Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
ASPETH
17 Days Before the Conquest Moon
When night four in the woods arrives and we’re still doing drills, I decide they’re doing this to torture us.
We go up the stream.
Down the stream.
Up the stream again, but this time tied in a different formation.
We go up and down the stream with weapons drawn.
Without a lantern. All of us carrying lanterns. All of us carrying lanterns with our pack weight doubled to simulate if we found a stash of treasures.
Not even a few stolen touches in the tent can make this any better. Not that there’s been many of those lately, either. After that first explosive interlude when Hawk made me come, I’ve been aching for him to touch me again. Aching.
Instead, we just talk .
And while I find talking to him joyous and incredibly satisfying—he’s as fixed on Old Prell as me in some ways—I wish he would touch me again. I think it’s my fault. I told him I wanted to get to know him during rest times in the tent, and I think he interpreted that to mean I didn’t want to be touched until we knew each other better.
Is it greedy to want both? I certainly don’t think so.
Magpie grows steadily more ornery as the nights pass as well. She doesn’t look so good. Her hands shake with tremors constantly and she sweats even when it’s cold. Her face is pale, her eyes are hollows, but she’s determined to keep us moving. She’s grumpy, too. She yells at us constantly to pick up our feet, or to move faster, or to swing a sword harder. To make a fire faster.
In short, she’s horrible.
Hawk isn’t much better. He doesn’t speak much outside of our rest times inside our tent, alone, and when he does, it’s to point out something our Five is doing wrong. That we’re going to fail if we keep going as we are. That we need to shape up, do better. We’re giving everything we’ve got and yet it’s still not good enough for him, or for Magpie.
“You’re using your eyes too much,” Hawk tells me, batting aside my attempts to stab with my training sword. “I can predict where you’re going with your weapon. Quit projecting.”
“I’m not projecting.”
At my next stab, he makes another growl of frustration and bats me aside again, as easily as batting away a fly. “Eyes.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” I sputter, even as I stab and feint again. My vision is blurry and I’m focused more on shapes and colors than actual objects, but I can’t let him know that. “They’re eyes! They’re meant for looking!”
“And in the tunnels, your lighting is going to be almost nothing. The shadows are going to trick your vision. You need to rely on your other senses when you fight, Aspeth, or we’re going to have to break out the mucking blindfolds again.”
I make a frustrated sound and stab again, just as he’s taught me.
Hawk parries me easily, and when I stab at him wildly a second time, he smacks my hand with his blocking staff.
Yelping, I drop my blade and bring the back of my hand to my mouth. My skin stings at the contact, but more than anything, I’m humiliated. I can’t tell him that I can’t see enough to follow his lessons other than the broad gestures. I can’t tell him that I’m doing good just to not run into walls. I have to pretend like I can see as well as anyone else. This is something I can’t master, and I can’t tell him that. “I need a moment.”
I walk away, sucking on the back of my hand, determined not to cry. Tears of frustration don’t solve anything. They won’t make me better at sword work. They won’t fix my vision. They won’t get me into the guild, so I need to channel that helpless anger into something else.
“Aspeth,” Hawk calls after me.
“I said I need a moment,” I call back, walking into the thick copse of trees. “Let me be and then I’ll come back to training.” I keep walking, and my frustration mounts when I can hear him crashing through the underbrush behind me. I hike a little faster, only for him to keep following me as if what I want doesn’t matter. It only adds to my bad mood, and by the time I hit a good spot to sit and relax, I turn and glare at the big bull-man who has followed me all this time. “What part of ‘I said I need a moment’ did you fail to understand?”
He ignores my bad mood and marches right up to me and takes my hand, turning it over and examining it. “Did I hurt you?”
Oh. “It stung, but you did the same to the others.”
“I’m not married to the others.” He lifts the back of my hand to his muzzle and rubs his nose against my skin. “I’m sorry. I was trying to be gentle with you and instinct kicked in.”
“I don’t want you to be gentle with me,” I tell him, distracted as he continues to rub his muzzle against my skin in a way that makes me feel shivery inside. “I want you to treat me the same as the others.”
“But you’re not the same,” he murmurs, and his golden gaze meets mine. “You’re my wife, and I’m supposed to be teaching you about pleasure. I don’t like seeing you hurt.”
His response leaves me flustered. “It’s not like it’s been about pleasure over the last few days. You haven’t touched me since the first day we got here.”
“Missing it?”
Oh gods. My face heats. “I mean…no…”
“Liar.” He grins, his expression practically feral as he releases my hand and takes another step forward. I automatically take a step back, and stumble over roots, only to find myself with my back against the nearest tree. His hand goes to my waist, and then he flicks open my belt and slides his hand into my pants.
Sucking in a breath at the feel of his warm fingers against my skin, I flick my gaze up to him. “What are you doing?”
“Making you feel better.” The heat in his eyes is playful, even as he cups the back of my neck with his other hand and draws a teasing circle around my clit. The pose makes me gaze up at him, and when I brace a hand on his chest, I can see a smile curving his mouth. “You sounded sad that I haven’t touched you lately. I’m making it up to you.”
“You—you don’t—I wasn’t—”
“Shhh. I know, little bird.” He strokes against my clit, and my knees almost buckle. “I have you.”
My lips part, and anything I want to say, to protest, disappears from my mind as he keeps touching me. His fingers dance through my folds, slicking them with my juices, and when he dips a finger into the heat of my channel, my body makes a wet squelch. I jerk, startled and embarrassed.
Hawk only hums with pleasure. “Feel how wet you are, Aspeth? When the moon is upon me, the more I touch you, the more slick your body will create so you can take me. You’re going to be twice as wet as this, so wet that it runs down your thighs and soaks the bed. It’s all so I can stretch you to take my knot, and it’ll make you feel so good.” He eases his finger into me again, his thumb moving to rub my clit as he does, and then starts a slow, regular motion, pumping into me with his hand. His gaze is locked on mine as I curl my hands in his shirt, clinging to him as he pushes me toward a climax.
When I come, it’s with a muffled cry, my face pressed against his chest as he keeps fingering me. Pleasure bursts through my mind and sweeps down my legs, and then it rolls through me, leaving me sated and weak-kneed. “Oh. That was…nice.”
“It was, aye.” He rubs his muzzle against my ear, as if drinking in my scent.
“I wasn’t begging for you to touch me,” I tell him primly. “I just thought that we were supposed to be spending our time here in the woods getting to know each other. Our time alone, that is.”
“Oh, we are.” He chuckles, amused at my prissiness. “I’m getting to know which touches make you squeal, and that you talk about Old Prell in your sleep.”
I wriggle until I free his possessive hand from my body and slip away from him, flushed with embarrassment. “I do not.”
He licks his fingers clean of my taste with lascivious strokes of his tongue that make me think all kinds of naughty things. “You do, and it’s charming. Last night you were discovering bowls in your sleep.”
“Last night” was actually “last day,” since we’ve been sleeping in the daytime, but I don’t correct him. I’m a little too mortified that he’s right. I do have vague dreams of unearthing glowing bowls from a big pile of rocks. “What kinds of bowls?”
Hawk chuckles, his expression amused and full of affection as he gazes at me. “I don’t know. You kept saying it was a secret.”
Normally I’d be fixated on the soft expression my new husband is giving me, but all I can think about is that I’m talking about secrets in my sleep. Is real life bleeding over into my dreams? Have I mentioned anything about my father and his hold? His need for artifacts? I need to distract Hawk from this line of thought so he doesn’t pay too much attention if I do so again. “You know, Prellian bowls were a very important part of mealtimes. They had different-sized bowls and different colors of bowls depending on what was being served and at what time. It was considered poor manners to serve anything in a large bowl at the first meal of the day, for example. It implied you were greedy. If a wife wanted to get on her husband’s bad side, she’d keep increasing the size of a bowl, a subtle insult.”
The Taurian chuckles, shaking his head at me. “That’s one of the things I like about you, Aspeth—when you get cornered, you start teaching history lessons about Old Prell. By the time you get to be a guild master, I’ll be as much of an expert as you are, because you’ll have told me so much.”
His words make me pause. “You truly think I’ll get there?”
“If anyone will, it’s you.” He smiles.
I want to preen at his approval.
The afternoon when we start our fifth day in the woods begins with a drizzling rain, and my boots squish with every step I take. It’s the breaking point. The cloak I wear is wet. The socks on my feet are soaked. Everything is covered in mud and damp and cold and I’ve had enough.
“This is ridiculous,” I exclaim, parking my feet at the edge of the stream before we can tie ourselves together for yet another water hike. I turn around to glare at Magpie and Hawk. “Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
Gwenna, Lark, and Mereden look just as miserable as I am. Even Kipp looks a little weary. The big shell of his house hangs lower on his shoulders than it should, a sign that even someone with his expertise can grow tired of this nonsense.
“You know why,” Hawk says, voice harsh. For a moment, I regret I didn’t ask him to go easy on me because I’m his wife. He’s just as hard on me—if not harder than anyone else.
Next to him, Magpie winces and holds her head. She’s looking just as sorry as the rest of us, her clothes wet and muddy, her eyes hollowed out. She acts as if she has a headache, too.
“We’re going to be in tunnels,” I feel the need to point out. “Not—this!” I extend my hands, gesturing at the rain pattering down on us, and then indicate the mud at my feet. “There’s no rain in the Everbelow! There’s no bugs! There—”
“Spiders,” Hawk says immediately. “There are spiders.”
I pause. “They’re just spiders.”
“Not just spiders. They’re great big ones. Terrifying creatures.” His lip curls and he looks absolutely revolted. “I wish there weren’t, but you need to be prepared for such things.”
“You say they’re big? How big?” Lark asks. “Like…the size of a plate?”
“Big as my thumbnail,” he declares in a grave voice, his expression somber. “Trust me when I say they’re horrible.”
My lips twitch, but I promise myself I won’t laugh. “While I hate a spider as much as anyone, I don’t see how this camping excursion continues to help us. We’re more in danger of mosquitos and getting a cold from being rained upon than running into cave spiders. If you really want to teach us what it’s like in the tunnels, we’d be better off indoors, don’t you think?”
He shakes his head. “This is about—”
“I know what it’s about,” I protest, exasperated. “All I’m saying is that there has to be a better way to teach us than to trudge us through a forest full of mud!”
Hawk storms over and plants his hands on his hips, looming over me. Mereden makes an alarmed squeak but I only glare back at the Taurian. If this is an intimidation tactic, it’s not going to work on me. “Do you have something you want to say to me?” he asks in a deadly voice. “Wife?”
“Yes.” I lift my chin. “This is madness. If you want to teach us how to move about in the tunnels, find us a nice dry basement instead and—” I cut off as he puts a finger in my face. “Put that thing away.”
“Aspeth,” he says, his tone full of warning. “ I am your teacher. Magpie is your teacher. If we tell you to trudge through the mud for a week straight, that’s what you’re going to do.”
“I really don’t think—”
“Tut!” The finger is under my nose again, raising higher with the sharp syllable. “You’re not here to think, you’re here to learn.”
Now I’m the one making an angry sound. “I’m not some idiot—”
“No, just a terrible listener. And you don’t seem to like being told what to do.” He eyes me balefully, looking nothing like the heavy-eyed bull who fingers me to climax when we’re alone. “I’m thinking you’ve picked the wrong line of work.”
“You’re not here to think , you’re here to teach,” I snap back, using his words against him.
Gwenna hisses between her teeth.
Kipp takes a delicate step away from us.
Hawk gets in my face, his muzzle practically to my nose. “If you were a man, I’d turn you over my knee and spank you like a child, since you’re acting like one.”
I’m not sure why, but the angry flick of his tail hitting his thighs and the loom of him over me doesn’t make me any madder. If anything, it makes heat uncurl deep in my belly. “My gender shouldn’t matter.”
His eyes narrow. “So you do want me to spank you.”
Now we’re both breathing hard.
“Hey, uh,” Lark says. “I think I speak for all of us when I say ‘What the fuck?’?”
“Mind your business,” Hawk says, not looking away from me. I don’t look away from him, either. If I continue to meet him glare for glare, is he going to make good on his word? Is he going to turn me over on his knee and spank me, his hand on my bare buttocks, me helpless and splayed over his lap…?
Mercy, that should not be as arousing as it is. I blink up at Hawk, and I could swear I see a hint of red in the gleam of his eyes. Is it the moon making him act like this…or does he really want me? It’s most likely the Conquest Moon, as he’s drummed into my ears over and over again, and the realization dampens my arousal.
I’m just convenient, nothing more.
Before I can come up with a response, there’s a distant sound in the woods like that of branches snapping. We all turn, and then a voice calls out, “Ho! Is someone there?”
“Ho,” Magpie calls back in greeting, cupping a hand to her face. “Over here! By the stream!”
To my surprise, the pack I have on my shoulder slips. One of the straps falls away and I turn to grab it, only for the entire thing to tumble to the ground with a wet slap. The blankets, foodstuffs, dry boots, and everything else spill out into the mud, and I want to scream in frustration. Just what I needed.
Gwenna kneels down next to me, picking up one of my boots. “You clumsy, silly thing,” she loudly exclaims as the riders make their way toward us.
I pick up one end of the strap, noticing it’s been unbuckled. What the—
“Pull your hood up,” Gwenna whispers to me. “Do it now. Quickly.”
There’s an urgency in her voice I’ve never heard before. I pull my sodden hood over my hair, looking up at her in surprise. I reach for the boot but she holds on to it, and her gaze meets mine. There’s a warning in her eyes.
“Greetings, greetings,” a man says in a cultured voice, his accent that of the north. Like mine. “Is there a better place to cross this water? My lord Barnabus’s horse has lost a shoe and is too expensive to risk laming on the rocks.”
I freeze, ice going up my spine. Lord Barnabus Chatworth? He’s here?
Gwenna gives me the boot, her expression firm, as if to say See?
Oh, I see now. I take my time shoving things back into my pack, determined to make it last as long as possible. I wonder if I can get sick on command? Right now my stomach is roiling enough that I wouldn’t have to try too hard. Barnabus is here. Why? He’s made it clear to me in the past that busy, dangerous Vastwarren holds no interest for him. Surely he hasn’t come to retrieve me.
“The stream crossing narrows farther down the hillside,” Magpie explains. “You’re heading in the wrong direction if you want things to get easier. Only gets wider from up here, but it ain’t deep. If your horse can’t cross this you’ve got bigger problems.”
Hawk chuckles. Mereden and Lark do, too. I don’t hear anyone else laughing, though, and my pulse pounds in my ears. Barnabus is here. I’ve been found out. Woodenly, I pick up a soggy piece of clothing and pause, panic rising in my throat. I’m going to lose everything. I’m going to be destroyed. Not only will my father and grandmother be in danger, but our hold will go down in flames. And Hawk—
“Clumsy twit,” Gwenna says in an exasperated voice. “Let me help.” And she kneels next to me and pulls everything back out of my pack. “You’re not going to be able to fit everything in again. Watch how I do it.”
“Thank you,” I mouth to her, squeezing my trembling hands into fists.
The horses grow louder, the sounds of their hooves in the mud and the jingle of harnesses like death knells to me. I glance over, peeking out the side of my hood, and there are at least a half dozen horses around the edge of the stream, the men wearing a familiar livery. I recognize the house colors of their jerkins, the Chatworth Hold deep blue with the bold yellow trim that stands out even to my bad eyes. One of the men is walking, leading a horse by the reins. And then to my horror, Barnabus himself rides up, eyes the stream, and turns to look at our group.
I quickly hide my face again.
“What is going on here?” he asks, voice just as cultured and haughty as I remember. I used to love how precisely he said each syllable, as if he were biting them. Now I know it’s just a tactic to put himself above others. To show them that he’s superior because he has holder blood.
That, or I’m still bitter about him calling me ugly.
His words make me freeze in terror, though. I clutch my canteen tightly, a knot in my throat.
“What do you mean, what is going on here?” Magpie’s voice is an amused drawl. I imagine her with her hands on her hips, confronting him with that world-weary stare of hers. “What does it look like is going on here?”
“It looks like a religious ceremony of some kind,” Barnabus answers, his voice stiff. “Are you some sort of nature cult?”
Gwenna snorts, a sound so low that only I can hear it. I want to be amused, too. Normally I’d laugh at the idiotic suggestion that we’re a nature cult…but I’m too afraid that I’ve been caught. That I’m going to be dragged back to Honori Hold in disgrace, without a single artifact. That everything has been ruined.
“Why in the five hells would we be a cult?” Hawk sounds annoyed.
I can almost see the dismissive look that Barnabus would send in his direction. “You’re all wearing the same clothes. It looks like a religious training program.”
“Your men are all wearing the same clothes,” I hear Lark mutter loud enough to be overheard.
Mereden giggles.
Magpie shushes both of them. “It’s a uniform. This is a training program for fledglings of the Royal Artifactual Guild.”
I tense, waiting for him to remember my fascination with it. How I was always reading books about the greats of the guild. How I’d been obsessed with learning Old Prellian glyphs.
“Ah.”
I wait.
“That explains the colors. Carry on, then,” Barnabus says, as if we needed his permission.
I slowly help Gwenna restuff my pack as the horses splash across the stream. When I dare to look up, they’re on the far side of the stream, nothing but horse withers and Chatworth cloaks meeting my stare.
They’re gone. I’m still incredibly rattled, though.
I’m shaking, and Gwenna puts a hand over mine, as if to comfort me. “I don’t think he noticed you,” she whispers. “He barely glanced in our direction.”
Taking a deep breath, I nod. Then my stomach churns, and I realize I’m going to throw up the cold breakfast I ate a few hours ago. I barely manage to crawl away a foot or two before I’m puking in the mud, bent over.
When I recover, Hawk is looming over me, a heavy frown on his face. He hauls me up to my feet, brushing me off, and then cups my face in one hand, studying it. “What’s wrong with you?”
I manage a faint smile, downplaying the situation. I don’t want him to realize why I’m so stressed. “It’s nothing. Just feeling a little ill.”
He pulls his canteen out and pops the cork free, offering it to me. “Drink.” Turning, he says to the others, “We’ll go back to town. Let you rest. We’re pushing you too hard.” And then his gaze lingers on me. He reaches out and tucks a lock of scraggly hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry.”
I just sip the water, feeling like the worst woman alive. I should tell him that we haven’t been worked too hard. That I’m not sick because I’m overtired, I’m sick because the knot of anxiety in my gut seems to be growing larger by the moment. But I can’t say anything.
It never occurred to me that my two lives might collide. That someone from my past might show up in my present…and now I have no idea what to do if it happens again.