16 #2
Nicu wedged himself between us, severing the hostile trance. I swerved into his path, barring his entrance.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” I censured. “However commendable your ambitions, your subsequent disappearance has turned the castle upside down.”
Wrong choice of words. Nicu would not assimilate this geographical disarray. He wouldn’t fathom how much distance he’d placed between himself and his family.
Be that as it may, years of conditioning taught him about the concept of separation.
Remorse over his actions, love for his family, and longing for independence crowded his features.
“And what about me?” he appealed. “How am I supposed to help the clan if I can’t seek out my own stars?
Why can’t I search for them? It’s my life. ”
“No, Nicu.” I fought to keep my tone low and even. “It’s never just your life. You did not witness your mother’s shattered face or your father’s rampage tonight. By Seasons, you do not know that pain. You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be lost!” he defended, then shouldered past me into the cottage. His profile regarded the garland installed in the ceiling, which led to his chamber in the loft. At the sight, hurt cracked his voice. “And I’ve lost plenty of people too.”
His birth mother. The grandmother who helped to raise him. His father, when Poet had been the Court Jester of Spring, limited to visiting his son in secret. Then later, Briar when she was temporarily exiled from Autumn.
Of course, Nicu had experienced abandonment. It had been shameful of me to forget.
Humbled, I opened my mouth, hoping to make amends. Yet Nicu moved too quickly, trailing the garland and climbing the stairs. Frustration and anguish emanated from him, so that I felt acutely his predicament and the lengths to which he’d gone. Unable to deny his yearning, I let him be.
Bowing my head, I gripped the right door casing and festered at the ground. As a man intimately acquainted with grief, I understood the burden plaguing all parties. The thought of failing our clan, failing my oath of service, failing to protect yet again, wracked me to the core.
A curvy figure shifted in Nicu’s wake. Without raising my head, my left arm shot sideways, my flat palm hitting the opposite frame to obstruct Aspen’s passage. I whipped toward her, my broadsword slicing from its scabbard, the execution of which felt rhapsodic.
Armed, I prowled forward. Aspen held her ground until my coat smacked her mantle, the contact provoking her into motion. She walked backward, though not out of cowardice, for this woman didn’t know the meaning of that term. Instead, she moved to achieve distance between her clothes and mine.
“He’s not trying to upset anyone,” she advocated while backtracking toward the glowing pumpkins. “You know as well as I, he would never do that.”
“No, he would not,” I agreed. “That ambition is yours.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re skilled in the art of evasion. The Shadow Orchard, where you eluded my brethren.
The ruins of The Phantom Wild, when you stowed away on our ship.
The bonfire ball during Reaper’s Fest, when you tacked Rhys to the pyre.
You manifest out of thin air, then take your unexpected leave with none the wiser.
And now, you crossed paths with Nicu during his sojourn from the castle.
” I leveled the sword. “Although you had no justifiable cause to be there past midnight.” But when she made no reply, I snapped, “Explain!”
Aspen weathered that strike like a warrior. Her shift in expression testified she’d been about to do just that—albeit carefully—until my tirade. “Which part would you like me to unpack first?”
“What the fuck were you doing in the fortress at that hour? And where the fuck are you going with Nicu?”
“Those are two different subjects.”
“Spare me the cryptic deflection. It will not work.”
“You heard Nicu,” she argued. “He wants to seek his own destiny. What human doesn’t like adventure?”
“We can start with me.”
“You weren’t invited.”
I choked the blade handle. “Thus far, your testimonial scarcely rings innocent.”
“Innocence has never been my thing,” she averted.
We kept walking, me striding ahead, her moving in reverse. Yet it felt less like an advance on my part, more like an inducement on hers. That brash nature acted as a siren’s call, dismantling one’s sense of propriety.
“Give me something I can work with,” I barked. “Now.”
She deliberated. “I broke into the relic vault.”
That, I had not expected. Then again, the woman had never been predictable, the novelty as refreshing as it was unnerving.
My pace wavered. “You navigated the trap floor.”
Aspen let her silence speak for itself. I speculated, torn between impressed and outraged, a standard reaction where she was concerned. “So Briar disclosed the step pattern to the clan during my absence, and you abused that intelligence.”
The renegade female stopped abreast of a tree trunk. “Yes.”
That answer. That reply firing off her tongue, the sound of “Yes” cutting through these woods, the confession bleeding into the wind.
I hated it. And I wanted her to say it again. I craved to hear this radical exhaust that word in a different manner, at a different volume, for a different reason.
I wrenched my gaze from her insufferable mouth. “Tell me why.”
Once more, she weighed the benefits and drawbacks of responding. “To retrieve an ancient harness.”
“I see your passion for weaponry is growing felonious.”
“I need it to protect myself.”
“Your axe can achieve that more effectively.”
“Not where I’m going.”
I angled the point of my sword against the tassels fastening her cloak. “Who says you’re leaving this spot before I’m done with you?”
Until this moment, I had believed it impossible to render this female inarticulate. Gusts of air rushed from her lungs, the exhalations coming out in shallow bursts. And curse me. I hadn’t meant for that reply to reshape itself into something explicit, to shake this feud off course.
Her bodice contracted, the cloak’s tassels shivering against my weapon. One sign of consent from her, then one light flick, and the closures would be severed. Between us, the vestment would tumble to the ground.
It would be effortless. If I wanted to do such an inconceivable thing.
Which I didn’t. So I wouldn’t.
Waking the fuck up, I reached behind and buried the weapon into its scabbard.
“You could have asked the Royal family to borrow the harness instead of looting its contents.”
Aspen blinked. “Artifacts of the vault are sacred.”
Condemnation. She was right. Removing objects from the relic vault was sacrilege, tantamount to desecrating a grave.
An image of a small headstone with a bird chiseled into the facade drifted through my mind. The thought of anyone violating that resting place set my molars on edge.
Idling beneath a wizened tree, Aspen waited for me to deduce the rest. If this odyssey held as much importance as she implied, Briar and Poet would have handed over the harness.
Despite Aspen’s ritual falsehoods, the particulars were often extravagant to the point of ludicrous.
Always, the lies had been little more than harmless theater, a coping mechanism for things she would not share.
As such, the princess and jester knew the distinctions between Aspen’s fictional tales and her factual ones.
Had she been earnest, they would have believed and aided her.
Still, bestowing a hallowed treasure in secret involved risk.
Our unknown spy, or any number of ambitious eavesdroppers, could have found out and then leaked that information to the public, which would have tarnished the jester and princess’s standing among the denizens of Autumn.
After so long battling to win the public over social justice, the Crown could not afford a flagrant offense.
Aspen valued autonomy, and she worshipped Poet and Briar, therefore she would not have put them in that compromising position.
“I’ll return the harness when I’m back.” Aspen planted one hand on her chest. “Would I lie?”
Very fucking funny. And very well, she stole a priceless harness for an expedition to an undisclosed location.
I cocked my head and mused, “Somewhere far. And historic.”
“Ancient, actually,” she provided. “In which case, I figured antique weapon accessories were better than modern ones. It’s a precaution.”
“To what end?”
“To protect the people I care about.”
I considered myself to be a level-headed man. But against all laws of reason, my brain jumped to a vile conclusion.
My inflection could have sundered granite. “Raccoon.”
Aspen squinted in exasperation. “Rhun,” she reproached. “His name is Rhun. And no, this isn’t about him or any of my lovers.”
Lovers? As in, plural?
A corrosive reaction sizzled through my veins. I’d maintained a lethally calm tone on the subject of Aspen’s bed partners. But now, I hardly knew what the unhinged fuck to do with myself.
Yet something more critical than envy launched to the surface. The warnings about failing to protect her, paired with this series of events, could be an extreme coincidence. Or it could be the start of something ruinous.
My equilibrium tilted. “You left with no reinforcements.”
Under the hood, Aspen’s countenance twisted into a glare, vines and leaves knitting across her skin. “For the last time, I can look out for myself.”
“This isn’t about your aptitude. I have every faith in that, but even soldiers need backup. Aspen, you have nothing to prove. You never did!”
“And who was I supposed to call on?”
“Me!” I hissed. “You could have asked me!”
She stabbed a finger into my pec. “You’re not a lawbreaker. What’s more, you already have an important job to do.”
“Headstrong, intrepid woman! That’s not…” I ground my canines, my voice hitting a decibel that threatened to blow the roof off the cottage from where I stood. “Why do you deny me this? Why have you always denied me a chance to keep you safe?”
“Why are you so determined?” Aspen shouted back. “Who are you really trying to save?”
The second it left her mouth, she froze.
Perhaps it was the furious grief that must have ripped a hole into my features.
Perhaps it was the gruff sound that chopped from my throat.
Whatever the case, Aspen stalled her attack.
The glowing pumpkins illuminated the contours of her mouth, where an apology balanced precariously.
My chest hitched. Every complicated emotion in existence surged to the forefront. Blessings I once had but lost, temptations I never knew I wanted, and desires I could not attain. None of which I had a right to want.
My shadow touched hers across the grass. Until that was not enough.
I stalked in her direction, backing Aspen fully into the tree trunk. There, I inhaled the illicit fragrance of melted iron and myrrh, hot and earthy.
Eventide light traced the crimped layers of hair tumbling from the hood and brushing her hips. My fingers itched to snatch a lock, wrap it around my fist, and pull hard.
I tipped my head down, our respirations blasting together. “Go on,” I murmured, “Don’t stop now. Speak plainly.”
Even to my ears, that could have been mistaken for an invitation or a threat. I could not say which. But one fact became clear. Of all moments between us, this might be the most forthright one.
Aspen’s eyes sank to my lips, then she dragged her attention back to my face. “Who am I substituting for?”
I detested the inquiry, the ache it produced, and anger that followed. Of its own volition, my knuckles scraped across a leaf imprinting her cheekbone. At the contact, my eyelids hooded. Beyond reckoning, she felt like the earth itself, rooting me to the ground, awakening a primitive urge.
“There is no one like you,” I rasped.
Her breathing escalated, the outtakes remarkable to behold. “Then prove it.”
Permission. Her unbridled endorsement to take this disorder further. A challenge to demonstrate how far she’d provoked me since the moment I returned.
Aspen’s breasts pushed across my torso, the ruched outline of her nipples pitting through the material. Fuck, the disks toughened. My vision blackened, and my cock lifted, its width standing high, the head swelling.
We couldn’t do this. We shouldn’t do this.
My muscles locked, straining to draw back. To stop myself. To stop her. To stop us. For once I did this, I could not undo it.
The pumpkins’ glow highlighted the beauty mark nestling over her lips like a knot of wood. Above that lying mouth.
My eyes raked over her, and my growl carved through the night. “You are the most meddlesome creature I’ve ever known.”
Fuck it. My hands shot out, seized Aspen’s hips, and hoisted her against me.