He inclined his head, and then stalked off, bringing to mind a tomcat retreating beneath an armchair to nurse his injured dignity. Still blushing hot enough I was amazed my red face didn’t illuminate the clearing, I found a soft patch of moss, cleared it of twigs and leaves, and huddled down for sleep.
That night, I dreamed.
First I had the murky awareness that something was trying to infiltrate our shelter. The branches creaked, in one place and then another, as a being’s weight stole across the canopy. Through my eyelashes I saw Rook asleep a few paces away. He lay utterly boneless, with one hand flattened against the ground. I recalled his trance when we’d first entered the autumnlands, and it occurred to me that if he was healing himself now, he might not awaken as easily as he would normally.
Weariness blurred my vision. Exhaustion lapped at my mind like warm dark water, sucking me back down in the undertow.
When I regained awareness a figure sat perched in the willow above Rook. It was tall and thin and clung to the branches like a cricket, with its folded knees drawn up past its ears. Its colorless hair floated. Its white face was angled down toward him, and it was speaking to him, even though he slept.
No, she was speaking to him. Hemlock was.
“It’s only you now, Rook,” she said. Her tone was pleasant, but her inflection had a pelting, hissing quality like rain lashing against a window during a storm. “Only the autumn court remains untouched, and look at you! You’re too busy waving your sword about and collecting mortal pets to notice.”
Responding to no sound I could detect, she abruptly broke off, tensed, and stared off over her shoulder at nothing. She silently watched the darkness for a time before she turned back to him.
“I am forbidden to speak of it, but you can’t hear me, can you? Then I will tell you this: I no longer answer to the horn of winter.” Her jade eyes were as unfeeling as polished gemstones. “Snow melts on the high peaks, and the Hunt has a new master. Try as I might, I cannot make a game of things now.”
She paused to look over her shoulder again. “So I suppose what I’d like to ask you is, what are we to do when following the Good Law isn’t fair? It’s a dreadful question, isn’t it?” She spoke in a whisper now. A luminous fascination had entered her eyes, and they seemed to swallow up her face. “Rook”—she lowered her voice even further—“do you ever wonder what it would be like to be something other than what we are?”
I swear I didn’t make a sound. But suddenly Hemlock looked around directly at me with her lustrous cat’s eyes, and gave me a feral smile.
Down, down I sank, down into the dark. It was only a dream. I slept.
Rook had moved during the night. When I blinked against the morning light I found him facing me, close enough to touch, but still asleep. His glamour had returned. For all that I’d grown used to the way he looked without it, I knew him best like this, and was glad to see him restored. My gaze wandered over his eyebrows, arched slightly even in sleep, his long eyelashes, his aristocratic cheekbones and expressive mouth. Good health—or at least the illusion of it—burnished his golden-brown skin, and his tousled hair pillowed his head. I noticed an indentation in his cheek where the dimple appeared when he smiled.
He sucked in a breath trapped halfway between a muffled yawn and a sigh, and his eyebrows furrowed meditatively before he opened his eyes. At first hazy with sleep, his face showed dawning comprehension as he looked back at me, followed by acceptance of where he was and with whom. We lay there watching each other in silence for some time, listening to the breeze sigh through the trees, each time followed by the rustle of leaves falling.
“May I touch you?” he asked.
At that moment nothing existed beyond the clearing, beyond us, as though we drifted on a mirror-still sea with no land in sight. Soon we’d part ways. There was no harm in allowing myself this, just once. I nodded.
With a fingertip, he traced the curve of my jaw. His touch was so light I barely felt it. His hand brushed the collar of his coat pulled up around my neck, and a trickle of cool autumn air spilled into my warm cocoon. He traced all around the edge of my ear and up toward my forehead. His finger paused near my hairline.
Mortified, I realized a blemish had appeared there overnight. “Rook! Don’t touch that.”
“Why not?” he said. He lifted his finger and regarded my forehead. “It wasn’t there yesterday.”
“You aren’t supposed to poke people’s spots. It’s embarrassing. It’s—like when I was looking at your wound, I suppose.”