“What happened?” I asked, keen to divert him before he noticed my delight.
A darkness came over him. “We found Marin,” he said grimly. “More stone than man.” He drew a sharp breath through his teeth as he shifted his weight.
“You are hurt.”
“I’d prefer to call itslightly inconvenienced.”
“I’d prefer if you sat down and let me take care of you,” I snapped.
I had little patience tonight for his lightheartedness. Adrik led me without argument back to the reading room, undeterred by the maze of winding stairs and shifting doors that led nowhere.
“Sit,” I ordered as soon as we’d entered.
“I will be fine,” he insisted. “I am half of a faerie, remember?”
But he sank with a quiet groan onto the settee and watched through soft, tired eyes as I searched aimlessly for something to ease his pain. In the drawer of a polished redwood desk, I found a roll of bandages and a pouch of tinctures.
“Put your leg up on the stool,” I ordered.
Adrik complied, surprisingly, without question. Voice low with amusement, he said, “I have, it seems, a weakness for your bossiness.”
“Good,” I said, a little breathless. “You will hear much of it tonight.”
“Do not torment me too much.”
I shivered under his teasing gaze while I inspected the tear in his breeches, the deep cut carved into the sun-kissed skin of his thigh. “You need stitches.”
I was well-practiced in closing smaller wounds—I’d often returned to my mountain shelter with one or the other lesion from trapping—but I was nervous and I trembled and I made a mess of the task. Adrik did not complain. He only watched me softly, as if I were doing him a great kindness. I realized only when I set the needle aside that my efforts had been quite senseless. The wound had turned into a faint silvery line, marredonly by my untidy stitches. Half of a faerie, indeed. I traced, a little absentmindedly, the smooth skin beside the cut—silken and hot as coals beneath my freezing fingers.
Adrik caught my hand. “What did I say about tormenting me, Ana?”
“I made no promises.” His soft laugh swept over my cheek like the shadow of a kiss. I said, just to fill the tension, “Your servant said he’d gather a meal for you.”
At that, Adrik lifted a brow. “I have no servant.”
A chill, frigid as a riverwave, slithered over my spine. “Old man, red cloak?” I tried to sound unworried, but fear bled into my voice.
He shook his head. A draft swept through the window, and the door sprung open. He was there, the servant who was not a servant, two steaming bowls in hand, a smile carved onto his thin lips. Adrik’s hand jerked for a heartbeat to his sword. Then recognition eased his frown, and he echoed the man’s smile.
“Dinner, my king,” said the servant who was not a servant with a bow.
“Thank you, Malek,” said Adrik.
The man set the bowls on a low table before he hastened out the door. He seemed well-acquainted with the place, for he had no trouble navigating the room despite his blindness.
I said, once his scuttling steps had faded, “I thought you had no servant.”
“Ah,” said Adrik. “That was just Malek. He has always been here.”
I passed him one of the bowls and a spoon and busied myself with pulling at a loose thread of my blouse while he contemplated me curiously over the rim of the bowl. “You waited for me. It is not often I return from these searches to warmth.”
“You should,” I said sharply. “If you received only half as much as you give, you’d never suffer a moment of cold.”
A flush came over him, as if kissed by dawn. His lips parted, but he said nothing and gave me only a sleepy smile. He looked so human, so breakable in spite of his strength. “You need rest, Adrik.” I’d meant for it to be a reprimand, but it came out a little frightened.
Adrik sighed. “There is much to do—”
“Ah, of course,” I snapped, “there is a foal waiting to be birthed, and Sai needs his doorstep shoveled, and perhaps Ada has need of another nightingale, or is it a gold-specked hummingbird this time?”
