“I know he was here.” Charlotte’s voice shook. “His tools are here.”
“He was here.”
“Then where is he now?”
“I left him.” The beast dropped his head into his paw-like hands with a low moan. “Oh, God. I left him.”
Charlotte perched in the other armchair. Elspeth stood over her like a bodyguard. Calyx wrapped one tendril around Charlotte’s arm, reached for the beast with another.
“Left himwhere?”
The beast dragged his hands through his hair, leaving it bedraggled. Calyx unwound itself from Charlotte to drape over his shoulders.
“In the forest. Alone.”
They seemed in danger of getting no more from him, for he dropped his head in his hands again, his breathing quick and harsh in a way familiar to Charlotte. To her astonishment, she realized he was in the grips of a panic attack.
He was a beast, and he’d seen Arthur—but Charlotte was a healer before she was anything.
She bit her lip, touched the beast’s arm.
“Lottie,” Elspeth said sharply, but Charlotte said, “It’s all right.”
To the beast, she said, “Breathe with me.”
He raised his face to hers. It was alarming: the fangs, the cervine ears on a face both canine and corvid, the human eyes at odds with all his animal features. The blood dried on one cheek, the moss and lichens growing from his fur. But his eyes were bright and scared, latched on to her desperately as so many eyes had been in her years of healing.
“Give me your hands,” Charlotte said.
They were nearly paws, thick-fingered, clawed and furry, with metacarpal pads. Charlotte swallowed but gripped them. She didn’t have to tell him to hold her gaze; he was already doing it. To her surprise, he started breathing the way she’d intended to show him,in for four, hold for four, out for four, before she’d begun.
“That’s it. Together, now.”
After several cycles, his breathing calmed. He let out a long breath. Calyx nuzzled his cheek with a vine.
“Did you teach Arthur that,” he asked, “or did he teach you?”
Charlotte’s eyes stung. That was why he’d known the breathing cycle: Arthur had taught it to him.
“I taught him.” She gripped the arms of her chair, trying to order her errant thoughts. “Are you the Lord of the Wood?”
The beast gazed at her dolefully. “I am.”
He bent over, massaging his gnarled right leg with a grimace, or what Charlotte thought was a grimace. With his strange, bestial features, it was difficult to tell.
Her brain had gone all numb and funny. Her thoughts swirled, a confusion of her father’s stories, the beast before them—so different than the figure in the tales—and question upon question about Arthur. How long he’d been in the vale. Why he’d left. Why the Lord of the Wood had, evidently, gone with him, and why they’d parted.
“You seen a girl?” Elspeth asked in a strained voice. Charlotte reached for her hand. “Would’ve been—hell’s bells, I don’t know—three weeks ago now or so. Looks a good bit like me, except she’s taller, and fairer, and her nose’s crooked.”
“Arthur’s the first human I’ve seen in almost thirty years,” the beast said. “I was trapped here. Until he came.”
A muscle ticked in Elspeth’s jaw. Her fingers crushed Charlotte’s. She’d known she was probably looking for a corpse, but she’d thought she’d find it. She’d thought the Lord of the Wood would know what had happened.
“If you haven’t seen her,” Charlotte said, “isn’t there any way to—to find out what happened? To see where she is?”
The beast dragged a hand through his hair and launched to his feet. Calyx swayed on his shoulders. Charlotte tamped down a prickle of jealousy. She’d come to think of the strange little creature as hers in the last couple of days, but it was clearly his.
The beast brushed past to retrieve the odd silver basin.
