ELEVEN
SAGE
I knock on Faelan’s door, but only silence echoes back. Unconscious people tend not to answer doors.
When I glance across the walkway to my cottage, I don’t see any sign of a fire. The air smells a bit tangy still, but the smoke damage on the outer wall is gone. I’m guessing Aelia is right, and the repairs have already been completed. Do they just move real speedy, like the Flash? Or does time just sorta stand still whenever they need to get stuff done quickly?
I knock on Faelan’s door again. Still no answer.
After standing on the welcome mat for a few seconds and absently watching a blue jay hop around on a nearby branch, I decide that things are way too wacky in this place to give a crap about decorum. So I try the knob, and when it won’t give, I pull one of the bobby pins from my hair that Aelia used to make it look like I had a stylist instead of a pocketknife. I bend the thin metal and wriggle it into the keyhole. The lock’s got pretty old guts so it clicks almost immediately and creaks open a little.
I slip inside and softly shut the door behind me. When I look up, my breath clogs in my throat.
It’s a forest. I’m in a forest—or at least it feels that way. Green drips from the ceiling and the curling arms of ferns crowd around my legs. Tree trunks act like natural pillars, the bowers creating a canopy above, the roots nubby under my feet. The air smells like damp green things. Like rain.
“Faelan?” I whisper, searching the thick shadows. My pulse picks up speed at the strangeness.
I step deeper into the room, hearing nothing but the slight shifting of plants around me as I move. But then I push aside some drooping vines, and the leaves above my head rustle loudly. I look up, hoping it’s just a bird or something. In the house. Or the forest. I don’t know what to call this place. I don’t see anything, so I keep going farther. As I move aside a branch blocking my view, it gets even weirder.
A circular structure made of sticks appears in front of me. It’s a foot taller than me and rimmed in chunks of brown grass at the top. Dead grass. Moss and mushrooms coat the woven white birch branches, dark earth crumbling out of the crevices along the base.
I stare in confusion for a minute, and then I walk around it, looking for rhyme or reason to the thing.
A soft sigh fills the air, and I freeze, looking up. “Faelan?” But the noise sounds too feminine to have come from the burly Faelan.
No answer comes. I should probably just walk away, leave whatever this is alone. Poking around in the unknown is usually a horrible idea—I’ve seen enough curious ditzes die in horror movies to know that. But, apparently, I’ve become a curious ditz.
I slip off Aelia’s ridiculous purple heels and prop my foot on one of the branches woven into the body of the structure. I grab a chunk of dead grass along the top and pull myself up to peek over the edge.
My nails dig into the bristly roots, and my breath catches in my throat.
Faelan’s head is beside my fingers. He’s lying on a bed of browning grass—asleep or dead, I can’t tell. But I know where the sigh came from. Aelia’s friend, Niamh, is wrapped around him, her delicate fingers splayed on his bare stomach. The two are coated in a thin silver-white substance that looks like it’s made of spiderwebs.
I can’t stop staring. The girl’s head is tucked into the dip of Faelan’s shoulder muscle, her long blond hair covering her obviously naked body. His arm is wrapped around her waist to hold her close, and his breath is rustling the hair at her brow. They’re like something out of a faerie story, lovers frozen in time, so beautiful it almost hurts to look at them.
And the skin on Faelan’s face isn’t twisted and charred anymore. Just like when Ben drank Faelan’s blood, the burns are completely healed, and only a tinge of pink is left behind on his cheek and neck. There’s a little smudge of soot there, on his temple—
His eyes fly open and instantly lock on mine. They’re glowing green.
I gasp and jerk back. My fingers slip through the dead grass roots with the sudden movement, and I fall, landing on a fern with an oomph.
The air whooshes from my lungs, and I have to focus on trying to breathe as threads of the silver webbing float down. A creak sounds from above, and Faelan appears in shadow, his predatory form crawling over the edge of the structure. He perches there for a second, searching with glowing eyes, then he spots me. He hops down, landing in a crouch like a bronze Tarzan.
I gape at his body as he stands.
Yep. He’s naked. Nay. Kid.
Heat washes through me as the vision of him sears my brain. I’m torn between wanting to scrub my memory of the sight and wanting to drool over it for the rest of my life. Why did I have to be the curious ditz?
A growl reverberates from him, and the branches above fill with the sound of leaves rustling and birds screeching.
I look up and spot several bright blue jays fluttering over my head, squawking and cawing like mad. They swoop down one at a time, like they’re trying to scare me.
One of them zips closer in a rush, beating its wings at my face.
I scramble away and swing at it, but another one pecks my shoulder, drawing blood. Still another gets its talons into my hair, yanking.
My palm smacks the tiny body as I swat at the air, sending it reeling. I growl right back at the birds, at Faelan who’s stepping closer—but before he can reach me, I stagger to my feet, stumbling for the door, flinging it open, tumbling out, and slamming it behind me.
Something hits the wood with a thunk, and I find myself hoping one of the blue jays just gave itself a concussion.
I lean against the door and slide to the ground, trying to catch my breath.
Maybe I should be worried that naked Faelan will come after me, but I can’t seem to focus on anything but oxygen right now.
Note to self: the safest Faelan is an unconscious Faelan.
The sound of someone clearing their throat interrupts my thoughts. I look up and see Aelia leaning against a tree several feet away.
“So, are you happy with everything you’ve seen?” she asks, obviously annoyed.
I give a jerky nod.
She breathes out a tired sigh and steps closer. “And now you’re a mess again.”
“What the hell was all that in there?” I ask, done with her weirdness. “I think he made birds attack me. And he was naked! And covered in these spiderwebs, sleeping in some sort of—” I move my hands, searching for the right word to describe it.
“A nest,” she fills in, giving me an irritated look.
“Yes! A nest.” The idea sends a shiver through me, the vision of him cocooned with that girl, curled up with her, then his body crawling over the edge . . . “What kind of thing is that guy?”
“It’s super rude to ask that, you know,” she says.
So I’ve heard.
“I really can’t believe you interrupted his hibernation—not cool. Now I’ll have to put him and Niamh back under, and that will cost me. And you.”
“Cost what?”
“Power? Energy? Gods, girl, keep up.”
Is she kidding? None of this makes any sense.
She steps closer and points at me as she steps over my legs to get to the door. “You’re going to owe me some juice.”
I shake my head. “I have no clue what that means.”
She rolls her eyes and then bends so she’s more at my level. “Look, sweetie, this is so not my job, but I’ll lend you a hand, okay? You burned our resident hunter nearly to a crisp.” She points at Faelan’s door and raises an accusing brow at me. “You got that?”
When I nod, she continues, “Well, that mess forced his mind—or consciousness or whatever—to retreat, to protect itself and his power, which is why he nearly ripped your head off back in your cottage, and probably sent a few sharp beaks your way a second ago. Right?” She pauses again, like she wants me to agree or something, so I nod once more. “Okay, so then, in order for him to heal and allow his power to fully restore itself, he has to be all dormant and whatnot for a period of time near a power source—Faelan gets his energy from life, things that grow, and Niamh is a pixie who grows things. Got it?”
When I frown, still not fully wrapping my head around the crazy, she closes her eyes and rubs her temple like she’s getting a headache. “Oh, my freaking gods,” she mutters. And then she says, “So, like, when a creature of Faelan’s ilk goes under, they have to pair with a compatible underling. Niamh, as a pixie, is the closest thing we have to an earth faerie. Therefore she’s the chick who picked the short straw—even though an alfar would’ve been better. Buuuut,” she draws out the word, “now I’ve gotta go in there and use a spell to put him back to sleep so he can finish healing—and so he doesn’t do anything too deadly in his subconscious state.” She stands again and combs her fingers through her hair. “Is that all simplistic enough for you?”
It’s funny, but she actually used a few big words in that explanation. From the conversation we had in her room, I wouldn’t have thought the girl owned a book. I assumed she was about as deep as a desert puddle.
I nod at her again, even though I’m pretty clueless. Will I ever understand this strange world I’ve been pulled into? The thought of running away from it all rolls through my mind again, but where would I go? And apparently I’m not safe around people—regular people who can’t heal by wrapping themselves up with pixies or drinking blood. If I burned down half a house in only minutes, in this supposedly protected place, who knows what I’d do out there. I need to get this under control. I need to understand what I am. Either that or I need to go hide in a mountain cave, like a monk, so I can’t hurt anyone.
For now, I’ll just steer clear of Faelan. Which leaves the vapid Aelia as my companion and clarifier. And she’s even less helpful than Faelan was. I can only hope that Marius will have actual answers when he comes to dinner tonight. That can’t happen soon enough.