I felt him die.
We were bound together, not only by the witch’s powers, but by that same thing that had bound us to Dafydd and the rest of the pack. It snapped, and his rage was gone as if it had never been. He was gone. I was alone. Utterly, remorselessly alone.
I howled, my cry breaking the silence that had fallen in the snow-covered woods. But no one answered me.
I ran, then, ran to Ariana. Retaining just enough of myself to change back to human as soon as I felt I was near enough to her to grip the chain I wore and chant her name.
TWELVE
Three months after he left, just as spring was strewing her flowers over the forest, Ariana discovered Samuel naked upon the ground before the door to her home. His hands and feet were raw and muddied—he lay so still. She dropped to her knees beside him as he drew in a breath.
In that moment, when she knew that he lived, she understood what she had only worried over before. Human or not, she loved this man who had saved her from her father and washed away the despair of her home with his music.
When he wouldn’t waken to touch or voice, she summoned Haida. Between the two of them, they got him in and laid him on her bed since it was closest to the door. Haida helped her clean him and cover him.
“Exhaustion,” said Haida, her hands on his unshaven face. “And despair. Something terrible has happened.”
He awoke in the middle of the night, when Ariana was sitting beside him. He didn’t say a word, just looked at her with such sorrow that she crawled into bed beside him. When he turned to her, she gave him gladly what comfort he could take from her.
“He’s gone,” Samuel said afterward, his face buried in her hair where she could not see his pain. “My fault. The witch tried to get him to kill me, and when he rebelled, she killed him.”
His pain was so different from hers when her father died that she didn’t know what to say at first. She had never seen his father, though Haida had told her he’d had kind eyes and gentle hands.
“No guilt, surely,” she said finally. “The witch killed him, and his blood is on her. If not for you, he would have lived in thrall to the witch for even longer.”
“She will die now,” he told her, and his body that had been clenched hard around her softened. “He would be satisfied with that, I think.” And then, in the safe darkness of her room and bed, he told her the full tale, of which she knew only bits and pieces, of how he and his father came to be enslaved to a dark witch.
“Stay safe here,” Ariana said when he was done. “She cannot come here without invitation. She will die, and your father’s death will not be without meaning.”
She held him through the night. Over the next week, she and Haida between them saw that he was seldom alone and never without something to keep his hands or head busy. His hurt was deep, but the wound of his father’s murder did not fester nor mar the sweetness of his temperament. Gradually, as days passed, more laughter and music filled her house, and the nights were passion and fire, and her wounds of the spirit mended in his care.
One day, he set the drum he played aside and pulled her away from her loom and into the forest. Swinging her by the hand and singing at full voice, he pulled her into an impromptu dance of great silliness and more energy than grace. He stopped her and took her by the shoulders.
“You,” he said, his blue eyes bright with heady joy.
“Yes?” She felt unaccountably shy, but he made her that way sometimes.
“You I love,” he said, his voice a sweet rush that caused her heart to stumble.
Tears rose to her eyes, she who never cried. This was not a man who would forget that he loved someone in a fit of jealous envy or fear. Still, she couldn’t help but whisper a question just to be certain. “Forever?”
His hands slid up to cup her jaw. “And always,” he agreed hoarsely. He kissed her openmouthed, and there, in the forest that had once been her father’s, he loved her in the sweet grass.
Ariana watched Samuel tease her Haida and smiled to herself. He was one of those rare people who needed others to take care of. Once he’d decided that they were his, he was easier about his father’s fate. He had a purpose and that suited him.
He suited her, too. When he held her at night, she didn’t wake up cold and shaking, certain that the red hounds were on her again.
Like her, Samuel was not happy sitting around doing nothing; soon enough, the tasks around her house would not be enough for him. Already he was restless, getting up as soon as he sat down and pacing rather than sitting still. She decided she wasn’t one for sitting idle, either. Perhaps they should do a little traveling.
“I think,” she told him as he sang to them after dinner, “we should go traveling, we three.”
Haida’s eyes grew round. “Oh, they would never let the likes of us into a court, lady. You, of course. But I’m a hobgoblin and he a human. They treat humans with no gentleness.”
“I’m not talking about visiting my mother,” Ariana told her. “But why shouldn’t we travel throughout the human kingdoms?”
Samuel smiled sharply, his hands keeping a restless rhythm on the drum. “A stir we’d make, that’s for sure,” he said, his voice oddly cadenced as he talked with the beat of his drumming. “They aren’t used to fairy princesses and hobgoblins in human villages, my lady. Some warlord would try to claim you, and I’d have to take him down.”
She pulled a glamour over her face and form and spread it over Haida just to watch his jaw drop. “Do you think that fae keep to themselves always, Samuel?” she said behind her guise of a pox-scarred, plain-faced woman. “Just because we are not seen doesn’t mean that we do not go where we please.”
“I thought your magic was gone,” Samuel said, his face softening. “Is it back?”
“This isn’t that kind of magic,” she told him. She had expected her magic to start seeping back to her by now, but it had not. Sometimes she worried about that, but Samuel made her feel safe—and magic had brought her enough heartache that she would not be sad if she were never any more than what she was now. Samuel waited for her to explain herself, so she told him, “It’s glamour—a part of me, like music is a part of you.” Then she nodded at Haida. “I could only do that because she does not guard herself against me.”
Haida put her hands on her cheeks. “Oh dear,” she said, and squeaked when she sounded like an old woman. She laughed and ran off to find the polished-bronze mirror in the hallway to see what Ariana had done to her.
Samuel set the drum down, got up, and walked all the way around her. He stopped in front of Ariana and reached out to touch her nose. He slid his hands to her cheekbones, then to the corners of her eyes.
“It feels real,” he said, drawing a deep breath. After a moment he relaxed. “But you smell like yourself.”
“Samuel,” Ariana said. “How would you like to earn our room and board as we travel from village to village? I can be your meek wife, and Haida can sing with you.”
He rubbed his face and paced a bit.
“I have a hard time thinking with the moon singing in the sky,” he said, as if it were a confession.
She tilted her head—it was still daylight, though the sun hung low in the sky. There were human things, phrases and aphorisms, that seemed odd to her; perhaps Samuel’s odd comment was just such a thing as those.
“Samuel?” Ariana couldn’t keep the concern out of her voice.
His eyes half closed. “I am restless tonight, I think. But travel appeals to me. Yes.”
“We’ll do it,” she said. The floor moved just a little under Ariana’s feet. So it was to her home she spoke the last bit. “Travel the summer and return for autumn and winter.”