Something hard collided with my chest, knocking the air out of my lungs. My head slammed forward into the hard thing, my face bursting into pain, and the wrenching of my body felt unbearable—as I was lifted upward.
My foot hit something—a branch—that scraped agonizingly down my skin, but I wasalive.Relief flooded me.
Strong arms were wrapped around me. My face was pressed against a hard shoulder.
Fieran.
I looked up at him through dazed eyes. His face was a handsome blur, his eyes worried.
“You’re bleeding,” he said, and the two of us settled back to earth. His wings still stretched out to either side, fluttering protectively, as if they had a mind of their own.
My feet were on solid ground now. I inhaled a deep, shaky, desperate breath that gave away too much of how I felt.
“You’re all right,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
He gently encouraged me to sit down on a fallen log, then knelt before me, cataloguing my injuries. His hands were firm and careful—and gods, they did something to me even when he was just checking for broken bones.
“That was a rough stop in midair,” he told me, his hands probing my ribcage. Though he seemed totally intent on his work, his head bent, his handsome face in profile limned by moonlight, I was keenly aware of how close his hands were to my breasts. A rogue spiral of need raced through me, and I barely resisted the impulse to shift my torso, to guide those big hands to cup my breasts instead of checking so carefully for?—
“No breaks,” I told him quickly. “I think the worst of it is my face…where I collided with your shoulder.”
He looked up at my face, close enough that I could lean forward just an inch and kiss him. Except no—blood was still trickling from my nose, salty and coppery on my lips. I must look like a disaster.
“I’m sorry,” he told me, pulling a cloth from his pocket and blotting the blood away.
“Sorry?” My laugh was shaky. “You saved my life.”
“After you saved mine.”
“I have a feeling you would have been fine.” After all, he had survived how many monsters without a mortal at his side?
“You thought so quickly. Clever girl.” His lips quirked in a smile, his eyes twinkling gold even in the moonlight. “Reckless, but clever.”
I pulled a face. His evident admiration, mixed with the faintest scolding tone, made me feel a pulse of warmth—and that made me uncomfortable.
He guided my hand up to hold the cloth to my nose, trying to stem the last of the bleeding. At least it wasn’t too bad. Not like the time I’d accidentally kneed myself in the face trying to somersault into the lake when I was ten.
Then he returned to checking for wounds. His hand touched my bare shoulder, sending heat flaring through me and?—
My bare shoulder.
My clothes were torn.
“You’re scraped here,” he said. “The griffin got you?—”
“It’s nothing,” I said, grabbing the collar of my dress—or what remained of it—and trying to yank it up to cover the mark on my back.
“Griffins are not exactly clean,” he told me. “Their talons can carry?—”
“I’m fine,” I repeated, clutching every shred of fabric I could gather to pull it tight around my throat. But my shirt was torn, and it wasn’t helping.
“Try not to be stubborn.” His fingers brushed the nape of my neck, just above the mark, as he shifted behind me to see the wound.
I turned to try to shake him off, but he was quicker than I was.
“Fieran!” an unfamiliar voice called out.
I couldn’t be sure what passed over Fieran’s face, or what he saw in that split second before his expression smoothed into its usual stoic lines.
