Chapter 9
Iwake up sprawled out in a bed I don’t recognize.
My heart jumps into my throat as I sit up, clutching the sheets as if they could protect me.
“Good morning.”
The sudden voice sends a wave of panic through me. I twist, searching the bed, but no one else is in it.
Desmond sits on a stiff wooden chair. His book is nestled in his lap, and he rests his elbow on his thigh, his hand propping up his chin. He tiredly turns the page. Dark circles make his drowsy eyes appear sunken. “Did you sleep well?” he asks.
I release a tense breath. “Better than you,” I reply, lifting a brow. “Did you sleep at all?”
Without looking away from the book, he takes a swig from his flask and winces like it’s as bitter as willow bark. “No.”
“You didn’t have to give me the bed. We fit last night.” I don’t understand why he bothered to lie down if he planned on staying awake.
“How long would you have argued with me if I insisted on taking the floor?” he asks, turning the page.
“I don’t—”
He closes his eyes, his hands clenching like he’s fighting fatigue. Then he sighs. “You needed your rest.”
“Like you don’t?” I gesture at him, even though he’s now looking at his book. “I’ve fought draugr who looked more alert.”
A few seconds of silence pass as he traces a sentence with his thumb. Then he says, “Don’t underestimate me,” without any trace of humor.
“At least explain the chair.”
“I carried it up from downstairs.”
“And why?”
His jaw flexes as he closes the book. “The thrashing would’ve woken you.” Then he stands, grunting as the chair rises with him. A knotted leather cord secures his wrist to the arm of the chair.
My stomach drops.
“Pass me a dagger,” he says, nodding at the side table where his blade rests.
I levitate his dagger to him. “And who exactly tied you to a chair?”
He cuts the cord. The chair falls to the ground with a thud. “I did.”
My mouth dries as I struggle to know what to say. “I still don’t understand.”
He flexes his hand and then rubs the angry red line around his wrist, right above the inked crescent. “Just a precaution.”
When Evie and I were little, older village kids would frighten us with made-up stories.
Draugr crawling out of tombs to drag meddling younger siblings into their barrows.
Trolls who would cut the tongues out of tattletales and eat them.
Fae were often the villains, tales of their glamour meant to terrify us.
Evie had fitful nightmares for a week straight after a particularly gruesome one. The fae were said to kidnap lost children and glamour them into obedient servants. More than once, I debated tying her down to the bed.
As I stare at the prince of the Hollowlands, it’s hard to imagine what could haunt him badly enough to make him restrain himself.
I slide out of the bed and reach out to examine his chafed wrist. “We could get some soothing salve from an apothecary before we leave Mythos.”
Then his emotions batter me like a rough wave—sorrow and guilt toward the past, bitterness and regret toward the future he can’t have. None of it shows on his impassive face.
Stunned, I let my hand drop. “You should get some rest. I’ll go downstairs and order us breakfast.”
“I’m fine.” His tone leaves no room for arguing. “I once stayed awake for five days straight when captured. This was nothing.” Then he strides across the room and throws the armoire doors open, revealing a change of clothes. “We need to get going.”
Pulse-quickening panic rises in my chest as he shrugs out of his tunic, the muscles of his abdomen rippling. His skin is nicked with scars; a long one crosses his left pectoral, and another follows the curve of his right arm. When he twists to grab his clean shirt, I catch a glimpse of his back.
I gasp. He tenses, his muscles moving beneath the long, raised scars that crisscross like an erratic lattice from his shoulders to his waist. Those scars aren’t from blades. What happened to him?
He turns back around, his jaw tight. The wisps of dark hair down his lower stomach draw my gaze somewhere it definitely shouldn’t be.
My cheeks flush as I whirl to face the wall.
“I didn’t expect you to be so modest,” he comments, a hint of a taunt in his voice.
I roll my eyes, not that he can see—and I know better than to ask about his back. It’s not my business. “I thought you might want some privacy. Would you prefer if I watch? I didn’t take you for an exhibitionist.”
There’s a clack of a belt buckle. Gods, he’s changing his pants, too. “No, I’ll be done in a moment.”
When he finishes, he moves past me and grabs his cloak.
The sleeves of his charcoal-gray tunic are rolled up, hugging his biceps.
The front is unbuttoned partway down, revealing a thin silver necklace that contours to the sharp angle of his collarbone.
As he heads toward the door, I notice just how tight his black linen pants are around his thighs, hinting at the muscle beneath.
“Cynthia.”
My pulse skips as I look up. A glacial frown twists Desmond’s full lips as he holds my gaze.
Gods, help me. He caught me staring at his thighs.
I clear my throat. “Yes?”
His curls shift as he tilts his head, revealing a ruby cuff that glints on his pointed ear. Then he raises his cloak’s hood, hiding both the cuff and his ears.
“Get changed,” he coolly orders, then hands me the key to the room. He opens the door with his glove on.
“Wait,” I call out. “Please tell me this shithole has a washroom.”
“With water as black as tar,” he answers with a foreboding smile. Then he leaves.
I shudder, and then shut the door. He’s not giving me time to run to a bathhouse.
There are a few in Mythos, run by families with water-wielding Gifts like Evie and Mom.
Guess I’ll have to choose between tar or the dirt caked under my nails until we arrive at wherever we’re going. It occurs to me that I should ask.
He left his book on the nightstand. What is it? Could it reveal his motives?
I open it to a dog-eared page. The scrawled, handwritten text is in a language I didn’t expect to see outside the barrows. Old Avedoran. Two lines are underlined, with a translation in common script over them.
Where the one-eyed sleeps
So does the arrow that reaps
No one has used Old Avedoran for centuries, but that’s not the only sign that this book is ancient.
The leather cover is cracked and faded, the pages are yellowed, and it has a slight mildew scent.
I flip through the other pages and look at inked illustrations of forests, moon cycles, and strange beasts.
Some pages are full of text, while on others the lines are organized in stanzas like poetry.
There isn’t another translation, and I’m not proficient enough to read the book without pausing to parse every word. So I close it, change, and lock the room’s door behind me before heading downstairs.
I meet Desmond at the tavern counter. He nods to a bowl of lumpy porridge as he wolfs down his own. Behind us is a couple feasting on boiled eggs and sliced goat cheese.
“We could be eating that,” I gesture toward them, “but you bought us this?” When I lift a scoop with my spoon, it oozes down the sides. I shoot him a look. “I bet women regret you the morning after.”
“And I pity the men who suffer through your snores.” Desmond’s glare has enough of a warning in it that I don’t retort.
But I definitely don’t snore. He slides two silver marks toward me like they’re lint from his pockets.
“Buy whatever you want.” Then he takes off, going up the stairs two steps at a time.
Did I strike a nerve? I spin the marks on the counter, waiting for the kitchen boy to finish serving another customer.
Maybe it’s hard to bed women when you have to tie yourself to a chair all night.
Surely, some would still be into that. Or maybe I’m so ‘stubborn’ and ‘disobedient’ that he can’t stand to be around me any longer than necessary.
Either way, why be so liberal with his coin purse for me? Unless the marks aren’t real, just clay or stone enchanted to resemble them until sundown. That’s something fae do in the stories.
The kitchen boy takes my order. As soon as my breakfast is served, I start devouring the over-easy egg with sprinkled herbs and a handful of wildberries.
The unseelie fae with the ram horns clops behind the counter with a stack of dirty dishes. When he heads into the back room, I lower my voice and ask the kitchen boy, “He’s a servant?”
The kitchen boy is human, maybe thirteen years old.
His dark eyes narrow, and his black hair sways as he plants his hands on the counter and leans toward me.
“The innkeeper’s ancestor fought in the War of Burning.
He spared the fae’s great-grandmother in exchange for four generations of servitude.
Fae live a long time, you know. And that one may look friendly, but sometimes when he looks at the innkeeper, I think he’s gonna—” he traces his finger across his neck, his expression macabre.
Four generations? How deplorable. My stomach turns. If it were me in the fae’s place, I’d resent the innkeeper, too. That poor fae will never know freedom.
I continue eating as the kitchen boy darts away, but every mouthful tastes like ash.
When I return to Desmond’s room, he opens it as I raise my fist to knock. “Get your things ready,” he says. “I was starting to think you were too enamored with breakfast to return.”
Scoffing, I charge past him. “What did you do to the chrysanthemums?” The white flowers on the nightstand have wilted. They looked freshly cut last night.
He shrugs. “All flowers wilt. All trees wither. That’s the nature of mortal existence—impermanence.”
“You’re all sunshine and rainbows today,” I mutter.
I levitate Desmond’s flask to me and sniff it.
It’s just water, but it made him scowl this morning.
I pour some into the vase. Then I untether the window’s latch and shove the hinged glass aside.
Music and laughter flow in along with a fresh breeze.