He gave me a sidelong glance, his amusement fading. “Whatever it takes to keep you safe, Katherine.”
The look hit me at the same time as the realisation. The old Bastian had woken up this morning, rather than the one who was all detached business. A wild and foolish flutter ran through my insides. I swallowed it down and shrugged. “No concerns about honour?”
He made a dismissive sound in his throat. “Honour is a pretty idea. Let me know how relying on it to keep you alive goes.”
I found myself smiling up at him. Perhaps fae didn’t hold with the same ideas humans had about honour and women’s weapons and all that nonsense.
We reached a firing range and I scanned the area, grateful for the distraction. Because the more I looked at him, the less I remembered important things like betrayal and how not to grin like a fucking moron. “So what am I going to be firing to keep myself safe? Do you have my pistol?”
“A pistol is great, but it still can’t be loaded as quickly as one of these.” From a tall locker, he produced a bow. “And what we don’t tend to advertise to humans is that our bows are just as dangerous as our pistols.” His grin was vicious and I’d have said it was as dangerous as either weapon. He rolled his eyes. “For some reason your people prefer guns.”
I wasn’t sure if I scowled at him out of a sense of defensiveness for my fellow humans or because I didn’t feel like I belonged with them at all. “Perhaps it’s because anyone can fire a gun.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”
“Aren’t you? Said like a man who has the strength to draw a bow with ease.”
Bastian’s face scrunched up. Combined with his tiredness, his confusion was almost… cute.
I blamed that for my tone softening. “You might feel differently if you were a woman with little upper body strength. Then you’d see the value of a weapon where you only need to pull the trigger.”
His eyebrows rose slowly as he nodded. “I hadn’t considered that before. Well, you’ll be glad to hear our bows aren’t as hard to draw as yours.” He touched the bow’s tip and said, “Tennacht.” With a faint creak, the bowstring tightened. He held out the elegantly arched weapon. “Try it.”
He was probably basing his assumption on a fae woman’s strength, which would be far greater than mine. Not bothering to grip it properly, I gave an experimental pull on the string.
The bow flexed. It still gave some resistance—a reassuring kind of feedback—but drew to full extension without much effort at all.
“See?” His grin wasn’t even smug. “There’s a reason we don’t sell our bows to humans.” Now it was smug.
“Wouldn’t want us using them on you.” It was meant to be a joke, but even as I said it, I remembered what he’d told me about how close fae had come to being wiped out by war with humans and how slowly their population grew.
His grin disappeared.
“Sorry, that was in poor taste. I didn’t mean—”
He waved off my apology. “You need to hold the bow horizontally.”
It seemed our lesson had begun, and he’d leapt to the assumption I was a complete beginner.
What would be the best moment to tell him he was wrong? Maybe I’d wait and see how long it took him to realise.
When I obeyed and tilted the bow, he handed me an arrow. “The string goes in the notch, fletching upmost.” He moved behind me. “The fletchings are the feathers on the end.”
“Really?”
“Mm, that’s right. Now, take these three fingers.” Coming close, he folded in his thumb and little finger. “Forefinger above the arrow, the other two below. Place them on the string.”
I was already standing side-on to the targets yet he still didn’t realise, so I continued with the charade. “Then what, Bastian?” I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see my grin.
“Bow upright”—his arm came around me as he guided my wrist—“and draw.” He “helped” and I tried to ignore the press of him against my back. “Elbow—oh, it already is up. Good.”
That word. Fuck. That word.
With my hair braided and coiled around my head, he had to see the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I couldn’t summon an overly enthusiastic reply. Not when my stomach was doing odd flippy things like a swallow in the summer sky.
“Make sure you’re not locking your elbow.”
I wasn’t.
“You should feel the pull here.” He released my wrist and his palm landed between my shoulder blades. “Then you just need to aim and—”
I let my arrow fly.
It thrummed into the target on the edge of the inner bullseye.
I nodded and rolled my shoulders. “A little rusty. But you’re right, that was easier to draw than I remembered.”
The air huffed out of him. “You’ve used a bow before.”
I flashed him a grin. “Only a few times. When did you realise?”
“Too late. That’ll teach me for not asking, won’t it?”
I raised my eyebrows.
He jerked his head towards the quiver mounted to a stake in the ground. “Fire another.”
I nocked another arrow and drew. This next part wasn’t so different from pistol shooting. Aim, exhale, adjust aim, fire.
Dead centre.
He returned my wide smile like it was infectious. “Another.” There was a note of playful challenge in his voice that eased the tension I’d been carrying in my jaw and shoulders since waking in Elfhame.
I could almost forget everything that had happened in Lunden.
Almost.
Maybe this morning, I wanted to. It felt like I had a friend here in this strange city.
Maybe that was what made me cocky. “Name two adjacent colours on the target and a number between one and twelve.”
His eyes narrowed and he eyed me with suspicion. “Blue and black. Eleven.”
I nocked. I aimed. I fired.
“Hmm. I suppose every shot can’t be perfect.”
It wasn’t in the bullseye, no.
But I wasn’t aiming for the bullseye.
“Ah, Bastian,” I sighed, shaking my head. “What colours am I on the line between?”
A frown flickered between his eyebrows, and he glanced back at the target. “Blue and black.”
I widened my eyes. “Really? Huh. Weird. And if the target were a clock face, where would—？”
“Eleven.” He exhaled a disbelieving laugh. He looked at me a long while, gaze flicking over my face and down as if he’d never seen me before this moment.
It made my skin burn. That foolish fluttering renewed, fed by his undisguised admiration. I cleared my throat and shrugged like I wasn’t so affected. “I told you I was a good shot. It carries over from pistols to archery—that’s all.”
But it had felt good to prove him wrong, to surprise him where he’d underestimated me. And the look he gave me felt more than good. I couldn’t contain my grin.
A slow and dangerous smile inched over his lips, and I found myself preoccupied by his scar. “Fine, so the Wicked Lady can shoot. But what about when she’s distracted?”
“You don’t think it’s distracting to worry about being executed if you’re caught? I’ve been living with distraction for years.”