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

“I’ll feel better once she isn’t leaching the life from me.” He rubbed the starburst mark underneath his shirt.

“We have a while to wait. Tell me what happened, Bran. Every bit of it.”

He took his time explaining what had happened. There was history between them. Elva had been his first love, his first heartbreak, and everything in between. She deserved to know every detail and then some.

To her credit, she listened intently through the entire tale while sharpening her blade, only setting it aside when he spoke of the dead god and the Duchess. Sometimes she interrupted with questions, but mostly she let him talk.

Every word lifted a weight off his shoulders he hadn’t realized was there. She’d always been good at this. Elva’s talent was that she made people feel like they were important. She listened, she understood, and she healed without a word.

It was both her blessing and her curse.

As he spoke of the nightshade running through Aisling’s veins and his flight through the window, he felt a rush of energy and power pouring back through him. A long sigh of relief escaped his lips.

Elva nodded. “And so it is done.”

The fiery trails down his sides disappeared. “How is she doing it?”

“Scáthach is a mystery to all of us.”

“Even to those who live with her?”

Her gaze slid to the side. “She says every warrior must also be a healer. To understand what can cause the most pain, we must also know what does not.”

“How intriguing,” he murmured, his eyes finding the fortress again.

Was Aisling scared? It made sense she would be. She was good at pretending that nothing affected her, but he’d seen the flashes of fear in her gaze. She would awake to a stranger bending over her, perhaps even touching her, and he wasn’t there to ease her worry.

“Sit down, Bran.”

He hadn’t realized he’d risen.

Slowly, he settled back down onto the carpet and let out a breath. “What you must think of me.”

“There are many things I think of you, Unseelie prince. But I’m uncertain you could ever guess them.”

He ran a hand over the feathers on his skull. “Perhaps not. But I know how I was back then. I made life difficult for you when you didn’t choose me.”

“I was a pawn in my life. My parents wanted a daughter who was royalty. They didn’t care who I chose.”

“They didn’t.”

He remembered those days well. He was supposed to have a Seelie bride. His mother wanted someone who understood their ways so she could pry secrets from their lips. He had desired Elva but hadn’t been able to throw her into his mother’s web. In the end, he chose to be selfish and take her for himself, regardless of his mother’s plans.

So, he’d wooed her. He poured so much energy and affection into her that he had surprised himself. Before Elva, Bran hadn’t known whether or not he could be the soft, kind person he had been with her.

And then the Seelie king had arrived.

He rode a golden steed, not a single strand of pure white hair out of place. Bran had seen him and known immediately that he had lost. Elva wouldn’t choose a man who was half beast. She would choose the paragon of the Fae.

When she left him empty-handed, he had felt his heart shatter into a million pieces. It had taken years to build himself back up, and even then he had shards of self-doubt that still dug between his ribs.

He looked at her now and saw a person. There was a woman under all that golden beauty. A woman who had been through much and regretted her decision of husband a thousand times over.

His expression softened. “How are you?”

A pretty blush spread across her cheeks, and the smallest of smiles made her lips twitch. “After you helped the Seelie king take back his throne from my husband, I left the castle for good. He banished Fionn to the human realm. I do not know where he is or what he does and I am glad of it. I’m learning how to be myself again. It is taking more time than I expected.”

“We all discover that, some point or another in our life.” Bran stared down at his hands and wondered when they had become these people. He had forgotten how to be confident. She had forgotten how to be a person. And yet they both waited at the door of a fortress for a woman neither knew.

“Did you know of her?” he asked. “Your sister?”

“Illumina left us very early in her life, but not as most changelings do.”

He lifted a hand. “Illumina?”

“It is her name.” Elva’s eyes narrowed. “She never told you her name?”

“She said her name was Aisling.”

“That is the name she chose for herself, but not by birthright. Her name is Illumina. She is my youngest sister and the last of our family line. Our parents kept her for as long as they could, but it was clear she would never be one of the Seelie Fae. They could not stand such a slight upon the family name.”

“So they got rid of her.”

“It was late in her life to do so. We had to call upon…less than savory familial contacts to take her to the human realm. I remember it being very painful for her.”

Bran ground his teeth, jaw creaking as he held himself still. “Such practices were outlawed a long time ago.”

“Yes, they were. And yet, we still did it.”

“Who helped you?”

“My grandmother.” Elva glanced up, her eyes burning with the same rage he felt coursing through his veins. “Badb.”

The great Tuatha de Danann, perhaps the most mysterious of them all, was Aisling’s grandmother? He should have known. Only the speckled goddess of war could create a spell so profoundly confusing and infinitely simplistic as that which bound his witch.

Before he could ask another question, Scáthach’s deep voice interrupted them. “She will live, but she must stay in your tent until