Chapter 17 #2
I let out a sigh. “For the love of the gods, do not sneak up on me like that!”
“I didn’t,” he says as he takes a seat next to me, his comfortable presence filling the space that the guard left. “But I don’t blame you for being jumpy,” he murmurs as he looks around the room, taking in the dark shadows lining the walls of the tavern. “Who are these guys?”
“The Royal Shield,” I say, and his gaze cuts to mine. I raise my eyebrows in affirmation. “Sent here by King Wyndbrook to help Hawthorne out with the situation here.”
I can’t help but let my eyes roam over them. I count eleven men lining the walls of the tavern, but I’m confident that’s merely a small portion of the group that has been sent here. King Wyndbrook doesn’t do anything half-baked.
“The situation here?” His face contorts in disgust as he looks back at the men.
“Do not rock the boat, Silas,” I warn. Silas’s obvious looks have got him in trouble more than once, and these are the last people he wants to be making enemies of. “It seems they might be here for a while.”
I rub a hand over my face before taking another gulp of my drink. There’s only so much I can process in one day, and I’m bashing against the threshold.
“Are you okay?” Silas’s hand lands on mine where it rests on the table, and I have to force myself not to flinch away.
Everything feels like too much in this moment.
The unexpected grief that still tugs at me every day since we buried two women in the forest.
The dagger in my pocket with questionable origins.
My parents. The vials. The secrets I’m now keeping.
The hot breath of the guard still lingering on my cheeks, and the way that I can feel all of their eyes watching this entire room.
It is all too much.
“I’m fine.” I can’t exactly explain all of that without admitting to my lie from earlier, and I don’t particularly feel like unpacking all of that under the scrutiny of watchful eyes.
“You don’t seem fi—”
“I didn’t pick you for an ale type of girl, Rosie.” A voice interrupts Silas’s inquisition.
Relief floods through me at the signature lilt of Rylan’s tone. I don’t question why I reconcile that feeling with the sound of his voice. I don't have the energy tonight. I merely accept it for the distraction that it is.
“Oh, for the love of the gods,” Silas mutters, running a hand down his face. “Are you serious, right now?”
“About as serious as the guy in the corner who’s been watching you two intently ever since you sat down, stableboy.” Rylan finds the stool on the other side of me, leaving me flanked with male bravado on either side. I don’t have the strength to shoo them away.
My eyes subtly flick up to see the same man from earlier, his gaze stuck on me. I look straight back down, running my fingers along the condensation around the base of my cup. “How long have you been here?” I ask.
“Long enough to see him get entirely too close to you.” The depth of his voice catches me off guard. His tone is a stark contrast to his earlier teasing. The ale in my stomach swirls in waves.
“Who got too close to you?” Silas asks, his gaze flitting around the room before he lands on the guard who is still glaring at the three of us. “That guy?”
“It was nothing,” I say, finishing off my drink with a roll of my eyes. I can’t deal with all of this right now.
“Well, why didn’t you do anything?” He fires his question over my head to Rylan, as if Rylan is responsible for my safety. I attempt to ignore their bickering, but they make it impossible.
“Stepping up to a Royal Shield on their first day in town sounds like a sure way to end up in the cells.”
Silas scoffs. “We don’t have cells here.”
“I can assure you, we do,” Rylan counters. “I was working on them yesterday.”
That catches my attention. “You were building cells?”
His eyes meet mine with a pleading look.
“I didn’t know what the job was until I got there, and Hawthorne had someone else hire me for the work.
I wasn’t given much of a choice once I got there.
It was either do the work, or this Mr. Collingwood would sully my name in town, ensuring I never got any other work,” he says.
“Either that or the councilman who was overseeing the job would arrest me for obstruction of justice.”
I loosen a harsh breath. Mr. Collingwood is the biggest meddler in town.
If he says he can ruin any chance of work for someone, you’d better believe him, because he could do it easier than I could comb my curls.
But it also sets off another line of questioning in my mind.
Why is Collingwood working with the mayor?
“Hm,” Silas mutters. “You could’ve just said no and, I don’t know, gone and lived anywhere else.”
“Silas!” My head whips to where he’s sitting to my right, but his gaze is fixed on Rylan. When I look back, Rylan is just wearing his signature smirk, like he’s simply waiting for Silas to make the next move.
“There are certain things I like about Sylvan. I don’t want to go anywhere else at the moment.”
“Certain things like what?” Silas says, falling for Rylan’s bait.
“Certain people, for example.” I close my eyes as a headache builds behind my eyes. I can’t take this idiotic conversation any longer.
“I need some air,” I say abruptly. Pushing back my stool, I make for the door.
A gush of cool evening air hits my warm cheeks as soon as my feet land on the soft ground, and it immediately calms me.
I find myself leaning against the rough wooden slats that make up the outside of the tavern.
I take a few deep breaths to clear my mind of everything it has collected in the last twenty-four hours.
I try to listen instead. To the rustling of leaves above me as a small breeze weaves through them. To the low and steady croak of a frog from somewhere hidden in the forest. To the echoes of laughter from the other side of this wall.
It’s something that has always worked for me—grounding myself in the current moment, focusing on the world around me instead of what is going on inside my mind.
It’s something I started doing after my parents died, when the only thing in my mind was a cycle of images of their dead bodies, and my mind going wild imagining their accident.
Just as I think I’m starting to calm down, to find a moment of peace, the door to the tavern creaks open.
“Evie.” My head thumps as it hits the wall. “I’m so sorry, I was being ridiculous in there. I got carried away,” Silas says, his voice louder with every step he takes closer to me. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say, running my fingernails across my scalp before I curl the bulk of my hair around my hand. I’m not going to pretend to disagree with him.
“It’s just…” He paces in front of me, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t trust that guy, Evie. He’s dangerous.”
“All the men in The Royal Shield are dangerous, Silas. I believe that is the point.”
“Not the guard,” he says, coming to stand in front of me. “Rylan.”
A laugh slips from my lips. “Rylan is not dangerous. A little overzealous maybe,” I say with a tilt of my head. “But he’s not dangerous.”
I say the words with so much confidence, as if I really know anything about him. As if he’s not still an entire mystery of his own. The weight of the dagger in my pocket is a constant reminder of the secrets he’s keeping himself.
“You need to be careful around him Evie, okay?”
“I can look after myself, Silas!” I snap. My voice echoing through the open air around us.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I say, realising how harsh that sounded, but I’m sick of feeling like I need someone to look out for me.
He brushes my apology off and steps into me.
“I’m being overbearing, I know. I’m sorry.
I just…” His eyes meet mine, and it feels like I can read every emotion in the space between his pupil and the edge of his warm brown iris.
“The last thing I want is to see you hurt.” His calloused fingers find my face, and his hand curls around my head as his thumb strokes the skin on my cheek. “You mean too much to me.”
Guilt wraps a vice around my chest, threatening to upheave everything I've been hiding from him as my eyes find the ground beneath my feet.
His index finger finds my chin, guiding my gaze back to his and all I see is desperate longing.
I want to tell him everything. I should tell him everything, but the words get caught in my throat.
Instead, I focus on this moment, because if I think too hard about any of the things standing between us, I’ll lose out on whatever he is about to do, and I desperately want to know what he is about to do.
I focus on the pounding in my chest as he gets even closer and his breath skates over the bridge of my nose. “You are more than just a friend to me, Evie.”
I swear I hear a snap—the line left between us finally severed—and I feel instant relief, my soul begging to be his no matter the consequences.
I hold my breath as I close my eyes, seconds feeling like an eternity until I feel his soft lips on mine.
His kiss is delicate, as if he’s holding a fragile flower in his hands, something he doesn’t want to crush. But I want him to crush me.
I want him to consume me.
My hands find his shirt, and I pull him further towards me as I part my lips, inviting him to kiss me again, and he does. His lips fitting perfectly between mine.
He kisses me softly, carefully, and I know it’s because this is scary, because this is a clear cross of that boundary, but I don’t care about the boundary anymore.
“Silas,” I whisper into his mouth, begging him to give in to the feeling that has been brewing between us for years. But instead of giving in, he pulls away. As soon as he steps back, my body instantly shudders with the chill that replaces his warmth.
“Evie,” he whispers, running a hand over his bottom lip, as if he can’t decide if that moment was real.
Insecurities flood my mind in the space he left between us. “Do you not…” My question fades away. I don’t know how to finish it.
He shakes his head, stepping back into me, his hands cradling my face once again. “Of course I do. But I want to go slow with you. I don’t want to rush a single second of this, not when I have been waiting for so long.”
It’s everything I've ever wanted to hear from his mouth, but I can't help but feel a tiny sliver of disappointment.
“I want to savour every single moment.” His lips find my forehead, and I close my eyes, letting his heat warm me up. “Is that okay?”
I pull back, finding warmth in his gaze as he looks down at me, and his words settle in my mind.
It makes sense. For so long, this energy has been building between us. If we rush things, it might burn out, and that is the last thing I want to happen. I’ve waited so long for this, I can wait a little longer if it means that whatever this is between us lasts.
“Yeah, that’s okay, Silas.”