“Yes,” agreed Emma, not needing the rest of the words to know what he meant. She and Julian almost always agreed on people. She felt her mouth curve up as she smiled at him, despite everything, despite the incredible, impossible strain of the night.
And it wasn’t as if the risk was over, she thought, turning to gaze at the room. She had hardly ever been in such a beautiful space. She had even heard of cave hotels, places in Cappadocia and Greece where gorgeous rooms were dug out of rocks and draped with silks and velvets. But it was the flowers, here, that tugged at her heart—those white flowers that smelled like cream and sugar, like the white flowers that grew in Idris. They seemed to radiate light.
And then there was the bed. With a sort of belated shock, she realized that she and Julian had been left alone together in a wildly romantic room with only one, very large and very plush, bed.
Definitely, the night’s worries were not over, at all.
* * *
When Nene returned, she cleaned Kieran’s wound gently with damp linens, pressing the edges of the cut carefully with her fingers. He sat upright and rigid on the edge of the bed, not moving or acknowledging what was going on, but Cristina could see from the deep crescent marking his lower lip that he was in pain.
Mark sat quietly beside him. He seemed wrung out, exhausted, and did not move to hold Kieran’s hand, only sat with his shoulder touching the other boy’s. But then, they had never been the hand-holding type, Cristina thought. The Wild Hunt had not been a place where such gentle expressions of affection were welcome.
“There was monkshood on the Unseelie’s arrow,” Nene said when she was done cleaning the wound. She held her hand out for a bandage and began wrapping Kieran’s slender torso. He had been undressed and re-dressed in clean trousers, a shirt folded on the bed next to him. There were scars on Kieran’s back, not unlike the ones on Mark’s, and they stretched to the tops of his arms and down his forearms, too. He was thin but strong-looking, with clear lines of muscles in his arms and across his chest. “If you were a human or even ordinary fey, it would have killed you, but Hunters have their own protection. You will live.”
“Yes,” Kieran said, an arrogant tilt to his chin. But Cristina wondered. He didn’t say, Yes, I knew I would live. He had doubted, she suspected. He had feared he would die.
She rather admired his bravery. She couldn’t help it.
Nene rolled her eyes, finishing with the bandages. She tapped Cristina’s shoulder as Kieran shrugged his shirt on, doing the buttons up with slow, shaking fingers, and indicated a shallow marble dish on the nightstand, filled with damp cloths swimming in a greenish liquid. “Those are poultices to prevent infection. Put a new one on the wound every two hours.”
Cristina nodded. She wasn’t sure how she would set an alarm or wake up every two hours, or if she was simply meant to stay awake through the night, but she would manage, either way.
“Here,” Nene said, leaning down to Kieran with another vial. “Drink this. It will not harm you, only help you.”
After a moment, Kieran drank. Suddenly he pushed the vial away, coughing. “How dare you—” he began, and then his eyes rolled back and he sank down to the pillows. Mark caught him before his wounded back could touch the bed, and helped Nene carefully roll him onto his side.
“Don’t feel bad,” Mark said, noticing Nene’s set jaw. “He always falls asleep yelling that.”
“He needed to rest,” was all Nene said. She swept from the room.
Mark watched her go, his face troubled. “She is not what I imagined, when I dreamed that I might have family in Faerie,” he said. “For so many years I looked and asked, and there was no sign of them. I had given up.”
“She went out of her way to find you and save you,” said Cristina. “She clearly cares for you.”
“She doesn’t know me,” said Mark. “Faeries feel very strongly about blood. She could not leave me to fall into the hands of the Unseelie King. What happens to one member of a family reflects upon the others of that bloodline.”
She touched your hair, Cristina wanted to say. She had seen it only very quickly: As Nene had reached to bandage Kieran’s back, her fingers had brushed the fine edges of Mark’s pale hair. He hadn’t noticed, and Cristina wondered now, if she told him, if he would even believe her.
Cristina sat down on the foot of the bed. Kieran had curled up, his dark hair tangled beneath his restless head. Mark was leaning back against the headboard. His bare feet were on the bed, only a few inches from Cristina; his arm lay outstretched, his fingers nearly touching hers.
But his gaze was on Kieran. “He doesn’t remember,” he said.
“Kieran? What doesn’t he remember?”
Mark pulled his knees up to his chest. In his torn and bloody shirt and trousers, he looked more like the ragged figure he’d been when the Wild Hunt had let him go. “The Unseelie Court beat him and tortured him,” he said. “I expected it. It’s what they do to their prisoners. After I untied him, as soon as I got him out of the clearing, I realized they’d done him some kind of damage that meant he didn’t remember killing Iarlath. He doesn’t remember anything since that night he saw us talking in the kitchen.”
“He doesn’t remember the whipping, what happened with Jules and Emma—?”
“He doesn’t remember it happening, or that I left him over it,” Mark said grimly. “He said he knew I would come for him. As if we were still—what we were.”
“What were you?” Cristina realized she’d never asked. “Did you exchange promises? Did you have a word for it, like novio?”
“Boyfriend?” Mark echoed. “No, nothing like that. But it was something and then it was nothing. Because I was angry.” He looked at Cristina wretchedly. “But how can I be angry at someone who doesn’t even remember what he did?”
“Your feelings are your feelings. Kieran did do those things. He did them even if he does not remember them.” Cristina frowned. “Do I sound harsh? I don’t mean to. But I sat with Emma, after. I helped bandage her whip cuts.”
“Now you’ve helped bandage Kieran.” Mark took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Cristina. This must seem— I can’t even imagine what you’re thinking. Having to sit here with me, with him—”
“You mean because of—” Cristina blushed. Because of the way we kissed at the revel? She searched inside her heart, looking for jealousy, for bitterness, for anger at Mark. There was nothing. Not even the fury she’d felt at Diego at the appearance of Zara.
How far away that seemed now. How distant and how unimportant. Zara was welcome to Diego; she could have him.
“I’m not angry,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be worrying about what I’m feeling, anyway. We should be concentrating on the fact that Kieran is safe, that we can return.”
“I can’t stop worrying about what you’re feeling,” Mark said. “I can’t stop thinking about you at all.”
Cristina felt her heart thump.
“It would be a mistake to think of the Seelie Court as safe ground where we can rest. There is an old saying that the only difference between Seelie and Unseelie is that the Unseelie do evil in the open, and the Seelie hide it.” Mark glanced down. Kieran was breathing softly, evenly. “And I don’t know what we will do with Kieran,” he said. “Send him back to the Hunt? Call for Gwyn? Kieran will not understand why I would want to be parted from him now.”
“Do you? Want to be parted from him now?”
Mark said nothing.
“I understand,” she said. “I do. You have always needed Kieran so badly, you never had the chance to think about what you wanted with him before.”
Mark made a short noise under his breath. He took her hand and held it, still looking at Kieran. His grip was tight, but she didn’t pull away.