A Heart Wrapped in Thorns #2
He crouched on the ground, setting his basket aside as he caught her up, stick and all, and ruffled her curly black coat.
"Who's a good girl? Are you a good girl?
What a fine stick you found, my little princess.
" He reached into his pocket, pulled out a treat, and held out his closed hand.
She pawed and nibbled until he finally relented, opening his hand for her to take the treat.
Once she'd eaten it, he took the stick and tossed it for her, laughing when it reached the creek and did not slow her down at all.
From there, she got entirely distracted by some fish and annoyed ducks.
Leaving her to play, he retrieved his basket and finished filling it with berries. Then he went to the creek, where Pip had fallen asleep on the bank in the midst of gnawing on her precious stick, and set to work sorting and washing the berries, eating a handful or so as he was growing hungry.
He looked up when the sunshine abruptly vanished and frowned at the storm clouds that had gathered, heavy and dark, ominous for certain. Damn it, if he got caught out in the weather…
A roar made him jerk, startled Pip awake and set her to barking her fool head off.
It came again, and then was followed by something that sounded like a cry of pain, but not one he'd ever heard before.
Heart in his throat, Aurélien ran for the source, abandoning his berries on the bank to retrieve later.
Bursting through a thick copse of hedges and trees, he appeared—
To nothing.
Well, not nothing, not exactly, but certainly not the chaos he'd expected. Just the remains. Entire trees had been snapped in half, shrubs torn and completely ripped out of the ground in places.
In the midst of the destruction was a lone figure, a naked man covered in cuts and bruises, including a rather nasty gash across his chest, from shoulder to opposite hip.
Aurélien dropped down beside him, cold with fear, but the man was breathing.
Removing his satchel, he dug through it quickly for the box where he kept emergency potions, because wandering the woods unprepared was a fool's game.
He spread the entirety of one healing potion along the gash in the man's chest, relief making him weak as the bleeding slowed and the wound slowly began to close.
It would take a few hours to heal entirely, and he'd still need rest and to use care for a few days, but he'd be all right.
Using a clean kerchief, Aurélien dabbed most of a second potion across the man's other scrapes and bruises.
Immediate crisis averted, he turned to the most pressing questions: what had happened, where was the beast that had assaulted him, and why in the world was the man naked.
Around the clearing, Pip sniffed and barked and growled in a way that said she smelled something she didn't like but wasn't concerned about.
Whatever the threat, it was gone. Stranger and stranger.
Something large enough to snap trees and leave gouges in the earth, destroy entire head-high shrubs, and leave a gash across a man's chest that would have killed him if Aurélien hadn't been right here…
He should have seen it, heard it, but the damned thing was just gone.
Before he could begin to figure out answers to his ever-growing list of questions, thunder boomed so hard and loud he felt it in his bones. Pip yelped and ran to him, huddled against him. "It's all right, Pippy," he said soothingly, scooping her up and petting her.
The thunder came again, this time with lightning, and before he could even draw breath to soothe Pip again, the rain broke loose and drummed down upon them hard enough to sting. Damn it.
Slinging his satchel over his chest again, he tucked a protesting Pip into it, then braced himself and, with a great deal of cursing, huffing, and puffing, got the larger man up over his shoulders the way he'd been taught through a miserable six months of martial training that he and the guards stuck with him had detested.
Getting his bearings, mostly confident in where he was, he headed out, soaked, cold, but also red-faced and hot, lugging the unreasonably heavy bastard along and nearly killing all three of them at least twice.
Finally, finally, he reached his destination. It wasn't even that far, but for the sake of his dignity, he would pretend it was.
A tower. All that remained of the original castle before it had been razed in a nasty, bitter battle that had turned the tide of a war and put his ancestors on the throne of a brand new kingdom.
He kicked the door open, nearly killing all of them again, then practically fell inside.
There was no way in the world he would be making it up the stairs like this, so he sank—fell, really, but nobody could prove it—to his knees and as carefully as possible lay the man on the dusty, leaf-covered floor.
That attended, he released Pip from her cruel and terrible prison, then pulled out his cloak and covered the poor man in it. "Pip, stay."
She whined at him but obeyed, and he slipped back out into the rain, bound for the clearing.
As he'd hoped, he found the stranger's belongings: a pile of clothes, deepening that mystery, and a large rucksack with all manner of things attached to it.
The pack of a perpetual wanderer, nearly a whole house on his back, so he had everything he could possibly need, no matter where he went.
Normally Aurélien only saw such from peddlers, wandering tradesmen, that kind of thing.
But this pack showed no sign of either of those.
Well, it hardly mattered. No doubt the man's explanation would make perfect sense, not that he was obliged to offer one.
Heaving the pack onto his back, Aurélien bundled the clothes in his arms and trudged back to the tower.
The man was still asleep, which seemed odd.
By now he should have stirred, unless he'd suffered injuries that Aurélien couldn't see.
But he wasn't feverish or anything, so maybe it was simple exhaustion acerbated by the peculiar, brutal fight.
Setting the man's belongings neatly aside, Aurélien set to work on the next task.
As this was far from the first time he'd gotten caught in a surprise storm, he'd learned to keep firewood stored in the tower.
Normally he went up to the top, where he had a cozy little nest, complete with an old woodstove that had taken him an embarrassing amount of huffing and puffing to haul up the stairs and install.
Honestly it wasn't a mystery to him that nobody wanted him, just his wealth and power. Neither of which he really had, as he was entirely at the whims of his mother. There were reasons he had to make his own dyes instead of simply ordering them.
Once he had a fire going, he ventured out into the rain one last time to fetch his poor berries and fill a bucket of water.
He had a simple pipe system at the top of the tower, connected to rain barrels on the roof, another laborious project that had taken him a couple of days, but as he was right here by the creek and they wouldn't need much, this was easier.
With all those chores attended, he finally hauled all the way up the stairs, taking the stranger's wet clothes with him.
Stripping off his own sodden clothes, he hung everything up to dry, changed into a set of spare clothes he kept in the tower for precisely this reason, and dealt with his hair.
Once it was mostly dry, he pulled it loosely back and returned to the bottom floor.
He froze as he reached the final few steps. The stranger was awake, dressed, and sitting by the fire.
Aurélien looked him over, finally taking in all he hadn't really noticed before because saving a life and getting everyone to safety tended to be pretty all-consuming.
The man was handsome, beautiful even, with warm brown skin and long, thick, dark brown hair that he'd woven into a single thick braid.
He was in need of a shave or trim, but the scruffy look suited him.
He looked up at the sound of Aurélien's movements, revealing eyes that were the same blue-green as a summer ocean.
Aurélien had only visited the ocean twice, the last when he was seventeen, but he would remember that bright, vivid color for as long as he lived.
He hadn't known a person's eyes could be the very same color.
Looking at him set something in Aurélien's chest to fluttering, made his stomach twist itself into knots. He never wanted to look away, just drink in the man's beauty, his compelling presence, for as long as he was permitted.
Of course he had to meet such a fascinating, beautiful man in the middle of the forest, in the midst of a storm, while he looked like a bedraggled rat and the man was recovering from serious injury.
Of course they couldn't meet while Aurélien was looking his best, could ask him to dance, sit next to him at a fine dinner…
Shoving away his idiotic thoughts, Aurélien said, "Hello, how are you feeling?"
Pushing hastily to his feet, the man said in a deep, faintly rough voice, "Thank you for helping me, stranger. I am greatly in your debt. However did you chance upon me all the way out here?"
"I was picking berries by the creek. I heard you scream. Are you feeling all right?"
"Very well, thanks to you. Sit, please. I've got water on for tea and food aplenty to share in my pack if you're hungry. I'm Keone."
"Aurélien. I'm glad you're all right. What happened?"
The man grimaced as they sat down. "I was surprised by a bristled ogre. Bastard nearly got me too."
That made Aurélien wince, because bristled ogres were particularly nasty and territorial. They didn't normally venture anywhere near this part of the forest, though, as far too many people used it, and ogres in general preferred to stay far away from the only real threat facing them.