Glimmerglass

Finn levered himself off the sofa, and I winced in sympathy.

“Please don’t get up!” I said, although he was already on his feet. “Do you need something?” My mind kept flashing back to the sight of his beaten and bloody face, to the knife stabbing through his shoulder until the tip was buried in the floor. And as brave and strong as he was, he hadn’t been able to completely muffle a scream when the paramedic had pulled the blade out.

“I’m not an invalid,” he said, and proceeded to amble toward the kitchen.

I was horrified when he started pulling food from the fridge and I realized he meant to cook. That answered my question about dinner.

“You are not cooking,” I told him in a voice I’d used on my mother when she was too drunk to be allowed near an open flame.

His response was to arch one brow at me while he continued gathering ingredients. It looked like he was planning on spaghetti and meatballs, based on what he’d pulled out so far.

“I’ve been cooking since I was about six,” I told him. “I can handle making spaghetti. Please sit down.”

My voice cracked a bit, to my embarrassment. But after what he’d gone through today on my account, it made something deep inside me ache to see him doing this for me when I could do it myself. I had come to Avalon partly in search of someone to take care of me, to let me be the child I’d never gotten the chance to be. Funny how now that I had the chance, I wanted nothing more than to take the reins back into my own hands.

Finn put down the green pepper he’d been examining and turned to face me, leaning a hip against the counter. “I’ve been cooking since I was six, too, and that was a lot longer ago for me than it was for you.”

“But’”

“If you’d succeeded in having me sent home, I’d be in my own kitchen cooking my own dinner right now.”

I swallowed hard a couple of times, hating the fact that I felt like crying over something so stupid as who was going to cook dinner. I’d made it through the attack and its aftermath without bursting into tears; surely I could hold them off now.

Finn took a couple of steps toward me, and his voice gentled. He actually had a very nice voice—deep and kind of sexy—on those rare occasions he chose to use it.

“Dana, I appreciate your concern for me,” he said. “But the truth is, you were hurt far more than I was.”

That opened the floodgates, and the waterworks started no matter how hard I tried to hold them off. I covered my face with both hands, still trying for all I was worth to force the tears back into my eyes. Finn nudged me, and before I knew it I found myself in the living room, sitting on the sofa, a real linen handkerchief pressed to my eyes as I bawled like a stupid baby.

Finn didn’t say anything for a long time, letting the most violent waves of emotion settle. I was still sniffling and hiccuping when he finally spoke.

“I’m a Knight of Faerie,” he said. “I have been a Knight since I turned eighteen, and that was … a while ago. I have been run through with swords, shot with arrows and with bullets, tortured in ways I will not describe to you. It is my job, and knowing full well what that job entails, I choose to do it.”

“But they could have killed you!” I protested, trying to wipe away the last of my tears with the soaked handkerchief.

Finn actually grinned. “So could the ones who ran me through, shot me, et cetera. In fact, most of those fully intended to kill me, whereas the Knights today did not.” He turned serious again. “Do not grieve for my pain. But do recognize your own, and let me take care of you.”

I shook my head. “So is cooking dinner part of your job description, too?”

“It is tonight. Let me do this one small thing to help atone for having been used as a weapon against you. Please.”

Back in the good old days, when I lived with my mom, I’d gotten used to winning ninety percent of our arguments. Let’s face it, my will was just flat out stronger than Mom’s. As far as I could remember, I hadn’t won an argument in Avalon yet. And Finn was playing dirty with that whole atonement thing.

“Fine!” I said with poor grace.

But Finn smiled, and I figured I must have done the right thing.

Finn wasn’t exactly ready to challenge Chef Ramsay for supremacy, but he was surprisingly good. Even with the Fae eyes, which always struck me as mildly feminine, he had the manly-man look of a guy whose specialties came out of cans and freezers, but I had to admit, he seemed at least as at home in the kitchen as I did. I can’t say I was comfortable letting him wait on me, but I managed to bite back every protest that tried to escape my mouth.

He was back to his usual taciturn self, but since I now knew he was capable of something resembling a conversation, and since I still had a lot of questions about the attack, I decided to grill him while we were eating.

“Did you know those two Knights?” I asked him.

He deliberately stuffed a meatball in his mouth so he couldn’t answer, but I just tapped my fingers on the table, waiting for him to chew and swallow. If he’d hoped the delay would make me drop the question, he was in for a sad surprise.

“Well?” I prompted.

“Yes.”

“Yes, you knew them?”

He nodded, then shoved more food in his mouth. I was obviously going to have to work for it if I was going to get information out of him.

“So since you knew them, you were able to identify them to the police, and that’s why no one asked me any questions?” That still seemed a bit … off. There’s no way I would have escaped a chat session with the police if this had happened in the United States.