“I went through the drive-thru,” she said. “I used to love drive-thrus. We’re from a world where you almost always have to dress for dinner, and just a couple miles away, people didn’t even have to get out of their cars.”
“Imagine tagging along on a fugitive hunt,” he said quietly. “That’s usually nothing but fast food. You could go to all the drive-thrus you wanted.”
Iris didn’t seem to hear him. Of course she didn’t: she was lost in some of her most painful memories.
Keith gave up on trying to distract her with any lighthearted comments, and he just stuck to holding her hand.
She spoke like somebody in a dream:
“I got a chocolate ice cream cone. I started driving home. And I got close to the barrier, where you start to feel the magic in the air, and I thought,What if I just keep driving? What if I don’t make the turn? If I were human, I wouldn’t even know there was a road here to take.But I’m not human. And it’s home. So I made the turn after all. But I think I waited too long, so I cut the corner too sharply, because the truck—”
She hid her face against his shoulder, and he let go of her hand only so he could put his arm around her and hold her while her shoulders jerked. He had no idea what else to do.
Somehow, just holding her was enough. Somehow, he was enough.
Iris’s rough sobs quieted down, and she pulled back to look at him. He kept his warm where it was, and she didn’t shrug it off.
“It was terrifying,” she said simply. “I guess I hit the barrier wrong, and I think it ... it was like it didn’t recognize my truck because I wasn’t meeting it head-on the way I was supposed to. I think that’s what it was, but for a long time afterwards, I thought it was that everything here just knew I didn’t belong. Like the magic itself had decided not to let me in.”
She wiped at her eyes.
“I don’t remember all that much about the actual crash, thankfully. Just weird little details. My ice cream flew off its cone, and I could see a big blob of it on the dashboard. I’d crushed the cone in my hand. And I thought,This is really sticky, but when I looked down, I saw that mostly I was all sticky because I was covered in blood.”
She shuddered.
More than anything, Keith wished he could somehow go back to those awful moments. Even if the universe didn’t let him prevent the crash itself, maybe it would let him keep her company, just so she wasn’t alone in the truck, confused and scared and soaked in blood.
“And then I woke up in the hospital.”
“In Polis?”
“No, here. They were able to get me past the barrier before anyone outside could see the wreck.”
Thank God. For all the village’s faults, a human hospital would have been worse. They tended to be trouble for shifters, who healed much faster than humans.
“It was bad,” Iris said. “Broken bones, a concussion, some internal bleeding. But in the end, the big stuff healed. My face didn’t, not all the way. Too many delicate nerve endings. But I’m sure Lady Marianne told you about that.”
Keith frowned. “No. Why would she?”
Incredulity wiped out all the pain in Iris’s eyes. “She didn’t tell you about my faceat all? Didn’t they let you knowanythingabout me? I always thought they sent a file.”
“No file, just your portrait.”
She shuddered. “Yeah, they took that just last week. I hate it. I look somean.”
“I thought you were beautiful.”
She stared at him. “Marianne really didn’t tell you anything about me,” she said slowly. “She didn’t give you a heads-up. But you’ve never even asked.”
“Asked about where your scars came from? That seems kind of rude.”
“No, about—”
She was, if possible, getting even more incredulous. He didn’t know why, but if it was taking her mind off having to relive the crash, it was probably a good thing.
“I can’t smile anymore,” Iris said finally. “It’s some problem with the nerve endings. At first I had a big problem talking, too, but speech therapy really helped with that. Now you can’t tell unless I’m tired, and then I get sort of mush-mouthed. But there’s no way around the smiling thing. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you that. This whole time, you must have just been thinking I was so rude, or sour, or—”
“No!” Keith said, horrified at this. “No, I didn’t think anything like that.”
