Chapter 23 Maggie
Maggie
Iopened my door with a sweaty grip, giddy.
Evie and I had a do-over of our morning stretching lesson even though the trepidation poured off of her.
It didn't hurt that I actually told her how much it meant to me this time instead of keeping it bottled up.
Who would have thought that it was as simple as saying adult words out loud?
I also made sure that we rolled out the mats and laid down in cedar pose, flat on our backs, faces to the sky.
“Are we doing it?” Evie asked.
We were. And we lounged there until Evie let me take her hand and we starfished into the morning sun. Both of us might have fallen asleep in the warmth and gotten all sweaty, but I had woken up to Evie still holding my hand. I wouldn’t have traded this morning for anything.
Well, almost anything… the cake sitting on my side table made drool pool in my mouth.
Not just any cake. Melwyyn cake with its heavenly smell filling the room.
My eyes darted around, excitement fizzing inside me.
I hadn’t dared hope Noth and I would be anything more than a passing lightning strike despite the mate bond.
I hadn't heard from him in months and I could admit I was too scared to use the mate bond again. What if I was just a fluke for him? I didn’t really know how it worked. Maybe mates wore off.
There was no denying the bond wrapped around my heart chakra.
It hummed with a renewed energy, teasing me right to the shadows bathing the corner of my bedroom.
With preternatural speed, I raced to him.
Understanding my powers brought a whole host of things I never dreamed I might do.
Reaching into the dark, I pulled him out with a snarl.
I stood blinking at the man I’d missed with all my heart for the past three months–love pouring from my soul and fire in my eyes.
“You cut all your hair!”
His raven’s wing dream sat razored against his skull in the back, the front a messy just-fucked tussle. It made his sharp cheekbones like blades, his nose and chin even more pointed. Or perhaps that was the weight he lost.
His smirk hadn’t dulled a bit. “I needed a change too.” He scrubbed the back of his head like he wasn’t used to the fuzz.
I screamed so high it burst the windows and so loud the entire Keep was sure to come running.
“You stupid asshole. Sonofaratfacedwhore. How dare you lose your crown!”
I smacked him and kept swatting him. That was the only reason I could think of that he would cut something so important to his status as an Elf. It was only by surprise that I tackled him. I slammed his head into the floor. “What did you do?”
“Do you hate it?” he garbled out between hits.
I grabbed what remained of his nonexistent hair, tears welling up at the missing strands.
“Your beautiful Goddsdamned hair!” I wailed.
The door burst open and everyone piled into the room as I whacked his stupid precious skull into the wood boards.
Declan shot forward in his wolf form, barking, adding to the racket, his razor teeth inches from Noth’s face. Evie’s friend Noora and the bar girl Ruby argued how best to suppress Noth’s magic even though he sprawled there, letting me beat him up.
Ward and Evie made motions to split us apart but I couldn’t stop touching Noth’s face, his hair.
It was sexy as fuck even if it was tragically different.
The tears that started for his hair fell because he was beneath me again and intact, for all that the Elves wanted to bury him in an unmarked grave.
The love that welled up as I touched him told me I should have reached out sooner.
Declan stopped barking, wagging his tail.
I kissed Noth’s stupid face with everything I had. This felt like a whole new start.
“Okay, everyone out!” Ward shouted, pushing Evie out the door first.
Ruby covered Noora’s eyes, which almost made me laugh. Working in a brothel, she had done more sex stuff than all of us combined. Fallon dragged Declan out by his tail and Dane, the barkeep, walked in.
“Where did everyone go-”
And he promptly turned around again and exited the graphic scene. Noth slammed the door behind them with his shadows, plunging his tongue into my mouth. I sucked on it until he groaned beneath me and pulled out to lick the tears off my face.
“It can’t look that bad then.”
I raked my hand through the shiny black strands. It sprang into loose, messy curls that defied gravity like his old hair did. It would be the perfect handle while he was between my thighs.
With a casual shrug, I said, “I might have to use your head as a mop. I didn’t know it curled naturally.”
He laughed and hugged me until all breath left my body. “I didn’t know either. I haven’t cut it in centuries.”
“But your crown?”
“Still on my head despite my lack of hair. You should have heard the gasps of horror when the Council saw it. Even Yaya looked murderous.”
“Sounds like I missed a lot in these past few months. Like why you’re doing a scarecrow impression.”
Noth grimaced and I finally noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the black tinge around his lips.
“My Nightmare hasn’t had the easiest time away from you.”
“Show me.”
“I don’t think I can shift.”
My eyes rounded. “We should go somewhere private to have this conversation.”
He seemed surprised by my answer but Evie had told me many things about being a Queen that were not natural to her either. I wasn’t stupid. I started to learn how to be better at subterfuge, statecraft and negotiation like he was. It took only a second for his eyes to go shrewd.
“Easily arranged.” With smooth strength, he lifted me and himself off the floor and set me to the side.
Shadows flickered over him as his Nightmare reached for me but failed.
I hated that he seemed trapped. His Nightmare beating against the bond tattooed a second heartbeat in my chest. Gathering extra blankets and pillows, a silk sheet I didn’t even know was in the cupboard, he made a cozy nest on top of my bed.
“Sorry. I’m having a hard time controlling him now that you’re here. I can undo it and we can just lay down.”
My heart thumped in my chest and I used all the practice I had gained with Evie to say. “I love it. It looks snug but not very soundproof.”
He picked me up and set me in the middle.
I settled into his Nightmare nest and I dutifully curled up.
His whole body wrapped around me, the scent of cut grass and charred ruins filling the cocoon until I was dizzy with it.
His hands stroked my hair like he would imprint the slide of it on his fingertips.
The sharp angles of him were new, but still blanketed me in homecoming.
Before I did anything about it, his lips brushed my ear.
Noth drowned me in sleep and when I came up for air, I was standing in a dark alleyway lit only by green witch light.
It should have been terrifying, distorted in a way that made the cobbles not quite straight and the walls slightly tilted.
Wisps and curls of shadow licked my ankles, announcing the form creeping up behind me.
I didn’t turn. I wasn’t sure I would survive it when I walked in the Nightmare’s realm.
“Come get a drink with me,” Noth’s voice echoed in this place with a gravel that drifted across my skin.
His almost-Elven hand gripped mine and we headed for the unmarked blue door at the end of the alley. We ran forever, laughing, breathless, the unreality of the dream making our dance a fever that was over in a blink. I drunkenly swayed into his arms which multiplied by the second.
The feel of him opened my heart, my mouth.
“I'm so glad you came for me again. I'm sorry I tipped our hand after we sent Brad packing. One mistake and I brought your people's ire upon my head and yours. I needed to get better at the Queen thing, or we were both going to be dead. I want you to understand it wasn’t easy leaving you.”
“You have a thousand chances, Pumpkin. No mistake would ever part you from me. I loved you from the moment you kicked me in the nuts, right in the middle of a battlefield.”
He bent to kiss me with all the longing of a separation ended.
My hands brushed over the fuzz on his neck, the sensation running through my whole body.
I could taste his lips forever, but as I pulled back and he looked at the blue door, I realized this was more than us fucking each other’s brains out.
“Is this a date?”
In all my many interactions with men, I blushed to realize I had never actually been on a date.
“Is that what you want it to be?” Noth leaned forward, ridiculously eager.
“I… I…” This? I was stumbling over this?
He smiled like he had already heard my answer and was going to tuck it in his back pocket. “This was the first place I ever tried real Dryad food.”
In the way of dreams, the door all but melted and the strangest pub I had ever seen opened before us.
Shadowy figures filled the space with bright good cheer.
Servants rushed by with giant trays of fantastic food and the strains of a violin floated through the air with no one playing it.
But the pub was no bigger than the alley, close and intimate, tables in single file.
It was hard to be intimidated by such a secret pocket.
“How did you find this place?”
The knowledge that this was a date lapped against my mind. How could I be doing this for the first time in a dream?
“Ward did, of course, with that endless research he loves to do. When I told him nothing was better than Elvish food, he had to prove me wrong.”
“Smart.”
Noth winked at me with a few of the eyes that cropped up and melted away again.
“I’ve gotten a lot of amazing experiences out of those bets and Ward secretly enjoys doing it.”
I laughed at the white lie I would totally be using in the future. My instincts had gotten better at discerning what I should hide and what to communicate.