She’s too startled to reply, or even to understand what he means. Her lips tingle, and she tries to rub them with her sleeve to make the sensation go away.
At the top of the stairs is a tower bedroom that looks, to Aurora’s surprise and relief, much like a parlor she might have seen in the home of a Delucian baron or chevalier, except that a layer of dust covers the once-vivid red and purple brocades on the chairs and settees. A thick canopy hangs over the bed. One window has been thrown open to let in the springlike air. The fireplace is unkempt, ashes piled high. This could be any number of rooms she’s been in before, and yet it feels odd, like something is missing from the room, and the room itself knows it.
“This should do,” Heath says. “You’ll have privacy from the rest.”
“The rest?”
“We don’t have many private quarters. Some people live five or six to a room here.” He helps her into one of the chairs. “Are you comfortable?” He almost seems nervous, even though just moments ago he’d been all grin and swagger. “Here, let me see your ankle,” he says, pulling a stool up to her chair for her to place her foot on. Then he kneels before her and gingerly removes her boot, lifting the edge of her dress to reveal her ankle. He takes the bottle from the kitchen—some sort of fragrant oil—and dabs a little on his hands to rub into her bare skin.
She winces.
“It doesn’t look too bad, a minor twist,” he says. He begins to apply a poultice.
Her teeth grit together, sending pressure along her jaw to the back of her skull. She’s so tense she can hardly move. Finally she lets out a small cry.
He looks up at her in surprise. “I’m sorry, was I too rough? Are you all right? You look pale.” His hand goes to her cheek, and she reflexively jerks her head away. “Why are you afraid to let me touch you?”
“I . . .” How can she explain?
“Did I offend you in the cottage? I apologize for my rough behavior. I’m so used to defending myself, and it simply didn’t occur to me at first that you could be real.”
“It’s not that,” she says, and then sighs, trying to release the tension in her body. Trying to breathe in the pain in her ankle and breathe it out. It is just a fact; no more, no less. “It’s just that I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never felt at all.”
“I don’t understand.”
And so she tells him, haltingly: about her christening and the tithes the fae took in exchange for their gifts. With each word, she feels a little bit braver, freer, more confident.
“What kind of parents would allow that to happen to their child?” Heath asks quietly when she finishes.
“Oh, it wasn’t anything malicious on their part,” Aurora says. “They believed the exchanges were worthwhile, or else they wouldn’t have accepted them. They wanted to improve me.”
“By allowing your senses to be robbed from you? I suppose they thought beautiful and silent makes an ideal princess.”
His words abrade her more harshly than his touch did. She opens her mouth to respond but finds she can’t. She doesn’t know what to say.
Because he’s absolutely right. And the truth of it—hearing it spoken aloud like that—is stunning.
“They wanted to protect me,” she whispers at last. That much he cannot deny.
He clears his throat. “But not all touch is painful, Aurora.” Once again he reaches toward her cheek, and this time, she tries not to cringe or move away as he traces his fingers, ever so lightly, along her jaw.
It makes her want to cry. Because he’s wrong. All touch is painful—this kind of touch even more so. It makes her feel as though she is starving, lost, alone.
“Aurora.”
She’d been looking at the ground, avoiding his eyes. But now she focuses on him, takes in the warm tone of his skin; the light, messy shading of stubble along his jaw; the unkempt sweep of hair not much darker than her own. They catch eyes. He too has been staring at her.
“Forgive me.” He clears his throat. “I shouldn’t have done that, or said any of that. I just haven’t ever met someone like you, someone from . . . out there. I didn’t—we weren’t ever sure if it was possible.”
“Possible?”
“You see,” he says, gently finishing tying the bandage, “we’ve been imprisoned in Sommeil for generations. In the past there were countless suicides, horrible infighting between those who believed in the real world and those who had already begun to forget it. Eventually, knowledge of the other world they had come from began to fade. Now my generation knows no other way of being but this.” He gestures at the room around them. “We’ve simply inherited this . . . this feeling. Of smallness. Of being trapped.”
Aurora swallows. She understands the feeling of walls closing in, of the world around her shrinking rather than expanding. Even when the council is focused on other things—which they usually are—she has always imagined their control over her like an invisible yoke. But it’s not just the council members watching her, holding her back, keeping her in. It’s the people of Deluce and their expectations of a crown princess. Maybe even too the ghosts of her dead parents, wanting her to uphold their honor.
“Many no longer believe the stories,” Heath goes on. “About the other world. Your world. But I always have. When the queen made Sommeil, she had to have created a way out.”
“The queen . . . made Sommeil?”
Heath nods.
Aurora shifts, tempted to flee despite the continued ache in her ankle. His words have unsettled her. Part of her wonders if all conversations are this confusing, if she simply isn’t used to talking normally with people, and that’s why everything out of Heath’s mouth sounds so strange. But then she thinks about what he’s saying: Belcoeur, the Night Faerie, made a world of her own. And now she rules here.
Aurora runs through her 313-book collection of faerie histories in her head. She seems to remember something about the Night Faerie tithing. . . .
“Dreams,” Heath says, just as she’s thinking it. “The queen wove Sommeil out of dreams, or so the story goes. She has complete power here. She hides out in the north turret, protected by enchantment after enchantment, while the world around us grows more desperate and more treacherous by the day. And for as long as any of us has been alive, no one has found a way to escape. And no one new has appeared. Until you. Don’t you see? You’re the proof. You’re the answer.”
“But I don’t have any answers.”
“You must, though. Maybe it will come to you. Maybe you’ll remember.”
“Surely the queen must know the way,” Aurora protests.
He shakes his head. “We’ve tried everything. She won’t die, and she won’t answer our demands. She won’t even come out of hiding. She’s protected by too much magic.”
Aurora believes him. It would probably take another faerie—a powerful one, like Malfleur—to kill Belcoeur or to break the spell keeping them all in this world. “I don’t know how I can help,” she says again, hating to disappoint him.