Chapter Eleven
Sorcha woke in Aidan’s bed, carefully bundled in a blanket covered in shed wolf fur.
She felt refreshed, strong. As if she had slept for a night and a day.
A week. Her pillow smelled like Aidan, like amber and the forest and something ineffable that made her want to nuzzle in and take several deep breaths.
He sat at his desk, making notes in a journal.
A candle danced behind lantern glass, gilding his hair, the line of his nose, the serious brow.
A wolf inside a scholar. The light at the canvas suggested it was very late or very early.
She did not remember coming back to the tent. How long had she been unconscious?
Had she swooned?
Mortifying. She did not swoon.
She sat up abruptly. The soft scratch of the quill on parchment paused. Adian glanced up.
She might not remember how she got here, but she remembered the curse well enough.
And the kiss.
Also, literally falling into Aidan’s arms and not staying awake long enough to enjoy it. Criminal.
“She put a sleep spell on me,” Sorcha muttered.
“Aye.”
“Whyever for?” She sat up further, incensed. “I thought we had a pact and all that.”
“So you could recover.”
“You didn’t sleep,” she accused.
“No.”
“Sleep spells are forbidden during festival days now.” Sleep magic was regulated by the Order with more force than they had previously shown after Briar’s sister’s curse had nearly put the entire island to sleep. Permanently.
“Freya doesn’t much care for the rules.” He sent her a knowing sidelong glance. “Like someone else I know.”
It was hard to argue with the truth.
Especially when she remembered something else.
“Are we…”
“Betrothed?” Aidan supplied calmly, as if they were discussing nothing of import. He set the quill down carefully, as if it were made of glass.
“Well, are we?”
“I’m afraid Freya will have already announced it.”
“I see.”
“I did try to warn you. But you can cry off. Later. No one would fault you for it.”
He still had not looked at her, not really. She shoved the mass of her tangled hair off her shoulder. “No, I assume the betrothal will help us in our efforts to stop the Cauldron.”
“Aye.”
“Well, there you go, then.” If he could be so blasted calm and logical about it, so could she.
“A broken engagement is not…conducive to a lady’s reputation,” he said hesitantly. She had the urge to get up and pull his hair just to get him to look at her.
“Aidan, I’m already a spinster of questionable manners,” she said. She hoped he could hear her rolling her eyes again. Loudly.
This was all so…polite. She much preferred the chaos of the Wolf Wood, the growls and the snaps and the naked buttocks. They’d felt less complicated. She swung her legs out of the bed, even though it was warm and cozy. Her stomach rumbled, waking up with the rest of her.
“You’re hungry,” Aidan said, instantly standing as though they were at tea.
“I would commit murder for a scone,” she agreed. Maybe three.
“I think we can do better than that,” he said. “Curses eat up a lot of energy.”
She shivered slightly when the last of the covers slid off her. Mornings were damp and chilly in September. “Is it morning?”
“Just coming on dawn.” When she shivered again, he frowned. She itched to smooth the furrows with her thumb, just to touch him. “You’re cold.”
“A little.” Her dress was not particularly thick and she was still barefoot. She curled her toes into the carpet set by the bed. “I’ll warm up soon enough.”
“Here,” Aidan said softly. Almost shyly?
He handed her a plaid, neatly folded on the trunk.
It wasn’t his, at least not the one he’d wrapped so casually around himself after shifting.
Although it was the same pattern, the same grays and heather purple and white.
But this one was clean and knitted from soft wool into a shawl.
He draped it around her shoulders and she just stood there, unable to form a coherent thought when he was so near. His expression was not quite as calm and stoic as it usually was, but it was no more decipherable. “They’re my colors,” he explained.
She tilted her head up to meet his gaze. “Like your Pack colors?”
“Something like that.”
She pulled the shawl tighter around her. “Thank you.”
He nodded. “It’s expected.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Mitigating circumstances?”
His neck flushed. “I just like seeing you in my plaid,” he said quietly. Before she could figure out how to react to that, besides feeling a great deal warmer than could be explained by a shawl, he stepped back. “Let’s get you some breakfast. There are shoes just there for you.”
She was touched that he had sought them out for her. She used the water in the basin to wash her face and then her feet, making her as presentable as she was likely to get. Adian waited patiently for her outside. She resisted the urge to peek through his papers and journals, but just barely.
Pink dawn light sparkled on the dew. Mist swallowed the ground, softening everything it touched.
Sorcha smelled smoke from the fires slowly being rekindled, green leaves and dark earth, fallen acorns.
Birds erupted into song when she looked up and smiled.
Swallows and woodpeckers and starlings watched her from the branches.
Butterflies and dragonflies darted past her nose.
Aidan only waited, a crooked smile at the corner of his mouth.
Tavish emerged from the narrow trail, ducking under a pine branch. He wore pants this time. He dropped his armful of branches onto the fire, coaxing it to burn hotter. A kettle hung over it, water boiling. “Tea?” he asked, with a grin for Sorcha.
“Yes, please,” she said fervently.
Tavish made short work of adding leaves to a pot and taking clay mugs from a basket. “Milk?” he asked, producing a green glass bottle. “I’ve just fetched it from the river, so it’s been kept fresh.”
He added a generous dollop when she nodded and then offered her honey.
She took one sip and the cold faded away, as did the twinge in her hip from being jostled on a saddle, the faint ache in her witch knot from the curse breaking.
“I don’t know what your magic is,” she said, “but I strongly suspect it’s this.
This is by far the best tea I’ve ever had, and my friend used to run a tea shop. ”
“Aye, lass. You could marry me instead,” he said. “This one’s a fair hand with a stew, but he’s useless when it comes to tea,” he added with a nod in Aidan’s direction.
She tilted her head as though she were considering it.
“All right,” Aidan muttered, ushering her away. “Let’s go, songbird.”
He had called her that before. It made her cheeks warm. She ducked her head so he wouldn’t notice. Tavish, if his wink was anything to go by, had definitely noticed it.
Aidan led her around the edge of the main encampment.
He wore the rough trousers again, better suited to a farmer than an earl, and no cravat, no waistcoat.
Just a lawn shirt with the sleeves rolled up again.
The spirals of his tattoos, blue as a Scottish loch, made her think of standing stones and hill forts and gold torcs.
The Lycan were rising slowly, poking the cooking fires, calling greetings to one another.
Pups raced between the tents, barking and wrestling.
The wind chimes swayed gently. A huge wolf padded between the trees.
It ought to have seemed surreal or strange.
But it only felt strangely familiar. Like a place you missed dearly even though you had never been there before.
Sorcha slid Aidan a glance. “So you did remember, then? The Cauldron and the ogre?” She paused. “Me.”
“I’ve told you before, Lady Sorcha, you are rather hard to forget.”
“What were you doing in the Cauldron?” Sorcha asked. The more she thought about it, the stranger it was that he had been there at all. “Were you…captured?” But if he had been, he would have been in silver chains, wouldn’t he?
“No. I was hunting. We’ve been trying to find the Cauldron for a long time now. Too long.”
“Me too,” she grumbled. “I want to burn it to ashes. The things they do…”
“And the Red Cloak comes to the rescue.”
“I suppose.”
“And who rescues you?”
“I don’t need rescuing.” She thought of the ogre and the curse. “Usually,” she amended.
He dragged a hand over his face. “You have a Minotaur who bakes your bread. Did it no’ occur to you to take him with you on these terrifyingly dangerous jaunts of yours?” His brogue had thickened considerably. She liked it.
Which was beside the point. Entirely.
She shook her head firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“And why not?”
“Because the Collector had him once and would dearly love to capture him again, I daresay. Aesop might be as strong as three oxen, but he’s a gentle soul.
I’m not sure he would survive it again.” She swallowed.
“You didn’t see how he was when I found him.
” And he rarely left Nettlestone now. She did not blame him.
“You are also much more fragile than you think,” Aidan grumbled.
She glowered. “Hardly.”
He sighed. “Sorcha, you have the heart of ten warriors, but that ogre would have used your bones for his stew.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I am aware.”
“Are you?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “I know the risks, Coventry.”
“Coventry, is it? I have annoyed you.”
“Yes. You have. I’m not going to stop.”
“I never suggested you should.”
She halted. “Oh.”
He was amused, even if his jaw was hard. “I am not an idiot, Lady Sorcha.”
“I am happy to hear it.” The few people who knew about the Red Cloak lost no time in begging her to stop.
“I only think you should not have to do it alone.”