Page 34 of The Queen's Huntsman
“What is hob cake?” she demanded.
“My people call it ambrosia.”
She stopped whittling. “What’s it made of?”
His answer betrayed a twist of a smile. “A pinch of hope, a wodge of dreams, a sprinkle of dread… and the shimmer beneath apiskie’swings.” He smiled then, and his fang glinted blue beneath his Faerie light.
Gwendolyn resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Determined to be as annoying as he was, she persisted with more questions. “What is a wodge?”
“More than a wedge, less than a podge.”
Disappointed in so many less than forthright answers, Gwendolyn hurled her ash stick and said, “Very well! I see. You don’t wish to talk to me. Never mind!”
“Gwendolyn… if you are so concerned we’ll run out of the hob cake, do not be. There’s plenty more. And yet, I must warn you… if you eat too much, you’ll turn into anElf.”
Gwendolyn blinked. “Is that true?”
“No.”
He was needling her, she realized, and despite that it felt more familiar, it nettled her anyway—in part for his use of a word that was never spoken with good intention, although Gwendolyn was sometimes guilty of using it herself. Did he know she’d sometimes referred to him that way in anger?Gods.She hoped not. Determined to find some way to bridge the chasm between them, she persisted, “Where did you go?
“That is none of your concern.”
“Oh,” she said, tears now stinging her eyes, wishing for some way to make him understand all she wanted was the return of his friendship.
She missed him so desperately, and never more than she did right now when he was seated only an arm’s length away. More than anything in the entire world, she wanted to crawl over to him on her dirty knees and nestle in beside him… lay her head atop his chest and… rest.
“Gwendolyn,” he said low, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “I would really like to say I am sorry…”
“You would?” Her throat burned with raw emotion—and hope.
“I would, but cannot,” he said darkly, dashing all her hopes. “I cannot change my actions,” he said. “Nor do I wish to. I know what you want, and I cannot give it.”
“How canyoupossibly know what I want?” Gwendolyn shot back.
He sat abruptly. “Do you wish to know the answer? I mean, truly, Gwendolyn?”
“Of course!” she returned.
He lifted a brow. “I must warn you, you’ll not like the answer,” he said, and a shiver rushed down her spine, remembering that, once before, in her uncle’sfogous, he’d said something very similar. Yet Gwendolyn sorely regretted that she did not press him that day. If she had, perhaps everything thereafter would have transpired so differently. “Tell me,” she begged.
“Very well… you wished to know what happened back at the tree. I will endeavor to explain. All living creatures have what you mortals call a soul.”
Gwendolyn’s face twisted with confusion.
Did he now mean to give her a lesson in the mystical?
“You believe it exists within you,” he said, glancing up at his Faerie flame. “But it exists without you as well. Neither is it unique to sanguine creatures.”
He patted the tree at his back. “Take this tree, for example,” he said. “Its roots run deep and long, all connected. What one knows, all will know.”
Gwendolyn furrowed her brow.
“Do you understand what I am telling you?”
“I… think so,” Gwendolyn lied, glancing nervously at his Faerie flame as though it could give her another clue. It sat blinking as she did.
Málik gave her another moment to consider, then glanced away and back. “Let me ask you this way… did you realize it was me before I spoke to you?”
