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

“Like someone hit me over the head with a tree branch. What happened?”

“The Duchess poisoned you.”

He watched her eyes clear slightly. “Nightshade.”

“Likely, it was always a personal favorite of hers. I brought you here when we couldn’t wake you.”

“We?” She struggled to sit up, but he pressed a hand against her shoulder to keep her lying still. “Where is Lorcan? He should be here. He would know how to heal me.”

“He said nightshade was beyond him.”

“It’s not beyond him,” she said with a snort. “He’s healed countless people who suffered from poisoning. It’s how he learned how to be a witch. Nightshade is no less challenging than belladonna.”

Bran cursed. “That lying little— He’s the reason we came here.”

“How did we get here?”

“I—” He cleared his throat and leaned back. “I might have opened a portal.”

“You can open portals now?”

“Well…yes?”

Even weak with exhaustion, she gave him a look that chilled him. “Could you always, or is this a recently discovered talent?”

He swallowed. “Recent.”

“Bran, you can’t go around stealing spells from people! What if you had seen the rune at the wrong angle? What if—”

He let her continue to scold him, but stopped listening. A grin spread across his face. He never thought he would be so happy to have someone berate him for being foolish, but here he was. It meant the world that she could yell at him because it meant she was alive and well. She was still breathing, and was all that mattered.

Finally, he refused to take the beating anymore. He leaned down and covered her soft lips with his own, pressing his grin against her still-moving mouth.

“Aisling, stop talking.”

“And another thing!”

He mock groaned, framed her face with his hands, and willed her to silence with every lingering kiss. He relearned the textures of her mouth, the velvet softness of her lips, the delicate shape of her teeth and slight hesitation of her tongue. He lingered, rediscovering the pieces of her he should have savored far longer than one single night.

Finally he pulled back and inhaled her soft sigh.

“You foolish man, you could have gotten us both killed.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I put us both in danger.”

“Hush.” She reached up and ghosted a fingertip over his brow, gently setting his feathers back in order.

He licked his lips. “I brought you to the Fortress of Shadows. It was the only place where I knew they could heal you. I apologize if this is the last place you want to be. I didn’t know who your family was, and I—”

She pressed her hand against his mouth. “I woke up a little earlier than I let on. I heard what you were saying to Elva. All of it, really.”

If she had cracked the earth open under his feet, she wouldn’t have surprised him more. His jaw fell open, but he didn’t know what to say. How could he explain he had loved her sister? Should he? That was hardly a conversation anyone ever wanted to have with someone who had become important to them.

She nudged his jaw closed. “It’s okay, Bran. We all have a past, and I fully intended on telling you mine before this. I never expected the Duchess to try to kill me, or my sister to have a history with you, or to realize I could have met you a long time ago if my parents hadn’t given me away.”

He hadn’t thought of it like that, but it made him infinitely angrier to realize he could have met her from the first moment he stepped foot onto Seelie lands. He would have known her face as a child, watched plump cheeks with rosy peaks change into the graceful planes he now adored.

“I wish we had more time.” He touched a hand to hers. The raven eye shifted and locked upon her gaze. “We have had little chance to get to know one another.”

“I think I know you fairly well, Unseelie.”

“Do you, witch?” He leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers. “I suppose you know me more than anyone.”

She yawned, her jaw cracking with the sheer force of her exhaustion. “I thought they healed me.”

“You’re awake, aren’t you?”

“Barely.”

He pressed a kiss to her cheek and stood up. “I’ll see if I can buy us one more night.”

“We aren’t staying?”

“I can’t.” Bran hesitated in front of the door, wondering just how much he should tell her. “Men are not welcome here.”

Would she push? Would she try to wiggle her way further into his life until he revealed every secret he kept?

“Oh. Well, that’s foolish.” Her words shaped around another yawn. “It’s too bad, but we’re a pair for the time being. Where you go, I go.”

And damned if he didn’t love her in that moment. She didn’t question him. She didn’t wonder why they had to leave so quickly when she was injured. Aisling was a strange and unusual woman. It was a shame he was going to lose her.

He ducked out of the tent and smoothed a hand down his belly. It would all be over soon. He would take her to the Unseelie Castle. They would remove the binding curse, and then they could figure out what they were going to do. If his mother didn’t try to eat her, or worse.

The shattered pieces of her trust would be difficult to put back together, but he had centuries to win her back. Now that he knew she was a faerie, he could make his plans more concrete. He wouldn’t have to watch her die. He wouldn’t have to see her slowly age. No, they would gracefully age together over the span of immortality.

“Please don’t ask me.” Elva’s voice cut through his revelries. She sat on a log across the fire, forearms braced on her knees. “There is much I can take, but you and my sister spending the night in my tent while I am out in the cold is not one of them.”

“What? What do you think we’re going to be doing in