Chapter 5
JESSAMINE
I couldn’t sleep. Wolf had slipped off into the night after we’d found enough kindling and wood to keep the fire going. Redvyr said that he often left at night. The last time he did, he’d come home with me draped over his back.
Redvyr added, “I hope he doesn’t drag any more helpless females into camp. One is enough.”
I wasn’t annoyed by his description of me being helpless. Throughout our brief acquaintance, I realized that grouchy was his normal temperament. Besides, he was right. I was helpless. I couldn’t make it out here alone. I needed him.
Funny though, I hadn’t remembered climbing onto a wild Meer-wolf the night before. I’d fallen unconscious with those silver eyes watching me. He’d somehow managed to scoop me up, or I’d subconsciously climbed on and clung to him. Either way, the wolf had saved my life. As had Redvyr.
He slept now across the fire from me on his bed of furs. In sleep, his expression softened, his prominent brow smooth rather than pinched into a scowl, his mouth relaxed instead of sneering or mocking. He didn’t seem so ferocious as he did in the light of day.
My full bladder prodded me to empty it. Since I had no food, I’d filled my belly with water. Redvyr promised there would be plenty for me to eat once we reached his village tomorrow.
When I’d asked if I’d be allowed to stay in his village for a while, he didn’t answer me.
He’d walked away without a word. If I wasn’t permitted to stay, I worried about where I would go next.
The Mevian lord looking for his runaway bride now knew I was in Northgall territory. Would he continue to seek me out?
“Your magick is exactly what I need, princess.” He gripped my arm tight, leaning in close. The only sound other than his grating voice was the bees buzzing in our floral garden. “And you’ll do exactly as your lord and master tells you.”
I willed the memory to disappear, refusing to think about that day before I left the only home I’d ever known. A home that had given me shelter and food, but not love and affection. Most of all, not the protection or care I deserved. Not after Draydyn died, anyway.
My bladder reminded me again that I must relieve myself. Quietly, I shoved out of the furs and lifted one of the lone branches of kindling before lighting the tip as a torch.
Earlier, when Redvyr demanded we find kindling, I was sure it was a lost cause since snow covered nearly every inch of the forest. What I hadn’t realized was that Redvyr was an extremely powerful fae male, stronger than I’d imagined.
He found a fallen tree, a blanket of snow covering it.
With what seemed like little effort, he picked it up and flipped it over.
Beneath it and on the underside, there were plenty of broken, dried branches and some we were able to crack off of the trunk itself.
I’d watched him break off a branch as thick as my thigh with such ease, all I could do was stare until he’d asked if I planned to actually help him gather the kindling or simply stand there and watch him do it alone.
He was such an ornery beast, I thought as I tip-toed to the mouth of the cave and peered out.
The woodlands were so quiet, but I believed him when he said there were monsters who lived out there unseen.
Though it would be rather embarrassing, for I knew his heightened sense of smell would tell him that I urinated right outside the cave, I wasn’t going to be stupid and go any further.
Picking my way to the left of the cave opening, I leaned my makeshift torch against the outer wall of the cave. Grabbing hold of a thin tree branch from an elm growing alongside the cave, I held it for balance and pulled up my skirt with the other.
Before I could manage to relieve myself, something wrapped around my wrist. I gasped and instantly grabbed my torch, thrusting it toward whatever was holding me. The creature holding me then grabbed my other wrist, pulling me up until my feet left the ground.
With the torch still gripped in one fist, I stared in fearful awe at the creature. It was a dryad stag, a big one. His antlers, at least sixteen points, jutted out of his leafy head, his face and body an ashen green. His eyes were full black except for pin-points of red at their centers.
What I’d thought was an elm tree was in fact this frighteningly large dryad which had been semi-attached to the outer cave wall.
“A skald fae beauty,” he garbled with a creaking voice, his mouth a black pit. “Far from the waters of home.”
“Please,” I begged, willing my magick to come to life. “Let me go.”
My skin glowed with vibrant energy, bright markings of light glittering along my arms. The creature observed me with interest, those black eyes haunting and so very wrong.
“Great stag,” I said with magick in my voice, melodious and echoing. “You must put me down. You must let me go.”
While he did appear mesmerized by my voice and the ethereal glow of my skin, he wasn’t truly hearing me.
My magick wasn’t working on him. Blue claws sprouted from my fingertips.
My fangs sharpened inside my mouth. When he lifted me close so that he could peer at my face and into my eyes, I managed to barely scrape one nail upon his bark-covered shoulder.
He grunted but otherwise seemed unaffected by the poison I passed to him.
He wasn’t simply fae. He was god-touched.
An ancient one. His massive size and crown of antlers on his head told me so.
I couldn’t get my hands free to penetrate his leathery, leafy skin with my poisonous claws.
And there was certainly something terribly wrong with him.
Now that my face was so close to his, I noted black webbing underneath the pale green of his skin. A vibration of dark power radiated from the creature.
“Mighty ancient one,” my voice echoed with the power given to me by my Goddess Nemia. It also shook with the fear welling up inside me. “You will not harm me. You will let me go.”
For a moment, he seemed to be falling into my trance, his black eyes widening with awe and wonder as my skin glowed beneath my dress.
“You are more than a mouthful,” he croaked and grinned, revealing rows of sharp, black teeth, leaning his antlered head forward. “So bright. So sweet.”
He was going to eat me?
Panic took hold. I kicked out with my legs, pummeling his body with my booted feet. He grunted but held me firm.
Suddenly, there was a fierce roar and we were thrown sideways. The dryad let me go and I tumbled to the ground. Snaps and snarls and the cracking of branches was all I heard. I could barely make out the muscular figure of Redvyr wrestling with the long-limbed dryad.
They rolled toward the mouth of the cave into the halo of firelight. Redvyr snarled and opened his mouth on the dryad’s throat. A shrieking cry pierced the night followed by silence as the beast fae ripped the dryad’s head from its body with his mouth.
The beast fae stood, lifting the severed head by the antlers. With a great roar, he threw the head into the ravine far below. The crash of it landing in the brush was all that could be heard before he bent and broke the limbs from its body, tossing them over the cliff as well.
He was in a frenzy of fury, roaring as he cracked and ripped the dryad into pieces.
“Redvyr,” I called, approaching hesitantly.
He didn’t hear me, still breaking the body of the stag dryad like he might come back to life and challenge the beast fae.
“Redvyr!” I cried louder.
He snapped his head with a ferocious growl in my direction, his teeth dripping green blood.
“He’s gone,” I said, raising my hands in a disarming gesture.
Redvyr continued to growl as he crouched over what was left of the dryad, a look of feral wildness in his eyes, shining bright as the sun. His muscles were bunched, ready to pounce.
“Easy,” I soothed, intuitively knowing he couldn’t come out of this frenzy so quickly. “You’ve killed him. There is no threat.”
His lip curled up at my approach, further revealing his long, sharpened canines. He was indeed a fierce monster, but I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Something compelled me to ease his temper, his rage. After all, he’d fallen into this state to save me. Yet again, he had saved me.
“It’s alright,” I said softly, drawing so close now, I could smell the wild, masculine scent of him.
His tail lashed back and forth, his pointed ears laid back, a posture of aggression. If I was smart, I would simply cower in the cave and hide under my barga fur. But I couldn’t. Somehow, I knew he needed me.
“I’m safe now,” I assured him. “We’re both safe. The threat is gone.” Reaching out a hand toward his shoulder, fingers trembling, I added, “You’ve killed him.”
Crouched low, his shoulder was chest-high to me. When my fingertips touched the tight muscles of his shoulder, he snarled again, but he didn’t move. My own poisonous claws and fangs had retreated, but there was still a faint glow to my skin, which he was staring at keenly.
“Thank you for saving me,” I said in a soothing voice, caressing his shoulder.
He huffed a breath, his growl rumbling more into a purr rather than that menacing vibration that warned me he might bite my hand off from a moment before.
“I’m alright now. He’s gone,” I assured him again.
Redvyr dropped his head between his shoulders, still crouching over the body and making that deep purring sound as I swept my palm up his shoulder to the base of his neck and back down.
“See. All is well.”
He breathed great gulps of air until finally his breathing evened out and he was no longer snarling or purring or making any sound at all. When he lifted his head, his feral expression softened back into the beast fae I’d journeyed with all day. He stood to his full height, my hand falling away.
He turned his face toward the darkness, his face tight with anger though not the wild rage from before.
“Are you alright?”
“Go inside,” he said curtly.
I flinched. “I have to…relieve myself first.”
For now, my body was nearly aching with the need. Having nearly been killed had only worsened my situation.
“Do it now. Not out of my sight.” His voice was dark and cold.
I didn’t argue. I shuffled to the edge of the cave, making sure he didn’t watch me directly. He didn’t, keeping his gaze over the ravine.
Once I’d taken care of myself, I stood and hurried past him to my pallet of furs. When I’d curled up under the safety and warmth of my makeshift bed, I turned my face to the opening of the cave.
Redvyr settled with his back to the cave wall, his body blocking the entrance.
“Do you need a fur to keep warm?” I asked.
“Go to sleep, witch,” he told me, the coldness still in his voice.
“There was something wrong with that dryad,” I told him. “Dryads don’t attack and eat other fae. Or is that something they do here in Northgall?”
He didn’t answer my question but he did turn his face to me. In the dying embers, I saw that the rage was truly gone, though his eyes still shined with an unnatural luster.
“Go to sleep,” he said more gently than before, then turned his head back to keep watch.
I wasn’t quite sure why he was so angry. Perhaps it was normal for beast fae to launch into a savage madness in battle. My body still trembled from the entire encounter, though by some innate knowing, I wasn’t afraid of him.
My eyes blinking heavily, I fell asleep watching my guardian, his gaze on the dangers in the darkness that I couldn’t see.