20. Ash #2
“The bed is huge. You’re just occupying three-quarters of it!” I snapped. “You need to get over yourself. If you aren’t mature enough to just tell me what your problem is, then don’t take it out on my spine!”
“I don’t have a problem,” she shot back, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness. “But if you’re so miserable up here, you can just set up a bed on the floor. The innkeeper left plenty of thick blankets. I’m sure you’ll be wonderfully cozy next to the dust bunnies.”
“I am a guest in this room, paid for with my own coin, and I am sleeping in a bed,” I snarled, stepping closer. “I am not sleeping on the floor like a discarded boot because you’re throwing a silent tantrum like a spoiled toddler.”
“Then sleep on the edge and stop whining.”
“I was on the edge until you weaponized your elbows!”
“Maybe if you didn’t crowd my space, I wouldn’t have to defend it!” Claire bolted upright, throwing the covers off her legs, and glared up at me.
I leaned down, meeting her halfway, determined not to back an inch out of her territory.
We were inches apart. The banter died instantly.
The room was dead silent save for the sound of our ragged, heavy breathing.
We were practically breathing each other’s air, both of us heaving in absolute anger, shoulders tense and fists clenched.
I was ready to unleash a torrent of insults about her stubbornness, her pride, her ridiculous inability to cooperate.
But as I stared down into her wide, furious eyes, the words vanished from my throat.
The fire in her gaze flickered. The shadows from the dying hearth caught the edges of her face, and in that split second of intense proximity, I realized I had misread.
Claire wasn’t angry.
Well, she was angry, but it was a shield. Beneath the sharp armor of her temper, her eyes were bright, glassy, and defensive. She wasn’t throwing a tantrum because she was spoiled or stubborn.
She was hurt.
The realization hit me like a splash of ice water.
My anger evaporated, leaving behind a hollow, confusing ache in my chest. Hurt?
Hurt by what? I retraced every step of our journey today, every conversation, every sharp exchange, but nothing added up.
What could I have possibly done to put that fractured, wounded look in her eyes?
Before I could open my mouth to ask, Claire seemed to realize she had let the mask slip.
Her jaw tightened. Without a single word, she abruptly settled back down onto the mattress, turning her back to me and pulling the quilts all the way up to her chin.
She retreated into her shell, pulling the walls back up around herself so fast it made my head spin.
I stood frozen by the side of the bed, the silence in the room now feeling entirely different. It wasn’t hostile anymore; it was heavy with unsaid things.
Slowly, cautiously, I climbed back onto the mattress. I kept to my side this time, expecting another sharp elbow or a scathing remark. But Claire lay perfectly still, a quiet, rigid silhouette beneath the blankets.
I stared into the darkness of the ceiling, my mind racing in a hundred different directions. The ridiculousness of the situation was entirely gone, replaced by a frustrating, lingering riddle.
What the hell had I done to hurt her?
The early morning light was a faint, watery gray when my eyes drifted open. The room was freezing, the fire in the hearth having long since died down to a bed of gray ash, but I was completely warm.
Too warm.
As my mind cleared the fog of sleep, I froze.
Sometime during the night, the unspoken border we had drawn down the center of the mattress had utterly collapsed.
I wasn’t on my sliver of the bed anymore.
Instead, I was lying squarely in the middle, my front pressed loosely against Claire’s back.
One of my arms was draped over her waist, the heavy quilt mapping the curve of her hip, while my chest rested against her shoulder blades.
We fit together like two pieces of a puzzle I hadn’t known we were assembling.
My breath caught in my throat. I should have scrambled out of the bed, blamed the cold, and put a continent’s worth of distance between us.
But I didn’t move.
Claire was still asleep, her breathing slow and even.
Shifted sideways against the pillow, her face was turned just enough toward me that I could see her clearly.
The fierce, stubborn woman who had knocked me onto the floorboards last night was gone, replaced by a quiet softness that made my chest ache.
I couldn’t help but look. My eyes traced the delicate line of her jaw, the soft curve of her cheek, and the impossibly thick eyelashes that cast long, feathered shadows against her skin.
Her hair was a beautiful, chaotic mess across the white pillowcase, a few stray strands catching the weak morning light.
Then, my gaze drifted down to her lips.
They were parted slightly, moving with the soft, rhythmic hush of her breath.
A sudden, fierce ache flared in the center of my chest—a terrifying urge that had nothing to do with the cold or the proximity.
I wanted to lean down. I wanted nothing more than to taste those lips, to find out if they were as impossibly soft as they looked, to melt the icy distance she had built between us with a single touch.
The desire was so sharp, so overwhelming, it nearly made me dizzy.
What are you doing?
The thought slammed into my brain like a physical blow. I snapped out of it, a cold jolt of adrenaline shattering the haze of the moment. I pulled my arm back as if the quilt had suddenly caught fire, carefully sliding my weight off the mattress.
Claire stirred, letting out a soft, discontented murmur, but she merely rolled into the warmth I had just vacated, curling tighter into herself.
I swallowed hard, my heart hammering against my ribs as I grabbed my shawl and walked over to the small glass window.
Across the horizon, the sun was just beginning to break, spilling a thin ribbon of gold and violet over the distant, jagged peaks of the mountains.
The world outside was quiet, vast, and unforgiving.
We still had a week and a half of traveling left together. Ten more days confined to the road. I closed my eyes, letting the chill of the glass seep into my forehead, wondering how on earth I was going to survive the rest of the journey without losing my sanity.
After breakfast the next morning, I shut the door behind us. The soft click echoed louder than it should have, like we were being sealed in.
Or a death knell.
The room wasn’t cold but it filled with the kind of chill that didn’t come from stone walls or drafty windows, but from the way Claire stood there, rigid and distant, like she’d wrapped herself in an impenetrable cloak.
There was a knot in my throat. I’d stood toe-to-toe with men twice my size, cut through beasts that could have torn me apart, walked into fights knowing I might not walk out—
Yet this had my pulse ticking just a little too fast.
Wow.
“Alright,” I said at last, leaning back against the door. “What’s going on?”
Claire didn’t answer right away. She wandered to the bed instead, smoothing out the wrinkles in the sheets with careful, absent strokes.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” I said flatly. “You didn’t say a word all day yesterday. I’m not blind; you wear your emotions all over your face. You’re upset. So, say it.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.”
That got her attention. “Why does it matter to you?”
Because—
The answer hit fast. Immediate. And I had no idea what to do with it. It sat in my chest, heavy and uninvited, an answer I couldn’t quite voice but couldn’t ignore either. I pushed it down. I straightened, crossing my arms like that might anchor me back into familiarity.
“Why travel when we’re huffing and puffing at each other?” I countered instead, keeping my tone light, detached. “We still have a long way to go, so we might as well be civil.”
Claire’s expression shifted. “Right. Because this is a job to you.”
“Well, yes.”
“A job,” she repeated, quieter now, “and nothing more.”
Her tone pulled at me, but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know how to respond to it. So I just watched her. And when she held my gaze a moment longer like she was waiting for something, I felt that same strange pressure building again in my chest.
Then she looked away, seeming more disappointed.
What the hell did I say wrong?
“Never mind,” she muttered, pushing herself off the bed. “Excuse me.” She moved toward me, gesturing for me to move aside.
“Where are you going?”
“The Goat Parade.”
I stared at her. My brain stalled for a full second. “The what?”
But she was already opening the door.
“Why?” I managed, stepping aside on instinct more than anything else.
She paused in the doorway, glancing back at me like I was the ridiculous one. “Have you ever been to a Goat Parade?”
“No.”
“There you go. I’d like to experience as many things as I can before I’m married off to a duke. I imagine a duchess does not attend Goat Parades.” She hesitated. “Right?”
“That is… likely, yes.”
She nodded once, as if confirming something for herself, and then stepped out into the hall. The door swung shut behind her.
I stood there for a long moment, staring at the wood like it might explain what had just happened. Then I pushed off the door with a quiet groan.
Of course she was going to the Goat Parade. Of course I was going to have to follow her. And, apparently after all the things I’d survived, today, I’d be facing goats.