Chapter 10
The next day, Lavellin insists on a bath and Torver is glad when it’s out of the room, taking its flowery scent with it and leaving behind only a faint musk. He wants to be alone.
Because when his eyes had feathered open that morning, his first awareness had been the clenching heat in the pit of his belly.
He gets like this—sensitive. And he hates the feeling, because it’s a petulant little thing, his body. He doesn’t deserve what it craves. Even if it is successfully distracting him from the threat of Rheged and the Beast.
Even so, the feeling is strong this morning.
His skin prickles with aching need that both embarrasses him and stokes him with the anxiety that usually accompanies sex.
On the rare occasions he gives in to his thrumming nerves, when he takes someone home, he does it only in the way he feels he deserves.
Rough hands at his throat, bruises in the shape of bites, a trembling sense of unease.
He pushes the thoughts away, ignoring the tightness of the trousers constraining him. He has other things to contend with.
What he needs is a distraction from his distraction.
While he waits for Lavellin to return, he pulls one of the sanctioned romance novels from the shelves around the bed and flicks through the descriptions of bobbing throats and men corded with muscle. But the words struggle to hold his interest for long.
He runs a hand over his prickly jaw and tries to force concentration, fighting his way through a chapter. But he feels strange and aware of himself. Like he can’t quite breathe. Each beat of his heart pulses behind his ribs and behind the fastenings of his trousers.
So when movement catches his eye—it makes him flinch.
Lavellin.
Parading back into the room wearing nothing but a towel, clothes under its arm, drops of water studding its hard body like jewels.
Torver throws his book down in despair.
“Will you put some fucking clothes on?” He makes a show of splaying his hand, blocking the tall fae from his view; the scandalous taper of its waist, its long hair, wet and dripping.
This morning, of all mornings.
“Oh you love it,” Lavellin winks at him and Torver growls because he decidedly does not.
“You didn’t take long,” he grumbles, admiring the wall with fierce intent. Is he really that depraved? He’ll need to have a harsh word with himself. In the bathroom, maybe. Into the sink.
“Of course not,” Lavellin says.
Torver can see from the corner of his eye that it has now removed the towel from its waist and is using the thing to dry its hair. He gnaws at his lip, everything in him pulsing at the sight. Even despite the partially-healed bites that cover it, so perverted is he this morning.
“There’s no time to relax, is there? Can’t spend all day in the bath,” Lavellin continues, unbothered by his affliction. “I only wanted to get clean. It’s better to smell fresh—I woke up entirely too floral.”
Torver’s concentration on the wall deepens as it palms its chest with the towel, everything else entirely bare.
“I gave you two towels, you know,” he grinds out manfully.
“I know, sweet thing,” Lavellin says with a smirk in its voice and Torver suspects it may be deliberately winding him up. Like they’re friends, or—
“Don’t call me that.”
It chuckles.
He dares to turn his head and is relieved to see it’s put on one of Bassen’s long skirts—part of an outfit he’d cobbled together for their guest. It holds the shirt he’d donated loosely in one hand, looks down at him so that its wet hair is plastered across its chest.
Torver watches a droplet of moisture trail from the centre of its collarbones down to its navel, and for the briefest of seconds, its scorching eyes are a question.
It pulls the shirt over its head.
“I’m surprised you want to sit in that bed,” it tells him in a languid drawl. “The smell must be driving you mad.”
Torver quirks his brows, not sure what it’s trying to say. He sits up and leans towards the bookcase beside the bed, pushing his book back into its slot.
“Give me some credit, Lav,” he says. “You really think your flowery scent in my bed is enough to bug me? I’ve lived in the Wen for years. Trust me, I’ve smelled worse than you.”
Lavellin joins him on the bed, sitting a respectful distance away. It shrugs.
“I assumed the pheromones would be making you jittery,” it says plainly, leaning back into the sheets. Torver bristles, suddenly aware of the bed under him.
“What?”
Lavellin shrugs coyly.
“I had a…dream last night, shall we say, and it caused my body to generate the scent.”
Torver’s jaw clenches.
“Like most things about me,” it continues, “it’s probably a little more powerful than you’re used to. In Rheged, it’s said that fae pheromones could lure a human to their doom.”
Torver’s wrist tingles, the ghost of the girl from the tavern thumbing circles on his skin. The nervous tension in the air.
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” he lies, standing suddenly and moving across the room.
Lavellin’s head tilts.
“You’re clearly not as powerful as you think you are,” Torver continues, determined that it doesn’t get to be smug about this. It’s a smell. Yes, a smell that is apparently the reason for his temporary insanity, but a smell nonetheless.
Annoyingly, Lavellin looks pleased with this response.
“The human sense of smell must be weaker than I anticipated,” it muses. “Though, you’re probably still getting the full effects. My apologies if you’re feeling strange—we could open the window or change the sheets. It will be better now that I've had a wash.”
It takes a second for Torver to realise that it’s being genuine.
“I—uh, thank you,” he says. “Surprisingly considerate of you.”
“Surprisingly?” Lavellin’s voice has an edge of hurt to it. It tucks a loose strand of hair behind its pointed ear.
When Torver blinks he is taken back to the Dodwood—a flash of the forest floor beneath him and Lavellin spread over him, how it didn’t pause to think before putting its own body between him and the gnashing teeth. How it had held his hand and numbed his pain.
“Yeah, I—guess not,” Torver says, disarmed. “You’re such a prick, I forget that you’re nice.”
Lavellin responds with a healthy huff and a roll of its eyes.
“Humans,” it laments.
“Fae,” Torver laments back. “Coming over here, getting their sex musk all over our nice beds. Somebody ought to put up some kind of border.”
It laughs hollowly and looks out of the window, at the mountains. Meanwhile, Torver readies himself to blot this experience from his memory.
But the peace is shattered when Bassen barrels into the room.
The door squeals like a scream and Bassen, breathing hard, has the ruddy crust of an overnight nosebleed above her lip.
“We—” she breathes, dark eyes wide. “We need to go.”
Bassen had been looking out of the window when she’d spotted the Enforcers.
Led by Conise, they appeared in front of the house from side-streets and ginnels, sweating with terror in the morning light.
The youngest of them, a recruit in chainmail, not yet promoted to the lowest class of plate armour, had been receiving a hushed pep talk from an Enforcer in bronze.
Conise had a long scroll tucked under her arm as she quietly directed her colleagues into position.
Bassen explains it quickly and vividly, the image evidently seared into her. She’s as pale as a ghost.
The house will soon be surrounded and Bassen will have no choice but to let the house be searched, an unexecuted Torver and their forbidden fae guest discovered—or she will have to kill their way out.
There’s no time to wonder what Conise knows, what she’s seen.
They scramble towards the back door, and Torver grabs a pack as he goes, filling it roughly with what he can grab—a skin of water, a pouch of Bassen’s yan.
They scurry through the house and Lavellin’s mass of fiery hair, turned brown by the water clinging to it, leaves a dark patch on the headcloth it had managed to snatch.
Bassen takes her green cloak from the coat hook, thrusting Torver’s new cloak and his leather boots at him.
In his hurry, he puts the boots on the wrong feet and the sides of his toes and the arch of each foot are rubbed painfully as they exit the back door.
A few lonely clouds obscure the sun so that it casts a dull light over them.
They vault, one after the other, over the low wall of the back garden, ending up in a winding street that will take them away from the Rhodfa, the Citadel, and towards a stretch of the river.
The shade of trees and walls offer some cover but it doesn’t feel like enough. Torver wishes there were gods to pray to but there haven’t been for centuries, so he takes off his cloak and drapes it over Lavellin, concealing its face with the hood. His thoughts race.
Had Conise’s visit been a ruse? Did she only come to see how cooperative Bassen would be when confronted?
Does she know, somehow, about Lavellin? Why else would they search Bassen’s home?
Her magic makes her above the law—or so he thought.
The Enforcers that are probably now in their house must be powerful to even think about coming after her.
They must have strength and firemancy and all sorts to even consider that they could take her on and this is all his fault and—
“There!” Bassen stops him suddenly with a hand to his arm, pointing furiously at a collection of barrels on the riverside.
“We can’t hide inside barrels!” His voice is practically a squeal and his racing pulse doesn’t slow when she runs towards the wooden vessels regardless of his protests.
To his surprise, she jogs right past them—climbing over the low fence behind the stacked casks.
“There’s a boat down here!” She hisses weakly, disappearing down the sloped riverbank. Torver and Lavellin catch up in time to see her skid on her heels to the lapping edge of the blue-green water.