I turned away and batted at his hand. “I feel nothing,” I lied. My heart raced as warmth continued to spread down to the tips of my toes which I curled.
“Nothing?” The Elf King’s hand stilled. “Are you sure, Little Baker?”
“Nothing.” I turned my gaze back to his and attempted to shoot my most fearsome scowl.
“But do you still feel the pain in your leg?”
“The what—?” I breathed, too afraid to move. Too afraid to break this strange connection with the Elf King.
“My distraction.” The king pulled back his hand, leaving a cool chill in its wake as a wicked smile slid across his face. “Is working.”
“Yourdistraction?” I folded my arms across my chest, heat blazing up from my neck and spreading across my cheeks. “I was not distracted for one second.”
The Elf King smiled, a rare side smile, yet his eyes continued to search mine, his eyebrows knit in concentration. He opened his mouth as if to say something else. I waited, barely breathing. Warmth spread throughout my kitchen as the stars winked outside the window in slow orbits. I stared into the golden eyes of the king with a resolutionnotto get lost in their beauty. Though his face held a certain softness, one that I didn’t think possible. As if the white ice of his exterior held a molten core. One of warmth and tenderness, if only I could crack through. I hated him, and yet—he’d saved my life. I felt a shift in my heart. A softening.
The Elf King worked his mouth, then cleared his throat and pulled back his gaze. It was as if I’d been doused with a bucketof ice water, to be without his gaze, as if that magic tether had snapped.
He held the cloth of his shirt firmly to my throbbing wound. “I must get help.”
Finding my voice again and wanting the king to tarry, I asked, “What was that creature?”
The Elf King pulled in a sharp breath and closed his eyes. “It is a monster. It comes from the shadows. It has been a curse on these lands and,”—he swallowed, mouth twisting as if swallowing down a particularly nasty draught— “I must call the healer and hunt down the beast. Hold this here until I return.”
The king fled from the small cottage without a second glance, but I glimpsed his bare back as he ran. Four long scratches marred his shoulder, fresh and bleeding freely. But they were not the only scars. His back held several other scars from previous fights with the shadow beast. Long etches, and short, violent stabs of claw and teeth marred his body.
This was not the first time the Elf King had fought this foe. He may have won this battle, but if these scars were any indicator, he might not win this war.
12
THE CURSE
Stars sparkled outside the windows of the cottage as I fitfully dozed by the fire. I pressed the king’s shirt to my wound, but my eyes threatened to close, pulling me down into a painful, yet drowsy oblivion.
Rafia burst through the front doors of my cottage, followed swiftly by the potion master and gardener, Jel. He wore strange glasses and carried a stack of notebooks and the black bag of a healer.
Potion master, gardener and healer?
“Oh, you poor dear!” Rafia bustled up to me. She carried a stack of warm blankets and a pillow, which she shoved beneath my head. “I should have been here. I should have?—”
“No, no, Rafia.” I didn’t want Rafia to blame herself. “There was nothing any of us could have done. It just got a good slice at my leg.”
One glance at the blood soaking through the king’s once-fine shirt caused my stomach to drop.
Jel murmured something underneath his breath and knelt down to where my leg lay out on the couch. “Yarrow and witchhazel, tobacco, and my own special blend will take care of this in no time. Let’s get a closer look.”
Jel peeled back the king’s blood-crusted shirt and pulled in a sharp breath. We all did. The four cuts were puffy, red and inflamed. But beyond that, black lines twisted and fractured from the wounds as if my leg were made of fine porcelain and was starting to crack.
“What is that?” I breathed. The black lines looked familiar somehow.
“It is… the blight.” The Elf King had slipped in through the front door and now stood over the back of the couch I sat in. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and his breathing was labored.
He inspected my wound with thinly veiled loathing. “So, it can spread to humans.”
He said it as if I were no more than a scientific oddity to study, with all the warmth of his earlierdistractionforgotten.
“The blight?” I asked, my throat closing up. Now I remembered where I’d seen these strange patterns before. My infection looked just like the blackness on the egg Jel had been studying a few days earlier. “What’s happening to me?”
“You’ve been infected by a shade monster,” Jel answered, rubbing at his temples. “The monsters have been plaguing our lands for centuries.”
