I pause at that. Dommik rarely talks about himself, so it’s hard for me to imagine his life. Admittedly, I’ve never been very good at putting myself in other people’s shoes. “You did?”
He smirks my way. “We don’t all live in castles, Queenie.”
“I know that, it’s just…” I stop at the hole where the window used to be.
Dommik comes up beside me. “It’s jarring to see the view from someone else’s life?”
“Yes.” I nod before my gaze falls down to the corner of the window space. There are little grooves sliced into it. Perhaps they were caused by time. Or perhaps many, many years ago, someone dragged down these marks into the stone with purposeful scrapes.
It’s strange to think of someone else once living here, of having a full life, while I now stand in their echoes.
Lifting my hand, I bring my magic up, creating a thin sheet of ice within the window cut-out until it looks just like a pane of glass.
Dommik raps his knuckle against it lightly. “Very nice.”
Then I turn, both hands pressing against the stone, and I make more ice spread up. Slowly fixing the parts of the home that have crumbled and fallen away. I encase us, even making an arcing ceiling above that closes out the flakes of snow, though I leave a small doorway open for us to slip out of.
Dommik glances around, and now that the walls are all closed up, it makes the space seem even smaller than before. Yet there’s a feeling about this place—it’s calming. There’s something about it that makes me wish to stay a bit longer.
Just then, my stomach growls loudly. I place a hand on my middle as mortified warmth spreads across my cheeks.
Dommik grins over at me. “That must be the dinner bell.”
I scowl at him as he reaches up and undoes the clasp of his cape. “What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, he shakes it out and turns it over, and then lays it upon the snow. “Sit.”
Keeping still, I watch as he then takes a satchel from his belt and starts pulling out food and placing it on the cloak. He unwraps a piece of bread, cheeses, meats, strange fruits I’ve never seen before, and even a teardrop-shaped bottle that appears to be a deep red wine.
Dommik sits down on one corner of the cloak and then gestures to the other side, waiting. I hesitate for a moment longer and then sit down across from him, tucking my legs beneath me. The snow we sit on is surprisingly soft and pillowed, like it drifted in to help cushion our bodies. And since Dommik’s cloak is lined with leather, it’s not soaking through.
I glance down, watching Dommik as he starts to tear off pieces of everything with meticulous neatness. Bread first, thena bit of cheese and a slice of salted meat, all stacked on top of each other. He hands it to me first, and I take it, realizing that I can actually smell the food instead of gruesome death.
“The stench. It’s not spread over this way.”
He only nods, and I realize that’s why he brought us out here. As soon as he knew the smell was bothering me, he got me away from it.
Something softens in my chest as I watch him break off the same bits of food until he has his own stack. Then he raises it to me, waiting. Only when I lift it to my lips does he mimic the movement, both of us watching each other as we start to eat.
Surprisingly, the flavor of the food is delicious, the meat rich and the cheese perfectly creamy. Even the bread isn’t a hardened chunk of stale wheat. This is actually still tender, as if it was freshly baked.
“Say what you will about the fae, but their food is fucking good,” Dommik says around a mouthful.
Amusement fills me, because he’s right. I realize now, away from the burning corpses, that I’m too famished to be prideful about not wanting to eat their food. Plus, it really is delicious.
The two of us have another stack, and then he peels open the purple and red fruits, revealing squishy pods inside that burst with sweet flavor. We finish those off too, licking the syrup from our fingers. Then Dommik yanks out the cork of the bottle with his teeth and takes a swig. I watch his throat bob as he drinks, face warming when he catches me staring.
He only smirks and passes it over, and I lift it slightly, giving it a sip.
“Not like that, Queenie,” he chastises. “Give it a good swig. Like you mean it. Like you’re out here at the edge of the world and you can say, ‘Fuck it. I’m going to gulp down this fairy wine and hope it warms me up or gets me drunk—or both.’”
My lips curl, but then I do just that, lifting the bottle high up, letting the liquid start pouring down. I take a big swallow, then another before I pass it back to him with a cough that makes him grin.
“How did that feel?” he asks.
The airy heat dissipates from my throat enough for me to answer. “Surprisingly, rather good.”
“Good.”
