Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
AVELINE
Idreamed of unending comforts and tender care.
Gentle hands bathed me in hot water, dried my body and hair, and tended to my wounds.
Low voices little more than rumbles ebbed and flowed through the darkness.
Strong arms cradled me against a warm chest and then settled me into furs so soft and deep that the mere thought of ever leaving this bed made me weep.
Someone dabbed away my tears and pressed their warm lips to my forehead not once but twice, each kiss as gentle as the brush of a feather.
Cool water passed my lips, and warm broth, and herbal medicines. Sharp pains, lingering aches, fever, and chills came and went in turns, all muted by the medicines, hot or cold baths, cool cloths, and the comfort of the furs in which I lay.
Most soothing of all was the strange but wonderful sensation of lying nestled between two enormous bodies who smelled like warm stone and cradled me as if I were a child.
I’d never in my life felt so safe, even when my mother was alive and no one dared threaten us. Not even Henry Forbright, who believed his name and wealth entitled him to anything or anyone he wanted.
The thought of Forbright—the sickness his name conjured in my stomach and the worry he might yet find me—finally roused me from my long rest.
With a contented sigh, I opened my eyes…and blinked several times, waiting for what I saw to make sense.
I lay on my back in a bed of furs, in a splendid cavern lit by torches along the walls and a chandelier of larger ones far overhead. The air was cool, sweet, and fresh, and not at all cloying or damp. Goddess above, where could I possibly be?
I took a deep breath to settle my stomach and flinched. My ribs were sore. At least it was an ache and not the sharp pain of broken bones.
I turned my head and stared.
A man knelt on the left side of my bed, holding my hand clasped in both of his. His gaze was as rapturous as if he beheld an enormous diamond or some great wonder, which made no sense at all.
I say a man, but he wasn’t—or at least he wasn’t human.
Even kneeling, he was clearly a giant more than eight feet tall, and so muscular that he might have been carved from marble.
He also had a pair of horns on the crown of his head, each decorated with a wide gold ring.
One of his horns was broken at about the halfway point, and its jagged tip appeared to be dipped in gold.
On the other side of the bed, an identical giant also knelt, his hands cradling mine, his gaze as elated as his companion’s.
I should have been terrified, or at least apprehensive, or even angry that I’d been spirited away.
Maybe it was their worshipful expressions that kept me from being paralyzed with fear, combined with the realization that they’d likely saved my life and tended to my injuries too.
If they wanted me dead, they could have already killed me, or simply left me to die in the jaws of the monsters of Geedhollow.
Their black hair was very, very long and styled in many braids that glimmered with gold threads.
And their skin was an inhuman gray-blue, with large patches of what looked strangely like dozens of small, smooth stones embedded into their flesh.
I could see almost every square inch of their enormous bodies, since they wore only long, crimson loincloths clasped at their waists with a large gold medallion of some sort.
They seemed entirely unbothered by their lack of clothing.
I was no twittering maiden scandalized by bare skin.
Since early childhood, I’d joined my mother and her coven in nude rituals dedicated to the Goddess.
As an adult, I’d invited select men—usually travelers passing through the village who I would never see again—to my bed.
But my unfamiliar surroundings, the giants, and the strangeness of their attire made my stomach begin to roil.
I wore a nightgown that covered me decently, but that was little consolation.
I dimly recalled someone—presumably these giants—removing my own tattered and bloody clothing, washing me clean, and then re-dressing me before putting me in bed.
What right did these strange men have to see my nakedness?
Hadn’t I fled the manor to keep possession of my own body?
Slowly, so they didn’t interpret my movement as a prelude to an attack or an attempt to flee, I extricated my hands from the giants’ grasp. Their hands were very hot, or perhaps I’d gone cold.
My chest tight with growing wonder, unease, anger, and a dozen other conflicting feelings, I gritted my teeth and pushed myself up until I sat with my back propped against the headboard.
Now that I was awake, I expected the giants to stand, but they remained on their knees. So their size didn’t frighten me?
“Where am I?” My voice was rough. “Who are you?”
“Our Lady, you grace our home,” the giant on my right said, bowing his head. He had an accent I couldn’t place, and his voice was very deep and rumbled as if it rose to his throat from the bowels of the earth. “We are your kings.”
That both answered my questions and did not answer them at all.
By all accounts, the king, for all his royal blood, was a human man and no giant. And he didn’t share his throne with another. Was I no longer in my own country?
Travel beyond the borders of my homeland couldn’t explain this, though. Giants were mythical. They didn’t roam any country on Earth—at least not anymore. I didn’t understand how anything I heard or saw was possible, but I wasn’t dreaming.
And why were the giant’s tone and position so deferential? If these men were kings, shouldn’t they demand I grovel before them? My confusion grew by the moment.
“Please, Your Majesties, explain how I came to be here,” I said, bowing my head.
My hosts leapt to their feet, moving much faster than I would have thought possible for such enormous men, and sat on the bed on either side of me. They took my hands again, their expressions earnest.
“Our beautiful Lady, you must never bow to us,” the giant on my left said. His voice was not quite as deep, but more sonorous.
A fragment of memory surfaced of this voice singing to me when I was very sick with fever. A gentle hand had dabbed my forehead and wrists with a cool cloth, and warm lips had trailed soft kisses over my fingertips.
My stomach contracted. Not with pain or fear, but with a sharp pang of longing. I hadn’t known such comfort since I was a child, when I’d fallen deathly ill. My mother had cared for me night and day until the fever broke.
I didn’t understand anything about my circumstances, including the giants’ apparent devotion to a humble human stranger.
Only then did I notice they wore jewelry in their nipples.
The man on my left had simple piercings with a thin gold chain that ran between them, and the other’s each had a finely made golden ring.
Their noses also had small gold rings between their nostrils.
I had never seen such jewelry on either a man or a woman.
Like my mother had been, I was a tall woman—so much so that some would-be suitors had been put off as much by my height as my profession. But beside these men, I was as small as a child.
“Please explain,” I repeated, looking from one to the other, my hands trembling in their gentle grasps. “And please, may I know your names?”
“I am Toved,” the giant with the broken horn said, bowing his head.
“And I am Vosten,” the other giant added, with a matching bow. “We yearn to know the name of our beloved.”
Beloved? Was that a misunderstanding about the meaning of the word? No, these giants—these kings—certainly treated me as if I were dear to them.
“My name is Aveline D’Corsay,” I said. “Like my mother and grandmother before me, I own the apothecary shop in Halston.” My voice faltered. “Or at least I did.”
Forbright had held me prisoner at the manor for six days before my escape. I had no idea how long I’d been here. In the wake of my escape and the deaths of Nobles and the hounds, had my captor burned my shop and home to the ground as he’d threatened to do more than once? Had I lost everything?
Suddenly trapped in the terrible memory of being chased and attacked by the hounds and coming face-to-face with monsters, I gasped for breath and let out a tiny sound.
Both Vosten and Toved’s nostrils flared and their dark eyes glowed red.
“You have nothing to fear,” Vosten grated. “No one will ever harm you again, our beloved Aveline. We swear it.”
I barely heard him. My breath caught in my chest. The broken horn…the glowing eyes…
“Goddess above,” I whispered. “You’re the monsters of Geedhollow.”
I yanked my hand from Vosten’s grasp and reached once again for my amulet, seeking comfort and protection, but it was still gone—left behind in the manor’s fireplace.
Toved held on to my hand gently but firmly and raised it to his lips to kiss my fingers. “We are men, not beasts. Vosten and I are brothers. We are the kings under the earth.”
Vosten did not try to reclaim my other hand, but he put his own on the fur next to mine.
“Long ago, we ventured to your land and were captured and enslaved by the warlock of Geedhollow, whose name we do not speak.” His expression turned grim, and his eyes seemed to fill with dark memories.
“Our master died by his own hand during a ritual, but his curse on us did not die with him. My brother and I lingered, forced to live as bloodthirsty creatures.”
The ruins of Geedhollow had existed for centuries. My stomach contracted. How long had Vosten and Toved lived in that cursed state?