Broken Wishes, page 4
Salome slid her hood over her head as if receding into the cloak would protect her. “The darkness the venom brings will take down a strong man the same as a weak one. It’s not a matter of strength. Or of character. It’s outside of his control the same as a sickness of the body would be. If he fights it, we’ll be better able to manage the effects, but you need to be prepared for them nonetheless. Pretending they won’t be there won’t make them disappear.”
Ceana reflexively jerked on the reins, and her gelding tossed his head. She relaxed her hold and patted his neck. Poor thing. It wasn’t his fault she wanted to cover her eyes like a child and pretend that whatever she couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt her. What she wouldn’t give for a few moments of that childhood innocence, when her problems were that easy to solve.
They passed along a line of sycamore trees. Glowing eyes peeked at them from above, accompanied by an angry chitter. The eyes disappeared, and the spongy crunch of the horses’ hooves as they trod on the twigs and other debris from the trees filled the silence.
She settled deeper into the saddle. For years Gavran watched over her and protected her. Now it was her turn to do the same for him. Whatever was coming, she wouldn’t shy from facing it. “What should I expect?”
Something akin to respect flashed across Salome’s face. “I’ll tell you what it’s likely to do. I can’t tell you with surety that he’ll experience every symptom.”
Ceana clenched her teeth. Could Salome not speak plainly for once? She drew a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, repeating the action until her desire to kick a rock passed. Salome wasn’t at any more fault now than her horse had been a moment ago. What was she supposed to do with everything battling inside of her? Keeping it inside seemed like it would tear her apart, but letting it out only turned that destruction on the people around her.
If she focused her mind on the facts, perhaps she could force the rest to the side long enough to endure this. “How certain are you about these symptoms?”
The clouds flowed past the moon, moving shadows and deep crags across Salome’s features. “I know as much about it as I do about any unseelie fae.”
Perhaps that should sound reassuring. Salome had once been seelie fae, after all. But she wasn’t omniscient. She only knew what she’d witnessed or been told about. Which meant she knew more about the unseelie fae than any human would, but at times, that wasn’t saying much. “So enough to know we should avoid them, but too much to allow us to actually do so.”
A smile flirted with the edges of Salome’s lips. “Yes.”
If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Ceana might have laughed. At the moment, she feared that if she did, it might warp into hysterical crying. “What do you know for certain?”
Salome’s almost-smile vanished completely. “He’ll have lessened control over his emotions. They’ll be extreme and often seem baseless. He’ll want to follow his impulses even if they’re not the wise or best thing to do.”
They passed under some low-hanging branches. A spiderweb grabbed for her face. She batted it away, but it stuck to her hand instead. She wiped it on her skirt.
A moody Gavran would likely still be easier to deal with than most people, though it meant that she’d have to put a tighter rein on her own impulsiveness. Gavran had always balanced her out, tempering her tendency to leap and deal with the consequences later. “That doesn’t sound as terrible as I feared.”
Salome pierced her with a look that said I’m not done yet. “The emotional swings are the least of our worries. The true danger comes in that he’ll be both impressionable and paranoid.”
It felt like gears clicking together in her brain, lifting the gate that obscured her vision. “That’s why you couldn’t go without me. You didn’t know if you could convince him to leave with you.”
“If his father and Tavish oppose him leaving, which I’ve no doubt they will, it will be near impossible to change his mind while he’s with them. However, the closer Gavran is to a person, the more influence they’ll have over him. You may have a chance to sway him where I would not.”
An ache grew in the back of her skull and spread across her shoulders. Perhaps in the past she might have had a chance to challenge Allan’s influence over Gavran, but she certainly didn’t now. She’d have to pray that some unconscious part of Gavran’s mind still held all the memories of their life together before the cursed wishes erased her from existence.
She glanced at Salome. Something in the tension around her eyes and the stiff way she held her shoulders said there was more. “Why do those bring the true danger?”
Salome flinched as if Ceana had thrown something at her. “You won’t be able to reason with him. If he decides you’re out to harm him, you’ll become a threat.” The clouds threw her face into darkness again, wiping out her features and making her voice seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Men and women alike have killed those they loved most while poisoned by the nuckalevee.”
CHAPTER 5
“So when I see him again,” Ceana said, “he might try to kill me?”
Salome nodded.
The laugh caught Ceana unaware. She tried to stifle it, but the more she tried, the harder the giggles wracked her body. She shouldn’t be laughing. She just couldn’t seem to stop. She yanked her horse to a halt.
An ache pinched her sides. She sucked in a deep breath and held it. The laugher still wanted to come, but she managed to keep it down this time.
Moonlight lit Eachann’s face again, and his eyebrows rose so high they near disappeared into the shaggy hair falling over his forehead.
“I’m not off my head.” Ceana wiped the moisture from her eyes. Cheater’s tears, her mamaidh used to call them when Ceana was little and would laugh at times when most children would have cried. “But the Almighty surely has a sense of humor. I tried to kill myself before we decided to seek a cure for my curse. Gavran stopped me. For him to now be the one who’ll try to take my life…” She shrugged.
Salome’s lips were set in a grim line. “You’ll need to be wary, but not so wary that he feeds off of it, increasing his own paranoia.”
So she’d somehow need to strike a balance between wariness and helping Gavran believe he could trust her.
“Is there no chance your…” Ceana glanced at Eachann. Poor man still had more shocks coming, “Your gift will allow you to sway Gavran in the same way it keeps me in the saddle?”
Salome shook her head. “My blessing isn’t an active power. I had to relinquish those upon becoming human.”
In the corner of her vision, Eachann flinched, then straightened himself again.
“It’s more of a remnant.” Salome’s words came out slow, as if she were weighing each one before setting it free, trying to find a way to explain snow to someone who’d only known endless summer. “A birthright. It protects me from fae curses that weren’t cast directly on me. Gavran hasn’t been cursed. He’s been poisoned.”
Ceana’s head ached as if she’d been trying to do figures for too long by candlelight. Perhaps the ways of the fae weren’t meant to be understood by mere mortals. Every time she thought she’d sorted it out, the path twisted again.
A whiff of wood smoke on the air reached them.
Ceana squinted into the night. Buildings took shape out of the darkness in front of them. “I don’t know where to find him.”
“There’s only one inn. If they wanted Lyall to treat Gavran’s wounds, they’ll have taken him there. Lyall lives next to the inn.”
They passed the outskirts of the town without anyone stopping them. Though she’d never seen it in daylight, Ceana assumed Duntulm must be too small to be walled or guarded. The homes on the outskirts were no larger than her family’s wattle-and-daub cottage.
Light peeked through the cracks of most of the homes they passed, giving their path a second-hand glow. Sounds drifted out with the light—a fiddle playing on her left, a couple arguing on her right, a child’s high-pitched giggle up ahead.
The houses grew and closed in on them the farther they went, the second stories leaning out beyond the first, the street narrow and muddy. On both sides, signs painted with images of what the shopkeeps offered rocked and creaked in the wind.
Salome led her past the building marked as the inn by the bed and mug on its sign. She dismounted from her horse and knocked on the building next door.
Light flamed upstairs almost immediately and bobbed past windows, moving downward. The door opened.
From her spot on her horse, Ceana couldn’t hear much of what they said. A few scattered words, but she could clearly see the physician’s face. The small stronghold inside her that’d been holding out hope that Gavran hadn’t been poisoned by the nuckalevee fell.
Salome returned and pointed at the window almost directly above them. “He’ll be in there, but they only took one room, so if we were to go up directly, we’ll face Tavish and Gavran’s father. I’ll have the innkeeper call them down on the pretense of enquiring after Gavran’s health and to ask if there’s any way we can help. You’ll need to find a way to sneak up to the room while we distract them.” She handed her reins to Eachann, who’d dismounted from his own horse. She turned for the inn, then hesitated and turned back. “Are we close enough now that his blessing is cancelling out your curse?”
Ceana nodded. While she couldn’t have given Salome the range with precision, after fighting the nuckalevee, she had an approximate idea. She should, after battering herself against the barrier until her body gave out. They were well within the boundary.
Having the influence of the curses lifted due to Gavran’s proximity didn’t guarantee success, but at least now she was no worse off than anyone else would be when trying to sneak into the upper rooms of an inn. Hopefully they hadn’t had trouble in the past with thieves, making them extra vigilant.
Eachann held the door open for Salome. Ceana came in after, as if they weren’t together. The room was bright and warm despite the empty hearth. Burning braziers lined the walls, and the air carried a combination of baking bread, stale ale, and pipe smoke. Ceana’s feet stuck slightly to the floor.
Eachann and Salome spoke to the innkeeper. He led them to a back room. Salome’s position as lady of Duntulm would work in her favor. She couldn’t be expected to sit in the common room. All Ceana needed was to keep from being spotted or kicked out until Tavish and Allan were back there with her.
The innkeeper passed her on his way up the stairs and cast her an appraising look that said he was memorizing her face in case trouble showed up with her. Perhaps she should have asked Salome for coin to purchase something, but that could have been as suspicious as if she continued to stand here. The room had very few women, and those present were clearly under the protection of a man.
Except for the serving maids. They wove between the tables, some smiling and winking at the men, some smacking the hands of anyone who grabbed at them. That was a good sign. The innkeeper must have a rule about what his serving maids had to put up with. They could decline the advances of the men, knowing they wouldn’t lose their jobs for it.
And it might mean she could blend in. The women didn’t seem to be paying much attention to each other, only the patrons, and they were busy enough that the plates and empty mugs were piling up on the edges of the tables.
Ceana swept into the midst of it, slowly collecting the abandoned plates. She stayed angled so she could see the stairs without exposing her face. The innkeeper came back down the stairs with Tavish and Allan following him. They went into the back room. None of them looked in her direction.
She quickly filled her arms and headed toward the kitchen. She veered off at the last moment and took the stairs again. As soon as she reached the top, she put the plates down in a pile.
The upper hallway wasn’t long. The inn seemed to only have six small rooms. Gavran’s would be the one at the end, next to the wall that faced Lyall’s house.
Ceana stopped outside the door. She lifted her hand but brought it back to her side. Would it be better to knock and greet Gavran at the door, or should she check if the door was unlocked first?
Salome’s words about how dangerous Gavran might be repeated themselves over and over in her mind, and her heart beat hard enough in her chest to leave bruises. Even injured, Gavran would be stronger than her if it came down to a fight, and Lord MacDonald had suggested that they use surprise against the stronger nuckalevee. That probably meant it would be her best option here as well. If nothing else, it’d allow her to keep between Gavran and the door if she needed to make a quick escape.
She slipped her fingers around the door latch and slowly eased it up. It moved without resistance. No one had locked the door—from inside or out—after Tavish and Allan left.
She edged the door open, and the hinges creaked. She froze, straining to hear any sounds of movement inside. Maybe that was foolish. She wouldn’t hear anyone turning their head to look at the door. But she should be able to pick up sounds of Gavran moving towards her.
The silence stretched. She pushed the door the rest of the way open and slid inside.
The meaty stench of blood and the sharp bite of a chamber pot that needed emptying clogged the air in the room, along with another odor she couldn’t identify—moldy and rotten.
Stomach acid burned up into the bottom of her throat, and she swallowed hard. She’d been around sickness and injury before. It didn’t smell like that.
She inched another two paces into the room.
A half-burned candle flickered on a small table, giving off enough light to show two chairs set by the fireplace where the fire needed stoking, two beds, and a jumble of blankets on the floor that looked like they might have served as a third.
Gavran lay on the bed directly across from her, with his back to the room. He was naked from his waist up, the wavering candlelight creating unnatural peaks and valleys in his well-muscled back. Cloth wrapped his torso at the level where his wounds had been.
Ceana rubbed a knuckle against her lips. She hadn’t expected him to be asleep. She’d need to gently wake him so that he didn’t become startled and perceive her as a threat.
All of this worrying might be for naught anyway. He might be fine, and then she could simply tell him where to find her once he healed and leave without Tavish and Allan being any the wiser.
And even if he was poisoned by the nuckalevee, they didn’t have any proof he’d try to harm her. Salome hadn’t witnessed the effects of the poison first-hand, and everyone knew how unreliable rumors were. She held back a snort. Given the fickle nature of the fae, their rumors were probably worse than most in mixing fiction with fact.
She tiptoed the rest of the way to his bed and leaned over him. He tossed onto his back and moaned. She jerked back a step, but he didn’t open his eyes.
She moved in again. The bandages on his chest seemed dry. Shouldn’t they have been soaked with blood? There’d been so much blood when she found him lying next to the nuckalevee.
She smoothed his tousled brown hair back from his forehead. His skin was abnormally dry and hot, like touching a mud brick that’d baked too long in the sun. “Gavran,” she said softly.
He twitched under her hand, then his eyes flew open. His unfocused gaze flickered from her face to the empty chairs, to the door, and back to her face. Wariness edged into his expression.
The same tension she felt when trying to tend a wounded dog twined itself around her windpipe, cutting off her air. She drew her hand back slowly. This didn’t mean he’d been infected by the nuckalevee venom. Not truly. It might be a normal fever, brought on by his body fighting the wound. Now that she was near, the blessing side of the curses wouldn’t be holding a fever at bay anymore.
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He frowned. “I know you.”
She drew a shallow breath in through her nose and let it out through her mouth. Calm. Peace. Salome said he’d be impressionable. If he sensed fear in her, what would it do? Would that make him afraid as well, or would it be more like when a wolf sensed terror in potential prey?
Eejit. He wasn’t a predator. He was Gavran. And he needed her help—to either reach someone who could heal him or leave so he could heal through the wishes. “Aye, you know me. Ceana Campbell.”
“Ceana.” The tone in his voice grated against her ears.
She’d never heard him speak her name that way before. Like he wanted to spit it out of his mouth. A cold shiver slithered down her spine.
Run, said a little voice in the back of her head. Now.
“Ceana.” Said this time as if he were trying to piece together memories he couldn’t quite grasp. His look turned hard. “The witch.”
Her stomach bottomed out, and she tried to run backward for the door to keep him in line of sight. She stumbled over her own feet, and he leapt forward.
He slammed her into the wall next to the door. Pain crisscrossed her back, the air spurted from her lungs, and she gasped for more.
He wedged his forearm under her chin, firm against her larynx.
She fought to swallow, to bring in air, but it was like trying to move something wedged in her throat. “Not… witch. Friend.”
“You tried to kill me.”
Tavish and Allan would have fed him the story they believed to be true—that the nuckalevee was her and Gavran had killed her.
When he looked at her, he saw a monster. Pain arched through her chest as though her heart broke into splinters. Memories of her dadaidh telling her she was worthless, a disappointment, tangled up in her mind with Gavran’s face until the words seemed to be coming from him. Gavran had always been the one to tell her she had value. Now, even in his eyes, she had none.
Gavran’s forearm dug further into her throat. “I should kill you.”
Salome’s warning flooded back. This wasn’t Gavran talking. It was the nuckalevee poison. If she wanted both of them to live through this, she had to remember that.
She wedged her hands between his arm and her neck, gaining a few precious inches, enough to speak. “I’m not the one who tried to kill you. I’m the one who packed your mamaidh’s broken knee with knitbone poultice for two months until she could walk again. The one who taught your sisters to cook and braid each other’s hair while she healed.”
Ceana reflexively jerked on the reins, and her gelding tossed his head. She relaxed her hold and patted his neck. Poor thing. It wasn’t his fault she wanted to cover her eyes like a child and pretend that whatever she couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt her. What she wouldn’t give for a few moments of that childhood innocence, when her problems were that easy to solve.
They passed along a line of sycamore trees. Glowing eyes peeked at them from above, accompanied by an angry chitter. The eyes disappeared, and the spongy crunch of the horses’ hooves as they trod on the twigs and other debris from the trees filled the silence.
She settled deeper into the saddle. For years Gavran watched over her and protected her. Now it was her turn to do the same for him. Whatever was coming, she wouldn’t shy from facing it. “What should I expect?”
Something akin to respect flashed across Salome’s face. “I’ll tell you what it’s likely to do. I can’t tell you with surety that he’ll experience every symptom.”
Ceana clenched her teeth. Could Salome not speak plainly for once? She drew a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, repeating the action until her desire to kick a rock passed. Salome wasn’t at any more fault now than her horse had been a moment ago. What was she supposed to do with everything battling inside of her? Keeping it inside seemed like it would tear her apart, but letting it out only turned that destruction on the people around her.
If she focused her mind on the facts, perhaps she could force the rest to the side long enough to endure this. “How certain are you about these symptoms?”
The clouds flowed past the moon, moving shadows and deep crags across Salome’s features. “I know as much about it as I do about any unseelie fae.”
Perhaps that should sound reassuring. Salome had once been seelie fae, after all. But she wasn’t omniscient. She only knew what she’d witnessed or been told about. Which meant she knew more about the unseelie fae than any human would, but at times, that wasn’t saying much. “So enough to know we should avoid them, but too much to allow us to actually do so.”
A smile flirted with the edges of Salome’s lips. “Yes.”
If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Ceana might have laughed. At the moment, she feared that if she did, it might warp into hysterical crying. “What do you know for certain?”
Salome’s almost-smile vanished completely. “He’ll have lessened control over his emotions. They’ll be extreme and often seem baseless. He’ll want to follow his impulses even if they’re not the wise or best thing to do.”
They passed under some low-hanging branches. A spiderweb grabbed for her face. She batted it away, but it stuck to her hand instead. She wiped it on her skirt.
A moody Gavran would likely still be easier to deal with than most people, though it meant that she’d have to put a tighter rein on her own impulsiveness. Gavran had always balanced her out, tempering her tendency to leap and deal with the consequences later. “That doesn’t sound as terrible as I feared.”
Salome pierced her with a look that said I’m not done yet. “The emotional swings are the least of our worries. The true danger comes in that he’ll be both impressionable and paranoid.”
It felt like gears clicking together in her brain, lifting the gate that obscured her vision. “That’s why you couldn’t go without me. You didn’t know if you could convince him to leave with you.”
“If his father and Tavish oppose him leaving, which I’ve no doubt they will, it will be near impossible to change his mind while he’s with them. However, the closer Gavran is to a person, the more influence they’ll have over him. You may have a chance to sway him where I would not.”
An ache grew in the back of her skull and spread across her shoulders. Perhaps in the past she might have had a chance to challenge Allan’s influence over Gavran, but she certainly didn’t now. She’d have to pray that some unconscious part of Gavran’s mind still held all the memories of their life together before the cursed wishes erased her from existence.
She glanced at Salome. Something in the tension around her eyes and the stiff way she held her shoulders said there was more. “Why do those bring the true danger?”
Salome flinched as if Ceana had thrown something at her. “You won’t be able to reason with him. If he decides you’re out to harm him, you’ll become a threat.” The clouds threw her face into darkness again, wiping out her features and making her voice seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Men and women alike have killed those they loved most while poisoned by the nuckalevee.”
CHAPTER 5
“So when I see him again,” Ceana said, “he might try to kill me?”
Salome nodded.
The laugh caught Ceana unaware. She tried to stifle it, but the more she tried, the harder the giggles wracked her body. She shouldn’t be laughing. She just couldn’t seem to stop. She yanked her horse to a halt.
An ache pinched her sides. She sucked in a deep breath and held it. The laugher still wanted to come, but she managed to keep it down this time.
Moonlight lit Eachann’s face again, and his eyebrows rose so high they near disappeared into the shaggy hair falling over his forehead.
“I’m not off my head.” Ceana wiped the moisture from her eyes. Cheater’s tears, her mamaidh used to call them when Ceana was little and would laugh at times when most children would have cried. “But the Almighty surely has a sense of humor. I tried to kill myself before we decided to seek a cure for my curse. Gavran stopped me. For him to now be the one who’ll try to take my life…” She shrugged.
Salome’s lips were set in a grim line. “You’ll need to be wary, but not so wary that he feeds off of it, increasing his own paranoia.”
So she’d somehow need to strike a balance between wariness and helping Gavran believe he could trust her.
“Is there no chance your…” Ceana glanced at Eachann. Poor man still had more shocks coming, “Your gift will allow you to sway Gavran in the same way it keeps me in the saddle?”
Salome shook her head. “My blessing isn’t an active power. I had to relinquish those upon becoming human.”
In the corner of her vision, Eachann flinched, then straightened himself again.
“It’s more of a remnant.” Salome’s words came out slow, as if she were weighing each one before setting it free, trying to find a way to explain snow to someone who’d only known endless summer. “A birthright. It protects me from fae curses that weren’t cast directly on me. Gavran hasn’t been cursed. He’s been poisoned.”
Ceana’s head ached as if she’d been trying to do figures for too long by candlelight. Perhaps the ways of the fae weren’t meant to be understood by mere mortals. Every time she thought she’d sorted it out, the path twisted again.
A whiff of wood smoke on the air reached them.
Ceana squinted into the night. Buildings took shape out of the darkness in front of them. “I don’t know where to find him.”
“There’s only one inn. If they wanted Lyall to treat Gavran’s wounds, they’ll have taken him there. Lyall lives next to the inn.”
They passed the outskirts of the town without anyone stopping them. Though she’d never seen it in daylight, Ceana assumed Duntulm must be too small to be walled or guarded. The homes on the outskirts were no larger than her family’s wattle-and-daub cottage.
Light peeked through the cracks of most of the homes they passed, giving their path a second-hand glow. Sounds drifted out with the light—a fiddle playing on her left, a couple arguing on her right, a child’s high-pitched giggle up ahead.
The houses grew and closed in on them the farther they went, the second stories leaning out beyond the first, the street narrow and muddy. On both sides, signs painted with images of what the shopkeeps offered rocked and creaked in the wind.
Salome led her past the building marked as the inn by the bed and mug on its sign. She dismounted from her horse and knocked on the building next door.
Light flamed upstairs almost immediately and bobbed past windows, moving downward. The door opened.
From her spot on her horse, Ceana couldn’t hear much of what they said. A few scattered words, but she could clearly see the physician’s face. The small stronghold inside her that’d been holding out hope that Gavran hadn’t been poisoned by the nuckalevee fell.
Salome returned and pointed at the window almost directly above them. “He’ll be in there, but they only took one room, so if we were to go up directly, we’ll face Tavish and Gavran’s father. I’ll have the innkeeper call them down on the pretense of enquiring after Gavran’s health and to ask if there’s any way we can help. You’ll need to find a way to sneak up to the room while we distract them.” She handed her reins to Eachann, who’d dismounted from his own horse. She turned for the inn, then hesitated and turned back. “Are we close enough now that his blessing is cancelling out your curse?”
Ceana nodded. While she couldn’t have given Salome the range with precision, after fighting the nuckalevee, she had an approximate idea. She should, after battering herself against the barrier until her body gave out. They were well within the boundary.
Having the influence of the curses lifted due to Gavran’s proximity didn’t guarantee success, but at least now she was no worse off than anyone else would be when trying to sneak into the upper rooms of an inn. Hopefully they hadn’t had trouble in the past with thieves, making them extra vigilant.
Eachann held the door open for Salome. Ceana came in after, as if they weren’t together. The room was bright and warm despite the empty hearth. Burning braziers lined the walls, and the air carried a combination of baking bread, stale ale, and pipe smoke. Ceana’s feet stuck slightly to the floor.
Eachann and Salome spoke to the innkeeper. He led them to a back room. Salome’s position as lady of Duntulm would work in her favor. She couldn’t be expected to sit in the common room. All Ceana needed was to keep from being spotted or kicked out until Tavish and Allan were back there with her.
The innkeeper passed her on his way up the stairs and cast her an appraising look that said he was memorizing her face in case trouble showed up with her. Perhaps she should have asked Salome for coin to purchase something, but that could have been as suspicious as if she continued to stand here. The room had very few women, and those present were clearly under the protection of a man.
Except for the serving maids. They wove between the tables, some smiling and winking at the men, some smacking the hands of anyone who grabbed at them. That was a good sign. The innkeeper must have a rule about what his serving maids had to put up with. They could decline the advances of the men, knowing they wouldn’t lose their jobs for it.
And it might mean she could blend in. The women didn’t seem to be paying much attention to each other, only the patrons, and they were busy enough that the plates and empty mugs were piling up on the edges of the tables.
Ceana swept into the midst of it, slowly collecting the abandoned plates. She stayed angled so she could see the stairs without exposing her face. The innkeeper came back down the stairs with Tavish and Allan following him. They went into the back room. None of them looked in her direction.
She quickly filled her arms and headed toward the kitchen. She veered off at the last moment and took the stairs again. As soon as she reached the top, she put the plates down in a pile.
The upper hallway wasn’t long. The inn seemed to only have six small rooms. Gavran’s would be the one at the end, next to the wall that faced Lyall’s house.
Ceana stopped outside the door. She lifted her hand but brought it back to her side. Would it be better to knock and greet Gavran at the door, or should she check if the door was unlocked first?
Salome’s words about how dangerous Gavran might be repeated themselves over and over in her mind, and her heart beat hard enough in her chest to leave bruises. Even injured, Gavran would be stronger than her if it came down to a fight, and Lord MacDonald had suggested that they use surprise against the stronger nuckalevee. That probably meant it would be her best option here as well. If nothing else, it’d allow her to keep between Gavran and the door if she needed to make a quick escape.
She slipped her fingers around the door latch and slowly eased it up. It moved without resistance. No one had locked the door—from inside or out—after Tavish and Allan left.
She edged the door open, and the hinges creaked. She froze, straining to hear any sounds of movement inside. Maybe that was foolish. She wouldn’t hear anyone turning their head to look at the door. But she should be able to pick up sounds of Gavran moving towards her.
The silence stretched. She pushed the door the rest of the way open and slid inside.
The meaty stench of blood and the sharp bite of a chamber pot that needed emptying clogged the air in the room, along with another odor she couldn’t identify—moldy and rotten.
Stomach acid burned up into the bottom of her throat, and she swallowed hard. She’d been around sickness and injury before. It didn’t smell like that.
She inched another two paces into the room.
A half-burned candle flickered on a small table, giving off enough light to show two chairs set by the fireplace where the fire needed stoking, two beds, and a jumble of blankets on the floor that looked like they might have served as a third.
Gavran lay on the bed directly across from her, with his back to the room. He was naked from his waist up, the wavering candlelight creating unnatural peaks and valleys in his well-muscled back. Cloth wrapped his torso at the level where his wounds had been.
Ceana rubbed a knuckle against her lips. She hadn’t expected him to be asleep. She’d need to gently wake him so that he didn’t become startled and perceive her as a threat.
All of this worrying might be for naught anyway. He might be fine, and then she could simply tell him where to find her once he healed and leave without Tavish and Allan being any the wiser.
And even if he was poisoned by the nuckalevee, they didn’t have any proof he’d try to harm her. Salome hadn’t witnessed the effects of the poison first-hand, and everyone knew how unreliable rumors were. She held back a snort. Given the fickle nature of the fae, their rumors were probably worse than most in mixing fiction with fact.
She tiptoed the rest of the way to his bed and leaned over him. He tossed onto his back and moaned. She jerked back a step, but he didn’t open his eyes.
She moved in again. The bandages on his chest seemed dry. Shouldn’t they have been soaked with blood? There’d been so much blood when she found him lying next to the nuckalevee.
She smoothed his tousled brown hair back from his forehead. His skin was abnormally dry and hot, like touching a mud brick that’d baked too long in the sun. “Gavran,” she said softly.
He twitched under her hand, then his eyes flew open. His unfocused gaze flickered from her face to the empty chairs, to the door, and back to her face. Wariness edged into his expression.
The same tension she felt when trying to tend a wounded dog twined itself around her windpipe, cutting off her air. She drew her hand back slowly. This didn’t mean he’d been infected by the nuckalevee venom. Not truly. It might be a normal fever, brought on by his body fighting the wound. Now that she was near, the blessing side of the curses wouldn’t be holding a fever at bay anymore.
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He frowned. “I know you.”
She drew a shallow breath in through her nose and let it out through her mouth. Calm. Peace. Salome said he’d be impressionable. If he sensed fear in her, what would it do? Would that make him afraid as well, or would it be more like when a wolf sensed terror in potential prey?
Eejit. He wasn’t a predator. He was Gavran. And he needed her help—to either reach someone who could heal him or leave so he could heal through the wishes. “Aye, you know me. Ceana Campbell.”
“Ceana.” The tone in his voice grated against her ears.
She’d never heard him speak her name that way before. Like he wanted to spit it out of his mouth. A cold shiver slithered down her spine.
Run, said a little voice in the back of her head. Now.
“Ceana.” Said this time as if he were trying to piece together memories he couldn’t quite grasp. His look turned hard. “The witch.”
Her stomach bottomed out, and she tried to run backward for the door to keep him in line of sight. She stumbled over her own feet, and he leapt forward.
He slammed her into the wall next to the door. Pain crisscrossed her back, the air spurted from her lungs, and she gasped for more.
He wedged his forearm under her chin, firm against her larynx.
She fought to swallow, to bring in air, but it was like trying to move something wedged in her throat. “Not… witch. Friend.”
“You tried to kill me.”
Tavish and Allan would have fed him the story they believed to be true—that the nuckalevee was her and Gavran had killed her.
When he looked at her, he saw a monster. Pain arched through her chest as though her heart broke into splinters. Memories of her dadaidh telling her she was worthless, a disappointment, tangled up in her mind with Gavran’s face until the words seemed to be coming from him. Gavran had always been the one to tell her she had value. Now, even in his eyes, she had none.
Gavran’s forearm dug further into her throat. “I should kill you.”
Salome’s warning flooded back. This wasn’t Gavran talking. It was the nuckalevee poison. If she wanted both of them to live through this, she had to remember that.
She wedged her hands between his arm and her neck, gaining a few precious inches, enough to speak. “I’m not the one who tried to kill you. I’m the one who packed your mamaidh’s broken knee with knitbone poultice for two months until she could walk again. The one who taught your sisters to cook and braid each other’s hair while she healed.”
