Seven

I slowly drift back to consciousness, and while the pain in my side is still there, it’s more bearable. The room is bathed in soft golden light streaming in through a grimy window above the bed. Dust motes float in the shafts of sun that cast a warm glow over the stone walls and wooden beams darkened with age and soot. Beyond the pane of dingy glass are puddles of sunlight caught between tree trunks and branches, illuminating their leaves neon green.

A blanket, rough but strangely comforting, is tucked beneath my bare arms and snugly around my body. I’m sticky with sweat, and I shift slightly, wincing at the burning ache in my side.

You’re still alive, Hannah. The pain is proof of that.

I lift the blanket and peek under. My fingers find the bandage neatly wrapped around my waist and tinged with traces of dried blood.

Kane helped me. He saved me.

But why?

The door creaks open, and Kane’s strong figure is silhouetted against the afternoon light. He carries an armful of firewood and a bunch of onions pulled right from the ground, dirt still clinging to their roots. The sunlight catches the edges of his broad shoulders, casting deep shadows that stretch across the room. His steps are long and easy as he makes his way to the hearth, the weight of the firewood barely registering.

He sets the logs down with a muted thud. Then he picks up a knife and turns back to the onions. The blade glints in the light, and he looks over his shoulder at me, his expression inscrutable.

“You should rest,” he says firmly but not unkindly.

“I’d rather sit up. It’s weird staring at the ceiling while you’re over there with a knife.” I push against the bed, but the action is too quick. Pain slices my side, and I suck in a breath as the room tilts and spins, unconsciousness threatening to pull me under.

The wooden floor creaks beneath his weight as he swiftly approaches. His strong hand catches my shoulder and props me up as he arranges crunchy, hay-filled pillows behind my back. Without a word, he gently settles me against the pillows and returns to his task.

My bra strap slips down over my shoulder, and I realize I’m only dressed in my underwear. I grimace and tighten the blanket over my chest. “Why are you helping me? Why did you save me in the first place?”

Kane doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he turns to the hearth, his back to me as he stokes the fire and settles a cast-iron pot over the flames.

Fueled by his silence, my mind races.

He knows about portals, knows I’m from another world. He has to know there’s no one around here to miss me or come looking. Which means…

My jaw slackens, and my heart gallops. Kane’s taken me back to his cabin as his bride. He’s going to keep me here, barefoot and pregnant, making onion stew and following his every command. I’ll have a string of dark-eyed children named Jed or Rufus or Buck, be his bed wench, and watch him make fires and hunt.

That doesn’t actually sound so bad, Hannah.

Another indictment of my shitty life.

“I’m not good at cooking,” I say, breaking the silence.

He raises a brow, his expression unreadable as he brushes his hands off on his pants. “Noted.” He collects an onion and uses the bottom of his linen shirt to wipe away the dirt before removing the dagger from the sheath on his hip.

“And I’m terrible in bed.”

Kane pauses, the knife hovering over the fresh onion, his grip tightening ever so slightly on the handle.

“My boyfr—ex-boyfriend always said that I need to do more yoga—increase my hip flexibility.” Embarrassment creeps up my neck. “Never mind. I should stop talking.”

He sets the onion down, his gaze never leaving mine. “Please, continue.”

My cheeks burn. “I’d be a terrible wife.”

He smiles now, a genuine, if small, expression that softens the sharp lines of his face. “All interesting facts, Fawn.”

“So you can take me back.”

“You think I’ve brought you here to serve me?” He leans back, crossing his arms over his broad chest, the movements stretching the thin white linen across his muscles.

My face is so hot, I wouldn’t be surprised if I spontaneously combusted. “Why else would you bring me here?”

“You have a job to do,” he says, turning back to the onion. “I knew that, and I want to help you. You may be able to help me too.”

“Help you?” My side aches, but I fight the pain and hug my arms against my chest. “If you mean what I think you mean—”

“No, not that kind of help. Unless that is what you want,” he adds, his voice dropping lower. “Is it, Fawn—what you want?” His gaze locks onto mine, and for a moment, the room feels charged with a different kind of tension. The kind that makes my pulse quicken and my breath hitch.

“N-no.” I swallow hard, regaining my composure. “I want to know why and how I got here.”

“Mine is not the only world. Neither is yours. There are many.” He holds the onion up as he speaks, its skin glinting dully in the firelight. “You and I live in separate layers and never see the others. But sometimes there’s rot within a layer.” He pinches the skin of the onion and pulls it back, revealing a dark, decayed spot beneath the surface. The rot is a sickly gray, speckled with mold. Its pungent smell wafts through the room. “It can spread through the layers, weakening them, and allows things and people to pass through.”

The tip of his knife digs into the flesh, and he cuts the onion in half. The rot’s dark tendrils have crept through the white rings, poisoning everything in its path.

“So, something between my world and yours has rotted?”

“Not between worlds. In this world. There is rot within the Kingdom of Pentacles, within Towerfall.”

“And I’m connected to this how?”

“You’re the cure, Little Fawn. The thing that will stop the whole onion from rotting.”

“No.” I wrinkle my nose at the onion, at Kane, at whoever thought I could cure anything. “I can’t be.”

Kane sets the onion aside and moves with a purposeful grace, picking up a mug and dipping it into the pot resting within the hearth. He brings the tea to me, the aroma of herbs a nice change from rotted onion. I take the tea, my fingers brushing against his, and drink deeply. It’s still sharp and bitter like beer left out in the sun, but it will dull my pain and bring me peace. It’s harsh yet soothing—a bit like Kane.

He kneels beside the bed, and I’m acutely aware of his presence and the heat emanating from his body.

“May I?” Kane lifts the side of the blanket, only uncovering enough of my waist to examine the wound. “Does it still hurt?” His palm ghosts over the bandage, and his brow furrows with a concern at odds with the man who thundered through town on horseback and filleted two people.

“It’s better now. With the tea,” I say, watching him study my bandage. There’s a strange mix of vulnerability and safety under his scrutiny.

I take another drink, savoring the warmth that spreads through me and wraps around the ache in my side with soft fingers.

“The wound is healing well,” he says. “What you need now is rest.”

“What I need now is to get out of here. To get back to civilization and antibiotics.” I wedge the blanket more firmly under my arms and clench my teeth against the pain searing my side as I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and stand up.

For a moment, I’m fine. The ground is firmly beneath my feet, and my vision is just slightly wonky. The room around me has only blurred softly, like a photo filter, the golden sunlight mingling with the fire’s dancing shadows. But before I have a chance to take a step, the edges constrict like I’m looking through a paper telescope. A drunken heaviness spreads through my limbs, and I lose my grip on the blanket. It falls, and once again, I’m standing in front of a beautiful man in nothing but mismatched Target underwear.

“Whoops.” I tip forward, and Kane catches me against the hard muscle of his chest.

“Must you fight me on everything, Fawn?”

“You know, you’re not so scary,” I slur and let him lower me back to the bed. “I bet you’re just a big squishy daddy bear on the inside.”

“Rest,” he says, drawing the thick woolen blanket around me.

“Yes, Daddy.” I snicker, drunk on steeped herbs and something hot and fizzy within my veins.

A smile slips onto his lips as he tucks the blanket beneath my sides.

The room feels warmer, cozier. The tea is working, dulling the pain, blending my thoughts into soup.

Yum, soup. Whatever he’s making smells so good.

Maybe it’s magickal soup that will open a portal and take me back to my real job.

I’m not the cure. I can’t even present a thoughtfully planned, winning idea to a client. I snort, and Kane looks at me like he did when I asked about outlets.

“This is all a mistake,” I mumble, the words thick on my tongue.

“Magick doesn’t make mistakes. The Tower doesn’t make mistakes. You were chosen,” Kane says with unwavering certainty, his voice a steady anchor in the storm of my thoughts.

“How? Why?” I manage to ask through the confusion and fatigue.

“Things fall through the realms. Talismans. They find the help they need and bring it back.”

“Talismans?” The word triggers a memory, razor-sharp and sudden.

The card!

I should have never followed the advice of a self-help book and done something unexpected. Then I wouldn’t have ended up in Luna’s Twilight Tarot and Healing Arts with a dick in my face and an enchanted tarot card shoved into my hands.

“The woman on the tarot card. She’s the—the—”

“The Empress.”

“Did you see her too?” My head lulls back against the stiff pillows. I’m melting, drifting back under, the warmth of the fire and the soothing rhythm of his voice lulling me to sleep. “I don’t want to have six children.”

“I shall keep that in mind.”

“Don’t leave.” The words sound distant and borrowed as sleep curls its petals around me like a closing bud.

“I won’t.”

Even as exhaustion pulls me into its black embrace, my thoughts spin chaotically. I plot and plan in the hazy space between wakefulness and sleep, combing through every partially read article and clickbait headline filed away in my memory for a way out of this mess and back home.