7. Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Viola
T he tight planes of Mace's chest press into my back, my hips socketed into his as I nestle my body between his legs. Our height difference is so slight that we're nearly cheek to cheek, his arms snaked around my waist as I hold onto the stag's horns.
We're leading the group as I know best how to get to Dalery, with Plume directly behind us, clearing foliage with her magic as needed and Tulip and Morrow off to the side. I could have had Morrow ride on his own, but I worry about Tulip and think his shielding is best suited to protect her if needed. She rides behind him, her arms wrapped around his broad waist and her cheek resting on the rippling muscles of his back. Every time I get a glance at his face, he's got a self-satisfied grin, and I can't hear what they're saying, but she flushes frequently.
The landscape doesn't really change throughout the summit, but I've gotten my bearings enough to direct us southeast toward Dalery. Massive trees with sprawling branches block the sun surprisingly well, giving us coverage from its harsh rays. A few times, I spot plants that normally I would stop to collect, and it kills me to just let them go.
But we can't slow down. Not now that Himureal has an inkling of our plan.
Midway through our journey, Mace dips his mouth to my ear, his breath warm and welcome. "Why, Miss Mistflow, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you engineered this situation just to get me alone and at your mercy." His husky tone is much preferable to the sharp one he possessed earlier.
"We're hardly alone," I tease. "But don't pretend you're not happy about it. I did read your blood, Nightroot."
He tightens behind me, and I am astutely aware of how my nerve endings light up with his contact. I'm not opposed to drowning out unwanted emotions with physical contact, and after last night's conversation with Himureal, I could use a distraction. Of course, returning to my home city without Max by my side doesn't help the sinking feeling in my gut.
But, despite my need for a distraction and what I read in Mace's blood, it appears he has no desire to indulge that whim of mine.
One of his broad hands stretches across my lower stomach, fingertips rubbing small circles. "I can't believe how much has changed in just a few days," he says softly, his breath a whisper against the shell of my ear.
"I can't say that I thought we'd end up here the first time I saw you underground," I respond with a shrug.
"No, I suppose you did not." His chuckle bounces me against his chest. I don't think he laughs with regularity, something we have in common. "If I recall correctly, you may have pulled a blade on me."
I snort. "That doesn't sound like me at all."
His laughter rumbles behind me, and he pinches me lightly on the side. "Tell me about Dalery."
I stiffen against him. "You have me on a stag, with the desire to touch me running so deep within you that I read it in your blood, and you want to ask me about my home?"
"I am multi-faceted, Viola. I can push past my arousal. There is plenty of time to taste you." His lips trail up the curve of my neck, leaving hot desire in their wake. My hips shift deeper into his of their own accord, and he stills them with a grip of his hands on either side. "Talk first, play later, Miss Mistflow."
With a groan, I call forth some shadows to wrap around the stag's horns and then my arms for security before turning slightly to face him. "You're really insisting on just talking?" His answering smirk is enough to make me roll my eyes. "Fine, what do you want to know?"
"Tell me what it was like growing up there."
"It was shitty, next question."
His hand grips my chin, forcing me to look at him over my shoulder. "Try again, " he says.
"My father was a quiet man," I say with a sigh, resigning myself to reliving a part of my life I had no intention of returning to. "He was tall, taller than me, even."
"Humans aren't particularly known for their height, are they?" Mace asks.
A small laugh escapes me. "Not at all. He towered over everyone in the village. His hair was dark like mine, too. He wore it in waves to his shoulders, but once a year, to appease Mother, he would shave it all off and start over." Memories of that day, the jokes he would make when his head was bald, assault me. "He would say that a bald head is a fresh start. All the memories held in the hair are released, and you can start anew." I shake my head, looking down at my hands. "It's stupid."
"It's not." Mace's voice is quiet and respectful, his chin resting on my shoulder. "It's a nice thought that you could choose to release the emotional by ridding yourself of the physical. It's giving a chance to begin anew."
"He was full of things like that." I look at the trees that are passing by us at a steady pace and glance back at our companions on their stags. "I often wondered why he chose Mother as his partner. They were so different."
"What do you mean?"
"My father was a lot like Tulip. He had these fanciful ideas, and while he agreed with Mother that training and winning the Race were the most important things, he also believed that once we did, he'd get to be an artist or creator- maybe an inventor. He would teach me about flowers just because they were beautiful."
"And your mother wasn't that way?" I feel Mace's fingers circling the strip of flesh between my shirt and pants, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
My scoff almost gets stuck in my throat, twenty-eight years of respecting my mother trapping it. "No, no, she was not. But you should know that. Didn't you meet her when they won?" Now it's Mace's turn to stiffen against me, his fingers curling into my flesh as he grips me tighter.
"I did. At the gala. I met your father too."
"What did they say? Did they talk about me?" I can't hide the hope in my voice that maybe they regretted leaving me, that just maybe they wished they brought me along with them.
Mace's sigh is deep, its breath across my face like a slap. "You don't need to hear this, Viola."
"Well, now I sure as fuck do." I feel my hackles rising, anger beginning to roil within me, threatening to spill over.
"Your father didn't say much. He just stood there, looking around." I feel the qualifier that is to come before it crosses his lips. "But, your mother did speak. They were the center of attention that year. Leaving you left a profound impact on the city. It was ruthless, and most fae value that. It's seen as a powerful trait. I still can't imagine many fae would do the same to their children, but they seemed to like it when your parents did."
I feel him circling the point, doing his best to avoid the words he has to say, whether to preserve himself or my feelings and memory of my parents. "What did she say, Mace?"
"She said they did their job, that they raised you right, and you were on your own now."
It wasn't as nearly bad as I expected it to be, and I chuckle. "That sounds like Mother."
For a beat, we ride in silence, me tightening the shadows around my arms to maintain control of the stag. Shadow tightens his grip around my neck, not to choke but in his twisted snake version of a hug. The landscape of the Summit looks different from this perspective, as if having won the Race has changed the composition of the forest. The sounds within it seem less sinister, the plant life more beautiful. My mind drifts to Races I did in the past, the desperation I felt some years.
"Do you want to know about the Race the year after?" I ask Mace in a soft voice, unsure if I even want to share this part of me.
"If you're willing to share, I would love that."
I dive in before I can convince myself it's not a good idea. "The first year after my parents left me, I felt immense pressure to win. I knew they expected that of me, and I had images in my head of them greeting me in the arena to celebrate my historic win. After all, had anyone ever won so young?"
I feel his head shake against my back. "No, I don't think anyone had truly won, outside of Link finding the elevator that was younger than late twenties."
I laugh under my breath, "That's what I thought. I know now how impossible that image of my parents greeting me truly was," Mace's hands tighten again, a physical embodiment of his guilt, "but at the time, it brought me comfort to think that they'd be there to welcome me with open arms. Maybe they'd even apologize for leaving me. I thought Father certainly would, but Mother was less likely." Shadow releases his position around my neck and slips down my arm, joining the shadow restraints I have on the stag around my forearms.
"I had nothing that year. I did my best bartering with my tinctures and medicinal teas, but my parents didn't have a lot of friends, and few people were willing to help me out outside of my alliance pod. Even the pod was hesitant because, to my parents, it was always just a convenience. They were never really active members."
"That's how you met Max, right?"
"Yeah, Max and I were in the same pod. She was a handful of years older than me, but my parents joined the pod right when I was born, so some of my earliest memories are with Max." My chest aches at the loss of her, but this time, instead of a sharp object driving through the flesh, it's a bruise, throbbing in tempo with my heart. "I should have taken her up on that offer to Race together that year, but I couldn't bear the idea of it. I thought it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to win, and she didn't really care to. There was a woman in the village she loved, and they were going to make a life together."
"What happened to that woman?"
"Oh, they didn't work out. Max had fantastical ideas about settling down and living a normal life, but she was a butterfly. She flitted everywhere, constantly sampling everything she found." I snort when I laugh, remembering Max's exploits. "She broke a lot of hearts in her wake, and yet the people still could not dislike her. She was one of those people, you know? She just drew everyone into her."
Mace pokes me in the side, a piss-poor attempt to tickle me. I shoot him a glare, and he laughs fully this time. "You draw everyone into you as well, Viola. It seems you two shared that trait."
"Power draws people in, and apparently, I have a lot of it. That's all it is."
"You drew in Tulip before your power manifested. I spoke to Link, he was equally enamored with you. Whether you like it or not, people gravitate towards you."
I lean my head back against his chest, focusing my vision on the sun glinting above us through the trees. "I don't like it," I say quietly. He strokes one hand across my forehead, pushing the hair back. I swat it away."You interrupted my story."
With a chuckle, he drops his hand from my forehead. "I am so sorry I was asking questions."
"You should be. Where was I? Right, I didn't have much to trade that year, and others weren't willing to help out, so when I entered the Race, my supplies were slim. Quickly, I decided to travel at night versus the day, figuring I could cover more ground under the cover of shadows." It was also in hopes of avoiding the man who violated me the year before, but I don't need to burden Mace with that part of my story. My eyes flit around us, trying to recognize the place we are. Have I traveled this route before?
"One night, I was starving and had yet to run across a hare or anything I could eat, but I did stumble upon a campground. Two Racers were sleeping, neither taking watch. Morons, the both of them." Mace chokes a little on a cough at my words. "I took everything they had, Mace. Their packs, their weapons, their food. I could have left something for them, but…" I inhale sharply. "But leaving it left them a chance to win. And I knew anyone I could prevent from winning pushed me that much closer to it myself."
His silence leaves me wondering if this was the final straw to push him away from me. If he could excuse everything else I've done, but not this. "In my defense, it was the first time I robbed someone in their sleep," I hedge, cutting off the silence.
"But not the last."
I cringe away from him the best I can on the back of a stag. "You're right. Not the last." For a breath, guilt weighs against me, but I straighten my back, refusing to be bowed. "No, you know what. I don't feel bad about what I did. I don't need to defend myself."
"No one said you needed to, Viola." His voice is unwavering, the tone I've heard him use when speaking to Lowlanders for the past decade.
"But you thought it. I did the best I could in the world you created for me."
"Viola," he says, hand moving to my chin again to force me to look into his eyes. The jewel-like green of them is clear and open. "I do not begrudge you what you did. Not at all. You made decisions for your survival."
I look at Mace, attempting to dissect his motivations with just a glance. I push Mace the Patrician, the orchestrator of the event that caused me so much trauma, out of my mind, hiding him in the part of my brain that wants to just enjoy time with a man. Instead, I force myself to see Mace, the man kneeling before me in his office. The man kissing me against a tree. The man pressed so close to my back.
"You don't?"
He chuckles, dark hair falling across his forehead. The side of his mouth quirks up in a grin. "Neither of us are great people, Viola, that has been established. How can I judge you for decisions that got you to this place between my thighs?"
I groan, leaning my head back against his shoulder as his hand falls away from my chin. "You would still be thinking about bedding me after I confess to essentially leaving someone for dead."
"I find your power intoxicating."