Chapter 23 #3
“Why?” I rasped, tears burning the backs of my eyes.
“Why would you fight for humans? Every year the forest demands a child in sacrifice and if one isn’t offered up by either the Fae or the humans, then it lures one from their bed to claim instead.
I have hunted the records. I’ve scoured every book on the subject.
I’ve been to the shrine which stands at the southern shore and watched as Rissa’s name was carved into the great, stone elm tree there along with so many others that there is barely a branch or bough left unscarred by their monikers.
Each name is labelled with the year they were taken, and I counted every fucking one of them.
And in the six hundred and fifty years since the curse began, there was barely a single year missed.
I only found three unaccounted for following the first decade.
Three Fae children taken. While hundreds of humans were forced to pay the price.
Not because the forest ached for only human sacrifice but because each year, when the blood moon rose in demand for payment, the Fae would come hunting and select one of us to settle the debt and give the forest the Offering it demanded. ”
“I fought it,” he insisted, though I had no idea why he was so adamant to make me believe him. “I tried to-”
“Whatever it was you tried to do, you failed,” I spat, because even if he’d fought tooth and nail against the plotting of his people, it hadn’t been enough and I’d lost my sister in the end.
“That is the story of my life,” he conceded, finally pulling back, allowing me my own air to breathe, my own space to think without him filling every thought. Yet as he retreated, I found I didn’t want him to leave.
I caught his hand and he stilled.
It was too dark for me to see much of his features and it was only getting darker as night fell outside, but I could just make out the twisting edges of the tattoo which marked his face, the ink so dark it seemed to drink any scrap of light that reached it.
I lifted my free hand and brushed my fingers over it without thinking.
Hendrix fell preternaturally still, his breath catching in his throat as I traced the line of the tangled mark, memory guiding me over the lines of it more than sight.
“No one has ever done that,” he growled, a low warning to his voice which sent a shiver down my spine.
I hesitated, my eyes on his in the darkness, the raw truth I’d just shared with him making me bold for some reason I didn’t understand.
“I’m not just anyone,” I told him, my fingertips curving around the turn in his tattoo as I dared him to stop me.
“I’m beginning to see that,” he admitted, his own hand coming up to knot in my hair, his fingers twisting into the wet, silver strands.
The space around us was shrinking, the grain store so small, I wasn’t certain how we fit in it at all. My heart was pounding faster with every moment, my pulse racing to a beat which might have truly been a song.
“Can you feel that?” I asked on an exhale, because there was something stirring in the air around us, something buzzing against my skin.
“Death haunts my footsteps,” he whispered, his fingers moving from my hair to skirt the side of my face. “But this feels more like her master than her.”
“Providence?” I breathed, and the pulsing in the air grew thicker at the name of the spirit which had gone unseen in so long that he had been reduced to myth.
“Perhaps,” Hendrix conceded. “Though the last time I felt him this close, I got that mark upon my face.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
Hendrix paused, his fingers skimming over my jaw and raking down the side of my neck.
My spine arched just a little, my skin prickling in a way which was altogether unacceptable.
He was Fae. I hated him. Not just for that but for what he’d stolen from me too, the spirits which should have been mine.
“I… did something my people could not forgive,” he said slowly, his fingers following the line of my collar bone, pushing the sodden neckline of my shirt lower, just a fraction, but it was enough to send goosebumps skittering across my flesh.
“Tell me.”
My heart was pounding so hard that I knew he could feel it where he was touching me, my human body so bad at hiding its reactions to every move he made.
He leaned in, not speaking a word in answer to my demand, his lips so close to mine that for a moment, all other thoughts departed me.
“Stop,” I breathed, but some other part of me, some foolish, wanton, insane part was screaming the opposite.
“Stop what?” His mouth brushed mine and whatever I’d been about to say dissolved into nothing.
“I can’t stop staring at your mouth,” he said in a low growl which had every thought in my mind scattering. “All the damn time. When you curse me, when you spit at me, even when you drive me utterly insane with your constant cleverness. It’s infuriating.”
I blinked at him, my eyelashes flickering as my brows pressed together, but I didn’t draw back like I should have. It was as though some force was holding me there, a breath away from a kiss I shouldn’t have wanted, a beat away from a mistake I wouldn’t be able to take back.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” I said.
“I know. But I find my tongue loosens around you in the most maddening of ways. You’re a splinter which keeps working its way deeper and deeper beneath my flesh. I’m struggling to figure out a way to remove you – and finding I keep forgetting that I’m supposed to want to do so.”
He was so close, his body so much bigger than mine, his presence so powerful I thought I might suffocate beneath the weight of it.
But instead of drowning on each inhale I took of him, I was finding myself intoxicated by that same madness he claimed to be suffering in my presence because I still hadn’t withdrawn, and now I was thinking about his mouth too.
It would be nothing at all for me to lean in and taste the poison of his tongue, nothing to let the dark consume me and give in to what it seemed to want.
It would be a secret we could leave hidden in this place come morning. One neither of us would ever have to speak of again…
“You’re cold,” he said.
I was shivering so I could hardly deny it, but I shook my head. “I don’t care. But I do care what manner of beast I’m hiding in the dark with. Tell me precisely why you were given this mark.”
Something shifted in the air between us, the heat which had been building struck through with ice.
I knew he didn’t want to tell me anything of his past. I fully expected him to say no, but again he paused, like his instincts were pulling him in two directions and he couldn’t decide which of them to follow.
“Lie down.”
“What?”
He gave me no choice but to comply, taking hold of me so suddenly that I found myself on my back beneath him in little more than a second.
Hendrix placed his hands to the hard floor either side of my head and peered down at me, his long hair spilling over his shoulders to shroud us within it. Now I could see nothing at all.
“Do you have any clothes in your pack?” he asked.
I blinked.
“Yes,” I said, a beat too late to cover my confusion.
“Then you need to get changed.” His hand moved to the button at the top of my tunic, but I caught it before he could tug it free.
“What about you?” I demanded, fighting to ignore the flush in my cheeks. It wasn’t desire. I hated him. I didn’t care what he looked like, I didn’t care about how powerful his body was or how the green in his eyes was so deep that sometimes I felt like I might drown in it…
“Did you pack clothes for me too?” he asked sceptically.
“No,” I said, because of course I hadn’t. I kept that bag packed and close at hand so I’d be ready to run from him at any given moment. “Only a fool would forget to keep their provisions nearby while lingering in this forest,” I said. “Did you pack yourself any spare clothes?”
“I must be the fool of which you speak,” he conceded. “But I have no problem sleeping naked so that my clothes can dry.”
“What?” I squeaked, hating myself for the way my composure shattered so easily but unable to take it back.
Hendrix chuckled in amusement, then summoned the Fox abruptly, practically blinding me with its appearance.
I cursed, stamping my eyes closed while the warmth of the Fox rushed over me.
“You could have done that the moment we entered this damn shelter,” I snapped, realisation dawning on me while Hendrix began tugging the buttons of my tunic open.
“I could do many things at any given moment, lightwing. You only have to ask me nicely and any one of your dreams might come true.”
I slapped his hand away from my buttons and pushed myself upright, my skin flaming despite the cold which had sunk into my bones.
I squinted at the Fox as it leapt up onto one of the heaped sacks of grain. The warmth its flaming body provided was nothing short of sinful, and the magic it was created of made sure nothing surrounding it caught light either.
“Get changed before you catch hypothermia,” Hendrix said, shoving my pack towards me. “And eat your berries. The last thing I need is you getting cranky because your belly is lacking in food.”
“I do not get cranky,” I snapped.
“She said crankily.”
An honest to the spirits growl escaped me as I turned my back to him and obeyed his command to change because despite my desire to defy him at all turns, doing so in this instance would only hurt me.
I hated him. I told myself that over and over and over again while in the back of my mind, I could have sworn I heard something chuckling.
I shrugged out of my jacket and tunic, glancing over my shoulder at Hendrix, then jerking back towards the wall as I found him stripping off too, his shirt already discarded, the ink across his back drawing altogether too much of my attention.