.”
There’s a knot in my throat. “Anton...”
But this time he goes, his steps heavy as he climbs down the stairs.
Why did it sound like a farewell?
“Is everything all right?” Wolf approaches me and sits down on his haunches. “You look sad.”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”
“About?”
I shrug. “Anton is old. I just hope... I hope he’s not sick.”
“You’re sick and locked up in this tower and you worry over the people wandering free?”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s not their fault I’m here. It’s your kind’s fault.”
“I see.”
“And I told you, Anton has been kind to me.” I grab the blanket and the handkerchiefs and struggle to get up. Wolf reaches for me, grabs my arm and lifts me up in one smooth motion, rising with me.
“Again you didn’t tell him about me. You know I wouldn’t hurt him.”
“Not even to stop him from telling on you?”
“I’d have probably tied him to the chair.”
Anger spikes in me. “You...”
“You don’t want to have me get thrown into prison, admit it. You enjoy my company.”
Yanking me arm free of his hold, I stomp toward the bed. “Keep dreaming. I want nothing to do with a Fae thief.”
“You like me.” His grin is confident and unrepentant as he follows me to the bed. “Admit it.”
“You’re an annoying Fae. I don’t like you.”
“Not even a little?” He wags his brows at me and my lips twitch. “How can you resist me?”
It’s true, it’s hard to do. I’d never imagined that a Fae could be so playful and funny, that he’d carry me to bed and tell me stories, call birds from the window sill to perch on his hand, that he’d take the blanket away and drop it on the bed—like now—so he can wrap my hands in his.
“You’re cold,” he says. “I should light a fire.”
“There is almost no wood left.” I like how his hands engulf mine, how warm they are. “I won’t get any more until the new moon.”
His brows draw together, his eyes flash. “So they’d let you freeze? That window can’t even close.”
“I don’t think they even expected me to live this long,” I say, a fact I haven’t been able to admit even to myself until now.
“Dirt-eaters,” he grunts and I assume it’s some sort of curse. “Fuck their griffins’ ears.”
Why do I feel like laughing?
“It doesn’t matter.” He pushes me down on the bed and lets go of my hands, turning toward the cold fireplace. “Let’s get this fire going. Aren’t you going to eat?”
I glance at the tray, still abandoned on the floor by the door. “What about you?”
His stomach rumbles and color rises to his cheekbones, making his eyes look brighter. “I’m fine.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
“See? You worry about me.”
“Wolf...”
“It doesn’t matter.” He places two of my last logs inside the fireplace and then strikes the flintstone underneath them to get a flame.
“You need smaller pieces to start the fire,” I tell him, “you—”
A flame jumps, eating at the logs hungrily, and I stare.
“A little magic.” He winks at me, then grabs an old, mouse-eaten blanket from my bed and goes to fasten it over the window. I don’t even know how he does it. He seems to find splinters from the wooden frame, take them out and use them as nails.
No idea.
Soon enough, the temperature inside the room starts to rise. I hadn’t realized how cold I had been all this time until now. My face hurts as it starts to thaw.
Grabbing the tray from the floor, he comes over and plonks it in front of me. “Eat up.”
“Join me,” I say and when he sits down beside me and tears the hunk of bread in half, I find myself smiling for the first time in a year.
“Thank you for the dinner, my lady.”
It’s a joke, and he’s grinning, but the way he bows from his shoulders, the graceful bend of his head, the hand he flourishes, it’s as poised and suave as that of any prince.
I incline my head at him. “My pleasure, my lord.”
Something different flashes behind his gold-green eyes, something like shock, like pain, like agony—but it’s gone the next moment and he looks away.
Not sure whether I should ask, pry into the life of someone I barely know and will probably not see again once he goes, I dip my spoon into the stew Anton brought me and let him be.
***
“You never told me what they are after you for,” I say.
We’ve placed two blankets and two pillows on the floor in front of the fire and are sitting side by side, warming our stockinged feet. It’s warm enough that he has taken off his gray knitwear with the hood, remaining in a black shirt and his britches.
It’s cozy. I never thought this tower room could feel cozy, not in a thousand years. It’s amazing what being with the right person can do for a place—but no, Wolf is not the right person by any standard, so stop, Mina, stop.
“I broke into the palace,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“What? Why?”
“To steal something.”
“So you really are a thief.” I stare at his handsome face in disbelief.
“Well, not all the time.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I am a mercenary and a jack of all trades. I offer my services in exchange for coin. Killing monsters, saving babies from fires, chasing away Lesser Fairies, rescuing cats from trees. You know the sort of thing. Occasionally I join a warrior party going to fight against some lord or king or other. A mercenary, like I said.”
“Then why would you try and steal something from the palace?”
“Because...” He frowns and for a long moment it looks like he won’t answer. But then, he starts to unbutton his shirt.
“Wolf.”
“Yes?”
“What in the world are you doing?”
“You asked me a question.”
“And that’s your answer?”
“You’ll see.”
Intrigued and mortified, unable to take my eyes off him although I’m sure I should, I watch as he opens his black shirt and shrugs it off his broad shoulders.
I’ve known that the Fae aren’t as prudish as we humans are, that they are given to indecent and lustful acts in the open, that they have no ethics and morals, which is how they seduce quiet housewives and get them with child, or how they draw in faithful husbands and convince them to take part in their debaucheries.
But looking at Wolf, I’m starting to think there is perhaps no real magic involved. If all High Fae are as handsome as Wolf, then I’d imagine the quiet housewives would lie with one willingly.
And I really shouldn’t be having such thoughts, but as his chest is revealed, beautifully sculpted like that of an ancient statue, then his broad shoulders and muscular arms, I’m transfixed, my thoughts in turmoil. Where there was darkness and sorrow, bitterness and fear until now, now there is a fire burning in me, reflecting the jumping flames in the grate.
It’s making me feel hot, too hot.
As the light plays on his chest, the outline of an animal is revealed. An inked wolf, I think, a wolf howling at the moon, but he doesn’t seem interested in that.
“Here,” he says, and it’s with an effort that I manage to drag my gaze to where he’s pointing at.
His forearms are covered in that golden writing I had noticed in the morning—maybe it’s ink but faintly glowing like the trail of snails in the moonlight.
“What is it?” Doubly fascinated, I lean closer to examine the writing, momentarily distracted from his half-naked body. “I can’t read this.”
“It’s Fae script.” He rotates his arm a little and the letters seem to writhe on his skin.
“Gods. Does it hurt?”
“Hurt? No. It’s annoying, though.”
“Why?”
He grimaces. “Because I don’t know who put the words there or what they are for.”
“What does it say?”
He touches a line of words. “Mirror of the land. Sword of color. Ball of fire.”
“Huh. What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” His finger moves down. “Or this line: the diamond seat.”
“Diamonds. Is that why you came to rob the palace?”
“I thought... I thought there might be something here. I heard that your king has a lot of these... diamond things. I have to say, they don’t look like diamonds at all.”
“They don’t?” There is a word, sitting alone right over his strong wrist. “And this one?”
“Here... here it says, Firebird.”
We both sit and stare at the glowing words, the flames playing over them as if they are bands of shiny metal embedded in his flesh.
“That’s not all,” he eventually says.
“Oh?”
He turns his back to me and for a moment I catch my breath. I’ve always found men’s backs beautiful, the narrow hips and waist flaring into the width of their shoulders, that tapering effect, so powerful. Makes me want to touch, map its shape with my hands.
But then I see it—between his shoulder blades, a design, a symbol, like an eye, a gray oval in its center.
“What is that?” I whisper. “What does it stand for?”
He grabs his shirt and pushes his arms through the sleeves, his movements jerky for the first time since he arrived. “I wish I knew. I don’t know who I am, what I am supposed to do.”
“But you are Wolf.”
“That’s not my real name,” he says stiffly, his hands shaking as he starts buttoning his shirt. Then he stops, leaving the buttons half undone. “That’s not who I am.”
“A thief?”
“A thief, a wanderer, a mercenary. A criminal lost in a foreign world, but Faerie seems just as distant to me. I can’t remember much of it.”
I shouldn’t be surprised to discover more mystery surrounding Wolf than I’d originally thought. He is, after all, Fae. Fae are mystery personified—looking so much like us and yet so different, with their magic and their malice, their animal-like ears and their distance from us since the Last War and the Sundering.
Though as he sits there beside me, if not for the ears and the writhing, golden tattoos, I might have taken him for a slightly bedraggled prince returning to the palace after a long journey.
“What do you mean,” I say slowly, “you can’t remember much of it? You weren’t born here? Could you be half-Fae?”
It happens sometimes when humans are seduced by the Fae that they bear their offspring. Those don’t always survive but when they do, they may have Fae traits that set them apart from us. I’ve heard stories of such half-Fae living in the woods out on the plains, shunned by our kind and yet not at home in Faerie, either.
“If I was born here,” he says, “then I visited Faerie. How else would I have memories from it?”
Good point. And the more I look at him, the more differences I note about him—his cheekbones are so sharp, his eyes so uptilted, his jaw free of stubble, and let’s not forget those metallic designs and words placed on him.
He isn’t human. Not even by half.
No matter how much I like sitting with him by the fire right now, he’s Fae and I don’t know what I’m doing. A daughter of the Royal Family of Kyrene would never have approached a Fae, that accursed otherkin, let alone shared stories and embraces with one.
The look in those bright eyes, though... I can’t do anything but stay and seek his hand. “You really don’t remember who you are?”
“I am just Wolf,” he says and there is a thread of bitterness in his voice to match the one winding inside of me. “That’s what they call me, because of this.” He slaps his hand on the wolf inked on his bare chest. “Or maybe it’s the ears.”
He winks at me but he doesn’t smile.
“I doubt that,” I say quietly. “Everyone knows a Fae when they see one.”
He shrugs. “Nobody knows who I really am, though. My only token of a previous life, is this.”
He lifts his hand and mutters something under his breath. A ring appears on his smallest finger, as if parting a dark veil, fading into existence. It’s mounted with a gemstone, a pale gray, half-transparent. A diamond? On it is etched a bird.
I blink and it’s still there. I open my mouth but no sound comes.
“See?” he says.
I shake my head. “You have magic,” I whisper. I hadn’t been sure before, but there is no mistaking it now.
“Don’t all Fae?”
“I... yes. I suppose.”
I’ve heard all the stories of Lesser Fae harming people, curdling the milk, tangling the threads. I’ve heard many a tale about High Fae seducing humans and having babies with them, but this casual show of power? It hasn’t been present in any tale I’ve ever heard.
“This ring...” I try to ignore the fact that he just performed magic right in front of my eyes—as this isn’t a tale, this is reality and no matter how often you hear of incredible things happening it’s always quite different when it happens to you—and focus on what is solid and tangible. “It looks old.”
He pulls it off his finger and lifts it. The gemstone catches the dancing light from the flames, breaking it into rainbows. A flame appears in the center, as if it’s caught fire, too.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.
“I’ve worn it for as long as I can remember. It’s the only possible clue to the riddle of my identity. But it hasn’t helped me so far. Any idea what it might mean?”
“No. I’m sorry. The only thing I can say, having been raised in a palace...” I lick my dry lips. “This is the ring of an aristocrat. A very rich one. Then again... you are Fae, not human. Who knows what rings common folk wear in Faerie?”
“Not this kind, for sure,” he says darkly, scowling at the ring, and I don’t know what to say to that at all.