“Twilight berries,” I said, swallowing as the feeling of his lips spread through me with an odd, tingling numbness. He took my other hand in his, repeating the process slowly and working his thumbs over the injuries as he inspected them to make sure they were clean enough to prevent infection.
“You’re a harvester,” he said, nodding as he splashed some of the water on his own hand. His enormous palm came toward my face slowly, waiting for me to panic and back away from the touch. The moment his skin touched mine, I leaned into it, even though I didn’t understand the urge.
The skin surrounding his callouses was surprisingly soft. His thumb dragged over my cheekbone, drawing a ragged gasp from me as his palm cupped my cheek. He set to cleaning my face with his wet hands, moving slowly and with a gentleness that I wouldn’t have thought him capable. I couldn’t help but stare, wondering what had possessed me to allow him to touch me, and to care for me like I mattered when he was nothing but a stranger to me
“Much better,” he said after he’d finished, clearing his throat and drawing his hand away slowly.
“I’m sorry for biting you,” I said, conceding that I’d perhaps misinterpreted the situation.
“I’m certain that’s not something you say every day,” he said, pursing his lips in thought.
I cracked a smile, chuckling at the ridiculousness of it all. “No, I can’t say that it is.”
“Well, the least you can do after wounding me is tell me your name. I must have something to tell people when they ask who bested me, and I am sad to say claiming a harvester I call ‘Little One’ doesn’t make me sound intimidating. I have a reputation to uphold, after all,” he teased, resting his hand on top of my knee.
It was a move that Lord Byron had done on more than one occasion after feeding me twilight berries, but whereas his touch had felt lecherous, this stranger simply rested his hand there. It wasn’t a pathetic attempt to touch me, but rather just a convenient place for it.
“What makes you think my name will be any better to that end?” I asked, leaning back on the pile of straw until I laid sprawled out beside him. I wasn’t sure when the shift had come, but at some point in the brief interaction, I’d realized that he truly didn’t mean to harm me.
At least not immediately.
“A woman who can bite so powerfully and cut me with my own dagger must have a terrifying name to accompany it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and lying back beside me. His hand rested only inches from mine, the awareness of his body like a living thing inside me. His fingers shifted until his pinky brushed against mine, and I wondered briefly if he felt the same current of tension.
Perhaps it was because we were both marked by the Fae, and the magic within us called to like. But whatever the reason, he seemed to be in no hurry to break the small contact between our bodies as he turned his head toward mine.
I followed suit, staring back at him and studying the way his dark eyes seemed to glimmer like onyx, with the faintest sheen of frost within his iris. My breath caught when his eyes dropped to my lips, and I wondered briefly if he might kiss me.
“Your name, Little One,” he repeated instead, making my cheeks flush in embarrassment as I studied him.
“Estrella,” I said, shrugging off the awkwardness I felt when his lips tipped into a smile.
“Estrella,” he repeated in a murmur, making the name sound filthy in all the best ways. “A star is much more intimidating than a harvester.”
“I suppose it is,” I agreed, wishing I had the strength of even just a single star that burned in the sky. Instead, I was the coward who ran and hid, who endangered my brother by taking him with me. “Now you know who I am. What am I to call the man who likes to sneak up on innocent, resting women and terrify them?”
“Caelum, Little One. My name is Caelum.”
12
“I suppose it’s nice to meet you, Caelum the Marked,” I said as that pinky finger of his brushed against my hand once more. He didn’t seem the type to fidget, his body unnaturally still next to mine except for the single place where we touched.
The brush of his skin against mine soothed something inside me, a place where I’d wondered if I’d ever find somewhere I truly belonged. Caelum may have been a stranger. We might have been two passing ships in the night, who would never see one another again. But he was Fae Marked like me, a sign that maybe, just maybe, there were others like us out there somewhere. Preparing for a life in hiding.
I studied the contours of his face, noting that, despite the calluses that covered that pinky finger he used to touch me so delicately, his skin didn’t seem weathered by the sun. He didn’t bear the wrinkles that came from a life of outdoor labor and exposure to the elements. His skin gleamed with a natural golden bronze, but the freckles and sun spots I’d come to expect were nowhere to be found.
A swordsmith, maybe? The hilts of the swords peeking over his shoulders would certainly lend credence to that notion: weapons only the extremely wealthy or skillful could afford outside of the Mist Guard or Royal Guard. His clothing was well-made and mostly clean, lacking the signs of wear that mine showed.
“The pleasure is all mine, Estrella the Star,” he said, his lips tipping up into the hint of a playful smile. The way he practically purred the word “pleasure” coated my skin, hinting at all manner of indecent things I had no right to be thinking of at that moment.
Even if he was easily the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.
The barn door cracked open, and I instinctively sat up, ripping my hand away from Caelum in guilt for the direction my thoughts had wandered. Caelum chuckled as my cheeks pinked, sitting up beside me as Brann’s face poked in the cracked door.
His body followed as his brow furrowed, his lips pursing as he tried to hide his obvious concern. “It’s okay,” I said, standing and stepping away from Caelum and crossing toward my brother. He left the barn door slightly ajar, making for an easy escape in the event that he decided my judgment wasn’t accurate.
I could hardly blame him. A man like Caelum made it hard to think rationally, quickly disarming all my thoughts of escape with his charm.
“Explain to me what exactly is okay?” Brann pointed toward my neck, which was visible with my cloak pushed to the side. It seemed to pulse as I lifted the fabric to cover it once again, as if it had a mind of its own and hated being concealed once again.
“Caelum is like me,” I said, turning back to look at Caelum. His dark eyes that had previously glittered playfully were like hardened stone as he glared at Brann, and the air around him felt tense, as if the power lurking inside him saw my brother as a threat.
I swallowed, pushing forward to find a way to keep the peace. They didn’t need to be the best of friends for us to be civil, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the first living person like me we’d seen. “This is my brother, Brann.”