His eyebrows rise, but he doesn’t comment. We’ve known each other too long for him to waste words on the obvious questions.
We part ways at my shelter. He goes into his, and I step into mine. The interior is dim, lit only by the faint silver glow of the walls. I’ve kept the furnishings sparse—a table, a chair, and a low platform spread with furs I conjured when we first raised the camp. Everything I need. Nothing I don’t.
I lay her down on the furs and crouch beside her. Her face is peaceful. The frown that creased her forehead has smoothed away, and in the silver light she looks almost?—
No. I pull back from that thought before it can form.
The wound on her arm is still bleeding. I could heal her. It would cost almost nothing, a thread of magic, a few minutes of focus.
I don’t.
Let her keep the wound. Let the scar form. It will remind her what her own people did to her. And it will remindmewhat she is. Human. A problem I created and now have to solve.
Straightening, I turn away, walking over to the chair and sitting down. She’ll wake soon. The magic is already thinning, her breathing growing less shallow, her eyelids twitching with the first stirrings of returning consciousness.
When she opens her eyes, she’ll find herself somewhere very different from the palace she fell asleep in.
TWENTY-FIVE
ALLERIA
The surfacebeneath my cheek is soft in a way my pillow isn’t. I move my head, rubbing my face against it, while I frown, trying to pull myself out of sleep.
I’m lying on fur.
My eyes snap open on the thought.
Why am I lying on fur?
“Welcome back.”
My heart slams into my throat. The voice came from somewhere to my left, or maybe behind me. I jerk upright, eyes darting around. This isn’t my room. This isn’t anywhere I recognize. I twist, scanning the space, eyes taking in the strange silver-white walls, searching for the voice.
Where is he?
My eyes sweep over the curved walls, the furs I’m sitting on, the strange sourceless light.
There!
Half-hidden by shadow, is a chair, and he’s sitting on it, watching me out of those gold eyes. So still he could be part of the darkness.
Cairn.
My stomach drops. Every muscle in my body locks, some deep animal part of me recognizing the predator before my mind fully catches up. He’s just sitting there, but the way he’s watching me … waiting … a hunter deciding whether to strike.
I scramble backward across the furs, putting distance between us. My breath comes too fast, my thoughts scattering.
I was in my chambers. I was in my bed. I remember lying down, closing my eyes?—
“How—” The word tears out of me. “I was in my room. I was?—”
“You were.” His head tilts slightly, a corner of his mouth curving up. “Now, you’re not.”
Someone took me from my bed. Someone brought me here while I slept … Whereishere? … I didn’t wake up. I didn’t feel anything.
My eyes dart back to him, and part of my brain notes how different he seems from when I last saw him. His features have sharpened, the bones more defined beneath golden skin. The dark marks I glimpsed at the stream are clear against his throat and the backs of his hands. His ears taper to a slight point, visible where he’s tucked hair behind one.
He looks exactly like what he is.
