CHAPTER 14

His wife was far better at comfort, he thought, as he poured the boiling water into the small cup.

The Princess held her knees to her chest, wrapped up in a blanket as if it could shield her from what she had seen and done.

She had washed away the stains from earlier and her clothes soaked in a tub nearby.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the cup from the Woodcutter.

He grunted in acknowledgment.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am the Woodcutter,” he replied simply.

“So you cut wood?”

“No.”

“Then how can you be a woodcutter?”

“I am the Woodcutter.”

“I do not know what that means.”

She should have, he thought. She should have known the name Woodcutter, for his father and his father’s father had overseen the crowning of every heir in the Sixth Kingdom for the past one hundred years. He knew her. He had brought her gifts from the fae days after her birth. Indeed, it was he that brought skin of snow and hair of ebony and lips as red as mortal blood.

She should have been told stories of him upon her father’s knee. Her father should have told her of the treaty between the fae and humans and of the Woodcutter who held the peace. More importantly, she should have been warned why she, as royalty, as a blue-blooded half-fae, should never venture into the Woodcutter’s forest until her heart had discovered true love.

Instead, her ignorance had led her to spill blood at the base of his trees. Blood bound one to the forest, and the water soaking her clothes was dark red.

He stood and poured the water out from the wash bin, refilling it from a pump carved to look like fish there in the kitchen.

Blood bound blood, and she was bound.

“Why were you in the Wood, Princess?” he asked.

She wrapped the blanket more tightly. “I do not know.”

She was lying. And he knew it. He sat down in front of her and quietly waited.

The words were soft and hesitant when they finally flowed from her lips. “I woke this morning and went to the garden…It was as if the sun had forgotten to rise. The sky was dark and not a creature stirred. There is a pond in my garden with a weeping willow beside it. It has always been my haven. But instead of my pond, I found a mansion I had never seen before. It was as if faeries had come and built it overnight.

“Its door stood open. I called for the owner, but no one replied. I entered, which was foolish, but I only hoped to find the answer to the mystery. The rooms were strange. One would look like it was morning and the one beside it would be as dark as night. But then I came to a wooden door, which opened into some sort of workroom. There was a spiral staircase going down. I followed those stairs and at the bottom…”

She paused, as if gathering her strength to survive the memory.

“I found a prison. The walls were lined with iron cages, and inside, they were filled with pixies—thousands of pixies. They were dying. I tried to free as many as I could, but they were so many and they were so weak…”

She looked at the Woodcutter. She looked at him with haunted eyes that pleaded to forget the memory. “Have you ever heard a pixie touch the earth?”

He had.

He had seen and heard many things a person should never see or hear in their lifetime.

He reached out and gripped her hand, grimly.

“Their magic was being siphoned off,” she said. “Bottles and bottles of dust lined the walls…fresh, wild magic. They had been bled dry. I freed as many as I could…” There was a note of frustration in her voice. “As many as I could…”

He wanted to touch her shoulder reassuringly.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he poured her more tea.

She stared into the depths of the liquid. “I knew I needed to get them to the Wood.”

The Woodcutter’s eyebrows raised in surprise before his face disappeared once more into a mask of control. He was surprised, for all her ignorance, she knew this. Once bound by iron, the life of wood could best reverse the effects upon the fae.

“I placed them in a basket and brought them here, but as I entered the Wood, the Huntsman saw me. He had been following me, I am sure. I ran to the clearing and tried to give the pixies to the trees. But the Huntsman started killing them. He killed so many. They were just lying on the ground…They tried to protect me…All I wanted to do was to save them…He just kept slicing and stabbing with that knife and their light kept getting dimmer…the sound as each one touched the earth…He wouldn’t stop, even though I begged him…He wouldn’t stop…”

Her eyes bore deep into the Woodcutter’s.

“So I killed him.”

The Woodcutter rose to his feet.

The fae were as close to immortal as any creature could be. That the knife had been able to kill them…that this Huntsman carried a tool that could kill a faerie…and that this princess was strong enough to wield the knife to kill the Huntsman…

“Stay here,” he said.