57. Now Breathless
NOW: brEATHLESS
We’ll slit that little mute girl’s throat while she sleeps.
The words echoed in my head as I stumbled towards the camp.
I did not know what to do next, where to go.
It occurred to me that running back to wagon four hundred and twenty-three might be dangerous, might bring my would-be murderers straight to my family.
I tried to reason with myself as I stumbled through the grass along the perimeter of the camp, staying in close range of the campfires and throngs of people.
“Thank you,” I squeaked out, coming to a stop, bracing my hands on my knees, trying to breathe. “Oh my gods, thank you for that torch.”
“Robbie.”
I stood up to see Reed standing in front of me, his hand on one of the swords at his hip, his eye squinting to look over my head into the night.
“Did someone accost you? Who did this?”
“I—No one. I—” I had to cut myself off as I still struggled to breathe.
“Are you in danger? Tell me now.”
I waved him away, still inhaling.
“Why do you smell like smoke?”
“Why do you sound like smoke?” I asked, half delirious.
“What?” he asked and tore his gaze from peering into the dark to glare down at me. “Answer me. Why are you breathless and floundering on the perimeter of camp? Did someone frighten you? Yes or no. Say it.”
Despite my blood racing through my veins and my heart’s frenetic scamper in my breast, I found myself irritated. I had just evaded my own doom, and now I had to deal with him. Now I had to be bothered with the man I could not stop lusting after, but whom I did not yet entirely trust.
“I’m fine,” I spat out. “No. I am not in danger.” Perhaps I should have confessed that I was, but his insistence irked me.
“Do you—Do you have a lover?” He took a step back, his alertness decreasing for a second, and looked me over again. “Say that you have had a tryst and I will let you be,” he said, and his usual detachment had returned.
“No tryst,” I exhaled heavily, rolling my eyes, leaning into my ire. I put my hands over my heart and tried to breathe. “Why do you always—” I paused to catch my breath. “Why do you always think I am running around conducting constant seductions? It has become tiresome. You beat the same drum.”
“Robbie,” he spoke over me, his earlier concerned inflection back again. “I want an answer. Now. What are you running from?”
“I will tell you. I need a moment.” But I lied.
I was not ready to speak about what had happened.
I needed to come to terms in my mind with the fact that there was a plot, run by Father Starling, to have me killed and that a lord’s son and the captain of a large army were the two men assigned to it.
“Take your time,” he replied. Then he said, “Your hair is wet.”
“Yes, I had a bath in the river. Naked,” I added arbitrarily, another lie.
I could be honest with myself. I knew what I did.
It was simpler to be Reed’s irritable temptress than a victim of attempted murder.
I had just escaped my killers and used fire magic for the third time in my whole life, but instead of concentrating on those things, I was flirting.
I was hoping to make him adjust his jaw again.
He did. “See?” he answered me. “Constant seductions.”
I laughed, rather wildly, my fears bubbling beneath my bluster. I put my hands on my hips. “Fine! I am a seductress. You win! You already claimed victory weeks ago. Are you happy?”
“I’d be happier if I knew what transpired just now.”
“And what if I told you I did have a lover?”
That green eye, lit only by the distant campfires, looked gold in the night as he gave me a long, slow blink. In a voice a hair too paced to be called careless, he said, “Then I might ask after that man’s name. So I could congratulate him on having won such a prize as that.”
“A prize?”
“The privilege of fucking you.”
I swallowed. He had unseated me again. But again, I was tired of his constant victories.
I was finding an obscure kind of comfort in this banter, a blessed distraction from the storm of thoughts in my mind.
I had to remember that I was no untried girl.
I breached the short steps between us and put my right hand on his chest.
“You think it a privilege?” I asked.
“I think,” he answered, still paced, “you know that I think that.”
“And why would you want to congratulate my lover?” I asked, my head tipped to the side, hoping I came off as saucy and not deranged.
He angled his head towards me, lowering it and leaning his nose into the space below my ear, just as he had done in the god tree.
His salt-and-soap smell overwhelmed me. Involuntarily, I brought my other hand to his chest and leaned into him a little, my neck arching slightly, causing his nose to run over my skin.
We both gave a shallow exhale.
Then he said, “I lied. I don’t want to congratulate him. I want to—”
“Reed!”
We broke away from each other.
Evangeline was striding towards us, appearing to have just exited the camp. “I thought you had gone into town!”
“Robbie,” Reed said under his breath, eye on me but a hand raised to Evangeline.
“I’ve better eyesight than you know. And I can somewhat see in the dark.
I don’t know what I saw through the trees, but I saw something, and while I would rather not that you were entertaining another man, if it was anything else, if you were in some kind of danger, I expect you to—”
“I thought you were in town!” the lady warrior repeated, coming closer. “What’s this?” she asked, smiling, eyes darting between us. “Robbie, does he try his luck with you again?”
“I was foraging,” I proffered and stepped past her. “Have a good night, the both of you,” I said over my shoulder.
“I expect an explanation,” Reed muttered. “And soon.”