Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Iwonder how much time I bought myself as I push away from the wall and sprint straight back between oak trees.
Eventually, Oren will come looking. When he doesn’t find me, I’m sure he’ll alert the others.
I have to assume that they’re good at tracking.
I’ve nothing to base that assumption on, but I would rather plan for the worst while I hope for the best. Given how my luck has been this past day, they can no doubt track a beetle across a mountain range.
When I’m far enough that I know I’m out of view, I cut left and head in the direction we came from.
There was a creek not too far back. I’ve heard tales of people crossing bodies of water to avoid being tracked by dogs.
Something about washing off your scent trail.
Fae seem to be part beast, so maybe the premise is the same. It can’t hurt.
The small motes of light that illuminated the forest in the daytime have made their beds on the dark moss, turning the forest floor into a sea of stars that ripples away from me as I run through and closes back in over my footsteps.
The trees shimmer like water, what can only be described as magic pulsing off their trunks and into the leaves before falling back down to the earth as luminescent haze.
Everything here feels alive, awake; I feel like I’m being watched with every step by ancient beings.
I press my hand into my side. It aches and my lungs are burning.
I catch my breath for only a second and keep running.
If I can make it to the creek, maybe I can throw them off.
I paid attention to the path we took today.
I’ll find my way back and then I’ll head into the mountains.
I’ll cross the Fade. If they can do it, so can I.
After all, I have this magic of kings or whatever it is that their ritual was supposed to create. I can do this; I know I can.
The creek comes into view.
I jump down the shallow bank, splash in the water, and leap across. As my feet touch down on the other side, I see the blur of movement in my periphery. I spin toward the source.
A man slams into me. He came from the sky, a blur of bloodred iridescence and starlight.
We hit the ground together. I bring up my knee instinctively, looking for the spot between his legs that will surely shake him, but instead I find his ribs, due to the awkward way we fell.
He’s half on top of me, pushing off the ground, trying to catch my wrist as I struggle to free myself.
“Unhand—” A large palm clamps over my mouth.
I’m looking into Davien’s bright green eyes. The only thing keeping his nose from touching mine is his hand. His hair cascades over his shoulders and tickles my cheek.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he snarls.
I speak against his palm, but the muffled sounds are unintelligible, so he removes his hand. I say it again: “Your friends kept telling me all day how I’m going to die anyway. I might as well hurry it up.”
“And yet we’re still trying to keep you alive.” He has yet to pull away. His body is crushing mine against the creek bed. Water rushes against my side, in cool contrast to the heat of his firm muscle.
“You know who else tried to keep me alive? My mother and sister. You know how they did it? Locking me in rooms, preventing me from having friends, taking anything that brought me even the slightest amount of joy. They treated me like a thing more than a person.” I blink up at him, my eyes burning.
The words spill from me unbidden. I don’t want to be saying these things, not to him, not here, not now.
But in this moment, it feels as though there can be nothing hidden between us.
He’s crushed all the space where secrets could live into dust. It’s just him, assaulting my senses like he has been for weeks.
Except now I can see him. Now I can stare into those bright green eyes as they expose me.
Now it’s more than the barest of touches, and I can feel his body on mine as his weight destroys my barriers.
“I want to live, more than anything, and because I want that, I refuse to spend my days as someone’s thing. I’m going to live my life the way I want to live it or die trying. So help me live freely or be ready to kill me now,” I finish, voice quivering.
He opens and closes his mouth. Still undecided on his words, he shifts his weight and presses a hand into the ground by the side of my head. With space between us once more, I can breathe again. I’ve never felt so laid bare.
“Get up,” he says, barely more than a grunt. “You’ll catch a cold if you lie in the water.”
Davien makes room for me to stand. I brush the dirt and rocks off my tattered robe. My nightgown is alarmingly translucent on the side where the water flowed over me. I pull my robe a little tighter. If he noticed, he made a point not to look.
“Live your life the way you want to live it,” he echoes and laughs softly with a shake of his head. “What a selfish aspiration.”
“Excuse me?” It’s my turn to close the gap between us. I rise to my tiptoes to try and stare him in the eye and still come up short. “What did you say?”
“You want to live your life in total disregard for everyone and everything else. It’s selfish.”
“I made my sacrifices. I earned this.” I shake my head, backing away. “I don’t have to defend myself to you or to anyone.”
“You’re right, you don’t, because you clearly don’t care for others.” He shrugs. “Not that I could understand someone who chose to live their life that way.”
“Oh? And how do you live your life? Holed up in a manor in the human world? Finding brides whose families have the things you need for your nighttime rituals? Am I even the first human bride you’ve taken?
” I’m surprised at how much I want him to say that I am.
How wounded I would be if I was just one of many.
“You are.” He gives me a glare so cold, I shiver.
“And I did not accept you as my bride lightly. Had I a choice, I wouldn’t have.
I never wanted to involve you in any of this.
If your father had just given me that damn book when I first demanded it years ago, none of this would’ve happened.
I had to wait and prepare an offering I knew your family could not refuse. ”
“My father’s death—”
“I had nothing to do with it, I swear to you,” he interrupts firmly, but he’s still somewhat gentle around the delicate subject.
“Nor did I find joy in it. I sent Oren to negotiate with your father, not Joyce. I didn’t know he’d passed to the great Beyond; I knew only that he was away and I’d heard rumors of your family’s hard times. ”
I heave a small sigh of relief.
He continues, “But last night, when I finally, finally had everything I needed in place, years of work all coming to fruition for a cause much bigger than myself—much bigger than you will ever know—I…”
“You?” I whisper when the silence stretches on to the point that I’m afraid he won’t continue.
“I still thought of you. I left you that letter in an attempt to make it easy should anyone claim that you didn’t have a right to that land, that home.
You would have been taken care of for the rest of your mortal days.
And all you had to do was follow the rules I gave you for your own benefit and stay put. ”
My stomach churns, and not because I ate food from the fae world. I’m sick because I don’t smell smoke and fae can’t lie. He’s telling the truth.
All I had to do was stay put. One final night of heeding the rules, and the total freedom I’ve always craved would have been mine. Davien would’ve been out of my life and his riches in the Natural World would’ve been mine.
“And here we are again.” He shakes his head. “Another night where you risk everything by not staying where you were put.”
“If you want me to go along with this, you have to start telling me what is happening. Treat me like an equal. I know I should, but I can’t follow rules blindly.” Joyce scarred me too deeply in ways I’m only beginning to understand for me to go along with something without question.
“Do you think you deserve that?” He arches an eyebrow.
“If you have any fondness—no, any respect—for me, then you’ll do this. I am not a relic that you can store on a shelf until your next ritual. I’m a breathing person. Don’t treat me like a thing and I won’t have a reason to be out of place because the place I’ll be in is the one I’ve chosen.”
Davien sighs heavily. He runs a hand through his hair. Half of it slicks back, thanks to the water of the creek. The other half falls into his face. “Do you promise that’s all it will take?”
“I swear it.”
“Give me one reason why I should believe you will keep your word. You swore if I unlocked the door, you wouldn’t leave.
You lied.” There’s hurt on his face. Maybe that’s why he never wanted me to see him.
The man is an open book of emotion. He’s spent so much time in physical isolation that he hasn’t learned how to guard himself.
Whereas I learned that skill very quickly, thanks to Joyce and Helen.
I shake my head slowly. I can’t think of anything I could offer him to prove I’m telling the truth. I could tell him how I taste metal when I lie. But he doesn’t know what I can taste. Laura never said she could smell metal on my breath the few times she indulged me with a sniff.
“I guess you don’t have any reason.” I shrug. “I guess the best thing I can do to prove it to you is to start acting in good faith myself. I’ll head back to camp right now.”
His emotion changes. His brow softens slightly. His eyes narrow, just a little and only for a second. It’s like watching thoughts dance across a person’s mind, exposed in a way I’ve never seen before.
I cross the creek and splash up the bank on the other side. I’m several steps away when I realize he’s not following me. “Are you coming?”