I Broke My Sacred Law For The Wounded Barbarian

The tranquility of my grove shattered first as a scent, then as a stain. The air, usually sweet with moonpetal blossoms and damp earth, was suddenly thick with the coppery tang of blood. It was a smell that didn't belong here, a raw, metallic scent of violence that made the magic in my veins recoil. I floated from the hollow of my ancient willow, my wings beating a silent, agitated rhythm. And then I saw it. The stain. A dark, ugly smear of red soaking into the sacred emerald moss near the heartwood spring.

My breath caught. At the center of the stain was a body. A man. Not one of my kind, not a creature of the forest. A human.

He was massive, a fallen giant sprawled across the clearing as if dropped from the sky. His sheer size was an offense, his broad shoulders and thick, muscular limbs taking up space that wasn't his to take. He was clad in rough-spun leathers and dark furs, but they were ripped and soaked through. A brutal gash ran from his left shoulder diagonally across his chest, a deep, ragged canyon of flesh where muscle and sinew were torn apart. I could see the glint of a rib bone through the carnage.

The law was absolute. Unforgiving. A mortal trespassing in a sacred grove was a desecration. Their non-magical, chaotic presence was a poison to the ancient energies I was sworn to protect. The prescribed response was to do nothing. To allow the forest to reclaim the intruder, to let his blood and bone feed the soil he had violated. To interfere was to invite that same chaos into myself, to risk being severed from the grove that was my life force.

I should have turned away. I should have retreated into my tree and let him die. It would be quick. His breathing was a shallow, wet sound, and the pool of blood beneath him was growing with every weak beat of his heart.

But I couldn't move. I drifted closer, my bare feet hovering just above the blood-tainted ground. I looked past the horrific wounds to his face. It was half-pressed into the dirt, a strong jaw covered in a thick, dark beard. His brow was furrowed, but not in pain. It was something else. As I hovered over him, a strange feeling washed over me, something that had nothing to do with the magic of the grove. It was an echo from him. A wave of profound, soul-deep sorrow that was so heavy it felt like a physical weight in the air. It was an emptiness that went far beyond his bleeding wounds. It was the ache of a man who had lost everything.

That feeling resonated with a quiet, lonely place deep inside me. Against every law, against my own better judgment, I found myself kneeling on the moss beside him, the warmth of his body a shocking heat against the cool air. A soft, silver light began to glow around my palms. He was a blight, a trespasser who deserved to die. But in the hollow space of his sorrow, I saw a reflection of my own. And I could not let him go.

My fingers trembled as I reached for him. This was a violation. I was tainting myself with his mortality, inviting a chaos the grove might never forgive. But the silence of his sorrow was louder than the voice of my conscience. I had to touch him.

I pressed my glowing palms against his skin, one on either side of the gaping wound. The shock of it was immediate and overwhelming. Heat. A brutal, furnace-like heat radiated from him, so intense it felt like it was scorching my cool skin right through to the bone. Fairies are creatures of moonlight and evening dew; our bodies are cool, ethereal. He was sun and fire and earth, a solid, living inferno. The contrast was so stark it made me dizzy.

His blood was hot and sticky on my hands. I gritted my teeth, pushing past the revulsion and forcing the silver light of my magic into the wound. The light sunk into his flesh. I had to get closer, to press harder, my small hands sinking into the solid wall of his chest. His skin was rough, textured with hair and old scars, so different from the smooth, petal-soft skin of my kind. Beneath it, his pectoral muscle was a thick, dense slab of power, bunched and hard even in his unconscious state.

My magic began its work. I watched, mesmerized, as shimmering silver threads spun out from my fingertips, weaving through torn tissue. The raw, red edges of the wound pulsed and began to crawl toward each other. I could feel the sinew re-connecting, the muscle fibers twisting and knitting themselves back into a seamless whole under my touch. It was a gruesome, intimate process. I was inside him, my magic a part of his body, and I could feel everything. The steady, powerful beat of his heart slowing as the bleeding stopped. The sheer, dormant strength coiled in his limbs. He was a weapon at rest, and the raw potential in his body was a terrifying, magnetic hum that vibrated up my arms and into my chest.

I poured more of myself into the healing, the silver light growing brighter. The gash was shrinking, the skin sealing over, leaving only a thin, angry red line. The effort was draining me, my own energy flowing into his massive frame. I felt light-headed, my connection to the grove thinning as my focus narrowed to this one, forbidden task. The scent of his blood was being replaced by the clean, warm scent of his skin, a smell of leather and sweat and man that was entirely alien and deeply unsettling. I was overwhelmed by him—his heat, his size, his raw physical presence. He was everything my world was not, and as the last of the wound sealed shut, a part of me was terrified of what I had just done.

I pulled my hands back as if burned, the last of the silver light fading from my palms. The skin on his chest was smooth and whole, the only evidence of the wound a faint, pinkish line that would likely fade to a silver scar. I had saved him. I had broken the most sacred law of my people for a man I didn't know.

His eyes opened.

They weren’t brown or blue, but a startling, stormy grey, like the sky just before a flash of lightning. They didn't drift open; they snapped, instantly aware, instantly assessing. The change was terrifying. One moment he was a pliant, unconscious mass of flesh and heat under my hands. The next, he was a predator.

His entire body went rigid. The muscles in his neck and shoulders corded, and with a grunt, he pushed himself up onto his elbows. His gaze darted around the clearing, taking in the ancient trees, the shimmering spring, and then they landed on me. His eyes narrowed.

His right hand slapped the empty space on the ground beside him, his fingers curling around nothing. A low growl rumbled in his chest, a deep, primal sound that vibrated through the moss. His attention snapped back to me, no longer just assessing, but hostile. He looked at my delicate wings, my glowing skin, and I saw the recognition in his eyes. He didn't see a healer. He saw a thing of magic. A trick.

"Where is it?" he demanded. His voice was a low rasp of gravel and disuse, but it held an undeniable authority.

I rose to my feet, trying to gather the shreds of my composure. I floated an inch off the ground, an old habit to assert my authority in the grove. "You are in a sacred place, mortal. Your weapon is not permitted."

He ignored my explanation, his grey eyes fixed on the new, thin scar on his chest. He ran his fingers over it, his expression unreadable. He looked back at me, the suspicion in his eyes hardening into something colder. "You did this." It wasn't a question. "Why?"

The truth felt too fragile, too foolish to speak aloud. I felt your sadness. Instead, I gave him the answer the law would demand. "Your blood was poisoning the moss. Your death here would have been a prolonged desecration. It was easier to mend you and send you on your way."

A humorless smirk touched his lips, not reaching his eyes. "Easier." He pushed himself into a sitting position, every movement fluid and controlled despite the ordeal his body had just endured. He was so much bigger than I’d realized, a mountain of a man who made my grove feel small and fragile. "Things of your kind don't do things because they are easier."

He looked at me, truly looked at me, and the vast, unbridgeable chasm between our worlds opened up between us. He was a creature of iron and earth, of violence and survival. I was a creature of magic and moonlight, of rules and tradition. He saw a potential jailer; I saw the chaos that threatened my entire existence. We were inches apart, yet we might as well have been standing on opposite sides of the world, staring at each other across an ocean of silence and mistrust.