“Oh, thank the gods, at least you have aloe.” He grabbed the bottle full of clear gel and then eyed the bundle of dried eucalyptus hanging beside the mirror. “Guess this’ll have to do.”
Piper sniffled, wariness to her voice. “You’re not using your thauma-thingy to find the right stuff.”
“Doesn’t matter—magic is seventy-eight percent intention, as a Rule, and my mother always says…ah, see?” He showed her the sludge he’d made by squashing the two ingredients together, and even he had to admit it didn’t look helpful.
“What if that makes it worse?”
“Piper, I am an elf—preserving the longevity of life is what wedo, and that includes healing human bumps and bruises. It’s not like you’ve got a broken wing or anything, I’m just trying to reduce inflammation and take away the pain.”
“There’s ibuprofen in the cabinet that does the same thing.”
“Well, you can have that too if you want, but would you please let me smear my goop on your face?”
Her nose had gotten much redder, and her entire face followed suit. “Okay, yes, fine.”
Kol was even more careful than with the stymphalian goose—Piper may not have had fangs or a cloaca capable of shooting out fire, but he knew hurting her would be much more consequential. Her eyes crossed, watching his hands as they cupped her nose, the puffiness rimming them lit up by the glow from his palms.
Tender, irritated flesh calmed under his hands, not because he had the right ingredients, and not because he was anything like an expert healer, but solely because he willed it to. Piper was holding her breath, he could tell, but her posture had softened, and when her dark eyes lifted to look up from under her lashes, they were again glassy.
“Am I hurting you?” he murmured, easing off.
“No,” she whispered, and then, “Don’t stop. It’s getting better.”
So Kol didn’t stop, and he would have kept touching her if he thought she would have let him—and if his hands weren’t so sticky. But he had done all he could, and when he pulled away, her skin was shiny with aloe and dotted with crusty bits of eucalyptus, but it wasn’t swollen, and it was no pinker than if he had told her how pretty she’d looked laughing out in the snow. With a satisfied nod, he turned to the sink, collected the bloody tissues for the trash, and started to wash his hands.
“What does your mom always say?” Piper asked quietly as she touched the tip of her nose. “About magic?”
Kol balked at his reflection.Oh, you idiot, you can’t just tell her. But he could, actually, because the lyrical language of the elucidai came out of his mouth in response.
Piper was staring at him, he could feel it, and he turned up the hot water as a distraction. “What does that mean?” she finally asked.
“There really isn’t a translation for it.” Which was true, in a way, since the Elvish language was so old. The closest meaning,Love and intention must both come with action or neither matter, was far too much for Kol to say, so instead he just shoved a washcloth under the warm water and grinned at her. “Now, let’s get that junk off your face.”
11
Pipers Piping
Don’t come in!”
Kol halted just outside Piper’s bedroom, doorknob in hand. She’d been out of the shower for a while, but the thought of her still standing there, naked and wet, filled up his mind and made his fist on the knob tighten.
She’d recovered from the rock to the face, though whether it was due to his enchanted help or her own unbreakable will, he didn’t know, and by that evening she was serving dinner and running up and down the stairs to launder and dry everyone else’s clothes. At least Uncle Russ had been convinced to send his kids out to shovel the driveway, though it wasn’t anywhere near enough of a punishment in Kol’s opinion.
Piper’s voice allowing him entry cut through another vengeful, plant-based fantasy, and he steeled himself before finally opening the door. Shopping bags, wrapping paper, three kinds of tape, and a whole nether of a lot ofthingswere strewn all over her bedroom, and worst of all, she wasn’t even a little naked. Piper sat on the ground in the middle of the present paraphernalia with a pair of glinting scissors in hand. “Shut the door behind you,” she said and snipped through a length of red ribbon.
He did, but only because the cartoon reindeer patterned all over her pajama pants made her slightly less intimidating. “You know, I’m surprised,” he said. “I would have guessed you’re the kind of person who finishes her Christmas shopping in June, and yet—all this.”
“Oh, no, I do.” Piper flipped up the edge of the duvet and pointed to a number of wrapped boxes under the bed. “This is mostly everyone else’s stuff.”
Kol maneuvered around bows and ribbons strategically organized by color and size. “But what about all that shopping we did?”
Piper pushed up onto her knees and stretched to retrieve a neon-colored squirt gun, the length of her body going taut and t-shirt rising up to reveal a sliver of stomach. “This is Uncle Russ’s stuff for his kids. He says he’s a terrible wrapper, which he is, so I do it for him.”
Kol had tipped his head, sitting across from her to take advantage of the view, but his thoughts of dipping his tongue into her bellybutton were chased away by the mention of the children who hurt her. “You’re still doing that for those little fuckers?”
“Yes, of course, because I’mnota Scrooge.” She rolled out more paper and measured how much she would need with the meticulousness of an elf, but she was grinning in her very human way, and when she began to snip with the scissors, her eyes lit up. Strange as it was, she actually did seem to be enjoying herself.
“And which one of your assailants is getting this stuffed kao?”
