Page 6 of Gold & Shadow

With a human mother, my siblings’ and my elven gifts were tempered by human frailties. We healed more quickly than humans—it would be maybe two or three days for my ankle to be completely back to normal—but we would age much faster than full-blooded elves.

Despite this, we all had my father’s amethyst eyes, pointed elven ears, and weaving magic. Father used to say that Frostwood magic, the magic of elves from his kingdom, was determined by the spirit of the elf wielding it.

Calli, my fiery second-youngest sister, was the only one of us who had inherited my father’s weatherweaving. The rest of us had all inherited different gifts, each involving the creation and manipulation of some element.

Sometimes, I wished we had been born of Silvershade or Elandor, the other two elven kingdoms. Silvershade elves tended to have magic that improved their physical prowess, with keen eyesight, speed, and intelligence, and Elandoreans were said to have the ability to shift into a number of different creatures, distinct from shifters who held only one secondary form. Both magics would have been useful in this gods-damned eternal winter.

It must have been near evening when I awoke properly to find Orson in his huge bear form, his muzzle nosing the blankets and his black eyes catching mine as I opened them blearily.

“Are you…smelling me?” I asked, trying to sit up amid the nest of blankets and pillows. Orson growled deep and low in his throat, and I instinctively stilled as he finished his examination.

He shifted, the hairy male taking the place of the bear as he crouched next to me. He was once again completely naked aside from the golden amulet, and I tried to focus on the ceiling instead of looking down.

“I need to examine the wound,” he said, his voice still very bear-like. “Take off the bandages.”

He stood, revealingeverything,and I blustered out a protest. “You can’t just—“

“If you want to die,” he drawled, throwing a blanket around his waist as he moved to the kitchen. “By all means, don’t.”

I grumbled, shimmying my way to a sitting position. My ankle was already significantly better, the throbbing now a dull pain rather than a sharp one, but the wound in my side ached fiercely. I adjusted the pillows under my foot until it was more comfortable, then began unwinding the bandages clumsily.

“You could be nice about it, you know,” I complained, feeling awkward as I voluntarily exposed myself. Orson was busy doing something in the kitchen and wasn’t watching my struggle over the bandages, thank the gods. “You don’t have to be all gruff bear all the time.”

“This is who I am,” Orson said simply, not looking up as he worked on something I couldn’t quite see.

I winced at the blood that had soaked through the dressing on my side, which crawled up from the base of my ribs across the side of my left breast. I tried to pull up the blankets so they would cover the rest of me, blushing furiously at the idea of this male I didn’t know having seen me already.

“Nudity does not bother me,” Orson commented, appearing at the end of the sofa, the blanket and his glasses, which he must have retrieved in the kitchen, his only clothing. He was holding a small stone bowl, and his eyebrow was raised at my struggle with the blankets.

“Clearly,” I quipped, throwing out an irritated arm at his bare and extremely muscular chest and arms. His calves and bare feet were also visible beneath the blanket, and for some reason the sight of them also made me blush.

He rolled his eyes, moving to sit on the coffee table next to me, the blanket falling open to reveal a muscular thigh. His bear paw amulet was still around his neck, hanging tantalizingly out of reach.

Gods above, this was torture on so many levels.

Orson didn’t stand on ceremony or wait for me to announce I was ready. He leaned forward, gently pulling the dressing away from the wound and grunted in annoyance at its inflamed edges. I looked down, surprised by the row of neat stitches he had made, and even more surprised at the infection settling in.

“You’re going to be fevered tonight,” Orson growled, spreading something cool and green across the wound that made me hiss. He didn’t apologize, dipping his fingers back into the bowl for more of the green paste. “This will help it break faster.”

“What is it?” I asked, my teeth gritted against the pain as I clutched the blankets to myself. It smelled faintly minty and sweet, but I had never seen healing magic like this. Izzy’s blood weaving could heal, but it was much more potion-based and required, well, blood.

“Family recipe,” Orson replied, not looking up from his work. “Healing herbs ground into a paste.” He looked up after pressing a new white dressing to the wound, making sure it was fully covered. “I’ll need to re-wrap you now.”

“I can do it,” I said, trying to hold the dressing in place along with the blankets.

A gentle touch at my chin startled me as Orson tipped my face up to meet his eyes. “You cannot,” he said simply, his chocolate gaze melting some barrier in me. “And I do not care about nudity. I will not look at your breasts.”

I pursed my lips, flushing pink. I was feeling better than I had, but still weak. And it would be difficult to wrap the bandages myself without risking tearing my stitches. I sighed and nodded, and Orson took the bandages from me.

He pressed a warm hand to my side as I dropped the blankets from him to work, reminding myself that it didn’t matter, hewasn’t looking, and I’d never see him again after I had healed up and stolen from him anyway.

I heard his breathing hitch a bit as I dropped the blankets, but he didn’t pause in his work or comment as he wrapped the bandages tightly around me, making sure I could still breathe.

“Done,” he said, his voice a bit gruffer than it had been before as he sat back. His eyes were sparkling behind the glasses, and his beard twitched. “You have very nice breasts.”

“You said you wouldn’t look!” I exclaimed, cheeks flaming as I pulled the blankets back over me in horror.

Orson chuckled at my reaction, and I was doubly horrified to see that he had also had a significant reaction to my nudity after all, based on the bulge beneath the blanket. Gods, that couldn’t all be what I thought it was, could it?