24. Maren
24
Maren
K ye gently shook me awake.
He’d built the fire up again overnight, the pile of wood now larger than when I’d fallen asleep. Larger than we needed, since we’d planned to wake and leave immediately. I sat up, bleary-eyed and heavy-headed as Kye crouched next to me. He smelled of road dust and old leather, though I caught the notes of rain and mint as he shifted his weight.
Sunlight streamed across his cheeks. He avoided my eyes, turning his new whetstone over his fingers. Strands of gold embellished the edges of the grass, the sun gently cracking the horizon, and I wondered if he’d stayed up all night just to avoid waking me up and exchanging words with me.
“There’s a game trail that leads in the direction we’re headed,” he said, offering me the apple I’d asked for the night before. A warm, cozy cloud bloomed within me. Rather than cut the fruit down the center, he’d eaten half and saved the rest for me. I tried to force the cloud away. To ignore that there was something intimate about sharing with him. Passing the same spoon back and forth, drinking from the same canteen.
Kye pointed through the trees at deer tracks following the creek. They curved south, vanishing under gnarled branches.
“How important would it be for us to avoid the road?” I mused out loud.
His eyes traced the disappearing trail into the backdrop of birch and ash, and I knew he’d already considered my question before I’d asked. “Ideal. Especially while we’re still near the coast. I worried about entering Vranna, but we needed to supply ourselves. We’re supplied now.”
We both eyed the game trail in muted thought. Soft with grass, the ground remained mostly flat. The river dropped into a ravine, but the trail itself seemed easy enough to follow.
“We could give it a try,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. “At least until it stops heading south. Then we’d find the road again. If we have to double back, we’d only lose a few days.”
I gave a nod, standing to smooth the wrinkles from my dress. He’d already packed our camp neatly away. The pot we’d boiled water in was fastened to his saddle, the knitting needles and yarn folded along with his bedroll over Sero’s rump along with the scarf he was halfway through. It seemed my own bedding was the only things he’d left untouched.
The notion he’d wanted to avoid speaking with me so badly that he’d let me sleep until the last possible moment thrust a sharp edge into my chest. I stole the baldric from the ground, fitting the straps over my head as the sword batted against my buttocks.
He watched me take in the bare details of our night, packed and sorted away, then snagged my empty bedroll with his uninjured hand.
“Kye,” I murmured, a guilty strain evident in my voice as I buckled the baldric to my frame. Shame licked me clean. The answer I’d given him the night before, the night he’d spent awake in its aftermath, the chores he’d set himself to, neglecting to let me help. “You could have woken me.” I trailed him to Kolibri. She eyed him warily as he secured the bundle to her saddle.
He waved me away. “I knew you were sore from what happened yesterday—”
A soft crack sounded behind us. The snap of twigs, faint under the whirring tumble of the rapid creek.
Steel whistled at my hip, vibrating against my side. A hand shoved my stomach back, forcing me to step into Kolibri’s warmth. Dark chocolate hair flew across my field of view. Kye stood ahead of me, the hollow between his shoulder blades all I could see, my snatched sword firmly in his hand.
The four of us became still, Kolibri and Sero lifting their noses to the wind along with me. But it blew east, opposite us, plundering our senses. My eyes scraped the trees, the dark shadows not yet infiltrated by the morning sun. We waited.
A little rose-colored finch hopped out from a nearby bush, nosing its sharp beak into the ground where we’d eaten the night before.
My shoulders deflated, a heavy breath escaping my lungs. Kye took longer to recover, scanning our camp with mistrust, a shade of skepticism coloring the crease between his brows. Then he glanced at the empty baldric I’d just strapped to my back.
“I’ll take this back,” he said, swerving his gaze over the empty grass one last time.
I opened my mouth to argue. Then realized which of his hands held the blade.
“You’re ambidextrous?”
He smirked, needling the tip back into the sheath and angling me to find the buckle at my waist. “I’m better with my right hand, but I’m trained with both.”
I made a noise low in my throat, glaring up at him. “Why am I wearing this stupid thing, then?”
My sour voice captured the corners of his mouth. He bit down on his lips, failing to subdue a dark grin. “You offered to.”
I snorted. “Only because I thought you couldn’t. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Kye clicked his tongue. “I liked how it looked on you.” Golden eyes shifted over mine, mischief crinkling at the corners, before dropping to the straps I wore. “And it was cute you thought you could help me by doing so. But that’s enough fucking around. Besides, we both know you don’t need it.”
My heart skipped a beat as he toed the line of things I couldn’t explain, but he didn’t meet my eyes. His focus remained on his hands, the pads of his fingers deftly sweeping under leather and brushing softly against the bare valley below my breasts. My skin simmered to life, a soft throb expanding between my legs as his scent draped over me like heat under a heavy sun. I watched his veined hands move to the second buckle, secured under my collar, and felt my knees wobble under my own pulsing blood, hot and loud in my temple.
He gave a quick glance at our surroundings again, eyes sharp for movement, then returned to me. I’d stopped breathing, fully enrapt in the motion of his fingers as they worked the leather loose from my form. His throat rumbled as he cleared it. “You have to turn around for the last one.”
“Oh,” I swallowed, coaxing moisture back into my mouth. Pivoting on one foot, I leaned into Kolibri’s nearby saddle. “Where do you want me?”
Kye chuckled darkly. “Fully bent over, if you’re offering.”
My eyes snapped to his, mouth agape, though my blood roared in my ears.
His mouth curved as he popped the final buckle open, relieving my shoulders of the blade’s weight, then wiggled the fingers of his injured hand at me. “Help me put it on?”
I gave a stiff nod. “Turn,” I commanded, hiding my stupid grin until after he faced away. He continued surveying the trees, the tendons of his neck flaring slowly as he rotated his head. I worked the straps loose, his frame wider than my own.
My cheeks blazed as I scuffed the hardened muscle through his shirt, and I avoided his eyes, failing to suffocate the heat pooling over my face and neck. Finished, I made to draw away, to climb on Kolibri and let the cool air chase the lingering shivers from my spine, but his palm grasped hold of my arm, holding me in place.
“Wait.” He threaded fingers through my hair, and something crinkled behind my ear. A leaf came away in his hands, wrinkled and dry and patchy with browns and golds. He let it twirl to the grass, his thumb smoothing over the ridge of my elbow. “There. Ready. Let’s see where this trail leads.”