Page 86 of A Land So Wide
He said nothing, but the silence was heavy enough to seem like a response.
“You saved me,” she went on, studying the fire. “Twice now.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He shifted, uncomfortable. “I can toss you back, if you mind it so much.”
She saw the joke for the deflection it was. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Finn frowned. “I wouldn’t have let you die. I’m not a monster,” he began, and Greer found the strength to laugh. “I’m not.”
“I know the stories about your kind. The towns you’ve attacked. The people you’ve killed. What but a monster could do that?”
He bristled. “Those towns weren’t an amusement.”
“What, then?” she demanded.
He looked away. “We needed food.”
In all the accounts she’d read, in all the stories Martha had told, never once had it been said that the Bright-Eyeds were feeding.
This made it better. This made it so much worse.
“You were hungry.”
His eyes shifted to her. “Yes.”
Greer studied his hands. His fingers were long but not unnaturally so. The nails were short and blunt, cut all the way to the quick. Still. They were powerful hands, hands capable of striking someone down, of snapping someone’s neck. And she could not forget how fast he’d turned, shifting from Finn into something capable of so much more.
“Are you hungry now?”
He did not laugh. “Are you?”
She was, but said nothing.
He nodded. “You should feed.”
She hated his phrasing. Hated the way it made her sound nothing more than an animal, a wild, mindless thing set only on filling herself.
“Rest,” Finn went on. “You’ll feel better after both.”
Greer wanted to protest, to say she felt fine. She didn’t want to give this Bright-Eyed any reason to think her smaller and weaker than she already was. But her head ached, and the words would not come.
“You saved me today,” she began, unsure of where her sentence was going, “but last night, the other one…” She didn’t know how to complete the thought.
Finn tipped his head to one side, and Greer was struck with the familiarity. It was something she did so often the gesture was written into her muscles.
He’s listening.
Greer found herself cocking her head to the woods, too, trying to hear what he heard.
After a beat, Finn shook his head. “She will not bother you tonight.”
Surprise made her dizzy. “She?”
Greer had not stopped to consider the Bright-Eyed’s sex, but if pressed, she would have guessed male. It had been so aggressive, so cruel and callous. She couldn’t articulate why, but learning it was a female gave Greer an odd sense of betrayal.
