Chapter 24 - Cammon #2
She walked behind me, made a few noises of consideration, then came back with that adorable—yes, dammit, adorable—crease between her brows.
“That’s hardly fair, is it? I get torn apart by a few shifters, and my bruises are still visible.
You should have been incinerated, and all you have are a few singed feathers and a sunburn. ”
“We won’t argue superior genetics this close to dinner.” I winked at her and grinned when she rolled her eyes. “So I pass inspection?”
“I don’t think I need to waste any salves on you, no. Good thing, too, because we lost that particular kit. I would have had to make them from scratch, and the quality would certainly have depended on how sweet you were. So far, you wouldn’t have earned my best work.”
The words I could be as sweet as you want me to be tumbled towards my lips, but I swallowed them and gave myself a mental pat on the back for being so mature.
“Good thing, indeed,” I said instead, and shrugged my wings away. “I’d hate to have wound up with another rash.”
We worked together to create a few simple noisemakers to warn us if anything approached camp, then had the tent up before unloading anything else. It was luck we’d started with shelter. The moment the flap fell into place, the first raindrops spattered against the fabric.
“We’ll keep the bags inside,” Glory said. “Everything should fit.”
A few breaths later, the light rainfall turned into a deluge that obscured the trees only a few metres away from us.
We shoved our dripping packs through the flap, and I stood outside, making sure Glory was able to get comfortable around our few remaining belongings.
Once I was sure she had everything she needed, I set about securing the tent to keep the water out.
She noticed what I was doing, rolled her eyes, and stuck her arm through to stop me.
“For goodness’ sake, Cammon, get inside.”
I swallowed hard and hesitated before ducking through.
I might have refused her if I hadn’t stowed my blanket inside with the rest of my things.
It wouldn’t have been my first night spent huddled under a makeshift tent, the ground growing mucky beneath me.
Just another charm of my treasure-hunting lifestyle.
But I couldn’t deny that Glory’s pain-in-the-ass tent was better than a roof of dripping tree branches.
The enchantment in her blanket kept the space warm, and although I was soaking wet, I wasn’t chilled.
Hooks were embedded in the tent rods, and Glory had hung a small lantern from the ceiling, something that had thankfully survived its swim.
The small candle within cast sputtering flames across the walls, creating a tiny oasis of civility amid the wilderness.
On the downside, the tent was… cramped. Glory’s bedroll was already laid out across the centre of the floor, and it took up a little over half the space. Another quarter was now filled with our packs. I never would have fit in here if we still had all our things.
“I’m sure the rain will ease up soon,” I said, looking around, feeling too big and cumbersome in this mage’s tidy world. “Then I’ll head back out.”
Thunder rumbled overhead, followed by a flash of lightning that cut through the lantern light with an eerie purple glow, making a mockery of me.
Glory huffed and brushed her rain-wet hair out of her face. “Don’t be absurd. Even if it tapers off right now, I won’t make you sleep in the mud. All things considered, I owe you a dry night.”
I had no doubt it would feel very dry indeed.
Veering my thoughts in any other direction, I raked my fingers through my hair to shake out the worst of the water, then stepped into the narrow remaining space on the side opposite our bags.
My breeches were soaked. In the warmth of the tent, they’d dry quickly enough, but there was no way I’d sleep well wearing them.
Cursing the necessity, I pointed to my pack. “Would you mind?”
Glory seemed to be staring at my slicked-back hair, but she blinked herself out of her stupor and handed the bag over. Her gaze returned to my hair, and I cleared my throat.
“Now would you mind…” I gestured with my finger for her to turn around. Pink infused her face, and she spun to put her back to me.
“I’ll get us something for dinner, shall I?
” she offered. “It won’t be warm, but at least it’ll be something to fill our stomachs.
And then we can go over the clue and figure out our next steps.
I think we made decent progress today, but until we have a better idea of where we’re going, I can’t say how good we are for time. ”
She continued to babble while I stripped off my breeches and got dressed in my last dry outfit—including my last shirt.
The clothes were still a bit damp from our swim, water having soaked through the torn edges of my pack, but they were a significant improvement to the sodden, burned rags I’d dragged in here with us.
Once I was dressed, I pulled a cord out of my pack and strung it between two hooks across the front of the tent.
I made sure the cord was taut and would stay put, then hung my breeches over it to dry.
Water dripped onto the floor, but at least by the door, it wasn’t dripping onto anything important.
“Feel free to add yours,” I said, keeping my back to her.
“Mine?” she croaked.
“When you change.” I looked at her over my shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Your spare clothes might be damp from yesterday, but they’re better than leaving puddles under your warm blanket.”
Her cheeks flushed a deeper red, and she couldn’t seem to land her gaze on any one thing.
“I promise not to look.” I wanted to chuckle at her embarrassment.
Given all we’d been through and everything I’d already seen through her wet clothes, her reaction was more than a little endearing.
But I couldn’t, because my longing to stay right where I was had lodged deep in my muscles.
With more strength than it had taken to heave the boulder at the fourth landmark, I turned my back on her, dropped to my knee, and set to work spreading my blanket across the bare spot on the floor.
“Thank you,” she murmured, just loud enough for me to hear.
I stayed facing the blank wall, fighting all the while to convince my nether regions to settle the fuck down.
“I’m finished,” she said after what felt like an eternity.
I tugged my breeches to loosen the laces ever so slightly, then turned around and discovered the futility of my efforts as all my blood rushed from one head to the other. She looked as glorious as her name.
The black stockings and camisole were the same as I’d seen before, their form-fitting shape clinging to every delicious curve of her body, but she hadn’t yet bothered to put her hair up in its usual knot.
Instead, it drifted down around her shoulders, waves of mahogany that brought out every fleck of green and gold in her hazel eyes.
Eyes that, tonight, looked twice as large as they did when she was squinting to make out some indecipherable text or struggling to block out the glare of the sun.
They were ringed with long, dark lashes, giving her a look of such innocence that I felt even more the demon for the lust that burned through me.
I was glad I was already down on one knee, because that was where I deserved to be. At her feet, worshipping every beautiful inch of her perfection.
Glory canted her head and narrowed her eyes at me, then rolled them skywards. “Get up, princeling. The bond is playing with your thoughts again.”
Right. The bond. Contrary to what I’d thought earlier, my instinct to risk my life for hers was not the real danger.
This raging desire was. Because I knew throwing myself over her hadn’t been me.
The gesture had been so out of character that it had jarred me out of the lull.
But this yearning? I could very well believe it was all mine, and if I let myself forget that it wasn’t, I might get dragged along the current and crushed against the rocks.
I was out here for a reason, and that reason had nothing to do with entangling myself with a city-bound librarian.
“How long is that supposed to last again?” I asked as I blatantly repositioned myself to find some comfort. If the desire had been all my own, I would have shown more class—possibly—but synthetic as it was, I didn’t see the point in hiding it.
Glory’s gaze slid downwards, then darted away as she shrugged. “Not much longer. From what my mother taught me, the effects of a single bite usually disappear after a few days. Before you know it, you’ll be back to considering me the irritating academic you got stuck with.”
“Excellent. That’s the way I prefer it.”
She laughed and turned to her pack, the tension between us broken. “Now, where were we on this dinner thing?”
Outside, the storm raged on. The rain had eased and come back, the thunder had shifted farther away, then returned, but both continued with such ferocity I was more than a little relieved my companion had invited me into her inner sanctum. I might have drowned already if I’d stayed outside.
Still, I wasn’t about to take advantage of the situation, more than ready to earn my keep.
I took over transforming our simple, gathered food into a serviceable meal, leaving Glory free to work on the clue from the cave.
The space between us was so tight that every time I moved, I brushed against her.
After the third time, I expected her to get annoyed, but she didn’t seem to notice, too caught up in what she was reading.
Our remaining map, the one that had been tucked into my blanket, lay stretched across her bedroll, and from the glimpses I stole while I readied our feast, I could tell I wasn’t going to like where we were headed.
“Well,” she said after a long while. “That’s not ideal.”