For a moment, a flash of insight caught her and she grabbed his hand where it rested on the handle of the tray while the beast tried to take her mouth and spill the True Names that she had for him: Sawyl. Samuel Deathbringer. Samuel Whitewolf. “Samuel Healer,” she said, then managed to close her lips before more escaped.
He tilted his head, tossed an errant strand of long light brown hair out of his eye, and said, “Sometimes. I do warn you that calling me human is a little optimistic. I have not been simply human for a long time.”
“Wolf,” she said, her throat closing as the Name was born on her tongue. “Killer.” She pulled her hand away from him as if his flesh were hot iron. The beast was riled, and the flash of the memory of fangs closing upon her left her too afraid to control it properly.
“Sometimes,” he agreed again mildly, as if unaware of his danger. Maybe he didn’t know. “But it was your father who tried to have us kill you. Happily, his control slipped, or my grandmother the witch did not give him enough control of us because he fair annoyed her. She does things like that. So we killed him instead of you.”
She held still, all of her. The beast was silenced. The wolf sitting beside her was as nothing compared to what he told her. She felt as if time stopped, as if nothing moved inside her at all, not even her heart. “My father is dead?”
Samuel, who evidently was sometimes a wolf, though she’d never heard of such a thing as a human who could turn into a wolf, said, “Yes. It wasn’t an easy thing, not even for us. He killed the rest of the pack, all but my da and me. But your father is dead and returned to the forest.”
Her heart started beating again, but it hurt, and she clasped her fist to her chest in an effort to stop it. Grief, rage, and relief fought for ascendance. Once, she had loved him, her father whose death changed so much.
Samuel sat on the edge of her bed and held up a carved wooden bowl that steamed and smelled of good things. “Drink this.”
Her beast rose at his nearness, teetering on the brink of taking control. But when he simply did not move, she was able to breathe, and the thing her father had made of her subsided reluctantly. When she started to reach for the bowl, her hands shook, so she put them back down.
His mouth flattened, and the corner of his eyes tightened. “I did that,” he said, as if the words pained him.
“What?”
“To your shoulder,” he said. “It went bad—and the fever kept you sick for a while. Haida tells me that usually you heal faster but that you had used all your magic to thwart the forest lord’s will. In any case, the shoulder will bother you for a while longer—I don’t know how long. My patients were regular folk, not fae. Haida seems to think that you’ve been weakened by your magic working and might heal as slowly as a human. In that case, it will hurt for a few more days.”
She blinked at him a moment. Her shoulder hurt, it was true, but compared to what she usually felt after her father had finished with her, it was nothing.
She might have said something, but he lifted the bowl to her lips. She contemplated another True Name she had not let escape: Samuel Silverheart. She was named for the metal—Ariana and silver were not always the same. But she feared that the name meant what it sounded like; she could not love a wolf.
“I am Ariana,” she told him when the bowl was empty.
He bowed his head. “I wish that our first meeting had been different, lady. But upon this our second meeting, I say that I am happy to make your acquaintance.”
Samuel’s eyes held shadows that never left, though they lightened now and then—especially when he sang.
Ariana was not a hobgoblin, like Haida, to read emotions more easily than words. But despite the darkness born of sorrow and anger, he was gentle and patient with her sudden starts. When she fretted over staying in bed, he didn’t argue as Haida did.
While the hobgoblin scolded, he left the room. Ariana had swung her legs off her bed, when he brought in a skin drum.
He frowned at her bare feet. She found herself tucking them up beneath her instead of getting up as she’d intended. Because her bare toes seemed more vulnerable than she liked in front of this man who was nearly a stranger. He sat on the side of her bed, and she scooted farther back, away from him and against the wall.
“Well, then,” he said, not looking at her. “I saw this sitting around in the kitchen for no reason, and though it’s been a while, I couldn’t resist.”
She didn’t recognize the drum, which meant that Underhill had brought it for him—like a puppy seeking to please. It didn’t reassure her completely—Underhill had served her father long—but it helped to make her more comfortable.
He struck up a soft, solemn rhythm and sang.
She’d heard sweeter voices; the fae have singers among them. But music loved his voice just the same. His song was about a wren singing in a field and a man who longed for his childhood home. When he was finished, he raised one eyebrow, set a quicker beat, and hopped directly into a song about a clever mouse and not so clever woman.
There were better singers among the fae, but he would have done well, even so, she thought, in the courts where her mother had lived.
At his orders, she stayed in bed for a few more days. When she grew restless, Haida brought her weaving to her. It was not her favorite task, but making cloth was a necessity even for the fae. Samuel came in while she was threading the warp—and he made her teach him. At first he made a mess of it, but his fingers were long and clever, and it wasn’t long before he caught on. She thought it was another thing to keep her in bed. But when he later made Haida teach him to cook his favorite soups and sweets, she decided it was just curiosity.
If it hadn’t been for his kindness to her little champion, she might have resisted him longer—no matter the serious attention he’d given to her women’s work. He was human (and wolf, warned her beast, though it wasn’t loud around Samuel). Ariana wasn’t used to small kindnesses being dealt out by men, and she felt herself falling under the spell of the soft-spoken Samuel, just as Haida was.
The hobgoblin had initially resisted his intrusion into her kitchen—but then he proposed a trade. He taught her a song for every dish she taught him to make, finding pretty but simple tunes with limited range, so Haida could sing them well. Her little friend’s pleasure in making her own music made him happier than learning to cook did.
He let Ariana get out of bed after three days—and then, contrary man, he became relentless in his demands for her to move, to bend and twist. An old wound in her leg bothered him the most. He told her to keep salve on it to soften the scar, made her move and bend until it hurt, then bend a little more.
It took her a week before she admitted that she’d named him true: Silverheart, Ariana’s heart. Her body loved his form, but her heart loved the man within who had so much kindness inside him.
TEN
Haida was shy and nervous about my bumbling around in her kitchen. But I needed something to keep my hands and mind busy. Ariana was healing much faster than I expected, and after the first few days, her care was not enough to keep me busy. I needed to do things to keep my mind off Da.
Haida had broken the hold my grandmother had on me, but the tie that bound my father to the witch was stronger than mine, either because he’d taken Dafydd’s place as head of the pack, since he was closer in blood to her, or—and he’d said this was probable—because she’d had her claws into him longer. The witch would be enraged with the deaths of the rest of the pack and whatever Haida had done to free me—and my father was facing her alone. When I was certain that Ariana would heal without me, I would return to do for my father what Haida had done for me.