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She graced him with a look that could have shriveled a lesser man.
He wanted to ask her about it when it dawned on him. “Oh. I saved your life again, didn’t I? Wait, does that mean you owe me a double life debt?”
“No,” she muttered with a sigh and pushed off the wall, out of his arms. “But you don’t need to rub it in by repeating it.” The wink she sent him undermined her grudging tone, made it clear she wasn’t really annoyed.
Cocking a brow, he raised both hands. “Okay, okay. Next time someone or something wants to kill you, I’ll let them have at it. Don’t want nobody saying I’m disrespecting your wishes.” He wagged a finger at her. “See, I’m a modern man, and I can absolutely hold back from gallantly saving a female’s life if it offends her.”
And with a decisive nod and amusement bubbling in his veins, he picked up his bow and collected his arrows.
* * *
Isa watched Basil retrieve his arrows, and her heart ached with how much she wanted to kiss him right now, kiss that barely-there smile on his face, inhale his humor, his sunshine, his light. Oh, and if she lived a thousand lifetimes, she’d always yearn for the brilliance of his smile, the warmth in his eyes, the way he could make her wonderfully dizzy with lighthearted joy just by looking at her. Could make her forget her troubles with a few funny remarks.
Light such as his should not be snuffed out.
The thought whispered through her mind, its roots growing into her heart. I know, she wanted to cry in answer, and I wish there was another way.
But there was none. She’d spent two decades searching for another way to break the curse, all in vain.
Her pulse thrummed in her head, her vision faltered. She balled her hands to fists, closed her eyes. I don’t want to die.
She was a little girl again, clawing her way out from under the heavy body of the dead adult male who’d thought her easy prey…survive…living off insects and the carcasses of squirrels and birds during a particularly harsh winter before she learned how to hunt…survive…hiding in stone from the irate shop owner who caught her stealing a pair of shoes to replace the ones that fell off her feet…survive…breaking the water fae’s hold on her ankle so she could struggle out of the lake and escape her death in the deep…
Survive. It was all she’d ever done, all she knew how to do.
Her breath hitched, burned in her throat. With a pained sound, she forced herself to move, to collect her arrows and follow Basil out of the cottage.
He stood with his back to her, his hands on his hips. When she stepped up to his side, he let out a heavy breath.
“It’s a dead end, isn’t it?”
She grimaced. “We can still ask around the nearby village, see if the fae there know anything about where Rose and her captors went.”
He nodded, sighed, his sunshine subdued. “There’ll be food, yes?”
* * *
Sitting with his back to the wall, Basil watched the patrons in the pub while he took another bite of his steak. So many different kinds of fae, their shapes ranging from bark-skinned, wiry creatures that could have been miniature ents from Lord of the Rings, over the more common human-looking beings with pointed ears—both the bigger-sized ones like him and Isa, as well as the tiny, winged variants also found outside of Faerie—to burly creatures who seemed to be two-legged boars.
As a member of a witch family, Basil was used to seeing nonhuman beings, but this group topped anything he’d ever encountered. The best kind of people-watching. Plus, the steak was delicious. The soup had been great, too. As were the bread, the salad, and the casserole.
Isa slid into the seat next to him, her eyes sparking. “I just heard—wait, you’re still eating? How can you fit anything else in there?”
“I once won first place in an eating competition.” He stuffed more bread in his mouth, chewed with relish.
“I don’t doubt it for a second.” She shook her head. “As I was saying, I just heard something.” Her fingers drummed on the table.
Was she waiting for him to pull it out of her? He gestured with his fork, raised his brows while he chewed. “Spiff iff ouff.”
She leaned forward. “One of the fae I’ve been talking to, she remembered something. She said she talked to the couple who used to live in the house, and they mentioned they were moving to a village called Ranagor. However, she doesn’t recall if they had a child with them when they left.”
He sat up straight. “That’s still better than anything else we’ve found so far.”
They’d spent the better part of the afternoon asking around town, trying to find out where the fae who took in Rose went, or what happened to them, but nobody seemed to know anything. All they learned was that the couple had always been very reclusive, didn’t mingle much in town, didn’t have friends, so even in a village where everybody knew everyone else, no one had any information about where they’d gone.
“Ranagor,” Basil muttered. “How far is that from here?”
“Another day’s hike, at least.”
