13. Renard #2
My wounds are healing unnaturally fast. They’re not completely gone, but enough that the jagged tear left by the bogunder has already pulled itself mostly closed.
I touch the smooth, pink skin of the scar carefully.
It feels strange beneath my fingertips—like no wounds I’ve recovered from, and my ancient body is a map of healed injuries.
It’s not painful beyond a dull ache, and I would swear I can already feel strength returning to the muscles beneath.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was changed, somehow.
Fabric rustles softly behind the screen, and my imagination immediately becomes my greatest enemy.
I stare firmly at the opposite wall while reminding myself I am a grown man with a lifetime of brutal experience as a knight, not some moonstruck stableboy undone by the sound of a woman removing her tunic nearby.
Unfortunately, this speech accomplishes absolutely nothing.
When Vireth emerges a few minutes later wearing a loose sleeping shift, every coherent thought leaves my body anyway.
Gods above, this temptation may be my undoing.
Her hair hangs completely loose now, pale as winter frost in the dim firelight.
Without the braids constraining it, the antlers show more clearly beneath the silver waves sweeping around them.
The sight should be alarming, or at the very least, unsettling—especially in the wake of everything we just heard in the seer’s cottage.
Instead, the only word I can settle on is beautiful, followed by a much quieter, insistent one that whispers through me, daring to be acknowledged—mine.
Vireth catches my expression and points accusingly. “There. That face again.”
“I’m not making a face,” I argue pointlessly, sounding about as juvenile as I feel.
“Yes, you are. You look as though you are losing a moral argument with yourself. If you attempt to ravish me in the night, Renard, I will stab you.”
I drag a hand down my beard. “I assure you, I have never ravished any woman who did not wish for such. I am too tired and too sore to do anything other than sleep.”
“Hmph,” she grunts. “I’m taking my dagger to bed.”
“As you wish,” I grumble. “If it will ease your fears and allow me some peace, take your sword and mine.”
“That’s not necessary,” she says airily. “I’m more lethal with a small blade, anyway.”
I chuckle at that. Gods, I like her. Not just as a companion, not just because she is beautiful, not just because she is fae, not just because I will admit that I want her. No. The strange woman has wormed her way past my defenses in such a way that even our arguing feels comfortable.
Vireth slides beneath the blankets first and turns toward the wall while I extinguish the candles beside the bed. Only the hearth light remains afterward, low and golden and soft enough to blur the room into shadow.
After washing up as best as I can with the washbasin, I settle carefully onto the mattress beside her, acutely, uncomfortably aware of every inch between us. The inn may be modest, but the bed is a decent size—clearly built for larger fae bodies. This bed should feel spacious enough.
It does not.
Vireth lies close enough that I’m near madness with the very scent of her—the rosemary soap lingering faintly in her hair beneath the ghosts of smoke and damp forest soil that always seem to cling to her.
It’s like laying in a field of herbs on a midsummer’s eve, when the bonfires have died down and all the mead has been drunk.
Longing forms a splinter beneath my skin, all the more irritating because I don’t think I’ll be able to pluck this from my flesh.
Neither of us speaks for a while, the tension pulling taught like a bowstring. Finally, she mutters into the darkness, “My head feels like someone is driving nails through my skull.”
Concern rises before caution can stop it. “How bad?”
“Well, I’m considering removing the antlers myself.”
“Given what Ursula implied about the persistent nature of this change for you, that seems deeply inadvisable.”
“Yes, well. Desperation breeds innovation, I suppose. Mayhap I will ask you to lop them off with your sword when you have a spare moment.”
I hesitate only a moment before saying quietly, “Come here.”
I’m met with silence, and then, suspicion, which is a fair response.
“Why?” she asks.
“Allow me to help.”
“…with what, exactly?”
“Starving ravens, Vireth. With your headache.”
“Oh, have you secretly become a healer in the precious few moments that we have not been together in the last several days?”
“No. But I do possess hands.”
She harrumphs, and the movement shifts the bed slightly.
“I’m afraid that explanation creates far more concerns than it resolves,” she says. “Is this your idea of facing the wall and forgoing all impropriety?”
Despite myself, I grin into the dark. “On my honor as a knight, you may trust me.”
“Is now a good time to remind you that you are a knight no longer?” she presses.
“Your observation strikes true. On my honor as a farmer, then, you may trust me.”
“You know, I find that a much more earnest profession, anyway.”
“So do I,” I admit.
She goes quiet for long enough that I assume she’ll refuse. Then, with visible reluctance, she rolls onto her back beside me.
Warm, dim firelight spills softly across her face.
The shadows beneath her eyes look darker now that she’s finally stopped fighting her exhaustion.
Loose silver strands spread across the pillow around the antlers curving through them, giving her an unearthly appearance that makes my chest ache with reluctant tenderness.
Carefully, I move closer carefully and slide one hand into her hair.
The moment my fingers find the tense hollows of her temples and the angry, overheated skin stretched and shining beneath the antlers, Vireth exhales sharply, her relief evident.
“There?” I murmur.
“Yes,” she says after a moment, voice quieter now. “Gods, yes.”
If I were set upon by a bogunder, a lythettan, and a wyreboar all at once, I still don’t think I would have the wherewithal to stop after such an exhalation.
Every muscle in my body draws as taught as a bowstring, my heart thundering and my cock straining in my breeches.
I swallow thickly—the sound thunderous in the gentle quiet.
I work slowly, carefully applying pressure at the base of the antlers where strain has gathered beneath the skin.
They feel warm beneath my fingertips, almost like they grow even now.
Vireth gradually relaxes as her discomfort starts to ease. The tightness leaves her shoulders first, then the rigid set of her jaw. Every so often she leans unconsciously into my hand before catching herself and going still again.
“You’re surprisingly good at this,” she says drowsily. “Once again, I am perplexed at the breadth of your skillset given how ignorantly you came into my world.”
I chuckle again. “Cease your insults to my honor, Lady Fae, or I might stop.”
“That would be a tragedy. This is the best I have felt in days. I might decide not to destroy the world, if this continues.”
She means it in jest, but her words summon a brief, awkward silence. There’s only the sound of the fire crackling softly behind us, and the faint scratching of Nibblebones building her den somewhere in the rafters.
“It is not my place to comment on what you’re going through, Vireth,” I hedge. “But for what it’s worth, I do not believe you will destroy the world.”
“Then you are the only one who thinks so,” she says stifling a yawn. “Not even I am certain about how this wretched fate will play out, but I doubt anyone will hold a parade or a feast day in my honor.”
Outside, fog presses against the windows while the inn settles deeper into nighttime quiet.
“The world may yet surprise you,” I say, only because my own heart seems keen on bleeding out at her despair.
Vireth opens one eye slightly. “You moved closer.”
“My arms are only so long,” I lie.
“Hmm.”
The suspicious little sound should not affect me as much as it does.
Gods, but this is dangerous. Touching her like this feels natural in ways I don’t quite understand, and no longer know how to defend against. I think suddenly of Ursula’s cottage and the ancient stories about balance correcting itself through decay.
And Arden. Always Arden now, much to my everlasting shame.
The more I think about him, the more I am enraged by his careful calm inside the barn after he’d sent a score of starving squires dressed up in armor to cart me back to the seat of usurped power.
I find myself nearly choking on resentment with the way he spoke about sacrifice with such measured certainty.
I do not regret my path to become a knight, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that those who command armies are often far too certain of the necessity of sacrifice only when it is measured in the blood of others.
The more I’ve been considering Arden, my exile, and this quest, the more I’m coming to believe he didn’t send me to Hollowmire merely to spill the blood of an ancient goddess.
I suspect his reasons are twofold: firstly, so that I might find the Blight Mother before anyone else did, and secondly—more worryingly—that sending me into Hollowmire keeps me at an even greater distance than exile.
In all likelihood, given the danger of the errand, he suspects it will remove me in a permanent fashion.
No ruler sends an old knight out on his own when he has armies at his disposal.
I have been away from the court at Valehar for too long, and I’m starting to wonder if there is much more afoot than I previously suspected.
Vireth studies my face carefully through half-lowered lashes. “You’re thinking loudly again.”
I continue working gentle circles against the base of one antler. “I was merely thinking Regent Arden knows more than he admitted.”
That gets her full attention immediately.
“The one who sent you to find a cure for the famine?”