Time stopped. Even the dust motes glowing in the air seemed to go still.
I had to be sure of what I’d seen. I crossed the room in a trance and brought my hand to his cheek so lightly I barely touched him. He hadn’t been paying attention, and he made the smallest movement—almost a flinch—before he looked at me. Yes, the sorrow was truly there. Along with it, hurt and confusion, to a degree that I wondered whether he even understood what he felt, or whether it was as alien to him as so many aspects of the fair folk were to us.
“Have I offended you?” he asked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply . . .”
“No, you haven’t.” Somehow my voice sounded normal. “I’ve just noticed something I need to work on before your portrait’s finished. Could you hold your head like this for a few minutes?”
Aware that I was taking an immense liberty, I raised my other hand, cupped his face, and gently turned it toward my easel at just the right angle for the light to strike his eyes. He allowed me to handle him in silence, his breath warming my wrists, watching me all the while.
This was our last day together. The first and final time I’d ever touch him. The knowing of it pulsed between us like a heartbeat. With our gazes locked, another truth became unmistakable. I felt a connection between us as tangibly as a hand-shake or a grip on my shoulder. I knew he felt it too.
Dizzy, I stepped back and slammed the door on it before it could take form. Dark spots swam around the edges of my vision and cold panic squeezed the air from my lungs. Whatever this was, it had to end. Now.
Walking along a blade’s edge was only fun until the blade stopped being a metaphor.
Mortals cared little for the Good Law’s cryptic edicts, but one of its rulings applied to us all the same: fair folk and humans weren’t permitted to fall in love. Almost a joke, honestly. The sort of thing Crafters wrote songs about and wove into tapestries. It never happened, never could happen, because despite their flirtatiousness and their fondness for attention, fair folk couldn’t feel anything as real as love. Or so I’d thought. Now I doubted everything I’d been told about Rook’s kind, everything I’d observed, the neat, sensible rules I’d taken for granted my entire life. Laws didn’t exist without reason—or precedent.
And its penalty? Oh, you know how these stories go. Of course it’s death, with one exception. To save her life—to save both their lives—the mortal must drink from the Green Well. But only if the fair folk don’t catch them first.
“If you would remain still for me, please,” I said. My request came out coolly, and my chair’s creak sounded miles away. As I lifted my paintbrush, I dared not look at Rook and witness his reaction to my changed demeanor.
When the world failed me, I could always lose myself in my work. I withdrew into this sanctuary, where all my other concerns faded beside the demanding compulsion of my Craft. I narrowed my focus to Rook’s eyes, the full, mellow aroma of oil paint, the sensual gleaming trail my brush spread across the textured canvas, and nothing more. This was my Craft, my purpose. We were here for Craft alone. His veiled expression was something only a master could achieve, and I was determined to do it justice. The technique lay in the shadows of his irises—deep, mysterious, and clouded, like the darkness a boat cast onto the bottom of a clear lake. Not the thing itself, but the shape of the ghost it left behind.
And while I worked the fever filled me, the thrill of my talent, an awareness that I was about to complete a portrait unlike any painted before. I forgot who I was, swept up in this force that seemed to surge through me from both within and without.
The light faded, but I didn’t notice until the room grew dim enough to leach the color from my canvas. Emma was home; she made quiet sounds moving about in the kitchen, trying to keep her presence unobtrusive as she smuggled the twins upstairs. My wrist ached. Stray hairs clung to my sweaty temples. Without warning, I paused to shape my brush and realized I was finished. Rook looked back at me, his soul captured in two dimensions.
A horn blast sounded in the distance.
Rook leapt up across the shadowy room, tension in every line of his body. His hand went to his sword. My first muddled thought was that it was another fairy beast, but the sound wasn’t right: high and nasal, pure of tone. I became sure of this when the horn sounded a second time, shivered, and dropped away.
A chill rippled across my back. Though one rarely hears it in Whimsy, one never forgets the Wild Hunt’s call.
“Isobel, I must go,” Rook said, belting on his sword. “The Hunt has intruded on the autumnlands.”