Chapter 21
Tears well in my eyes, but giggle after giggle shakes my chest. My hands tremble, slipping off the horse’s muzzle. The words that tumble out of me don’t make any sense. Am I asking for more bread and jam, or am I begging for mercy?
Auri grabs my waist. She spins me. My feet flow into it, my arms flying out as the cave whirls and twirls, a kaleidoscope of shadows and light and color.
“Stop it!” I scream, fighting the glamour with all my willpower.
My stumbling feet slow, and I stagger toward the hint of sky and trees marking the cave entrance.
“Let me go,” I plead, the entrance swinging back and forth like a pendulum with every step. I’m almost there.
“She’s not okay,” someone says. I think it’s Finnian. I can’t distinguish their voices anymore. “We need to take her back.”
“She’s fine,” someone dismissively argues.
A tall shadow appears at the cave entrance. It’s a troll! I have to run. My feet trip over themselves as I turn away, and I fall. My arms splay out, but I’m too dizzy to catch myself. The stone floor rushes toward me.
Fingers dig into my shoulders. I’m held, then lowered until I’m sitting. “What did you do?” a low voice demands. “Enchanted blackberries? You knew how her body would handle them!”
The fae male recoils as if slapped. He shifts his weight like he wants to step forward and say something, but when his lips part, no sound comes out. His gloved hands clench into fists.
I lean back, trying to see who’s behind me, but my head bumps into their legs. I’m too disoriented to stand.
“There’s a bowl of salt ready in the kitchen,” the other fae says, a feminine voice that slides down my spine like ice. Her blurry form undulates, but her swaying braids drag my gaze as she tosses them over her shoulder. “You really think I’d let her die, knowing she’s vowed to you?”
“I don’t know what to think besides how disappointed I am in you. Stay away from her,” the person behind me says with the harsh edge of a threat.
I’m picked up before I can protest. Shadow turns to light as I’m carried out of the cave over someone’s shoulder. “I can walk!” I pound my fists against their back. “I feel fine!”
“You are not fine.” The voice is gruff and male. “You’re intoxicated from fruit that only fae can stomach. For a human of your weight, one spoonful of jam is like chugging six mugs of amber ale. It’s amazing that you haven’t lost consciousness yet.”
“Oo, that’s a lot.” I hiccup. “She told me to eat it, you know.” My head lolls against the stranger’s back as he enters the hideout.
His shoulders are firm, solid beneath my fisted hands.
I give up on hitting him, and my arms dangle down, brushing against his ass.
It looks like a nice ass. I decide to squeeze it.
The stranger tenses beneath me. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he snaps, an undertone of panic making the words sound uncertain.
“But it’s so firm.” I spread my fingers to cup it and squeeze again. Firm, but not flat. Definitely the sort of ass I’d stare at if I walked behind him. “See?”
My kidnapper inhales a ragged, strained breath and then swears in another language.
“Relax,” I whine. “Being uptight will knot your muscles up. Can I touch your muscles?” I reach around his body to grasp his arm. He’s dressed in short sleeves, and the strong ridges and veins are a delight to run my fingers across.
He shudders and lets out a breathy, “No. Bad human.”
I giggle. “I can be a bad girl if you want.”
“For the love of Danu, Cynthia,” my kidnapper hisses. “You’ll be the death of me.”
That stuns me, and I fall silent.
We’re in the kitchen, and then not in the kitchen. He’s carrying me through the forest, the moonlit trees leaning over us. Crickets chirp a merry jig that my feet long to follow.
“Put me down!” I whine. “I want to dance!”
My kidnapper slides me off his shoulder and into his arms. He gently sets me down in the grass, then kneels in front of me. I giggle as I look up at the stars, then at the dewy grass beneath us. Running my fingers through the soft verdant blades, I smile.
Then the man grabs my jaw and forces my mouth open. He pushes a spoon of salt toward my tongue.
I jerk away and knock the spoon from the stranger’s hand.
He scowls as he reaches for it, but I grab his face and tilt it toward me.
“You’re handsome.” His features are less distorted now that I’m sitting.
Yes, he’s definitely attractive. The sharp jawline I run my fingers along is rough from stubble, and the lips I brush my thumb over are soft and full.
His breath hitches. “Stop that,” he murmurs.
He’s still as stone as I trace his bottom lip, then up the straight bridge of his nose. My other hand follows his sharp jaw until I feel the warmth of the back of his neck.
“Hi,” I sing-song to him. “I know you. I remember you.”
“Then who am I?” he asks. The words rumble through my hands.
“You’re a prince! If I kiss you, will it break a spell?”
He recoils like I’ve said something cruel. “There are no spells on monsters, only curses.”
I follow the furrowed line of his brows down to the resignation in his eyes. “Then can I break your curse?” I whisper.
“If you believe the stories, a fair maiden’s kiss can save even the prince of monsters. But they’re just that—stories.”
“I do believe in them,” I argue, because something inside my heart stirs and tells me they’re true. “If you were a monster, would I do this?” I lean toward him until our noses bump, but our lips are still one gentle tilt away from touching.
He tenses as if on the edge of a precipice, his breath held and body unmoving. As I thread my fingers into his hair, his breath stutters and his lashes flutter, so long and dark.
“If you believed I was worth saving,” he whispers. Then he pulls away from me. He untangles my fingers from his hair and places both my hands in my lap. “Now sit still. You’re not in your right mind.”
I purse my lips into a pout. “But you didn’t let me kiss you.”
He grabs my jaw and hooks his thumb between my lips.
His calluses scrape against my tongue, just the right amount of friction.
He must want to kiss me after all. I moan, my eyes fluttering shut as I lean toward him, taking more of him into my mouth.
Soon, he’ll pull away to seal his soft lips to mine.
I wait, leaning so far that his hand grasps my shoulder to steady me. Any second now—
I flinch as he spoons salt onto my tongue. “Ergh!” I try to spit it out, but his hands clamp my mouth shut.
“Swallow it, Cynthia.” The voice is so authoritative. I listen, even though I don’t want to. He taps the spoon to my lips. “One more.”
I open my mouth wide and swallow the second spoonful. It tastes dreadful, and I ball my hands in the grass in protest. “Why’d you make me do that?”
“Because it counteracts fae magic, including those damn blackberries.” He sighs and runs his hand through his curls. “You’ll be glad when you come back to yourself. I was when my sister did the same for me.”
The world is too bright, even as the sun dips beyond the forest canopy.
I retch into the grass, and he hands me his flask.
Instead of tea, it holds an astringent liquid that I wash my mouth out with until all I taste is mint.
Then he leads me on my wobbly feet to a hilltop, where we stretch out and watch peony-pinks chase clay-reds across woolly wisps of clouds.
A headache rages behind my eyes, but the salt has cleared the murkiness away. I look at the man who helped me and remember who he is. Then I realize what he is.
“You’re not pure fae,” I whisper to Desmond.
The statement floats in the sky above us, between us. There’s no other reason why fae berries could intoxicate him.
He gazes up at the sunset, quiet for a moment. “My father was human.” He says it slowly, as if he isn’t used to saying the words aloud.
“But your ears are still pointy.”
“That’s a dominant trait. My fingers are shorter than most fae’s.”
“Show me.” I grab his hand and ignore his grunt of protest. His eyes widen as I fan his fingers out and press my hand flat against his. “They’re still longer than mine.”
For the first time since he fed me the salt, I sense his emotions. He’s flustered, his hand as tense as a board against mine. “And you’re still inebriated,” he says, but there’s a breathy hitch to his voice.
“Perhaps.” I stroke the calluses that encircle his palm. He tenses, his teeth running over his bottom lip, as though the sensation shoots through him.
Then tears prickle my eyes. They sting, too salty and hot, but they don’t stop falling.
They wash the last wisps of fog from my mind. I remember each detail of Auri’s little ‘prank’, and shame burns through me. I recoil from Desmond, letting go of his hand.
“Damn them both,” I curse, but it’s warbled by the lump in my throat. “I trusted them. What was I thinking?”
Desmond’s hand flexes once. Then he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes away my tears. “Don’t ever let yourself forget what we are.”
My throat tightens. “I won’t.” It feels like a vow.
“Good.”
His handkerchief catches another tear, and I sniffle. I need to pull myself together. My weakness, my utter inability to stop Auri and Finnian, feels rotten enough on its own.
Yet letting the fae high prince see how rattled I am is its own humiliation. If he had seen me cry like this when we first met, he would’ve rebuked me. He was cold, distant. I can’t imagine him having wiped away my tears. Has this kindness always been inside him? I don’t know if I deserve it.
I remember the giggles I couldn’t control, the wet slickness of the horse’s tongue. Finnian and Auri’s vulturine laughter encircling me. I made a mockery of myself, grabbing Desmond’s ass and trying to kiss him like a besotted maiden in a children’s story.
“They won’t make a fool of me again,” I promise, averting my gaze from him.