Chapter 12
TWELVE
ALLERIA
When the door closes behind the guards, I expect him to move straight away, but he doesn’t. He remains braced above me, his breath is warm against my throat. I can feel every place our bodies touch. His chest against mine, his hips between my thighs, and the hard length of him …
He’s aroused. Because of what happened. The sounds I made. The way my body reacted under his hands and mouth.
His golden eyes are fixed on my face. I don’t know what he’s looking for, but I wish he’d stop.
I turn my head away, trying to ignore the tears dripping down my face, while the sounds I made echo in my head.
The moans and gasps. The way I cried out when he sucked hard on my nipple, and my nails raked down his back.
I pulled him closer. I ground my hips against his. I wanted …
I wanted more.
The shame of it crashes over me, so intense I can taste it.
Then the mattress shifts. His weight lifts off me, and I hear his feet hit the floor.
I need to move, cover myself, and get dressed, but my hands won’t cooperate. They’re lying limp at my sides, trembling and useless.
I opened my mouth for him. When he kissed me, I opened my mouth and let him in. I didn’t even think about it. My lips parted, my tongue met his, and then I was kissing him back. Kissing him back like I’d been waiting my entire life for a fae to pin me to a bed and put his mouth on me.
What kind of person does that make me?
Four days ago … was it four days? … I was going to kill him. I had an arrow aimed at his heart. I was ready to watch him die, take the antlers that the Dell would saw off his skull and mount them to my wall. Now I’m lying here with my breasts bare and my body aching for more of his touch.
I can’t reconcile the two things. I can’t make them fit together into a story that makes sense.
I force my eyes open and turn my head. He’s standing by the window, his back to me, his shirt pulled on but not laced. He’s not moving. As far as I can tell, he’s not even breathing. Just standing there with his palms flat against the windowsill, fingers spread wide, every muscle locked in place.
My cheeks burn. Are there scratches on his back? Red lines where my nails broke the skin? Did I mark him?
I sit up slowly. My body feels strange—oversensitive and overwrought.
When I reach for my undergarments, the fabric against my skin is too much.
Everything is too much. The cool air on my flushed face.
The lingering wetness on my nipples where his mouth was.
I feel like I’ve been turned inside out, and have all my nerve endings exposed.
The cloth settles against my breasts, and I have to close my eyes and breathe through the rush of sensation.
My shirt is next, and I lace it with shaking hands. It takes four attempts to get the ties right.
“We’re leaving.” His voice breaks the silence—flat and clipped, with an edge beneath it. “The guards will come back once they believe they’ve given you enough time to … finish.” He’s still facing the window, still not looking at me. “We’ve bought a little time, we can’t waste it.”
We? There is no we. There is only him, his demands, and the plans I’m not allowed to know. I’m not getting a choice in any of this.
I stand, and my legs wobble. I grab the bedpost to steady myself. The wood is solid and cool under my palm.
“Where are we going?” My voice comes out hoarse.
“Away from here.”
He turns then, and for a moment, our eyes meet. His expression is shuttered, and there’s a stillness to him that scares me. Maybe his plan is to take me out of town and kill me.
“Can you walk?”
Under normal circumstances, it would be a stupid question, but my legs are shaking, and I honestly don’t know if I will be able to make it out of the room, let alone down the stairs and out of the town.
“Yes.” There’s little point in saying otherwise. He’d toss me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes again and take me wherever he wants to go, even if I said no.
He gives a sharp nod, crosses the room, opens the door and checks the hallway, then gestures for me to follow.
The walk through the inn is a test of my control.
Thankfully the common room is mostly empty, and only the innkeeper glances up as we pass.
I don’t look at her, but I can feel her eyes on us.
On me, with my flushed face and my swollen lips.
Does she know? Can she tell what we were doing? Did the guards tell her what they walked in on?
I don’t look at her, keeping my gaze fixed on the door ahead, and hold my breath until we’re outside.
The bright mid-morning sun hurts my eyes, and I squint, giving myself time to adjust from the dim interior of the inn. I want to go back inside, find somewhere dark and quiet, and not think about anything for a very long time.
Instead, I walk.
The fae … no, Cairn … falls into step slightly behind me, taking up that submissive posture again. The glamoured collar sits tight against his throat. To anyone watching, he’s just a fae following its mistress through town.
I know better.
I know what his mouth feels like on my skin. What his hands feel like on my body. What sounds he can draw from me when he puts his mind to it.
This is wrong. All of it is wrong. He is fae. He took me prisoner. He’s threatened to kill me more than once. The fact my body responded to him means nothing. It’s biology. Instinct. The animal part of my brain reacting to stimulation.
It doesn’t mean I really wanted it.
It can’t mean that.
We leave the town behind without anyone stopping us, following the road as it passes the last of the farms and into the open countryside. The sun climbs higher. My feet ache in the new boots, and the heat between my thighs slowly fades, leaving behind an odd emptiness that feels worse.
I keep my eyes on the road ahead. I don’t want to look at him, or think about what happened in that room. I don’t want to think about the sounds I made, or replay the way my body arched into his touch like it had been waiting for exactly that. So, we walk in silence. He sets the pace, and I follow.
That’s how it works now. This is what my life has become.
When the road curves, he stops, and because I’m not paying attention to where he is, I almost walk into him.
“What—”
He’s moving off the road, and down the slight bank toward where a stream is running. I hesitate, then follow, because doing otherwise means risking him chasing me down. And I’ve been there before. I know how that ends.
He stops where the stream widens and slows, pooling into a deeper section where the current eddies against a rocky outcrop. The road isn’t visible from here, trees rising to shield it from any travelers passing by.
He crouches at the edge and cups crystal-clear water in his hands, drinking deeply. I do the same a few feet away, the cold making me gasp. When I next look up, Cairn is pulling his shirt over his head.
I blink.
His back is a map of scars. Old ones, silvered with age, crossing over each other in patterns. The muscles beneath them shift as he moves, dropping the shirt on the bank. He strips out of the pants, and wades into the water until it reaches his waist.
The cold doesn’t seem to bother him. He ducks under the surface and comes up with water streaming down his face, pushing his hair back with both hands. The motion pulls his shoulders taut, and water runs down his chest, tracing the lines of muscle and ridges of scar tissue.
His hands move over his arms, chest and neck washing away the gods know how many years of grime, and he dunks himself under water again …
and again, throwing his head back every time he surfaces.
His hair untangles a little more with each pass, hanging past his shoulders, black and heavy with water.
As the dirt washes away from his skin, dark lines appear. They flow around his arms, his shoulders, over his chest and down, disappearing beneath the waterline.
They’re not scars, though. They’re patterns, and—
“If you’re going to stare, you could at least try to be less obvious about it.” There’s a cold note to his voice.
My face floods with heat, and my gaze snaps up to his face. He’s not looking at me, his attention on his hands, scrubbing at his forearms.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.” He glances up. “I know that look.”
“You couldn’t even see me.”
“And yet …”
The words bring up memories of the seamstress touching him, and the serving girl licking her lips.
Is that what I looked like just now?
“I’m sorry.”
The gold of his eyes flickers. “Are you?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to look at me like I’m a meal you’re waiting to consume or you didn’t mean to be caught?” He turns to face me fully, water lapping at his waist. “How refreshing.”
I don’t have an answer to that.
He wades closer to the bank, and my eyes go back to the marks on his skin. They trace up from his hips, curl around his ribs, climb his chest. Dark lines that look like thorns, or vines, or …
“What are those?” I don’t really expect him to answer me. I just want to turn the subject away from him thinking I was looking at his body for other reasons.
“My rank. My victories.” He lifts one arm, turning it so I can see the pattern that winds from wrist to shoulder. “Each one earned. Each one stolen when they put that collar on me.”
“Stolen?”
“The iron burned them away. Scoured them from my skin along with everything else.” His jaw tightens. “But they’re coming back now.”
He wades out of the water. I look away … too late. I’ve already seen more than I should have … again.
When I turn back, he’s dry. Completely dry. His skin, hair, everything. As though he was never in the water at all. His hair is untangled, falling around his shoulders. Silver light dances around his fingertips as he pulls his shirt back on.
I stare, lips parted. “How did you—”
“Magic.” He pauses, eyebrow arching. “Why? Was I not naked for long enough? Would you like me to strip again?”
My cheeks flame harder, and I swear I see a glint of amusement in his eyes.
“You’re enjoying this. Making me squirm.”
“Yes.” He doesn’t deny it. “I spent three hundred years giving humans what they wanted. Smiling when they told me to, sex when they demanded it.”
Sex when they demanded it? Not when he wanted it?
Before I can speak, he rises to his feet and steps closer to me. I have to fight not to step back. “Forgive me if I’ve lost the inclination to comply.”
He moves past me and back up to the road without waiting for me. After a moment, I follow.
We walk for hours. The road travels past orchards heavy with autumn fruit, alongside streams that glitter in the sunlight. It’s beautiful, but I don’t pay attention to any of it. I’m watching him instead, because I think I know where we’re going.
The Dell. He’s returning to the Dell.
I think about what waits for him there. The guards.
The wards. The huntmaster with his iron collars.
When he’s caught, they won’t just kill him, not after what he did.
They’ll make an example of him. They’ll string him up somewhere public and let him die slowly, a warning to any other fae who might dream of escape.
“Are you going back?”
He doesn’t answer.
“They’ll kill you.”
Still nothing. Just the soft thud of my boots against the ground.
“Cairn.” It’s strange hearing his name come out of my mouth. “If you go back there, they will kill you.”
He stops, and for a second time, I almost crash into his back. He stands there with his back to me, the wind stirring his hair. Then he turns, and the look on his face steals my breath away.
“They will try.” Three words, delivered flat and cold. There’s nothing in his expression that suggests he’s even considered the possibility of failing.
“Then why risk it?”
He doesn’t answer me straight away, his gaze moving over me. I wonder what he’s seeing.
His captive? The girl who was going to kill him? Maybe both. Maybe neither.
“Because they are my people. And I will not leave them to rot.”