“I’m fine.”
“Njáll…”
“I am.” I don’t like that he’s here, but strangely, I feel better for it. Magic or not, he’s good with a plan and he might know a better way of dealing with these fae and getting away.
“No, you’re not,” Reijo says. “They’re trying to get him to feed from us.”
Maurice growls. His hands move up my arm, shove it aside, and then travel down my side. I wince when he presses on my ribs. They’re not broken anymore, but the dull pain tells me they’re still cracked.
“What happened?” Maurice demands. He feels across my chest, finding more cracked ribs on the other side. I didn’t fall well; stupidly, I hadn’t been expecting it.
“Augustine shoved me down the stairs.”
“He washere?”
“Yes, he… Do you know where he is now?”
“With the hunters.” Maurice’s hands move down to my hip, and there’s a dull ache there, too, but nothing is broken. He’s warm, even through my shirt. “He’s going to get his challenge, I think.”
I sigh. It’s hardly surprising, but with all I know now, I want Deacon to be unreasonable and put up more of a fight. “What happened to you?” I ask.
Maurice doesn’t ask me to clarify, though I think he’s leaving a lot out when he shrugs and says, “The Huntsman took back what’s his.”
“Why?”
He tips his head back against the exposed brick wall. Reijo peers around at him, interested despite himself. I imagine all the fae are.
“Who’s running things here?” Maurice asks, but I shake my head.
“Tell me what happened.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Maurice…”
“It doesn’t matter!” His eyes are wild, chest heaving with the effort of his breaths. He hasn’t moved his hands away, but I reach for him all the same, soothing over his shoulders and down his arms.
If these fae didn’t know before that there’s something between us, then they definitely know now.
I cup the side of his neck gently and he exhales a heavy breath. I’ve never seen him vulnerable like this, and it’s hardly the best place for it; nevertheless, there is a thrill in my stomach that he is sharing this with me. “Maurice,” I murmur, “tell me.”
“I searched for you yesterday,” he says, then, more earnestly, “as soon as I found out you were gone. I wasn’t… I wasn’t thinking straight. I didn’t know where to start. So I didn’t find you.”
“And the Huntsman?”
“When I got back to the base, he was there. He’d warned me to stay away from you already, after—” A flush darkens his cheeks; his eyes skitter away. “He warned me. I knew what the consequences would be. It’s all right.”
It isn’t all right. I can’t see a mark on him, and his clothes don’t bear evidence of the fae who captured him having hurt him, but he’s holding himself stiffly all the same.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” I ask.
He presses his lips into a thin line, eyes darting around at the fae shamelessly watching us, and doesn’t nod.
“Some high fae has us here,” I say because he needs to know the truth. “Meilyr. From the Unseelie queen’s court. He wants to stake a claim here before other powerful fae make it through.”
“Fuck.” Maurice hisses. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Do you know who he is?”
