Chapter 17
Seventeen
When the sky darkened, Fawn finally consented to being carried once more.
“Okay,” she sighed, leaning against a rocky wall. “You win. Throw me over your shoulder, you brute.”
Zax picked her up gently. Now was not the time for shoulder-throwing.
They could do that later, when she was healed.
He still felt guilty for slamming her into the ground earlier.
He had examined her foot after they circled back to retrieve their supplies and kissed it after he was sure the bruising had not come back. Mortals were so breakable.
Fawn sighed and reclined in his arms, examining the rock walls around them.
They were getting narrower, with many paths joining to meet this main one.
It almost looked like someone had carved it this way, rather than the mountain conjuring this naturally.
When Fawn pointed this out earlier, Zax had admitted that his brother might have done it.
He had no idea what his strange, ancient brother was capable of.
“This is the way?” Fawn asked. “You’re sure?”
“I have made this journey several times,” Zax reminded her.
“You also mentioned you got lost a lot.”
“It is a large mountain,” Zax said defensively. “And this area goes around in circles many times. I sometimes miss the path that leads to my brother.”
Fawn began to say something else. Then she gaped, grabbing his shoulder. “Wait!”
Zax came to an abrupt halt, scanning for enemies. But Fawn only slapped his chest until he let her down, then ran over and grabbed a rock lying next to the stony mountain wall.
“Look,” she said. “It’s perfect!”
She held it up. Zax peered at it curiously, unsure what she meant. It was small and gray and unremarkable, except…
Zax squinted. There was a spot of purple mineral embedded near the top of the rock, off to the side.
“It looks like you,” Fawn explained. “Like your eye.”
Zax was suddenly overwhelmed. He took the rock gladly, running his claws over it. He had been overjoyed to give Fawn her freckle rock, and so heartbroken when she’d thrown it back at him.
“I love it,” Zax declared. “Thank you. I will keep it until it crumbles to dust.”
Fawn smiled, looking relieved. She had been doing this more often since she returned to him and all was revealed: finding ways to show him she cared. It made Zax feel like the luckiest creature in the mortal realm.
Fawn looked up at the stars, which were just beginning to twinkle. “This reminds me of the glow worm cave. We should go back there after all this is done with.”
“I would like that,” Zax said softly.
He pocketed the rock and moved to pick her up again. Fawn let him, pulling at one of his bone-fangs. “Where did you learn so much about romance?”
“From my brothers,” Zax said, surprised. He thought he had mentioned it.
“No, I know. But they can’t have told you about—about glow worm caves and rocks! Did they?”
“No,” Zax said, unsure if he should be concerned. “I just… thought about the things I wished to share with my beloved. Things I longed for.”
He paused, watching Fawn’s face as she stared up at the stars. She looked sad, but the distant kind of sad that she only got when she was thinking about her past. Sadness and anger: his wife was so full of both. They tangled among each other until Zax could hardly tell them apart.
“What do you long for?” he asked.
Fawn sighed. “For my husband to polish his own shoes.”
“I wear no shoes,” Zax said excitedly, half in jest.
“Even better!” Fawn laughed, then she sobered. “I don’t know. When I was small, I daydreamed about dancing with my love.”
“Dancing?” Zax repeated.
Fawn laughed again. Then she noticed his earnest expression, and her gaze turned curious. “Everything your brothers taught you, and they didn’t teach you how to dance?”
“They did mention it,” Zax said hastily. “They just did not tell me how it worked.”
He did not mention that he thought it was a form of play-fighting, which was the only context his brothers spoke of it.
Fawn nudged for him to let her down again. After listening for any encroaching footsteps, Zax did.
“Like this,” Fawn said. She took his hand and placed it on her shoulder, settling the other against her waist. Then she slid her hands around his shoulders, feeling the scars there.
They throbbed once, and Zax wondered if the pain would ever fade.
But for once, the pain receded fast. As if Fawn’s touch was soothing them.
“Follow my steps,” Fawn instructed him.
She stepped back. He followed eagerly. She stepped to the side, and he followed that, too.
Soon, they were walking in a circle around the rocky mountain path.
No, not walking—gliding. There was a rhythm to it, an ease which Zax had been missing for all of his long existence.
It made him wonder what else his mortal wife could introduce him to, things he did not even know existed until she fell into his life.
“I like dancing,” Zax announced.
“Good,” Fawn said. Her cheeks darkened under her lovely freckles, and she could not look at him directly as she led him around another joyous circle.
“There are other dances—communal dances—where everyone links arms or dances in circles together, and runs under each other’s stretched hands.
But this type of dancing is my favorite.
Here, duck under my arm and turn in a circle. ”
She stretched their joined arms out. Zax puzzled at what she meant, but ducked obligingly under her arm, bending mightily to do so. His unbroken horn skimmed her elbow, but otherwise he made it.
“Just like that,” Fawn said, her eyes gleaming as if he had just done something magnificent. “Now do me.”
Zax held out his arm. Fawn twirled underneath it, and Zax understood what he was meant to have done.
There was such grace in her twirl, her dress flaring out in a way that made Zax want to spin her until she got dizzy.
It was the delight in the movement, he thought.
That, and the way she fell into him afterwards, hugging him hard before leading him back into the dancing.
“Did you learn this in your village?” Zax asked as they spun together in another circle, faster this time.
“All the young girls learn how to dance,” Fawn replied with a grin. “The boys, too. We made such a fuss of it at that age. But most of that was the communal dances. The first time I danced like this was at my wedding.”
More angry sadness crossed her face. She pressed closer to him, rubbing absentmindedly at his scarred back. Did she find them comforting, the same way he found her freckles comforting? Zax hoped so.
“It was the first time I had been so close to a man,” Fawn continued. “I thought…”
“What?”
Fawn shook her head, her face twisting wryly. “I let myself believe it would be like I dreamed. My dreams weren’t as wide as they are now, but still. They were better than what I got.”
Zax had to stop himself from tightening his grip.
He wanted to love Fawn so dearly that it washed away the sadness of her past. One day, he vowed, she would be able to talk of it without those emotions playing over her expression.
Her past would feel like a story that happened to someone else.
Then again, after so many mortal lifetimes, it would.
Once she was properly bound to him with his brother’s magic, they had so much time to fill.
Maybe one day, centuries from now, she would not even remember her old husband’s face, let alone the way he made her feel.
“I will give you all you dream and more,” he promised fiercely. “And I will polish my own claws, always!”
He said the last thing partly to make Fawn laugh.
And she did, a little. But it was a distracted laugh as she stared into his face, her expression dreamy and unreadable.
She lay her head on his chest, and Zax tucked her against his body, feeling completely at peace.
Which was not the best thing to feel when they were being actively pursued by a group of hunters, but Zax could hear none of them about, so he allowed it.
“We should have a wedding,” Fawn said softly, her breath hot against his chest. “Did your brothers tell you about those?”
“I have been to many,” Zax said proudly. “Wick has a wedding with his Briar every few decades. Last time, we ended up in the suffering void and had to fight our way out. Briar killed a demon king with a bomb she made out of things from her pockets. She is very resourceful.”
Fawn blinked. She did not seem to know what to say to that.
“I will tell Briar not to cause any trouble,” Zax added. “She is very nice. And she always fixes things in the end.”
“I think meeting my sisters-in-law will be interesting,” Fawn said. “What are Skullstalker weddings like?”
“It depends,” Zax said. “Slate and Ruby have theirs privately. Wick and Briar usually invite people, especially after they met me. Oh, I have not told you about Vale. He is new to me and only met his wife recently. I do not know if they had a wedding.”
“But what happens at these weddings? Is there food, dancing, speeches?”
“There is food,” Zax agreed. “And drinking. And kissing. And much talking. Sometimes they mentioned dancing, but then usually something would happen, and we would go on another adventure.”
“So many adventures,” Fawn said. “The life of a Skullstalker’s wife sounds exciting.”
“I think that is just Briar,” Zax admitted. “Ruby and Slate live quietly in their void, and I do not know how Vale and his wife live. What would you like—adventure or quiet?”
Fawn hummed, considering. She looked so beautiful under the starlight that Zax had to stop himself from kissing her before she could answer.
“Both,” she said, sounding surprised. “I would like to have adventures and then come home afterward for quiet.”
“That sounds perfect,” Zax said, though he would have said that no matter how she had answered. Either life sounded wonderful if he got to do it with Fawn at his side.
Fawn smiled. She brought their dancing to a stop and leaned up to kiss him. Then her eyes widened, and she yelped, stumbling back.
“My foot,” she cried. “Something had my foot!”
Zax leapt to her defense to see a tendril of shadow reaching for her boot. It was coming from a nearby path, one that got darker and darker until the darkness turned into a living, swirling mass. Zax had been so distracted by the dancing that he hadn’t noticed it.
Fawn stepped away from the clawing shadow and squinted into the dark mountain path. For a moment, Zax wondered if it was hidden from mortals. Then she gasped, and he knew she could see the strange, otherworldly shadows waiting for them at the end of the path.
“What is it?” Fawn whispered.
“We are here,” Zax replied.
Fawn eyed the darkness distrustfully. Zax did not blame her—even as a Skullstalker, his brother’s small domain made him wary.
“Do not worry,” Zax said. “I will protect you.”
Fawn hesitated. She looked down at the grasping tendril of shadow that was still trying to reach her boot. Then she reached for Zax, letting him take her in his arms.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s go meet this nameless brother of yours.”