Chapter 7 - Many Nights Gone By

Many Nights Gone By

that is

A Short Tale of Absences, Friends and Enemies, Dylan's Words, New Blood, and the Beginnings of a Truce

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Nuada jerked awake with a start. Whispers of dreams clung stubbornly to his brain. Rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes to brush away the cobwebs of sleep, the Elf stretched, spine cracking as his back arched. He sat up slowly, mindful of the tightness in his limbs and the dull ache in his body. Pale amber eyes alighted on the chair that the human had fallen asleep in the night before. He knew without being told that the day had slipped away and night had fallen across the world above.

Without meaning to, the warrior had fallen asleep near dusk, exhausted from the day and the sickness spreading through his body from his wounds. The mortal had watched him practice with his gleaming silver blades all the day, pursing her lips but saying nothing, eying him with disapproval, reminding him so strongly of Nuala as a child that he'd almost smiled. The fair-haired fae knew she was concerned that he would do himself harm, but he'd been unworried. He knew how far he could push his body.

Or so he had thought.

Without realizing it, however, he'd managed to exhaust himself, and had fallen asleep upon his bed for the seventh day in a row without meaning to. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Nuada realized that there was an extra bedcloth draped over him. He had fallen asleep atop the golden quilt. Now he lay beneath a thin cotton blanket. Puzzled, he looked around for Dylan, to see if she could account for this. Somehow, the Elf prince knew the mortal woman was responsible.

He did not see her.

Getting to his feet, the Elf lord stifled his groans as stiff muscles protested. He scouted the room, in case Dylan was hiding, perhaps frightened of him now that he was awake. All the past day, and the six days prior to that, even as she cast him furtive, irritated looks, she had made a point to stay far away from him. As far as possible, in fact. The argument - if one could call it that - was no doubt accountable for this.

Having spent more than two weeks in the Elf prince's sanctuary, the unlikely pair had fallen into some bizarre habits – Nuada training under Dylan's disapproving eye, trying to sweat out the virulent poison and iron sickness that pervaded his blood and rendered him nearly weaker than a mortal, and Dylan doing the chores usually reserved for the lowly elementals bound to the sanctuary. The iron in Dylan's blood – a trait the Fey Ones did not share – slowed the healing magic's effect on her body. Sixteen days of healing had sped up the process, but not by much. Three weeks, perhaps, of magical mending, had been packed into a little less than two.

As for Nuada... the contamination of his wounds, though combated by magic and medicine, still kept those injuries laced with infection from healing properly. The slash at his ankle, the stab wound in his shoulder, and the gunshot wounds in his thigh and arm refused to close properly. They oozed a noxious-smelling fluid that looked and stank like sour milk. Once the seepage had begun, Nuada had refused Dylan's aid. The injuries continued to worsen. That fact pricked the Elven warrior's temper like a needle.

What honed said temper was the realization that, upon discovering his mortal caregiver's absence, his first feeling had been a brief stab of concern – not for his own safety, or anything centered around the Elf prince at all, but a fear for Dylan.

Curse that loathsome human. Somehow, she was corrupting the blond warrior. Entirely against his will, he found himself beginning to almost... to almost like her. The way one begins liking a stray cat or dog that stays around long enough to ingratiate itself to people.

The idea made him grit his teeth.

"Where is the human?" Nuada asked of the sylph, the salamander, and the crinaeae. The fire elemental and the little nymph in the well did not speak. Neither did the air sprite. This silence, and Dylan's absence, Nuada's own physical weakness and the persistent ache throughout his body, honed his already knife-sharp temper to a razor edge.

"Well? Where is she?" He demanded, his voice a beast's growl. The blond warrior glared at the empty room. Irritation tingled in his blood. Something, a shimmering voice like wind chimes, murmured the answer in his ear. Nuada muttered, "Another bath? That mortal indulges herself far too often."

Hiding.

"Hiding?" The prince echoed, forcing the odd twinge in his chest to fuel his irritation. "From what? There is no danger here. I will not harm her so long as she is in my care. From what does the human hide?"

Everything. Water make her feel safe. Much water in her blood. She know sister-water.

Indeed. She knew of Sister Water, how water is the life giver, and the daughter of Mother Earth? How did she know that? Aloud, he asked, "What makes you say this, Ariel?"

She move like selkie, sing like mermaid.

"I very much doubt she moves so gracefully or sings so beautifully."

No, no, no! Not graceful or beautiful, Highness. Love. Full of love. She love it all.

"I do not understand," Nuada murmured, frowning absently. He felt his rage fading away as he continued to regard the flickering wisp of fairy in front of his face. "What of love? What do you mean?"

No explain. You see. Someday. Human in bathtub.

"Well... I care not. At any rate, she was beginning to smell."

Smell? No smell. Human smell.

Moving to work the stiffness from his limbs, he went to one of the trunks lined up against the walls of his sanctuary and retrieved a fresh change of clothes. The Elf had some errands he wished to attend to, and he wanted to run them in clothes that did not stink of human female. The Elf knew he needed to make his escape from this place quickly. The stones of the floor and the walls themselves oozed mortal stench. It sickened him.

Nuada hastily donned black trousers, tunic, and boots – a very casual ensemble for him – and made his way to the entrance of his healing sanctuary. Stopping only long enough to grab his spear (only a fool went around unarmed in these times), the prince pressed his palm to the chamber's entryway as a soft voice made its way through the door to the bathing chamber.

"... The mermaid weeps blood red pearls
While Bluebeard beheads his lovely girls,
And Rapunzel's deceitful braid unfurls
To lure the prince to his death.

"An Arabian night burns like a star,
And Cinderella drives a fancy glass car.
But Little Red can only run so far
Before the Big Bad Wolf can find her..."

Nuada glanced back over his shoulder at the wooden door to the bathing room. What was this? The words reminded him of the old, mortal children's tales he'd heard long ago, but the melody was dark and bitter, melancholy. These words, just like Dylan's words from that dark night a week ago, somehow resonated with something inside the Elf prince. Dylan's voice shuddered down the Elf's spine, making him shiver. Her voice tasted of bone-deep loneliness, black despair. Again he thought of Nuala, of the grief in her during the wars against the humans all those centuries ago. Yet how could a mortal feel such grief? They felt nothing except the base emotions of an animal - fear, hunger. Nothing more.

"Someone cut down the fairy wood.
Crying about it won't do any good,
And Goldilocks won't do what good girls should,
But she does what works for her.

"Odile hides and Odette cries.
The Goose Girl weeps over her maiden lies.
Dwarven hearts shatter when Snow White dies.
And the child won't listen anymore.

"Dolls are dying while Clara dances.
Secrets are lost behind magic mirror glances,
And the Lass has lost all four of her chances.
It doesn't matter anymore...
The stories don't matter anymore..."

The resonance reached a pitch that made some dark, long-suppressed emotion rise up in Nuada. How did a human understand such pain enough to sing about it so convincingly? What if... what if....

A wave of disgust and fury suddenly threatened to swamp him. Red descended over his eyes. His hands balled into white-knuckled fists. The pounding tide of his blood roared in his ears. Nuada snarled something vile under his breath. Muttering the spell that allowed him to leave the sanctuary, the suddenly furious Elf warrior strode quickly from the chamber. The air tasted of hatred and pain.

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Dylan sighed and closed her eyes. Wavelets lapped at her bare skin, and candlelight danced across her face. She allowed her body to float on the surface of the bath water as she breathed.

The song she had sung burned the inside of her mouth, but she'd felt compelled to sing it. It was... a brutal piece, something one of her patients had written after his parents had forced him into the teen psychiatric ward at Saint Vincent's Hospital. Apparently, the youth - a boy named Henry Swan - wrote "violent and disturbing poetry," and had already been suspended for a piece submitted to his high school newspaper.

After hearing the song, and talking to the young man, Dylan had fought to get him out of that place. She knew what mental hospitals were like. For children who knew they were sane, it could numb the soul.

Even kill it. How well she knew that.

Sighing, the brunette ducked beneath the water, wetting her hair, and tried to capture the feeling she'd had as a kid. How many times had she pretended to be a mermaid – although a very clumsy mermaid – playing in the ocean with imaginary fish and other, more mystical water creatures? It had been real to her, and bright and brilliant, back then. Not so anymore. Maybe her imagination was deserting her.

Maybe the wolves had devoured it.

At the thought of the wolves, she kicked off the bottom of the tub and thrust through the surface of the water. Gulping air, she let the water half-carry her back to the shelf-seat carved into the wall of the tub. Her eyes stung. Blood from her bitten lip stung her mouth with its salt-sweet taste. Water cascaded over wet skin, dripping hair, upturned face. The current soothed, cleansed. Another sigh found its way into her lungs and out of her mouth.

"When am I going to leave this place?" She asked herself softly, aloud. "Do I even want to?"

Dylan glanced around, blue eyes taking in the huge, candlelit chamber. There was something otherworldly and timeless about this room. About the whole sanctuary. It made her feel safe. If dark dreams plagued her, she remembered nothing of them. No harm – well, very little harm – had come to her since passing across the sanctuary's threshold. The healing magic of the place soothed her pain. Nuada fed her, clothed her, gave her a bed and a place to bathe. If no responsibilities could be claimed by Dylan Myers, she might have asked her rescuer if she might stay in this place outside of time forever.

But she had patients. She had family - John and her sisters. She had her commitments at work and at church. In short, she had responsibilities. So of course, whether she wanted to or not, she had to leave someday. The thought made her heave another sigh.

I'm so melancholy today, Dylan murmured silently, somewhat surprised. It's my birthday - I'm twenty-nine today, and yet I'm so melancholy. Well, at least the urge to beat Nuada over the head has dissipated, she added gratefully. That idiot Elf... he insisted on beating himself to exhaustion, barely healed as he was. It made her want to scream. Or rip him a new breathing hole.

"Men are stupid," she muttered, and pulled herself out of the bath.

Dylan had never quite been able to see the invisible servants who attended to her and Nuada's needs, no matter how she strained to catch them. Somehow, in the three hours she'd been in the beautiful, steaming hot bath, her old clothes had been replaced, fresh towels had been laid out, and a particularly fragrant lotion that smelled of hyacinth blossoms and roses in a green glass pot had been left for her use.

She toweled off her hair, dried herself, and slipped on the pale shift the color of rose petals. Somehow, in the time it took for her to pick up the tiered, dark green skirt from the pile of folded laundry, the laces that ran from sleeve hem to elbow of the shift had been tightened and tied by an invisible attendant. Hastily donning the knee-length skirt and the leather vest, she tied it tightly. Then she arched her spine, trying to relieve some of the strain from not wearing a bra. Her back was beginning to have this constant ache near the shoulders – dull compared to the rest of her injuries, but irritating nonetheless. Trying unsuccessfully to ignore it, the mortal glanced at herself in the glass. Dylan always found the clothes in front of the full-length mirror in the bath chamber. Now, when she glanced at herself in the silvered looking glass, it seemed like some gypsy princess out of a storybook gazed back at her.

Her face ruined the image.

Bruises faded out to purple and green still couldn't hide the angry slashes, now a raspberry maroon instead of black, that sliced across her face. Dylan counted more than twenty lacerations to her face. One of them wrenched at the corner of her eye, dragging it sideways. Another slash did the same to her ruined mouth. The cuts twisted her features. Even as she scanned her reflection, the eyes in the mirror were blank and glassy, empty of recognition. Around her neck was a circlet of ugly yellow rosettes, a souvenir from her rescuer's brutal grip. The sight did nothing for the emptiness in her gaze.

We've been hiding too much, her little inner voice muttered. Sometimes, under stress, the battered woman lapsed into her childhood habit of referring to herself in the plural. It was a thing she and John had done since learning to speak. It had taken their parents several years to get them to stop. Too much time in the bathroom, the voice continued. Need to face reality eventually.

Not right now, she murmured back. I know it's not healthy... but not right now. I just want to go to sleep. I don't want to deal with it.

Coward...

Yes, I am. Sue me. It's my birthday gift to me.

Ignoring the voice as a yawn overtook her, the human sank to the floor and began smoothing the pale-rose cream over her skin. The delicious perfume of summer flowers danced in her nose. If Dylan closed her eyes, it was almost as if she were home, in her garden, among her flower beds and herbs. Chewing her bottom lip – already shredded like ragged bits of silk – to keep from sighing again, she got to her feet and pushed her way through the bathroom door and into the main chamber.

It only took her a few moments to notice the absence of pale amber eyes and a dark, brooding form with moon-white skin. It took her some longer moments to realize that this meant Nuada was no longer there in the chamber. The mortal, eyes wide in her face, pressed her ear to the door opposite the bathing chamber, but heard no movements from within the privy. She began to shake. Sinking to the floor, Dylan stared in numb disbelief at the entryway to the sanctuary, wondering what she was supposed to do now. The Elf was gone. Never in the sixteen days she'd been in this place had he ever left her. Now she was alone – helpless, defenseless, prey for the wolves.

The blood drained from her face. There was no protector anymore. It was only herself, ensnared in the dimly lit stone room that was now a prison. Only herself. No Nuada. Certainly no John. Only herself. The enemy was coming. The wolves prowled. She must not stay out here, in the open. She could not.

Finally, Dylan found it in herself to be able to move. Hastily rising to her feet, staggering a little, she made her way to the bed. When her fingers touched it, the golden quilt warmed her suddenly cold skin. It smelled of wild forests and faerie glens. The scent of an Elven warrior prince. Snatching it up, the human carried it, the pillow, and one of the little books from her last vacation back into the bathing chamber, locking the door behind her.

Wrapped up in the blanket with the pillow between the cold stone of the wall and her bruised back, it took very little prompting for the tired, terrified woman to fall asleep sitting up.

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Wandering the subway tunnels, the Elf prince made his way carefully back to the chamber he usually called home. He had several sanctuaries throughout the tunnels, in case of a need for a place to retreat. Several lairs also, in case he needed to travel or lay low. But he had only one pseudo-home in his exile, a place made extremely comfortable over the last century. The warrior found himself there now. Tension drained out of him as the magical wards woven into the stones washed over him, welcomed him.

Home. He was home. Of a sort, at least. He could relax a bit.

"Nuada!"

The blond warrior jerked around, wincing as the stitches in his wounds pulled at him. Sweat broke out on his forehead, but he wiped it away. He did not want Wink to see the extent of his injuries. The troll might smell the blood. That was all. He would not know of the sickness spreading through Nuada's veins from the poisonous iron in the human weapons. Would not realize that the dipsa venom had not worked completely out of his system yet, even after almost four moons. And hopefully he would not catch the scent of the mortal woman on his skin.

"How long have you been here, my friend?"

Mr. Wink lumbered up out of the large bronze chair he had been resting in and heaved his massive bulk over to the Elf prince. The troll took in his friend and prince, eyes missing nothing. The loose clothes, the thinness around the Elf's face and the gauntness of his frame, the way the prince limped, favoring his left leg: the silver troll's sharp, dark eye saw it all.

"Since you left. Where in the gods' names have you been? What happened? You go to rescue a human woman and you disappear for more than two weeks."

"Worried, Mr. Wink? I am touched."

The troll felt no compunction about whapping the Elf prince across the back of his head. Lowering his guttural voice to an even deeper growl, Wink grumbled, "Prince or no prince, I will not take sass from you. You would do well to remember that I was the one to save you and your sister and-"

"And avenge my mother's death. I know. You have been father, brother, and friend to me when my own family betrayed me. I know, Wink. I am truly grateful for your concern. There have been... complications."

"Complications?"

"The human... she is... different. Not like the others." Upon seeing Wink's disbelieving look, Nuada continued hastily, "Do not look at me that way. This human has taken it upon herself to care for me. She doctored my wounds. If not for her aid, I might very well have perished." He despised the fact that he felt the need to defend Dylan, a lowly mortal, to Wink, his oldest and most loyal friend. "The monsters that attacked her, they shot me with lead and attacked me with iron. She cared for me."

"My prince... she is a human."

"She is not like the other humans," the prince insisted. "She has honor. Compassion." Nuada had no idea where the words were coming from. But his honor demanded he defend the mortal woman who had risked her life more than once to save his. He could not let Wink believe that somehow, this human had bewitched him. "She reminds me... she reminds me of Nuala, at times. With her stubbornness, her desire to care for others. It is almost infuriating – you know how I hate that my sister will insist on caring for others when she has an equal or greater need. The mortal woman is just like that. She spent nearly eight hours removing the pieces of iron and lead from my body and stitching my wounds even though she was sorely injured herself and practically swaying with exhaustion."

Now that he was relaying the past events to Wink, he was seeing what Dylan had done with new eyes. It had been more than the Elf had realized until now. How could a human have that much compassion for another creature? Still, the mortal woman confused him.

"Is she a friend, then, Nuada? This human?"

"Don't be disgusting," the Elf snapped, rising to his feet. The prince had only come to tell Wink he was safe. That done, he surely needed to return to the sanctuary. If Dylan tried to leave, things would not go well with her and the golem that guarded the place. "Of course not. But she is different. It is well that I saved her from those men."

"Where are you going?"

"I must go back. She cannot leave the sanctuary on her own without danger, but if she believes me to be in any sort of trouble, do not doubt that she will try to come after me, to help. I will have no harm to her while she is in my care. My honor demands it."

The troll sighed. "You and your honor. You guard it so preciously. Sometimes, it astonishes me that your father cannot see you for the honorable warrior you truly are."

"My father is blinded to many things," Nuada replied, ignoring the sudden throb of pain lancing his temples. "He looks for honor where there is none, and does not see it where it resides. I may be back," he added, changing the subject, "sometime in the next weeks. I have to take Dylan to the human hospital-"

"Dylan?"

"The human," he amended hastily. "I must take the human to the hospital. Her wounds heal while she is within the sanctuary, but I am uncertain what will happen once she leaves. Is it possibly like immortality, obtained in Elfland but lost upon returning to the mortal world? I do not know. I do not want to risk her wounds returning without her being near a hospital. Then I have to remove any trace of her from the sanctuary. You know the laws, and what my father will think if he learns of this."

"Aye, I know both very well. Be careful, my prince."

Dark lips curved into an arrogant smirk. "Am I not always?"

Wink watched Nuada limp away. The troll's heart thumped, troubled, in his breast. The prince had changed in the last sixteen days. Never had he heard Nuada defend a human before. Never heard him compare his precious twin to one. There had never been a mortal to survive an encounter with the lethal Elf prince (except perhaps for a child). Now this human woman, this "Dylan," had forced the blond warrior to admit that perhaps not all of the Children of Mud were as evil as he had always believed.

"Your father is blinded to many things, Nuada. But then again, so too are you."

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Dylan shivered beneath the blanket. The rough, red stone bit into her hip and shoulder, but she didn't wake. Instead, the human slept on, caught between the panic of a night terror and the calmer, not so strickening fear of a regular nightmare.

Dreams of pain and screaming. A knife slicing across her face. The sanguine red of clothing beneath sizzling fluorescent lights, scarlet like a woman's blood spilling onto cold concrete. Her dress ripping under careless hands. Flesh bruising. Wolves slavering. Always, always the voice growling in her ear like an animal's, "We warned you, puta. Stay away from Red girls. We warned you not to try and take one of us. We warned you." And then the sharp, thrusting, vicious pain tearing inside her and her voice shattering as she tried to scream.

Somewhere, behind all the darkness and the grasping hands, behind the sheet of blood in her eyes and the hell between her legs, was Nuada. He had saved her before. He would save her again.

Maybe.

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The Elven warrior walked quickly. The itching between his shoulder blades, a rare physical manifestation of his uneasiness, was becoming maddening. It was in just such a spot that he couldn't reach around to scratch it. And why was he suddenly so uneasy? The Elf had no idea. If Dylan had tried to breach the wards – if anyone at all, human or otherwise, even Nuala – had tried to breach the warding spells around his sanctuary, he would have felt it, even as backlash. There had been nothing. Yet his instincts told him that danger was still stalking him, or perhaps even stalking he and Dylan both.

"Hail, Your Highness, Crown Prince Nuada, the Royal Exile."

A hearty, hail-fellow-well-met sort of voice called out to the exiled prince, and the fey prince stopped in his tracks, every nerve tingling, senses sharp as razors, muscles coiled and ready to spring. He knew that voice. He loathed that voice.

"Lord Eamonn," Nuada replied, and though his tone was cordial enough, his face blanked away any emotion as he turned to look at the Elf in front of him.

The Elves of Bethmoora, the Sons of the Earth, were pale, tall, graceful, with golden eyes and long, blond hair like gold or silver. Not so with Eamonn's kind. They were the Elves of Zwezda, the Sons of the Stars. Their skin was white, like Nuada's kindred, but their tresses were black as midnight, their eyes like gleaming steel, the pupils slitted like a cat's. It was said they were descended from Zorya Polunochnaya, the living Midnight Star. Yet if that were so, then Eamonn betrayed his noble blood with vile thoughts and viler actions. A slimy taint clung to his thoughts and his spirit. It sickened the Elf prince even to be near him.

There were thirteen Elf kingdoms among the countless fae nations, and there were others more antagonistic towards Bethmoora than Zwezda. But there was a special place, both in the most desolate plains of Annwn and in Nuada's heart, for Lord Eamonn.

Hands out in a show of harmlessness that the Elven warrior did not believe for an instant, that midnight-haired Elf grinned at Nuada with unusual warmth and drew abreast of him. Very deliberately, Eamonn took an exaggerated sniff.

"Can I help you?" Nuada demanded icily.

"Oh, no, Your Highness," the other Elf replied nonchalantly, slipping his hands inside the pockets of his black velvet trousers. The prince of Bethmoor despised Eamonn's foppishness (among other things). But the feral-eyed warrior forced himself to focus on his unwelcome companion as Eamonn continued, "It is only that I thought I smelled... but no, I must be mistaken."

A brief slice of unease, sharper than the itch between his shoulders. "Oh?"

"Yes. You see, Silverlance, I could have sworn that as I walked past you, I caught the scent of a... well, it matters not. I was, of course mistaken. After all," he replied to the raising of Nuada's eyebrow. "There is simply no possible way one would ever catch the scent of a human clinging to the Silver Lance."

Only years of living in Elven court kept the Elf prince from flinching away from Eamonn. He ought to have bathed, he realized. Then the scent of Dylan would be gone completely from him. But of course, trying to be chivalrous, he had allowed her to remain unmolested in the bathing chamber. Now one of his enemies had caught the smell of her on his skin. The very idea made the blond Elf want to shudder with revulsion. Instead, he looked into Eamonn's eyes.

"No," Nuada replied. "I do not think there is any way in this world that a human would have reason to come near enough to me that its scent would catch on my clothes. Perhaps you are ill, Lord Eamonn. Mayhap you should see a healer. As for me, I shall continue on my way. Farewell."

"Goodbye, Prince Nuada," Eamonn said. "I hope to speak with you again." And he clapped one meaty hand on the warrior's shoulder. The prince gritted his teeth as nearly a hundred pounds of force collided with the swollen, inflamed flesh around the infected stab wound in his shoulder.

Nuada walked stiffly away, with Eamonn sneering at the Elf prince's back.

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Dylan awoke when the door to the bathing chamber creaked opened. If it had slammed open, she might have attacked, thrown the nearest heavy object at whoever was trying to get in. But instead, it was a silent opening, and there was no sound of footsteps. That told Dylan one of three things: either it was the invisible servants, Nuada had returned, or another fey creature was slowly sneaking up on her.

Since the door creaked open slowly, she had enough time to regain control of her ragged breathing and shake off the nightmare. Enough time to flick her eyelashes just enough to see through them.

When Dylan caught a glimpse of golden hair and black linen, she sat upright.

"Nuada!" Remembering who she spoke to, she added belatedly, "Erm... Your Highness. You're back. I... I was worried."

He nodded to her in greeting, ignoring the sentiment of concern. "I require medical assistance."

Any relief or – dare she say it? – joy the mortal woman had felt upon seeing Nuada's face was eclipsed now by equal parts fear and irritation. Did he have to order her around all the time? Yes, he was a prince, but still! Wasn't he supposed to act graciously? Sometimes the injured warrior could act so much like her twin brother it was strange. But the human's heart thumped in her chest as she saw that the back of Nuada's shirt was soaked. He carefully peeled it off, and she saw the damage.

The flesh around the stab wound was maggot-white, laced with angry, bright amber lines cutting across the dead-looking infected flesh into the rest of Nuada's back. The wound itself was puffy, the scab more like a thin, transparent shell over a well of toxic yellow pus and blood. She saw places where the scab had been perforated, leaking pus and blood onto Nuada's skin. Dylan gaped, struggling against the urge to throw up and the feeling that she was looking at a humongous Elf zit the size of her doubled fists.

"What. Did. You. Do to it?" She demanded, rushing over to him. "You're lucky you don't have, like, gangrene or acute blood poisoning or lockjaw or something!" The human dragged the Elf out of the bathing chamber into the main room, shoving him into the customary chair beside the single table. She grabbed her tools. "You idiot! Prince or not, you should have mentioned this to me way before now! I may just be a stupid mortal, but I'm also the closest thing you have to a healer right now. Moron." Without even thinking about it, the mortal gave him a good whack on the other, uninjured shoulder. "I'm gonna have to cut off the dead tissue. Jeez, this is why you need to do what I tell you-"

"Do you intend to henpeck me," Nuada demanded, fingers curling into a fist against the urge to strike her back, "like some shrewish dwarf wife, or do you plan on helping me?"

Anger burned in Dylan's chest. "Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but bite me." And when she lanced the wound with her silver knife (a gift from a Wiccan girl who said her therapist needed to be more in control of where her energy was going) instead of cutting gently, she sliced as if it were a piece of tough-as-leather beef pot roast. The Elf grunted in pain.

"You did that on purpose." Several very derogatory terms for females tried to jump off his tongue, but applying them to the human would've insulted the rest of her gender.

"You're right," she told him with a furious glitter in her eyes, as if she could read his mind. "If you'd listened to me, this wouldn't have happened. And you traumatized it. You hit it on something, didn't you?"

The Elf warrior opened his mouth to defend himself, to tell her of the malicious backslap from Eamonn, but he closed it as she glanced at him and murmured, "You've got to do what I tell you, or you could end up permanently damaged, okay? Please? I'm not kidding about this. I'm only trying to help, but I can't do that if you won't let me. So from now on, I check your wounds every eight hours, got it? And we put Echinacea and everything else on it at those times. I don't want your arm rotting off and I really don't think you do, either. Please, Your Highness."

He could have argued. He should have argued. He was Crown Prince Nuada, the Silver Lance, heir to the throne of Bethmoora, son of Balor the One-Armed King of Elfland. He could have won the argument with her. But as she began setting up her tools, he saw a tear roll slowly down her cheek. Dylan would have to hurt him, and the Elf knew she hated to do that. And in that moment she reminded him once more of his beloved twin, just a little.

"Very well," he replied. "I will do as you say... for now."

"Thank you... my prince," Dylan murmured without looking at him.

Silence. And then...

"You are welcome."