3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three:
~Melrose~
Trouble was my middle name.
“Oh yeah? Big man, so scary! You’re just a weak scum-sucking cock who’s never been put in his place before!”
Maybe getting into a fight with the first handsy person at the festival grounds wasn’t the best idea.
“Wench, you and what fucking army?” The tall, brutish man made of muscles and a beer-stained goatee, loomed over me.
“Don’t need an army, you spineless—” He grabbed me by the neck.
Everything that followed happened in quick succession.
Yeah, getting into a fight with the first handsy person at the festival grounds wasn’t a great idea.
Keida had tried to peacefully pull me away.
Father instilled in me that it was better to avoid confrontation than to seek it.
Too bad I never learned that lesson. This was a bad idea.
Keida dropped the wiggling fool back onto his feet with a snarled warning. My heart skipped a beat and cheeks flushed. Oh no.
She swung with her right fist. Crunch!
No! No, definitely a bad idea.
I gasped, hands flinging to cover my face as Keida broke the man’s nose.
Her gloves drove him down into the dirt.
I swallowed a shiver to hear all the little bones in his face crack.
He fell to the ground, crying out and cupping his face.
Keida shook off her hands, red in the face with slits for eyes on him.
Her growl echoed in the empty halls of my ears, “And next time, when I tell you to keep your hands to yourself? Listen.”
This is what papa means that sometimes my mouth scribes spells my hands can’t cast. I have a problem. Had a problem.
Approximately an hour ago, Keida led us from the gardens to the festival grounds.
It was amazing. We rode horses through their little jumping tournament, we played a rousing game of snowballs until I shivered, then Keida took us to the stands to warm up where we sipped apple cider.
I tasted its tangy sweetness on my tongue still.
Then I heard the band strike up music and rushed Keida out into the courtyard where a crowd formed.
I was about to tell her she won, she could in fact have fun for a grumpy cleric, when a man twice my size slithered up behind me.
Keida saw him first, but I felt him grind his dirty trousers against me.
While I don’t mind men, and every once in a while I get a hankering for a bad idea…
they’re not my preference. Besides, I was at that festival with Keida.
The only person I wanted to press up against me tried to tug me away from him.
So maybe I got a little mouthy. I whipped around with the audacity of the daughter of a powerful man and told the handsy ruffian exactly where he could shove it.
Then he put his hands on me and frost ran up his arm. All his clothes turned into an icy stone as Keida put herself between us. It was so incredibly attractive until she socked him.
“Keida!” I barked.
“What!” she roared right back. The fool on the ground said something but I didn’t catch it. The sound of my heart racing filled my ears and drowned out the world. Keida cocked back her fist, the man squealing like a pig in her hands.
“Keida! Stop! You already broke his nose!” I pointed out the obvious but was helpless to do anything else. My mouth moved of its own accord. “I’m not going to stand here and watch you break his face in.”
“You’re more than welcome to sit if you like,” she huffed shortly before she spun the man the last few inches needed until he was face first in the dirt.
I squeaked, hands rushing to cover my face.
Only to have my hands forced down to my sides, Keida’s face incredibly close to mine.
“But you are going to watch. This is your mess I’m cleaning up. ”
“I didn’t ask you to—” The scrunch of Keida’s nose made me halt my complaints. It is my mess. In the heat of the moment, I ran my mouth. Again. I whispered, “I just wanted him to back off.”
“So, insulting his pride was the way to do that? Come on, Trouble, you’ve done enough damage and people will start to talk.
” She snatched me by the arm, dragging me away from the huddled crowd.
Between people jumping out of the way of us and the light whispering, I felt my pride go up in smoke.
My cheeks were scorched and I shrank internally as Keida shoved me under a cobble stone bridge, headed back to the cathedral.
So much for fun. She was doing so well too!
Come on, Trouble. I stopped in my tracks as she situated the cloak still wrapped around my shoulders. She dusted snow off me with sharp swats of her hand. The words tumbled out of a dry throat, “Trouble?”
“Yes, trouble.” She shook her head, letting all that loose, platinum hair flop left and right.
I didn’t realize until then that frost crept out of her scalp and formed a tiny crown of stalagmites in her hair.
My hands moved of their own accord, the intrusive thought winning, and touched one.
It sizzled instantly under my fingertip and melted.
Keida swiped the water dripping down her face, then my hand out of her way. “Quit that.”
“What is that?” I breathed.
“A defense mechanism. Something you do not seem to have equipped,” she hissed as she tightened the cloak around me like it might choke me. “I concede. I am not fun. Let us return to the cathedral where you’re safe.”
I couldn’t stop the eyeroll even if she were holding me at wand point. It came from deep in my soul. Keida stared through me into the pits of my brattish being. With a pout, I muttered, “I have a defense mechanism.”
“Sarcasm does not count, Melrose St. Augustine.”
Was it wrong to shiver at the way she said my name?
My breath formed a hazy white cloud in front of my face.
Cold prickles ran up my arms and down my back as her hands lingered on my bicep.
Even through heavy wool and two layers of silk separating us, I could feel the bite of her magic against my skin.
My nipples ached suddenly as I imagined her brushing her fingers like feathers across my bare skin.
I returned to a fantasy in my head a few times a month where Keida eventually gave into my whims and pinned me to one of the altars in the cathedral.
I dreamed I could see the moon through the stained-glass window and there was no other light but candles as she touched every inch of me.
In that moment, staring up into her frosty gaze, I replayed the fantasy over and over.
It hurt to breathe until her hands slipped away.
“Let’s go, Trouble,” she murmured.
“Am I really that much trouble?” I arched an inquisitive brow as she pivoted from me.
She stormed further away, forcing me to jog to catch up.
I snatched her sleeve and tugged. Touch me again!
My body begged for her to handle me again, to tug at my clothes and throw me into a wall.
Kiss me! And yet, instead, I was picking a fight.
“What do you care if I get into trouble?”
Keida pushed aside the dangling branches of the Elder Mother Tree, a weeping willow that lived within the castle since before the walls went up.
Its roots went so deep, they had to build around it.
There was a myth that when the Elder Mother Tree bloomed, if a flower fell on a person’s head, they would soon have another addition to their family.
I’ll never forgive it for all the flowers it drops on my head and not once have I gotten anything out of it.
Keida’s pushed aside more branches with one gloved hand as the other motioned for me to lead the way. Her face was pinched in fury. “Because you are in my care for the afternoon—”
I scoffed, “Oh please!”
Stomping through the branches, I weaved toward its thick trunk instead of following the path back out toward the kingdom streets. Keida’s frustrated snarl filled my belly with angry moths. Stop playing with fire, Melrose St. Augustine.
“I am entrusted with your safety!” Keida followed me under the dancing willow tree branches. A stiff, cold breeze made all them sway. Tinkling bells of glass wind charms, all with special holes to play music with every puff of air, swirled around us. I spun slowly in time to its ethereal sound.
“You’re entrusted with the safety of the order. I am simply entertaining you for the afternoon, Keida, so the hierophant can have peace and quiet before the festival. You think too highly of me. I am simply just another girl picking a fight with a stupid man.”
Keida stopped me, grabbing onto the only piece of me she could touch.
My hand. My heart skipped a beat, eyes widening as she dragged me away from the branches and back toward the thick, gnarled roots of the tree.
The bark was a dark chestnut, almost black during winter, and the branches were nothing but obsidian strings.
Thick and strong from years of bracing the bitter winter with pretty trinkets to keep it company until its leaves and flowers came back in the spring.
“You are the daughter of the Hierophant Rex of the Order of Avaris, you—”
Not this again.
“Yes, yes, papa is a very important man, and I should think twice about besmirching his name.” I shook my head.
It’s always this. Leonardo, the Hierophant Rex, was an important man.
Every tutor I grew up with, every lesson I was reprimanded with, every councilor’s sneer was about how important he was, revolved around it.
It’s never me they worry about. They asked why I misbehaved.
They berated me for liking dresses and jewels.
They mocked me for not choosing to marry.
“What? No—I mean, yes, I would encourage you to think twice before putting a bad reputation attached to your father’s name. But what I was saying, Melrose, before you interrupted me, another bad habit you have—”
“Just spit it out, Keida. I am in no mood for your lectures.” I tried to rip my hand out of hers. All it did was show how much stronger Keida was than I. Her grip barely adjusted even though I tugged hard. I furrowed my eyebrows in shock.
“—Is that you are both too valuable to any perceivable enemy of our Order and priceless to us. You cannot continue to act like you are not in danger or within harms reach. You are! You are too important to keep flirting with disaster and other such foolish activities.”
She tugged me instead and I stumbled into her chest. My hooves scuffed along the roots of the tree. Keida grabbed my chin before it could hit her collar and forced my head up in quick succession. I stared up into her piercing eyes, my thighs clenching and knees knocking together.
“Other such foolish activities?” The words fell out of my mouth like she’d squeezed them out of my lungs.
Her eyes softened, studying my face from top to bottom.
I was warm, pliable dough in her hands. When her blue orbs landed on my lips and lingered, I moved.
Sinking into her touch, my hands took hold of that rough frock of hers and pulled her flesh up against me.
Her cloak fell off my shoulders, the clasp giving up with a tiny click in my ear.
Cold air rushed up and under my skirt and bit into my goosebump riddled flesh as the heavy wool dropped to the ground beneath us. Our lips met, and I tasted magic.
Lightning shot through my veins. A dreamy mewl echoed in my throat as her lips tangled with mine.
It was so tender and innocent, I thought maybe I’d caught her cheek.
Then that hand on my chin snaked into my hair and collected it in a fist. Keida tugged lightly and my body arched into hers more.
A hand was at my waist for only a moment until it slid into place within the small of my back.
Our kiss grew intense. Her teeth scraped my bottom lip and stars exploded behind my eyelids.
That hand at the small of my back slithered further down, cupping my backside.
She grabbed me and dragged me against her ferociously.
I moaned into her mouth, letting her tongue in.
And, goddess bless it, did her tongue want to tango with mine.
She explored my mouth while I desperately tried to keep up.
The fingers in my hair left me shivering, nipples once again hard as diamonds.
I grabbed onto her hips and that’s when she tensed up.
Keida ripped her mouth from mine, her back hitting the tree with a heavy thump. She sucked in a ragged breath, “We shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t what?” I croaked, feeling my heart shivering in fear.
Keida opened her mouth to speak but a shriek of delight filled the air, cutting her off.
The sound was followed by a gaggle of ladies chasing after two small kittens with croissants in their mouths.
The entire cacophony rushed past us. One of the women, Daphne Oliphante, my best friend, squealed as she grabbed me by the arm.
“Melrose! Quick! Help us! Save the babies!”
I never did hear what we shouldn’t be doing.