16
Jeryn
Fuck. Something damp and brittle snared my wrists. When I tried to shift, an object harnessed my elbows in place, the constraint locking my wrists behind my back.
Rope. Knots.
My disoriented eyes whipped open. The metamorphosis from oblivion to consciousness stunted my vision, impairing my ability to focus during the first few seconds. Opaque blots of color oscillated before me, then solidified into a cove. Beyond a crescent of fern trees and gnarled hedges, chalk-white sand bordered a jewel-toned sea, waves smashing into the shore.
The bonds shackled my form as I lay slumped against the trunk of a tree, which extended its low, spindly neck over the beach. Predictably, my knees and ankles were bound as well.
Sunset descended, shades of orange crowding the sky. The little beast had disappeared.
To my left, a hoard of supplies had been dumped atop a sail cloth. The stockpile consisted of a canteen, that ostentatious dagger previously owned by the jester, a water net plus a strange hoop-shaped net with a chewed handle, lines of more rope, one mangled spear, another sail cloth, skeletal fragments of wood, and the figs that had been growing near the whirlpool.
The whirlpool. The place where I had swallowed freshwater in exchange for a brush with death.
Considering the setting sun’s position, I must have been comatose for hours. My skull no longer pounded, but my thighs burned, and the laceration across my mandible throbbed. I assessed the damage by flexing my muscles as best I could and rolling my jaw. The gash seemed to have crusted over. No leakage. No sensation of heat. The wound might not be as bad as my dehydrated cranium had suspected. But for Winter’s sake, I ached.
Slanting my head toward the waves, I stiffened. A drenched figure rose from the water like a sea witch, her dripping web of hair appearing murkier at the day’s end.
She crossed the sand on bare feet. The more distance she ate up, the more of her I saw. The little beast had taken a beating from the wreck, with lacerations covering her arms and one running across her knee. Her chemise was soaked and had lost a strap, and the garment was plastered to the naked body underneath. Hollowed waist, prominent ribcage, shrunken breasts. Dusky nipples and a dark spot at the apex of her thighs. Nothing I hadn’t seen before as a physician. Even so, my gaze caused the mad woman to halt, an angry flush staining her cheeks.
What? Did she think I was fond of the view? How repulsive.
Yet. A second glance at her wet breasts and pussy caused my retinas to sizzle. Some atrocious form of lightheadedness fogged my brain, to say nothing of the brief twitch in my cock.
Rage. Malice.
They had to be the culprits. For weak souls, hatred and stress manifested itself in depraved ways, including involuntary sexual frustration.
My stare progressed to her hands. Thin fingers that tied indestructible knots, steered boats through tidal waves, and pried victims from whirlpools. Hands that reached out and grabbed life by the throat. Resilient hands cast in a deep olive complexion, with a beauty mark imprinted on her thumb. Hands that fought back and survived.
Examining them for longer than necessary felt dangerous. I wrenched my gaze from the visual, only to behold another offensive sight. My scalpel knife and its sheath rested in a cord tied around her waist.
A snarl rolled up my throat. I had been so distracted by the graphic sight of this beast, I’d neglected to search for my weapon. Evidently, she’d confiscated it and then decided to make a fashion statement.
The beast noticed my reaction, her expression transforming from flushed to elated, her mouth tipping into a victorious grin. She flashed straight teeth and the site of an extracted molar, the gap visible as her lips peeled back.
Point taken. She could have used her own weapon, but in claiming mine she might as well have laid siege to my kingdom.
Slitting my eyes, I watched her flaunt the knife. Vindicated, she strode past me, her toes knocking a lump of sand across my pants.
So be it. My move would come, so long as I remained patient.
A trench cutting through the sand from the rainforest’s edge hinted she must have dragged me from the whirlpool. How long had it taken her paltry muscles to accomplish that?
Depositing a net between us—this one replete with mollusks—the female dumped herself atop the sail like a makeshift blanket. While parsing through the haul, she gloated, “Your Royal Dickless isn’t so Royal anymore, are you?”
“No, but Your Royal Dickless still expects you to untie him,” I replied.
Her gaze snapped to mine. With her head bent, I shouldn’t have been able to read her lips. That’s what she was thinking.
Which meant she wasn’t used to people ascertaining her audibly. Which meant my capability was rare, if not impossible.
I accepted this. I was too pissed off, too fatigued, and too shipwrecked to analyze.
She’d been taunting me, presuming I wouldn’t understand her if we weren’t speaking face to face. In short, she’d been trying to make me feel inadequate. But if the beast insisted on baiting a predator, she shouldn’t complain if she got bitten. I would dispel any and all of her assumptions.
Right. Fucking. Now.
“Indeed, I’m proficient at reading lips,” I ridiculed. “But for some confounding reason, I have the ability to detect your voice, so turning away while speaking won’t help you.”
Shocked indignation flashed across her face. “That can’t be.”
“It is,” I stated. “Period.”
“It’s not! No one can hear me except—”
When she cut herself off, I squinted. “Except whom?” Then for the first time in my fucking life, I took a wild guess. “Except you?”
Her glower confirmed enough. It seemed we were the only two individuals capable of registering her voice.
Although I hated loose ends, this inexplicable fact wrung a smirk from my lips. “How does it feel to know you’re not impenetrable?”
That did it. Snatching the hilt of my scalpel knife, she extracted it from the harness, shuffled toward me on her knees until the heat of her flesh seared mine, and traced a faint line across the gash in my jaw. “How does it feel to know you’re not invincible?” she retorted.
A gritty noise pushed against my mouth. I made the most of our staring contest. Silence versus silence. Yet to my displeasure, the blast of her gaze threatened to knock me off balance, the muscles in my face loosening a fraction.
My adversary broke the contact out of dismissal rather than submission. Blocking me out, she stored the weapon, uncapped the canteen, and drank. Her throat flexed, the inked collar of sunbursts shifting in tandem, while my own throat felt dry.
Those dangerous hands went to work. She propped the mollusks beside the assortment of figs, then reached for one of the orbs.
“I would not do that if I were you,” I advised.
At my prolonged drawl, she paused and gave me a scathing look. Malnourishment was the reason I’d ordered the patrol to go easy on her in the courtyard, to feed every captive a scant portion of broth during transport. Despite this logic, the thought of this female vomiting what little her system could handle had unnerved me as much as the chemise barely covering her ass.
Never mind. Back to the fucking subject.
“Eat slowly. And do not eat much,” I instructed. “If you get sick or die, there will be no one to untie me. Are you following, or should I use simpler words?”
She arched her brow. Defiant. Unimpressed. That look made it clear she did not require medical advice on the subject. The beast was familiar with the concept of starvation and understood the definition of malnourishment.
Ignoring my spiteful countenance, she picked one of the bulbous figs and sniffed it carefully. Summer citizens would recognize the native fare of their kingdom, unless it originated from a presumably deserted rainforest floating in the middle of nowhere. In this place, looks could be deceiving. She knew this too, especially after the whirlpool incident.
Deeming it safe, the beast raised the fruit to her mouth, but I cut her off. “Are you aware that in Summer, the brighter the fruit, the deadlier the poison? If it is indeed poisonous?”
At my jibe, she squeezed the fig. Under that much pressure, it might detonate.
Rarely did I feel the desire to provoke. Such indulgences wasted time, whereas I preferred candor. It cut quicker, deeper, harsher. Yet I craved this creature’s attention like a stimulant.
My lips quirked. “Winter has discovered many noxious plants across the Seasons. For instance, a Summer poison derived from yellow clovers, which assassins smear onto jewelry. It peels the flesh clear off.”
The instant she grimaced, I made myself comfortable and lounged against the tree trunk. “Also, venom from the bite of a siren shark or a viper. I’ve spent years mastering the art of medicine. I’ve seen what the brew of nature can do to a person’s eyes, mouth, blood, skin … mind.”
She just stared at me. So I fucking pushed harder. “A fruit unknown to you. Technically, you could make the prince sample it. Of course, that would mean forcing him to risk himself for you. And of course, that would turn you into the very captor you loathe.” I tilted my head. “It would turn you into me.”
Her nostrils curled as if she’d inhaled something rancid. Excellent. Because I had her attention, I arranged myself into an indolent slouch. “Survival or conscience. But what would a primitive thing like you know of conscience?”
Although I had instructed her to be wary of food portions, now I persisted in scaring her from eating anything at all. Not that my warning wasn’t valid.
As for that last goading question, this woman saw through the test—my quest for the chink in her armor. The spot where I could probe.
Some type of daring incentive alighted her features, motivating the beast into action. Balancing the fig, she crawled toward me with the ease of a feline. Instinctive. Unpredictable. My eyes cut to her rotating hips and then returned to those irises, which shone like golden spheres in her face. I waited for the slap of her hand or some other hostile response. Possibly a mouthful of squashed fruit, which I would be sure to spit back in her mutinous face.
The mad woman approached, slinking across my limbs until our noses tapped, pausing with her thighs splitting around my waist. Droplets of seawater streaked down her neck and hit my chest. One rebellious bead dangled from a breast and splashed onto my navel, which snuck into my waistband like a trespasser.
Straightening upright, she lowered herself onto my lap. Seasons flay me, with her open limbs splayed around my hips, wet and warm on my pelvis, the effect infuriated me for reasons I couldn’t begin to list. My canines ground together with enough pressure to crack enamel.
Lifting one hand, she wedged the swollen fig between our mouths. This, I had not expected. A solution. A challenge. Least of all, the sprawl of her dripping body atop mine, the proximity inundating my olfactory senses with the aromas of salt, sun rays, and wildflowers. More potent than the fruit, those fragrances saturated the air, strong enough to intensify one’s craving.
My traitorous stomach writhed. I had to eat something.
Revolted, I opened my mouth at the same time she did. I bit into my side of the fruit while she bit into hers. Not succulent or saccharine, as I had expected from a common fig, but hard and crisp. Tartness slid across my tongue and quelled the gnawing in my gut.
Together, we ate and stared. I measured her movements, matched the rhythm of her lips, and kept alert for warning signs. I knew methods of taste-testing for poison. This was not one of them.
We repeated the process, biting and swallowing with our gazes fixed. But when a droplet of nectar rolled down her chin like an illegal kink, I felt a perverse need to drag my tongue over the bead and lick her clean.
Apparently, my feverish cock agreed with me. Blood rushed from my sac to the head. I blew through my nostrils until the physical violation subsided, thankfully before it progressed to a fully-fledged, hate-fueled erection. With her pussy settled in the worst possible location, she would have felt that for certain.
Equally confounding, I thought of telling her essential things. I thought of warning her there were other dangers besides poison in this rainforest. I thought of saying there were thousands of unknown hazards beyond that border. I thought of listing exposure, night crawlers, and toxic botanicals.
And what was her plan? To keep me shackled until the masses found us? On her own, did she expect to be alive by the time a fleet arrived? What did she know about rainforests? Did she understand the nuances of a leaf that killed versus a leaf that cured?
If she got injured, who would heal her?
I thought of asking these questions merely to watch the responses fly out of her mouth, to have another excuse to see her lips move. Her, a born fool. I chewed on that notion while chewing on the fig, not liking the acridness of either.
We swallowed the last of the fruit, consuming it down to the pit, which verified it wasn’t an actual fig. I sensed her yearning to suck on the stone, but that would require our lips to touch. A repugnant prospect to us both, because she tossed the pit over her shoulder, and my mouth relaxed. In unison, I leaned back, and she shuffled off my lap.
The sun dissolved behind the horizon. The sky darkened to the blue shade of a bruise, and the black tide mowed over the shore.
The mad woman retreated to her makeshift blanket, steepled her legs to her chest, and wrapped both arms around her calves. She set her back to me, the motion stretching her chemise taut and delineating the slender vertebrae of her spine.
I averted my gaze. Ignoring each other for the night sounded like an ideal plan.
Though, eventually I would need to piss. And I knew what she would do about that: give even less of a shit. In which case, the only perk of this infernal humidity was that I might last a while before soiling these pants. To compensate, I would take pains to worm my way onto her precious sail cloth and soak it with urine.
The rainforest’s border loomed behind us, the treetops spearing the night sky. Several minutes passed. From the corner of my eye, I took a second look, glancing at her moonlit silhouette. Precisely what was the beast’s madness? The tattoo collar classified her as feral, therefore deadly. Yet despite her spitfire nature, this did not sit right with me. Summer’s assessment was off the mark.
She released her upturned limbs, hunched over the sand, and drew something there. Through the darkness, I made out a rendering of waves, trees, and a crescent. A replica of this cove.
As she worked, a gleam dominated her profile, worshipful and tender. Hmm. A penchant for art, which I’d first noticed back in Autumn’s dungeon. Imaginative and passionate, with a protective streak toward others. Also—
She whirled on me. “Stop doing that!”
I met her glare. “Your back was turned. You saw nothing.”
“I knew what you were thinking.”
“So you can read minds, beast?”
“I’m not a beast, and I’m not your prisoner!”
“Neither am I yours,” I dismissed. “Tying me up doesn’t make me less of a prince or you less of a fool. You think you’re innocent? You think you’re an authentic heroine?”
“You think you’re a real leader? Some shining example of a ruler?” she threw back. “Guess what. That ship sailed with Poet and Briar.”
“Meaning, you were friends with them,” I sneered, more as confirmation than realization. “Indeed, they were excessively protective of you, even if they remained silent on the matter.”
“That’s because they’re too clever for you. Brag about your intelligence all you wish, but you’ll never match up to them.”
“Yet unlike those two nuisances, I’m a doctor,” I hissed. “I save lives.”
“By stealing other lives!”
“A prince doesn’t need to steal his own property. And if he’s wise, he’ll learn a skill or two that exceeds his throne.”
When her reply escaped me, I gave her an exasperated look. To which she repeated, “What wise prince chases his quarry into the ocean?”
“A prince who knows he’ll catch her.”
“Your wisdom chased me to an invisible realm, and now you’re trapped here, and you still haven’t caught me.”
“This is not an invisible rainforest,” I growled. “This is nothing but an undisclosed landmass Summer has evidently kept to itself. A fool’s paradise. And you’re nothing but a filthy, mad plague—”
“I’m not a plague!”
“—who got us here by accident.” I leaned forward until the bonds strained, threatening to cut off my circulation. “And you are a plague, which means you do not count. You’re extraneous. A virus we’re forced to deal with.”
“The Seasons are divinities, but they don’t judge me. Their courts do. Their people do. You can’t say nature didn’t make me. It did, like everyone else!”
“A miscalculation on its part,” I dismissed.
She pointed at the sea. “I’m of Summer. I know this ocean.”
“Then you should have done me a favor and drowned in it.”
“Make up your mind! You wanted to catch me or wanted me to drown. Which is it?”
“You forgot about Autumn’s dungeon, where I wanted you punished for the vial. Then in Summer’s tower, where I wanted you to choke and kneel.”
“Monster!”
“I’m not the one who’s collared around the neck.”
Renewed fury contracted my muscles, this time directed at the dead guard I’d whittled down to a fucking skeleton after learning he was the one who inked her.
Distracted by the memory, I missed whenever she ranted. “What did you say?”
“I said, I hate you! I hate that you chased me, I hate that you followed me, I hate that you’re here. I hate everything about you!”
“That’s treason.”
“And I hate your people. I hate Winter and its rulers.”
I drew out the words. “Think twice before speaking, Little Beast.”
“Two times, I saved your worthless life.”
“Extricating me from a crash and a whirlpool had nothing to do with generosity. It was instinct because at some point, you might need me to rescue you back.”
“You wouldn’t know how. You couldn’t even save yourself in the whirlpool.”
“How did you expect me to do that?”
“All you needed to do was let go and stop moving. If you had, I would have pulled you up sooner. You were flopping about like a fish, but when you stopped, the water …” Her eyes glazed over, awareness gripping her. “The water let you go.”
“It let me go,” I repeated slowly.
The female scowled. “I saw it.”
She made it sound as if the water had consciously made that choice. While most people in The Dark Seasons would entertain this theory, I merely rolled my eyes. “I’m heavy. I’d been struggling. When I stopped struggling, the weight eased. There’s no other reason.”
“You want to know if I’m right? Jump back in and see. The rainforest doesn’t need to give you a reason. You have to trust it.”
“If I wish to learn about something, I conduct a test. I don’t evaluate deadly undercurrents by diving into their depths. Instead, I toss in something expendable.” My mouth slanted. “That’s what fools are for.”
Coldness and apathy were acceptable. Heckling for no methodical reason was not. It wasn’t the proper technique in which a physician handled a fool. So why the fuck couldn’t I contain myself around her? The spitfire needed only to glare with those volcanic eyes, and I reacted. Seasons be damned, but I enjoyed her anger to the point of obsession.
Seething, she veered toward the water. In that tidefarer, she had steered with quick motions and focused on the horizon. She’d navigated from Summer with zealous determination. One might go so far as to say with knowledge and expectation.
I narrowed my eyes. “You knew.”
Nothing.
“You knew this rainforest was here. You knew where to go.”
Nothing.
“Tell me how,” I said with fatal calm. “Tell me where we are.”
I could be patient. I could.
Fucking hell. I thrust out my bound legs and kicked her drawing, my heels carving through the sketched cove and spraying granules over her limbs. The little beast blinked at what I’d done, dismay contorting her face.
With her fingers splayed, the rabid bitch slapped the rest of the drawing at me, flinging sand in my eyes. Curse her.