Chapter Thirty-six
THEA
W ilder had wrought so much pleasure upon her that Thea thought she might die.
There was a delicious wickedness to her Warsword when he was completely unleashed, uninhibited.
The things he could do with his fingers, his mouth, his cock…
Yet despite the countless climaxes he’d wrung from her trembling body, despite the steady rise and fall of his broad chest beside her, Thea couldn’t sleep.
Whether it was the return of her magic or the thoughts of the war to come keeping her awake, she didn’t know. But she felt restless, far more alert than she had any right to, and her skin was crawling, like she needed to move.
For a while, she watched Wilder sleep in the golden glow of the dying fire.
She studied the lines of his beautiful naked body, the hard muscle sculpted by years of training and fighting, the scars he wore like badges of honour…
His fierce expression was softened in sleep, a side of him she knew not many were lucky enough to witness.
When she had memorised every scar, every freckle, every line that graced his sun-kissed skin, Thea slipped from the bed, unable to quell the unrest within, her feet practically itching to move.
She dressed in silence, congratulating herself that she was still stealthy enough to get ready without disturbing the mighty warrior in her bed. As she left the room, closing the door with a quiet click behind her, the restlessness in her body eased, ever so slightly.
Nervous energy , she told herself, making her way downstairs.
It must have been the very early hours of the morning.
In the tavern, the chairs and stools were placed upside down on the tables, the notes of lutes and fiddles long gone.
Folding her arms over her chest against the faint chill of the open space, Thea wove between the furniture, hearing the faint tinkle of glasses beyond.
In the heart of the tavern, a fire still crackled in the main hearth, and she found a smaller group gathered around the bar, talking softly with one another. Anya, Dratos and Marise sat on stools, while Everard stood behind the bar, drying tankards with a rag.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Anya asked, pulling out a stool for her.
Thea shook her head. ‘You?’
‘Don’t sleep much in general,’ Anya replied.
Thea sat down, though she couldn’t sit still completely, her knee bouncing beneath the bar.
Marise pushed three bottles towards her. ‘What will it be?’
Thea passed a hand over her face. ‘There isn’t any tea, by chance?’
Everard laughed. ‘I’ve never known someone to come to the Singing Hare and ask for tea…’
‘First time for everything,’ Dratos drawled.
Everard shrugged. ‘Indeed.’
‘I could use a cup myself,’ Anya declared. ‘Got any peppermint?’
Thea did a double take.
‘What?’ Anya asked with a frown.
Thea suppressed a smile, watching Everard go about setting the pot of water over the stove. ‘Make it two, please,’ she said.
Anya gave her a strange look, before her gaze dropped to the fate stone that had slipped from the folds of Thea’s shirt.
‘You gonna ask me about it?’ Thea prompted her, taking the piece of jade between her fingers and rubbing her thumb along its edges.
‘I don’t think I want to… Those things never did anyone any good.’ Anya turned back to Dratos. ‘When are you gonna ease up on Gus, eh?’
Glad for the change of subject, Thea tucked her fate stone away and wrung her hands, still feeling that creeping sensation along her skin, her stomach fluttering strangely.
Dratos gave a groan. ‘When are you gonna ease up on me? ’ he griped. ‘I’ve been watching over that kid since he was trying to eat mud. And after what he said to Adrienne… He deserves a fucking hiding.’
‘She still upset?’ Anya asked, her voice softening.
‘She’ll be fine.’
‘Not what I asked.’
Dratos rolled his eyes and gave Thea a pitying look. ‘You’ll never be free of this shit now.’
Thea stopped her hand from going to her fate stone again. Her limited time left in the midrealms flashed before her, each day, each month passing by like a grain through an hourglass.
She said none of that. Instead, she told the shadow-touched ranger, ‘It doesn’t seem so bad. A bunch of people caring about one another.’
He scoffed. ‘You’ll be singing a different tune after a few more weeks with this lot.’
Thea laughed, and gratefully accepted the steaming mug of peppermint tea Everard set down before her. ‘What happened to Cal and Kipp?’ she asked Marise and the tavern owner, whom she’d last seen with her friends.
‘Drunk and Drunker? Ah, they left our party a while after midnight in search of finer company,’ Marise told her. ‘I believe one had more luck than the other, if you catch my meaning.’
Thea snorted. ‘Kipp does seem to have a surprising effect on women.’
Everard snorted. ‘Not him, the other. The Flaming Arrow, or so their countless toasts called him.’
Thea blinked. ‘Cal?’
‘That’s the one. The archer. Saw him sneaking off with a lass a few hours ago.’
A laugh bubbled out of Thea, and she wished she could have seen the look on Kipp’s face as Cal at long last won the girl. She shook her head with a grin. ‘Good for him.’
‘He had the right idea,’ Dratos complained. ‘I made the mistake of choosing to drink with you sorry lot.’
Anya made a choking noise, tea slopping over the side of her cup. ‘Like that was a choice. I didn’t see any women lining up to —’
Dratos spread his wings in a flash of red. ‘Didn’t think you wanted me to show the good people of the Singing Hare these beauties.’
‘When’s that ever stopped you?’
Thea sipped her tea, watching the verbal sparring match with amusement.
But no matter how entertained she felt, the strange sensation within was still bothering her, her feet still kicking beneath the stool.
Was she so unfamiliar with her own magic now that it made her want to crawl out of her own skin?
Thea didn’t know how many minutes or hours she passed sitting at the bar. She must have retreated into herself for a moment, because when she refocused on her companions, they were in a heated debate about who should escort the alchemists to Naarva, should they agree to it.
‘How did your talk with Wren go?’ Thea asked Anya, suddenly remembering her younger sister’s red-rimmed eyes and how the Bear Slayer had swept her away.
Anya stiffened. ‘As well as could be expected.’
‘You upset her,’ Thea ventured.
‘My life upset her,’ Anya corrected. ‘It was no easy thing to see, as you know. No less an easy thing to show.’
Thea bowed her head, recalling the horrifying details the Daughter of Darkness had shared with her only days ago. ‘She needs time…’
‘Time we do not have,’ Anya said. ‘But I spoke with the Master Alchemist… She helped one of our own long ago, or tried to, in any case. She knows a lot about the Veil, about its make-up, its strengths and weaknesses. She might see reason.’
‘And if she doesn’t?’
Dratos looked as though he were about to say something brash, but his eyes widened at someone’s approach and he shut his mouth.
A warm, muscular arm banded around Thea’s chest from behind, a familiar scent engulfing her senses.
‘Don’t like waking up with you not in my bed,’ Wilder’s gruff voice rumbled against her hair.
Thea twisted in her seat, finding him deliciously dishevelled, his dark hair ruffled, his shirt only half buttoned, as though he’d felt her absence and come searching without fully waking.
But then his mouth closed over hers, capturing her lips in a deep, decadent kiss. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, in front of everyone.
Someone whistled loudly. ‘Wasn’t long ago you were trying to kill the bastard,’ Dratos said as they broke apart. ‘My, how the tides of fate have turned…’
Anya cleared her throat on the stool beside Thea. ‘The tides of fate are as they always intended,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m going to wake the others. It’s nearly dawn.’
Dratos groaned and rested his head on the counter, covering his eyes, while Marise and Everard topped up their glasses with an amber liquid and toasted to the drinkers and thinkers of the midrealms for the fiftieth time.
Thea didn’t know how the pair were still standing.
They could certainly give Kipp a run for his coin.
With his arm still around her, Wilder reached for her mug, taking a sip of the lukewarm tea and making a face. ‘Don’t know how you drink this grass water.’
Thea frowned. ‘What are you talking about? You drink it all the time.’
Wilder huffed a laugh. ‘Never.’
‘But you always have it in your saddlebag. You had it at the cabin.’
He rested his chin on her shoulder and pushed the mug away. ‘Who’d you think it was for?’ He kissed her neck gently. ‘You told me on our first journey together that it was your favourite. I only had it for medicinal purposes. I kept getting it because of you. I hate the stuff.’
Warmth bloomed in Thea at the thought of her burly Warsword buying peppermint tea for her and her alone.
The sweet, quiet moment was interrupted all too soon with the arrival of almost everyone from the meeting last night, all of them looking slightly worse for wear. Though Thea noted that Cal wore a sheepishly pleased expression on his tired face.
The noise was instant, and suddenly they were surrounded by everyone helping themselves to drinks over the bar. Apparently after Thea and Wilder had left, a serve-yourself mentality had been adopted by the group.
‘We should have stayed in bed,’ Wilder grumbled, reluctantly releasing her and finding his own stool to perch on. Thea was surprised the seat could accommodate the sheer size of him.
‘Should we move to the private room?’ Adrienne’s voice sounded from the other side of the bar. She was tying her thick blonde hair up and out of her face, dark circles shadowing her eyes.
Everard waved her off. ‘No need. The Singing Hare doesn’t open to the public until noon.’
‘Is there food?’ Kipp said, stumbling in, his auburn hair like a bird’s nest atop his head.