“One of the fair folk.”
“The faerie queen.”
“We shouldn’t be here, we shouldn’t look upon?—”
Gareth held up his fist.
The men went quiet, but he could feel their fear—that primal terror bred into every child raised on tales of the hollow hills, of mortals stolen by the fair folk, of bargains made and souls lost.Even his battle-hardened soldiers were crossing themselves, making signs against evil.
He didn’t believe in faeries. The Church taught they were demons in disguise, or at best, dangerous spirits to be avoided. His own experience taught him that the only monsters in the world were men.
And yet. The woman turned again, and lightning caught her face—pale, frightened, tears streaming down her cheeks to mix with the rain. Not the face of a demon or a spirit. The face of someone lost, terrified.
She was on his land. That made her his responsibility, no matter what she might be. Gareth stepped into the clearing.
The scream she let out would have done justice to a bean-sidhe. She stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet—another flash of lightning showed him dark shapes on the ground behind her, fallen branches perhaps—and landed hard on her backside in the mud.
“Stay away!” She scrambled back, hands raised as if to ward him off. “I don’t—I don’t have anything, I don’t know where I am, please?—”
He stopped. Looked down at himself.
Ah.
He was covered in blood. Fresh blood, some of it still wet enough to gleam. His sword was sheathed, but the violence of the past hour clung to him like a second skin. He knew his face showed nothing—three years of silence had taught him to reveal nothing—which meant he probably looked like death itself walking out of the storm.
Slowly, deliberately, he held up his empty hands. Palms out as he would to a wounded animal.
She stared at him, chest heaving. The strange wings on her back had twisted in her fall, one jutting at an angle that lookedpainful. Water streamed down her face, and her hair hung in heavy ropes around her shoulders.
“You’re not—” She swallowed. “Are you going to hurt me?”
He shook his head. Once, definitive.
“Do you—” She stopped. Started again. “Do you speak English?Parlez-vous français?”
A desperate edge crept into her voice. “I don’t know where I am. Somehow I got turned around from the manor. You don’t understand, I need to find the necklace I was wearing. I had a phone, I?—”
She was babbling. Fear and shock, he recognized the signs.
He took a single step forward.
She flinched but didn’t run.
Another step, then another. Moving as he would toward a spooked horse—slow, steady, no sudden movements. When he was close enough to touch her, he stopped and held out his hand.
She stared at it for a long moment. At his scarred knuckles, the calluses on his palm, the blood still flecked across his wrist. The rain was washing most of it away, pink rivulets running down his forearm.
“You’re not going to hurt me?” Her voice came out small. A child’s voice, despite the fact that she was clearly a grown woman.
He shook his head again.
“You promise?”
He didn’t smile—smiling felt like something from another life—but he inclined his head. As close to a solemn vow as he could offer without words.
She reached out and took his hand.
Her fingers were cold, trembling, delicate against his battle-worn grip. He pulled her gently towards him, steadying her when she swayed. Up close, she smelled of something unfamiliar—sweet, artificial, nothing like any soap or perfume he knew—and beneath that, simple fear-sweat.
