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His eyes were striking. Pale brown with the watchfulness of the wild in them, carrying the wary depth of someone who had learned to read danger. There were far too many scars to count—faint, small and white against his skin, crossing his torso and shoulders in quiet testimony. Not trophies, but marks of survival.

He did not look like a warrior.

He looked like he had endured the worst and finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

She nodded, not trusting her voice, and took the empty cup from him when he offered it back.

"You can have more," she managed, not knowing what else to say. "As much as you need."

His mouth curved, faint and uncertain. "I'd forgotten what it was like…these simple things."

She set the cup aside and drew a steadying breath.

"Now," she said, drawing a breath she very much needed as she lowered herself to the cold floor while gesturing him to do the same. "You were saying you had an explanation."

He looked at her, then down at her hands. "Yes," he said slowly, as if searching for the right words. "I do."

Chapter 27

He sat, clutching the sheet, shoulders slumped. "I know you knew me as Feraal. What I couldn't tell you was that I've been trapped in that wooden prison for around ninety years…though I am not sure how many exactly."

He spoke more slowly then, as if choosing each word with care. "It started on a hunt…"

Fae stayed silent, knees drawn up.

He had been tracking deer along the jungle edge when he sensed her—not from scent or sound, but the stillness where there should have been birdcalls. She stood where the light filtered thinly through the canopy, half in the shadows as the forest itself seemed to hide her.

He went quiet for a long time.

When he spoke again, his voice was careful, as though the words themselves might still bite. "I won't say her name."

Fae nodded once. She didn't press.

"She was...beautiful," he said finally. "Skin as pale as snow. Hair like silk. I didn't know then what it was made of. I thought it was just another way she was different."

"I shouldn't have spoken to her. My parents had always warned me not to trust my eyes in the forest. But she looked frightened. Shy, like she was deciding whether to run." A faint, humourless breath. "When I said hello, she jumped. Then she smiled like she'd never been spoken to kindly before. I felt like a warrior rescuing a fair maiden."

"You must have been young?"

"Yes, and stupid." His fingers tightened in the sheet. "She told me she lived alone, and that she was a mixed-blood. Unclean."

He was still looking down. The back of his hands were crisscrossed with multiple scars.

"She said she was shunned by her own kind," he went on. "That the forest was the only place that didn't ask her to explain herself."

"And you believed her."

"I did." His mouth twisted.

"She made you feel needed."

"She made me feel like I was the only one for her." He paused. "I went back the next day. And the next."

"What was she like?"

"At first? Quiet and gentle. She asked about my pack. My mother. My name. She listened like all the nonsense I sprouted was interesting." His voice roughened. "I was a spoilt young man, my pack adored me."