She bit her lip, eyes dropping. She turned away from him, looking over her shoulder. “Where’s Motley? I thought he would follow us.”
Cuan frowned, glancing back himself. Behind them, the path ran through a dolmen—a large, square arch formed from three rough-hewn gray stones. Motley must have anchored the portal between the rocks, but it had disappeared now. There was no white-feathered raven in sight.
“No need for concern,” he said, turning back to Tamsin. “He often wanders off, as the whim takes him. He will be fine.”
Tamsin still looked worried. “Won’t we need his help to get back to your place?”
“Once I have attended to my wounds, I will be able to return us to Lady Maeve’s sidhean without his assistance. It lies close by.” He gestured at Angus, who was pawing and whining to get down. “You may release your noble hound. This is a safe place, and he cannot wander far.”
Tamsin put Angus on the ground. He dashed away to investigate a pile of boulders.
“Where are we, anyway?” Tamsin asked, looking around.
“Come.” He offered her his arm. “I shall show you.”
She hesitated, then slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. Trying not to show how that light, simple contact made his heart pound faster, he led her down the winding path.
The limestone cliffs on either side grew higher, towering above them, striped in bands of pale, subtle colors—burned umber, pale gold, tawny orange. Glowing lichen clung to cracks in the rock, shimmering in soft shades of blue and aquamarine.
Minuscule silver flowers bloomed amidst plush pillows of moist, green moss. Tamsin brushed her hand over a patch of them as they passed, and a sweet, delicate fragrance arose in her wake.
“This is beautiful,” she said. “It all looks so wild, but everything is perfectly in balance. It can’t be natural.”
“It is, though not entirely. We unseelie believe in letting things grow as they will, with just the lightest of touches to best enhance their beauty. It is one of the things that distinguishes us from the seelie.”
Tamsin gazed around at the moonlit gorge. “Why, what do they do?”
“They are rigid and unbending. Anything that does not conform to their narrow standards of beauty, they destroy. This,” he waved a hand at the rainbow-banded walls, “they would quarry, taking the stone away from its natural place to adorn their halls. We know better. All things have a right to be, in their own unique way. It is our guiding principle, the unseelie creed: Do as thou wilt.”
A shadow crossed Tamsin’s face. “Yeah, I kind of got that impression from Maeve’s court. As a credo, it’s got distinct downsides. Especially for the weak and powerless.”
He opened his mouth to disagree—and found that he could not. Tamsin had put into words something that had long lurked unvoiced in the depths of his mind.
The freedom of the unseelie was marvelous…but it came at a cost. And it was not paid by the mighty, untouchable high sidhe.
He pushed that uncomfortable thought away. He’d brought Tamsin here to dazzle her, not debate philosophy.
“This way.” He pulled her onward, watching her face. “Look.”
Her expression, as they stepped round the final corner, was everything he could have hoped. Her jaw dropped. Pure delight glowed in her deep brown eyes.
“Oh,” she gasped. “Oh. Cuan! What is this place?”
“The Crystal Springs,” he said, enjoying her reaction. “Does it please you?”
“It’s magical!” She let go of his arm, dancing forward a few steps, spinning around as though to embrace everything at once. Angus followed at her heels, bounding through the clouds of steam rolling from the warm pools of water. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”
He’d suspected that they had nothing like this in her sterile human world. Her enthusiasm made him see the place anew himself. Had he ever fully appreciated the glowing colors of the natural crystal rock outcroppings—amethyst, citrine, rose quartz, moonstone—or the perfect clarity of the waters they surrounded? Had he ever paused to appreciate the gentle music of the bubbling pools, or the soothing way the warm mists embraced him?
“I did not bring you here merely to admire the beauty of the springs.” He picked at one of his bandages as he spoke, attempting to loosen the knot without success. “The waters here have healing properties, thanks to the crystals.”
“Here, let me help.” Tamsin took his hand, her deft fingers unwrapping the linen. “Do crystals really heal, here in the fae realm? I mean, there are people in my world who believe that they do, but I always thought that was kind of silly. Crystals are pretty, but they’re still just rocks.”
“And we are just meat, yet we walk and talk and love.”
She pursed her lips at him. “That’s different.”
“Is it? We are animated by energy, the forces that pervade and join everything in the world. It seems stranger to me that someone could claim that rocks are somehow not touched by that power.”