“Try again.”
“Like an autumn forest.”
He hummed softly. “You can do better than that.”
I glared at him. Now it was I who was under duress. In my mind I’d seen a moonlit meadow, heard a breathless whisper, felt a phantom brush of lips against mine. With a sweet smile I leaned close, stifling a shiver as Adrik’s breath swept over me. He smelled of fresh snow, of wood, and of peaches.
I sniffed and said, in my haughtiest voice, “It smells of conceit and a touch of presumption." I retreated quickly, half-proud and half-stunned by my own daring. He was half of a wicked faerie, after all. I’d become foolish and careless in his presence, mellowed by warm hours spent together.
Adrik laughed softly. “Is that so?” he murmured. “Tell me more, Evana. What else have you noticed so keenly about me?” I kept my lips sealed. His whispered laugh tickled my neck. “Or does it perhaps smell like a lover’s kiss beneath an autumn moon?”
For one fluttering heartbeat, I entertained the ludicrous idea of kissing him just to silence his teasing. Just to put his maddening lips to better use. I came quickly back to my senses when Lorell shuffled down the stairs. He grumbled thanklessly when Adrik offered him a slice of fresh bread.
“I see there is no need to make my way down to the baker this morning.”
He busied himself at the back of the workshop with a basket of dried herbs, working nimbly with fingers scarred from handling burners and boiling brews. While Adrik focused on calming the brew I’d so viciously upset, I flipped through the tome he’d given me and began, with fine pencil strokes, to add details.
“Thank you,” said Adrik when he next looked up from the cauldron.
“You saved my life,” I said with a soft laugh. “I will draw whatever you ask of me if it makes you glad.”
His grin chased a flush over my cheeks. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
We sat, that final storm day, for many hours in companionable silence, absorbed in our tasks. Here, amid simmering potions and ancient tomes, I felt a little like I belonged. It was a thought as venomous as a wildwood spider—I trampled it fiercely before it sank its fangs into me and spilled hopeless, lethal longings into my blood. It kept crawling back.
The thought of what I’d have to do that night to secure Adrik's secret made me nauseous with dread. I was not keen to meet the silver spirit again. It had often fled my mind, in the warm hours beside the hearth, the favor and the spirit. I’d even considered asking for Adrik’s help without a bargain. Foolish, to have become so soft and uncautious.
I was trembling from distress when Adrik announced that the weather called for a hearty stew. Neither Lorell nor I objected. Though we tried our best not to fuel Adrik’s arrogance, we had not the heart to pretend he was not an excellent cook. When I swayed on the steps, Adrik plucked me off my feet and carried me, with an amused glance at my outrage, to the parlor.
“There is no shame in needing help, you know?”
“No shame perhaps, but it is a reminder that I’m trapped here.”
He tensed and set me down quickly. “Right.”
I wished for a moment to lighten what I’d said, but was it not the truth? I was trapped, hopelessly, and every moment of warmth was no more than a dream that would fade come spring. I was living a lie—a child playing pretend.
“Here,” Adrik said with a cracked smile and handed me a vial of the horrid honey-like potion. “I made this for you. I know it tastes like the candied oranges you hate. I added heartflower extract to make it go down easier.”
A broken sound came from my throat—something that should have been a whisper of gratitude, a smile of appreciation. It tasted bitter and foul. I frowned at Adrik’s sun-tanned hand, at the long fingers wrapped around the vial.
“Why are you doing this? Why do you waste your time with me when you have much else to do?”
A sharp breath. “I care.”
“I know,” I said bitterly. “You care about everyone and everything.”
“You say it like it is a flaw.”
“I have no use for it.” A vicious thing that stung as it slipped out. Adrik’s face darkened, and I… I burned with despair and allowed the poison to spill. “I have no use for your tales. I have no use for your kindness or for your time.”
Without a bargain, I'd be gone with the thaw. In this life, I could not afford ever to have something to lose. Ever to falter again under the weight of the knife against my ribs when the hounds came.
“Then why do you come alive when I speak? If you have no use for these tales, why do you sit for hours listening with such heart and such spirit?” His voice was rough with anger. It simmered in the space between us, that anger, burning whatever sliver of sense I’d retained. I made to speak again, poison-lipped, but Adrik was quicker. “I know, Evana,” he said with that soft, lilting voice of a faerie. I shuddered with something primal, something between terror and intrigue—like a deer pricking its ear at the snap of a twig. “I know well that those who only listen have either little to say or much to hide. I know now that you have much to say. So, what are you hiding?”
His eyes gleamed with greed, with the horrible, heartless hunger of a hunter. I was his prey. A cornered beast with nothing left to lose. So, I bit.
“You’d know all about hiding, no? Do you not cower behind your tales? Are you not just as scared to reveal something real? These tales are delusions. You’remadto believe them.” Oh, but how the words burned me. “You’remad.”
