“Are you here so often?” Raymond nearly repeated Cal’s words, which may have been derisive, although Cal preferred to think he was amused. Cal visited Ray in the woods too much, and only more so as the time drew near for his leaving.
“Winter approaches,” Cal told him. If Ray had spoken to the villagers, he would know what that meant. Cal was due to return to the faery realm soon, as he did every seven years, to return after seven more. As he would forever, or until his death, unless he found something to keep him firmly in one of his two worlds.
Cal was fairly sure he had, of course. He was looking at him. But that was not the way of spells and gifts from the Faery Queen. Something to keep him meant that exactly and nothing else. Cal’s heart was strong but not enough to tether him here, however he might wish it to. He wouldn’t ask for anything in return—he might wish for it, but he would never ask. Being with Raymond now was enough to make him both forget his melancholy at today’s lovely human wedding and to feel it keenly at the same time.
Raymond set his axe against a tree and crossed his arms to observe Cal more intently. Raymond’s eyes were a piercing blue, even in twilight and forest-darkness. For them, Cal had set every blue flower he knew to bloom around Raymond’s cottage in the spring. He had few other skills to offer. He was not allowed to work in the fields or with the animals, and his father needed no help around the house. If Raymond had noticed Cal’s offering, the unusual number of flowers, he had not said. But he had plucked some and hung them to dry outside the door. A forever touch of color, even in the winter.
“Can you not feel the crisp bite of frost in the air?” Cal asked, breathless at having Raymond’s attention so fixed on him.
But it never meant what he wanted it to. Raymond kept his distance. “I hear all sorts of things in the village these days.”
Cal almost smiled as he hopped forward, taking this as an opening to talk more. “I didn’t know you gossiped.” He shook his head as he silently made his way over the forest floor. “Sinful.”
Ray ignored this instead of chiding Cal for silliness as another might have. “Winter approaches,” Raymond echoed him. The rumble in his voice was stronger, making the words as rough as they were meant to be.
“As I said, woodsman,” Cal replied joyfully anyway, a mad half-sprite, flushed at the cold and for the pleasure of coming to rest in front of this particular man.
“I hear a lot,” Raymond said, not over Cal’s words, but alongside them. “They tell me you are leaving soon,” he added, blunt, and there was the reason he did not smile, and something to make Cal glance down. “Which you have never mentioned to me in your many visits here, though you will talk of anything. You did not mention that, the date you were to go.” Raymond reached out, and Cal looked up, but Raymond flicked moss from Cal’s shoulder and did not meet his eyes. His voice sent shivers through Cal’s fae blood. “I have known since our first meeting that you have seen much more than just this village and this wood.” Raymond paused. “Some say you are to be wed.”
“Wed?” Cal exhaled the word so softly he barely heard the sound. He summoned his court skills and managed a faint smile before he met blue eyes again. “I doubt you heard that. Not in town. Or not about a villager, at least. I am only good for one thing, if you hear the right stories. No one will wed me, even if… even if I wanted it, and by some miracle, I was wanted in return. I cannot step foot into a church, and no priest will stand before me.”
Never before had he needed to remind someone of what he was. It was not spoken of, not directly, for fear of attracting the attention of the others in this wood.
Raymond did not act surprised to hear all of this. “Yet you were not cast out.”
Cal shrugged. “I am not the only one touched in our village. But, with me, should anyone harm me, there would be consequences. I follow the Seelie Court.” He waited, ready for Raymond to finally ask him about his parentage, and the luster in his skin, the sharpness of his teeth, the manners he could put on, and the feral pleasure he took in running through the Wildwood. The things that marked him as different.
But Raymond inhaled and looked away and said, “So that is where you will go. You must be bored, waiting for that splendor, and with nowhere in the village to call your own. Bored enough to wait with me.”
“Do you think I amboredwhen I come to you?” Cal demanded without thought, unable to believe that anyone could stare at Raymond as he did and be thoughtboredby him.
The subtle changes in Raymond’s expression were impossible to read without standing closer, which not even Cal would dare to do with Raymond’s mood so uncertain. Cal imagined Raymond was surprised, although by what, he could not say. He raised his eyebrows and gestured expansively to show hownot boredhe was in Raymond’s presence.
“I think…” Raymond began, and it was pleasing to know he was also being cautious, “that all the trooping faeries must be a sight to see. Must feel welcome, like family, after the cruelty of this world. You must long for it.”
Familyboth was and was not how Cal would describe the Court. But he was very interested that Raymond should think of it that way. He had often thought Raymond was lonely in his little cottage. Or perhaps Cal was placing his own feelings in Raymond’s breast, and wishing too hard for what he could not have.
“I do long for some of it,” Cal admitted. “It is a good feeling, to not be the only one like me.” He exhaled. “But both worlds have cruelty. It’s indifference that bothers me more at this moment.” He cleared his throat when this made Raymond seem to still, and decided to speak of other things before Raymond could ask about whatever it was that made Cal frown now. Cal kept his tone light with all the skills he had learned at the knee of the Queen. “I’ve made my way to see you even during the depths of winter, woodsman,” Cal told him sharply, because thorns and fangs might be required if Raymond had failed to see the moons in Cal’s eyes.
“I would not have asked you to,” Raymond argued immediately, breaking Cal’s heart until he added, in a particularly soft rumble, “You dislike the cold and are happier when you are warm.”
That was true of many people. But not as Raymond said it. Raymond said it with the note in his voice that meant he was speaking ofCal, that Cal had confused him or annoyed or delighted him, that Cal had been noticed enough to be teased or worried over. The words were plain but that note, like the furrow in Raymond’s forehead and how he leaned down ever so slightly toward Cal, held Raymond’s meaning.
Cal inched forward, removing more of the distance between them, and held Raymond’s gaze as he did. He had been shameless before, bathing in the river for Raymond to see, but this was different. If Raymond had taken him then, Cal would have been pleased but not surprised. Cal was toothsome and lithe, plump where men liked him to be. He expected to be taken, or for an offer to be made.
But Raymond had not taken him. Now, he had brought up weddings, had done so purposefully, as he did everything, and Cal was running out of time.
Another inch vanished between them.
Raymond took a breath, loud in the sudden silence. “Callalily.”
Cal waited to see what sort of man his Raymond was. “You live out here alone and rarely venture into the village or beyond. No bride for you, either?” Cal tread carefully, but deliberately, and didn’t look away from Raymond, even when the shadows around them made Raymond’s expression stark and sad before Raymond turned his head to hide it. Cal wanted to touch him so badly, the way he could in the Court but not here, where it wassinning, a bad thing that many were happy to do with Cal despite thinking that. “They look at you, the others in town. They want you.” Raymond did not react, as if he knew this already. Cal went on, the Wildwood in his voice now. “They have such longing for you, woodsman. But I hear not even a whisper of a tumble. Are you a man of their Church in your heart?”
Raymond snorted, then looked back at him. “Makes more sense to pray to the moon than with the greedy, lying, lustful, brown-robed fool in the village.”
“Lustful?” Cal was startled into asking. The priest was one of the few who had never approached Cal. But Raymond must have seen what he had not. “You know that for certain?”
Raymond nodded, confident.
