He saw the conflict on my face and released my button to place his fingers on my elbow and turn me toward him, gazing down at me in the morning light. “Your preferences have value,” he told me. “The things we love make us who we are. You are allowed to want things. Ask for whatever you want, and I will do my best to provide it for you.”
I heard the words he said. They made sense as verbal sentences. I still didn’t understand. “But why? Preferences just make us picky,” I said with a frown, repeating the words that my father had recited to me every time I complained about anything throughout my childhood. He had no time or patience for whining from multiple children and no desire to be embarrassed in front of courtiers by childish complaints. Unless you wanted to be the subject of gossip for every noblewoman with nothing better to do, you ate what Cook gave you with a smile on your face and wore what your maids dressed you in with confidence and grace.
“And you’re allowed to be picky,” he said, as if it were completely obvious and of no consequence. He lifted his hand to press his fingertip to the crease between my eyebrows, smoothing it out with a gentle motion, and more than my forehead relaxed at his touch. “You have been taken from your culture, your language, your land, and your people. Everything here is new and different. If you were to separate from your body, the things here from this land are not what your soul would show me in the memories that made you happy or brought you joy.” His eyes were piercing, and he spoke with emphasis that showed the importance he placed on his words. “Our preferences are things that make us happy, and your happiness matters to me.”
I stared at him in silence as there was no chance of me finding proper words to speak in that moment, so I simply nodded and then wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face against his chest. His body stiffened but eventually he brought his arms around my back as he had last night.
“Does the tailor have a shop?” I asked into his shirt when he finally relaxed.
“I would assume so,” he answered hesitantly.
“Could we go there instead?”
He didn’t answer, but when I tried to pull back to look at his face, his muscles tightened again, and he slid his hands down my shoulders to hold me closer instead.
“Is that not allowed?” I asked with a sinking stomach. He’d just told me to ask for whatever I wanted, but maybe this wasn’t what he’d meant. Maybe there were rules about what that could include.
I felt his neck recoil as if he’d been struck and he released me enough to pull back and look down at me. “Of course it’sallowed,” he said, sounding slightly offended.
“Then why didn’t you answer me?” I asked, not liking the uncertainty I felt when he didn’t respond. I pulled my wings tight against my back and stepped back to cross my arms.
He released me with reluctance. “I was thinking.”
The pink that bloomed on his cheekbones was the only thing that kept me from feeling as perturbed as I might have been normally. That and the fact that the shocking blue of his eyes made it hard to think straight. And the fact that he had seemed to enjoy hugging me. He was hard to be frustrated with.
He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Butyes, if that’s what you want, of course we can visit the outpost.”
My mouth pulled down to match the concerned frown he wore. “What’s wrong with the outpost?” I asked, wondering what he knew that I didn’t.
He studied my face, a look of apprehension creeping across his features before he closed his eyes for a beat and opened them, his expression once again impassive and calm. “You won’t be truly immortal for several more years,” he explained gently. “It makes me…nervous”—he said the word hesitantly, as if trying it on for size—“to have you outside the safety of the keep. However, I have no desire to own a caged bird, so we will visit the outpost.”
“Is it so dangerous here?” It was difficult to judge for myself what kind of risk we would be taking, as I had never visited the Boundlands before and knew little of the people. TheVeardurwere the fiercest warriors in Faery, so much so that we counted ourselves lucky that they found mortal politics beneath them and refused to fight in our wars, so his concern made me nervous.
Victor’s eyebrow quirked in what I was beginning to recognize as a tell for his amusement. “As a collector of the dead, I’ll admit my perception of mortal risk is probably skewed. I’ll keep you safe.”
I searched his face for any sign he was displeased with my request, and eventually nodded when I found none.
Just a short time later we were together on the back of a horse made of shadows, riding through the snow outside the keep. The horse—or wraith, as I reminded myself, no matter how real it felt to the touch—was vaguely familiar to me as the mount we’d ridden out of the Dawn Palace. My memories of that night were fuzzy at best. Victor had offered to create my own mount for me, but I didn’t trust my control of a creature made of magic, so he had me seated between his thighs with his chest pressed to my back. I was grateful I had regained enough magic to put my wings away and maintain my fae form, because I could feel his warmth even through my cloak like this, and I smiled, remembering his timid kiss last night. His fists rested on his thighs while loosely gripping the reins, but every time the horse shifted, he raised his arms enough to ensure I wasn’t jostled. This horse was huge, much larger than the irin we rode back in Faery, and its long strides carried us quickly along the winding path into Bhalden’s Post. Victor explained as we rode that, while it was a relatively small outpost, it contained plenty of traders due to its location near the mountain pass. His deep voice just behind my ear as he stooped close enough to be heard made my heart race even more than the knowledge that I was riding a wraith.
The chilled air bit at my cheeks, but he’d bundled me so thoroughly that I was otherwise comfortable nestled in front of him, and the views of the surrounding mountains—Dragon’s Teeth, he’d called them—were as breathtaking as they were foreboding. The mountains I’d known from home were merely rolling hills compared to these stark peaks and rocky drop-offs. There was something beautiful in the icy, jagged rock here, but maybe that was just my excitement about being able to get out of the keep and explore somewhere new.
The outpost wasn’t terribly far. It was a little village made up of small stone or wood buildings that was sheltered by its location between the sheer rock faces of the surrounding ridge. There were multiple blacksmiths with three-sided buildings open to the elements, fitting shoes to stout-looking donkeys with loud clanging strikes or hammering away at their metal tools. Boot repair shops and leather smiths dotted the line of buildings as well, and there was a butcher who had frozen cuts of meat hanging from the front of his store. Other than the blacksmiths we didn’t see many merchants, making it the quietest merchant row I’d ever seen. Not a single person called out to the few people passing by us in the road. Most of the stores didn’t even have signs. You were just expected to know where to go, I supposed.
Our black horse approached a wooden building with a small square sign painted only with the image of a needle and thread, coming to a stop in front of the wide wooden porch. “Are you ready?” Victor asked. He wrapped his arms around me protectively and then my legs were suddenly dangling in midair as the horse disappeared and he stepped to the ground in a single fluid movement. He climbed the step to the porch before setting me on my feet, then tapped the snow off of his boots. As he pushed open the front door, he asked someone inside if this was the tailor’s shop Master Blunthorn had recommended. He drew me under his arm as he engaged in a rapid-fire conversation with a man whose voice sounded like tectonic plates moving, but I only caught Victor’s words. I had no chance of understanding the man’s responses with as deep as his voice was and the way he ran his words together so that there weren’t any breaks in between them. He must have given the answer Victor was looking for, because he led me inside and then stood over me while conversing with the dwarvish man for several more moments.
I had no experience with dwarves other than the few glimpses I’d caught of the ones who ran the keep. This man was only as tall as me but four times as thick, and he looked like he’d been built of pure muscle. He wore fine, heavy robes that looked well-made, and his coarse, dark hair was pulled back into a single braid that was thicker than my upper arm. His dense beard covered skin that was a deep bronze color with a distinct reddish cast. Behind him were bolts of fabric crammed into every possible inch of shelving that covered the entire wall, floor to ceiling. Most of the options were muted colors, and there were lots of grays and browns, but I did see a light yellow and a pretty bird’s egg blue peeking out of the stacks.
Victor stayed close, standing directly behind me to the point that one might have said he was hovering. I tried to pay attention, because he was asking questions about production times and fabric types, but it was all very overwhelming. Besides, I wasn’t used to having any input on my outfits, anyway. The man held up several garments for me and tried to talk to me about cuts and colors, but even though I was nearly positive he was speaking Common Tongue, I couldn’t understand a word of it. I looked up at Victor with wide eyes and wanted to melt into the floor in embarrassment.
His hand squeezed my shoulder in a reassuring way, and he tilted his head toward the tailor as he spoke to me. “He wants to know if you have a specific style you want or a cut you prefer. Do you have specific clothes that you find the most comfortable?”
I started to shake my head but then stopped myself. “Tight sleeves. Fitted top. Something I can move in on the bottom?”
The dwarvish man rattled off a few sentences, and Victor agreed to whatever he said. “Do you have any brighter colors?” Victor asked him, making me glance up at him in surprise.
The man disappeared into a room at the back of the shop and came out followed by a woman smaller than him, both carrying bolts of cloth in a rainbow of hues. He waved me forward as they laid them out across his wide countertop and Victor told me, “He’s saying you should touch them.”
I stepped forward cautiously to feel the ones he gestured to and marveled at how soft some of the fabrics were. The girl who had joined him passed me another sample, and she had the most cheerful smile I think I’d ever seen as she handed it to me. She was much younger than the man, and her hair was frizzy instead of coarse, but she kept it plaited in a braid as well and shared the same reddish undertones in her skin. She tried to show me her own dress, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying other than her gestures at seams or the neckline, and Victor was busy talking to the tailor.Maybe coming here wasn’t the best idea,I thought, crestfallen.But the girl was undeterred and started speaking more slowly and trying to enunciate using single words which I could finally understand with her accent. She pulled out bolt after bolt of fabric for my inspection, always with a pleasant expression and an encouraging nod when I touched them. Her friendly disposition made me feel like she wasn’t judging me, and that she was having fun with the challenge of figuring out what I liked.
