The Faceless Woman by Emma Hamm (i love reading .txt) 📕

close to her cheek she could feel his warmth. “Does the spell prevent anyone from touching your face?”

Aisling didn’t know. A faerie had never expressed interest in touching her, let alone something so intimate.

She resisted the urge to gnaw on her lip, glad to know he couldn’t see her facial expressions. He would notice how uncomfortable she was, but also how intrigued. Aisling was rarely the recipient of kindness, affection, or any kind of regard.

The mere thought of someone touching her face made her heart race. It was overwhelming, perhaps a little too much with the fire warm against her toes and the light casting the hollow in an icy glow.

“What about you?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“People can touch my face.”

“No, I mean your life. You know how I grew up, and I blame my personality entirely on that. Now, it’s your turn.”

He blew out a breath and dropped his hand. Aisling mourned the loss of opportunity, but also relaxed. Her anxiety disappeared when the subject shifted to the strange man who wanted to touch her.

“I am the youngest son of the Unseelie king and queen. As such, I am the least important child they have. I was allowed to do whatever I wished and had the ideal Unseelie childhood.”

“Is that so?” she mused. “Seems to me if you were so happy with your life, you would have stayed in your castle rather than spending your time kidnapping a witch.”

“I didn’t kidnap you. You cursed me.”

“You still brought me here.”

“Because I want to break the curse! Do you think I brought you here for another reason?” He snorted. “You give yourself too much credit.”

“I’m right. That’s why you’re getting so upset, isn’t it? You weren’t happy here.”

She leaned forward, peering into his eyes for any hint of emotion. The raven eye rotated back and forth, refusing to meet her gaze. A thought formed in Aisling’s mind, and she gasped.

“Your eye…” she began.

“I don’t talk about it.”

“It can see me, can’t it?”

He stared at her, his jaw open and both eyes wide. “It’s still my eye. I would have mentioned it if I could see you.”

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to that”—she pointed to his eye—“because it can see me. I didn’t realize it until now, but it reacts. It won’t meet my gaze, and you’ve been able to discern my emotions too easily. In some way, you can actually see me.”

He hesitated then admitted, “In a sense. The other eye is better at predicting than seeing through curses. I still can’t see your face. It’s more I can see a semblance of something. Emotion, thought, what makes you you rather than just reading an expression.”

“Have you always been able to do that?”

“Since I was a child. It was the imperfection my parents were most proud of, considering I turned out a little too normal for their liking.”

For the first time, she didn’t want to insult him. Aisling knew what it was like to be different and the pain it could cause. But in her eyes, he was plenty strange and entirely abnormal.

She tried to lighten the mood by snorting. “What would be their perfect child then? A small furry creature that races through the halls of the castle while setting things on fire with its feet?”

“That is an amusing image, but no. My family is…” He ran a hand over the feathered side of his head and sighed. “Strange is perhaps the best way to say it. Intimidating, frightening to humans…I’ve even heard them described as nightmares.”

She furrowed her brows. “Why is that something to be proud of? Or to aspire to?”

“The Unseelie pride themselves on the absence of beauty. Where the Seelie prefer to adhere to strict rules, we enjoy living our lives as we wish. With both choices comes the temptations of cruelty, pride, and self-righteousness. Neither court has shaken the chains of the old ways from their shoulders.” He leaned away from her but sat himself in a furrow much closer to her. “Although the courts are constantly shifting. Change might happen now.”

She stared into the flames with this new knowledge dancing in her mind. She’d never known the courts were quite so volatile. The legends made them seem pristine, led by faeries who had learned the art of politics long ago.

From what he said, they weren’t quite like that. He condemned faeries for their flaws and actions. What would he say if she told him more about her own people? About the small skirmishes, the battles, the wars?

Considering his opinion of humans, he probably knew all the stories already.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Politics. I’ve never been able to understand them.”

“You and me both.”

Aisling turned onto her side, away from the fire and the confusing faerie who made her senses come alive. She didn’t want to give him layers. He was an annoyance, nothing more, nothing less.

He thought of her as a witch, as a creature that was a means to an end. The binding curse was why he was sticking around, and she didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise.

She tucked a hand underneath her head and closed her eyes. There was more to the faerie than she wanted to admit, and that made her thoroughly uncomfortable.

They walked for another three days before the Unseelie held up his hand and stopped them. Aisling watched his face with rapt attention as he cleared his throat.

“Not much farther now. We should leave the pack here. We’ll return for it later.”

“Why?” she asked. But she still removed it without hesitation.

“I haven’t been entirely truthful with you, witch. This is a very dangerous place, and I cannot promise either of us will make it out alive.”

Something in her cheered. Aisling could feel he was hiding something, and the sensation of being right was one worthy of celebrating. Somehow, it felt wrong to rub it in his face since he tried so hard to be secretive.

So, she pondered the words and shrugged. “If one of us