That night, I dreamed.
First I had the murky awareness that something was trying to infiltrate our shelter. The branches creaked, in one place and then another, as a being’s weight stole across the canopy. Through my eyelashes I saw Rook asleep a few paces away. He lay utterly boneless, with one hand flattened against the ground. I recalled his trance when we’d first entered the autumnlands, and it occurred to me that if he was healing himself now, he might not awaken as easily as he would normally.
Weariness blurred my vision. Exhaustion lapped at my mind like warm dark water, sucking me back down in the undertow.
When I regained awareness a figure sat perched in the willow above Rook. It was tall and thin and clung to the branches like a cricket, with its folded knees drawn up past its ears. Its colorless hair floated. Its white face was angled down toward him, and it was speaking to him, even though he slept.
No, she was speaking to him. Hemlock was.
“It’s only you now, Rook,” she said. Her tone was pleasant, but her inflection had a pelting, hissing quality like rain lashing against a window during a storm. “Only the autumn court remains untouched, and look at you! You’re too busy waving your sword about and collecting mortal pets to notice.”
Responding to no sound I could detect, she abruptly broke off, tensed, and stared off over her shoulder at nothing. She silently watched the darkness for a time before she turned back to him.
“I am forbidden to speak of it, but you can’t hear me, can you? Then I will tell you this: I no longer answer to the horn of winter.” Her jade eyes were as unfeeling as polished gemstones. “Snow melts on the high peaks, and the Hunt has a new master. Try as I might, I cannot make a game of things now.”
She paused to look over her shoulder again. “So I suppose what I’d like to ask you is, what are we to do when following the Good Law isn’t fair? It’s a dreadful question, isn’t it?” She spoke in a whisper now. A luminous fascination had entered her eyes, and they seemed to swallow up her face. “Rook”—she lowered her voice even further—“do you ever wonder what it would be like to be something other than what we are?”
I swear I didn’t make a sound. But suddenly Hemlock looked around directly at me with her lustrous cat’s eyes, and gave me a feral smile.
Down, down I sank, down into the dark. It was only a dream. I slept.
Rook had moved during the night. When I blinked against the morning light I found him facing me, close enough to touch, but still asleep. His glamour had returned. For all that I’d grown used to the way he looked without it, I knew him best like this, and was glad to see him restored. My gaze wandered over his eyebrows, arched slightly even in sleep, his long eyelashes, his aristocratic cheekbones and expressive mouth. Good health—or at least the illusion of it—burnished his golden-brown skin, and his tousled hair pillowed his head. I noticed an indentation in his cheek where the dimple appeared when he smiled.
He sucked in a breath trapped halfway between a muffled yawn and a sigh, and his eyebrows furrowed meditatively before he opened his eyes. At first hazy with sleep, his face showed dawning comprehension as he looked back at me, followed by acceptance of where he was and with whom. We lay there watching each other in silence for some time, listening to the breeze sigh through the trees, each time followed by the rustle of leaves falling.
“May I touch you?” he asked.
At that moment nothing existed beyond the clearing, beyond us, as though we drifted on a mirror-still sea with no land in sight. Soon we’d part ways. There was no harm in allowing myself this, just once. I nodded.
With a fingertip, he traced the curve of my jaw. His touch was so light I barely felt it. His hand brushed the collar of his coat pulled up around my neck, and a trickle of cool autumn air spilled into my warm cocoon. He traced all around the edge of my ear and up toward my forehead. His finger paused near my hairline.
Mortified, I realized a blemish had appeared there overnight. “Rook! Don’t touch that.”
“Why not?” he said. He lifted his finger and regarded my forehead. “It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“You aren’t supposed to poke people’s spots. It’s embarrassing. It’s—like when I was looking at your wound, I suppose.”
“Your face isn’t festering. Nor is it hideous.”
“Thank you. That’s nice.”
He frowned at my amusement. Haughtily, he said, “Something about you changes every day. Isobel, you’re very beautiful.”
I harbored no illusions about my appearance. I was neither homely nor pretty; I occupied an unremarkable spot in between. But Rook couldn’t lie. Despite his obnoxious tone, he really meant it. It wasn’t so much of a stretch to imagine that fair folk saw humans differently than we saw one another. A flutter stirred in my belly even as I determined not to make too much of it. He was the vain one, not I. And I needed to keep my head out of the clouds.
His hand had wandered to my hair, and he spread it out on the moss, combing through the strands with his fingers until it gleamed as straight and smooth as it could get. It seemed impossible that someone who had lived for hundreds of years and hunted fairy beasts for sport could find this entertaining, but his expression was transfixed. I glanced at the trees, suddenly a bit afraid of how much I was enjoying his attention. How much time had passed? Surely we couldn’t afford to linger like this. Shadowy anxieties flickered at the edges of my thoughts, some not unpleasant in the slightest, yet it surprised me how worrying about the Wild Hunt, getting home safely, and the possibility of getting attacked by more fairy beasts paled in comparison to the queasy anticipation of wondering what Rook and I might do if I allowed this to go on much longer. The whole world and its myriad possibilities shrank down to the tingling caress of his fingertips every time they brushed my scalp: all its beauty, and all its terror. Did other girls feel like this the first time they let a boy touch them? And not that I was humiliated by it, but—even at the age of seventeen?
His knuckles skimmed the nape of my neck. Well, that decided it.
“We should get moving,” I declared, sitting up. The crisp outside air came as a shock as his coat slid away.
But Rook didn’t move; he only regarded me indolently from the ground, with a look that plainly said he didn’t much feel like going anywhere, thank you very much.
“Get up.” I nudged his side with my shoe, hoping he couldn’t sense how forced my composure truly was. “Come on. We can’t lie about all morning like lumps.”
He allowed my nudge to flop him over onto his back. “But I’m injured,” he complained. “I haven’t finished healing myself yet.”
“You’re looking very well to me. If you insist that you’re in pain, however, I ought to take another look at your wound without your glamour on. The inflammation may have returned.”
His eyes narrowed. Then he extended his hand. Unthinkingly I reached for it to help pull him up. But as soon as our skin touched he clasped his fingers around mine and pulled, and I landed on his chest with a thump. The coat drifted down after, settling neatly over our legs. Rook gave me a charming smile. I glared back at him.
“I’ll use iron on you!”
“If you must,” he said sufferingly.
“I really will!”
“Yes, I know.”
I became conscious of the fact that his chest felt very solid, and I was straddling his slim waist. Our uneven breathing rocked us against each other slightly. Molten heat pooled in me again, ebbing lower.
I didn’t use iron on him.
Instead, I leaned down and kissed him.
Ten
THIS IS a terrible decision, I thought. I’ve gone completely mad and I need to stop this instant.
But then Rook made a sound and parted his lips beneath mine, and I’m afraid that for a time I ceased listening to my brain entirely.
I lost myself in the hypnotizing press of give and take, the odd but intoxicating feeling of joining my mouth with his. Soon I felt Rook’s palm slide do
wn my back, and in one graceful, powerful movement he swept me up in his hands. I automatically tightened my legs around his waist and hooked my arms around his neck, boggling at how high off the ground he’d lifted me. It was almost like riding him as a horse again—a thought that made me turn red as a tulip. He took a few steps across the clearing, and a tree’s rough bark pressed against my back. That touch was enough to jostle me partway back into reality.
Even though Emma had been careful to educate me on the specifics of this sort of thing (or perhaps because she had, quite frankly), a surge of nervousness warred with desire in the pit of my stomach. Noticing how rigid I’d gone, Rook drew back. He waited, his breath soft on my face. His lips were flushed, almost bruised. I wondered what I looked like and, recalling the pimple, instantly wished I hadn’t.
“Um,” I said. “I’ve never . . . that is to say . . .” I completely lost my nerve. “Are your teeth still sharp, technically? Because they don’t feel sharp at all. I don’t understand how that works.”
He was breathing heavily, eyes unfocused. He frowned a little, coming back to himself as he processed my anxious carrying on. “I’ve never made a study of glamour’s properties. All I know is that it isn’t the same as shapeshifting, but it’s more than a mere illusion. I won’t harm you.” My reluctance dawned on him. His shoulders stiffened. “If you’d rather not—”
I swooped in and silenced him with another kiss. I moved too fast and our noses bumped together, which hurt a bit, but he didn’t seem to mind. My heart still hammered like a frightened rabbit’s. By reflex I tightened my fingers in his hair, and again he made that noise—the one that pulled me taut as a bowstring inside. I flexed against him without meaning to, and both heard and felt his braced palm slide down the bark next to my ear.
Fascinated, I studied him. He met my eyes. I gave his hair a second, experimental tug. He let his head fall a little to the side, in the direction of my hand. Somehow I knew what that meant: he’d give me complete control if I wanted it. A rush of pure unadulterated want knocked the air out of my lungs and, ironically, knocked some sense into my brain.
“We can’t do this!” I exclaimed. “We’re stopping. Now. Oh, god.”
I loosened my legs and gripped his shoulders to let myself down. He got the hint before I took an ignoble drop, and lowered me to the ground. His face had gone a bit gray, and his expression was stricken.
I demanded of him, “Have we broken the Good Law? Did that count?”
“No,” he replied hoarsely. “Not unless—” He halted and shook his head. “No,” he repeated, in a surer voice. He cleared his throat. “If fair folk and mortals broke the Good Law every time we—ah—kissed each other, suffice it to say there’d be few of us left.”
“Sex really does turn people into imbeciles,” I said, amazed at having committed yet another base human error to which I’d somehow thought myself immune. “Rook, we can’t do that again. I’m really using the iron next time. That isn’t a bluff.”
White-lipped, he went over and claimed his coat from the ground. “Good,” he said. And he seemed to mean it.
I tugged my dress straight, tightened my bootlaces, and yanked a bunched-up stocking back over my knee, wishing I had more to do to keep my hands busy so I didn’t have to look at him. What I’d just done was so unlike me I could hardly believe it. The autumnlands’ magic wasn’t affecting me in some way, was it? I couldn’t shake the feeling that something dark lurked at the periphery of my recent memories—an unsettling experience I’d forgotten somehow, like a bad dream. And as soon as I thought that, one of the shadows that had been haunting me all morning sharpened into focus.
“Hemlock!” I blurted out.
Rook whipped around with his sword drawn.
“No, not here. Not right now, at least. I think I saw her last night, or maybe I just dreamed about her.” Already I’d begun doubting myself. The image of Hemlock perched in the branches was intangible, slipping away the harder I held on. “I’m not sure. If it had been real, I wouldn’t have just rolled over and gone back to sleep.”
He examined my face carefully. Part of his shirt had come loose from his trousers, and I bit back the urge to snap at him to tuck it back in.
“You are not prone to flights of fancy,” he said. At least he knew that much about me. “Fair folk can deepen a mortal’s sleep, if we wish, to move about unnoticed nearby. It is common for mortals to interpret such visits as dreams. But that would mean—”
“She’s already found us,” I finished slowly, apprehension weighing down the words.
In one clean arc he swept his sword through a stand of mushrooms, sending their caps flying. Then he stood with his back turned, leaning on the hilt, struggling not to project his defeat. Now I understood why Hemlock’s actions exacted such a personal toll. He was already insecure about his suitability as prince, and the ease with which she tracked him through his own domain was yet another mark against him.
But I had witnessed Rook’s power firsthand, and couldn’t believe it was as simple as that.
“She tried to tell you something,” I said, dredging up the details, frustrated that I could recall so little of use. “I think she was delivering a warning. She said it’s only you now, and that she no longer answers to the horn of winter. Do either of those mean anything to you?”
“No, but there’s an ill sound to both.” He sheathed his sword. “Isobel, I . . .” The pause spun out into an agonizing silence. When he resumed, I could tell every admission cost him. “I was not lying, of course, when I told you I haven’t yet fully recovered. I relied upon losing the Wild Hunt for several days at least. If we are attacked on the return journey—when we’re attacked—I fear I may not be able to protect you.”
I bit my lip and looked down. The heat between us had dissolved, a smoldering fire reduced to soggy ashes. “There must be another option.”
“Revisiting the summerlands would be futile, if not perilous. The winterlands are out of the question, as is”—he hesitated—“my own court, given recent events. But Hemlock wouldn’t dare accost us if we went straight to the spring court. We could stay several nights, and return to Whimsy along a safer route.”
No human had ever visited a fairy court and lived. Or at least, none had ever done so and remained human. I was a master of the Craft, escorted by a prince, but I had to wonder whether I truly was a special case, or if every mortal deluded themselves into thinking they were an exception to the rule.
I took a deep, shaky breath. “I do have many patrons in the spring court.”
Rook bowed his head in agreement. “If anything were to happen to me, Gadfly would honor your desire to return home. Of this I am certain.”
“And once I’m back in Whimsy . . .”
“We shall never see each other again,” he said, “for one reason or another.”
A pain that had nothing to do with anything physical twisted in my chest. What would happen to Rook after we parted? I imagined him returning to the autumn court, walking down a long, dim hall, and taking a seat on a throne with a thousand eyes upon him—all searching for a sign of the human wrongness on his face, the wrongness my portrait had exposed. How long before he tripped, and his people bared their teeth and sprang upon him like wolves on an injured stag? How long would he last against them? I knew he wouldn’t go easily. Or quickly.
But I was powerless to help him. I’d do well to remember that the only fate I had any control over was my own. Cold on the outside, aching on the inside, I nodded.
“Then let us go,” he said, sweeping past me with his face turned away.
A sparkling fall day greeted us beyond the glade. We walked for hours with no sign of the Wild Hunt, encountering nothing more dangerous than the occasional acorn dropping from a tree over our path. Surrounded by the forest’s peaceful beauty, with the sun warming our backs, it was hard to remain pessimistic for long. Even Rook’s steps lightened the farther we traveled without incident.
“What are yo
u smiling about?” I asked, bending over in another futile attempt to wipe the stickiness from the apples we’d found for lunch off my fingers, and watching him suspiciously.
“I just recalled the spring court holds a ball this time of year. If we haven’t missed it, we might be able to attend.”
“Yes, that seems like the perfect thing to do while fleeing for our lives,” I said.
“Then we shall go,” he concluded, pleased.
I snorted, completely unsurprised. “Fair folk are impossible.”
“That’s irregular, coming from a human who can’t even eat a raw hare.”
Hastening along behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides, I decided not to argue about the hare. I was coming to realize that the Craft was so enigmatic to fair folk I might as well have refused to eat meat unless it had been bathed in widow’s tears under a new moon. Realizing that your own magic held more mystery to fair folk than theirs did to you was a peculiar experience. I felt like some sort of wizard with delicate and arcane indispositions, not an artist and a perfectly ordinary person.
We passed a mossy boulder with a squirrel perched atop it. I turned to have a second look, and both the boulder and the squirrel were gone. Scanning the forest around us, I realized that though it was made up of the same types of trees we’d been walking through before, they weren’t the exact same individual trees. I looked forward, and looked back again. Yes—that ash with the overhanging branch had vanished. Straining my eyes, I thought I made it out a quarter of a mile or so behind us in the distance. With all the leaves in between it was difficult to tell for certain.
I remembered the old tales, and faltered.
“You aren’t doing something with time, are you?” I asked.
He looked at me loftily over his shoulder, which meant he was confused by my question but didn’t want to admit it.
An Enchantment of Ravens Page 11