I threw myself awake, sweat slipping down my back, and forced myself to breathe, to open my eyes and note each detail of the night-dark bedroom. Real—this was real.
But I could still see that High Fae male facedown in the snow, my arrow through his eye, red and bloody all over from where I’d cut and peeled off his skin.
Bile stung my throat.
Not real. Just a dream. Even if what I’d done to Andras, even as a wolf, was … was …
I scrubbed at my face. Perhaps it was the quiet, the hollowness, of the past few days—perhaps it was only that I no longer had to think hour to hour about how to keep my family alive, but … It was regret, and maybe shame, that coated my tongue, my bones.
I shuddered as if I could fling it off, and kicked back the sheets to rise from the bed.
Chapter 12
I couldn’t entirely shake the horror, the gore of my dream as I walked down the dark halls of the manor, the servants and Lucien long since asleep. But I had to do something—anything—after that nightmare. If only to avoid sleeping. A bit of paper in one hand and a pen gripped in the other, I carefully traced my steps, noting the windows and doors and exits, occasionally jotting down vague sketches and Xs on the parchment.
It was the best I could do, and to any literate human, my markings would have made no sense. But I couldn’t write or read more than my basic letters, and my makeshift map was better than nothing. If I were to remain here, it was essential to know the best hiding places, the easiest way out, should things ever go badly for me. I couldn’t entirely let go of the instinct.
It was too dim to admire any of the paintings lining the walls, and I didn’t dare risk a candle. These past three days, there had been servants in the halls when I’d worked up the nerve to look at the art—and the part of me that spoke with Nesta’s voice had laughed at the idea of an ignorant human trying to admire faerie art. Some other time, then, I’d told myself. I would find another day? a quiet hour when no one was around, to look at them. I had plenty of hours now—a whole lifetime in front of me. Perhaps … perhaps I’d figure out what I wished to do with it.
I crept down the main staircase, moonlight flooding the black-and-white tiles of the entrance hall. I reached the bottom, my bare feet silent on the cold tiles, and listened. Nothing—no one.
I set my little map on the foyer table and drew a few Xs and circles to signify the doors, the windows, the marble stairs of the front hall. I would become so familiar with the house that I could navigate it even if someone blinded me.
A breeze announced his arrival—and I turned from the table toward the long hall, to the open glass doors to the garden.
I’d forgotten how huge he was in this form—forgotten the curled horns and lupine face, the bearlike body that moved with a feline fluidity. His green eyes glowed in the darkness, fixing on me, and as the doors snicked shut behind him, the clicking of claws on marble filled the hall. I stood still—not daring to flinch, to move a muscle.
He limped slightly. And in the moonlight, dark, shining stains were left in his wake.
He continued toward me, stealing the air from the entire hall. He was so big that the space felt cramped, like a cage. The scrape of claw, a huff of uneven breathing, the dripping of blood.
Between one step and the next, he changed forms, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the blinding flash. When at last my eyes adjusted to the returning darkness, he was standing in front of me.
Standing, but—not quite there. No sign of the baldric, or his knives. His clothes were in shreds—long, vicious slashes that made me wonder how he wasn’t gutted and dead. But the muscled skin peering out beneath his shirt was smooth, unharmed.
“Did you kill the Bogge?” My voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“Yes.” A dull, empty answer. As if he couldn’t be bothered to remember to be pleasant. As if I were at the very, very bottom of a long list of priorities.
“You’re hurt,” I said even more quietly.
Indeed, his hand was covered in blood, even more splattering on the floor beneath him. He looked at it blankly—as if it took some monumental effort to remember that he even had a hand, and that it was injured. What effort of will and strength had it taken to kill the Bogge, to face that wretched menace? How deep had he had to dig inside himself—to whatever immortal power and animal that lived there—to kill it?
He glanced down at the map on the table, and his voice was void of anything—any emotion, any anger or amusement—as he said, “What is that?”
I snatched up the map. “I thought I should learn my surroundings.”
Drip, drip, drip.
I opened my mouth to point out his hand again, but he said, “You can’t write, can you.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. Ignorant, insignificant human.
“No wonder you became so adept at other things.”
I supposed he was so far gone in thinking about his encounter with the Bogge that he hadn’t realized the compliment he’d given me. If it was a compliment.