Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
TEROLON
I woke from a contented sleep to convulsive movement and the heart-rending sound of a whimper.
Illuminated by the faint light of a single dimmed lantern, my beautiful Hazel lay in my coils just as she had when we went to sleep.
But now, only a few hours later, she’d drawn her slim knees up to her chest, her face was buried against my body, and she trembled almost violently.
Her worn nightgown had bunched up around her thighs from her restlessness. The scent of her tears seared me.
My need to comfort and protect my mate clashed with a surge of rage against the cause of her fear and pain. My fangs ached to bite and avenge her suffering, whatever or whoever might have caused it.
“No,” she moaned. Her hands twitched and flailed, and one little bare foot kicked out as if she were trying to fight or run.
Carefully, I gathered her in my arms and lay on my back with my torso raised slightly so she could huddle against my chest. As she whimpered, I drew her gown back down to cover her legs and caressed her back.
“Shh, shelshi,” I murmured, my lips against her soft hair. “You’re safe. No one can harm you now.”
Her fingers curled against my chest as if seeking an anchor, or reassurance. “Terolon?” she whispered.
“Yes, I’m here.” I covered one of her hands with mine and pressed it to my chest above my hearts so she could feel them beating. “You’re safe. Whatever plagued your dreams, it can’t touch you now—I swear it.”
Hazel let out a shaky breath, pressed her nose to my chest, and inhaled. Did my natural scents provide comfort like her sweetness soothed and settled me? I hoped so.
We lay quietly for a long time while her heart rate and breathing slowed.
Her fingertips continued to curl against my scales in an erratic rhythm as I rubbed her back with gentle circular motions and wrapped a single coil around her middle, the way I’d seen others of my kind calm their distressed mates.
“I don’t know how long it will take for me to really feel safe,” she said eventually, her voice soft.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you when you say others can’t find us here, but I don’t know if there’s ever been a time I’ve truly felt safe.
Maybe when I was very little, before I had any magic, but those memories are faint.
” Her free hand squeezed into a fist, her nails digging into her palm.
“Even here with you, I can’t quite persuade myself to feel secure. ”
“I understand,” I said. “I hope security and peace will come with time. I can’t promise no danger will ever find us, but it would have to be something mighty indeed to get past my wards and walls and me to reach you.
” I undulated my body gently so she felt the size and power of my coils around her.
“I can’t guard your dreams,” I murmured into her hair, “but I can guard you.”
She chuckled. “And a fearsome guard you are.” She caressed my scales, which made the tip of my tail vibrate and sent a pleasant thrumming sensation through my entire body. “I’m considerably less intimidating.”
“But still fierce.” I tipped her chin up so I could gaze into her eyes. “When I found you, I knew you’d fought back and wounded your attacker. I saw your strength as well as your beauty. Those who underestimate you do so at their own peril, as the male who mistreated you discovered.”
“Only one of us ended up in that ravine,” she pointed out. “Lord Vedast rode away with his friends while I lay unconscious at the mercy of anything or anyone who wandered by.”
“But you didn’t remain there,” I reminded her.
“You weren’t defeated—not at all. You emerged from that confrontation stronger than before.
The woman who stood before me in our garden this afternoon and declared she wouldn’t accept shame or condemnation anymore for her gifts is not the woman who fell into the ravine.
” I tucked loose hair behind her ear. She leaned into my touch and closed her eyes as I caressed her cheek with my thumb.
“I wish you could see yourself as I see you. You’re magnificent. ”
Her lips twitched. “Such flattery.”
“I speak only truth to you.” I drew her against my chest again and wrapped her in my arms as well as my coils. “Tell me about your dreams, shelshi. What distresses you tonight?”
Her soft exhale traveled over my scales like a caress. “I don’t want to trouble you.”
“It troubles me far more not to know,” I countered. “I don’t wish for you to have to keep such things inside when I am here to listen. Some burdens are not meant to be shouldered alone. If you needed to shift a heavy stone, wouldn’t you ask for my help to move it?”
“Perhaps,” she said with a sigh. “I see what you’re doing, you know.”
“What am I doing?”
“Being exceedingly reasonable so I can’t argue.” She huffed. “Fine.”
I rubbed her back again as she gathered her thoughts.
“My parents both passed away about eighteen lunars ago,” Hazel said finally.
“I am very sorry,” I murmured. “The sleeping sickness?”
“Yes.” She kissed my chest—a tiny press of her lips that made my hearts lose their rhythm for a moment. “It swept through our village just like all the others. I was sick too, but I recovered fairly quickly. They didn’t.”
Her tone was surprisingly matter-of-fact. Certainly her mother’s ill treatment must have made their relationship difficult, but that didn’t mean their loss hadn’t hurt her deeply. More likely she was simply used to hiding her true feelings.
“I planned to keep our market stall where we sold vegetables and continue to take in sewing to pay the rent on our home until I found somewhere new to live, but the landlord turned me out,” Hazel continued.
“I had nowhere else to go, so when three of my cousins offered to let me stay with them in return for housekeeping, I accepted the offer. They’re brothers, and their mother was my mother’s sister.
” Her shoulders sagged. “The moment I arrived at their home near Arnard, though, I became their live-in servant. They were very demanding, and sometimes they were cruel.”
I thought of her thinness and her threadbare clothes and the old bruises that hadn’t come from her confrontation in the forest. My fangs tingled, and I swallowed a hiss. “They mistreated you.”
“Yes, very much so.” Her fingers curled against my chest again.
How I loved that she reached for me when she needed comfort.
“I wanted to leave, but I had nowhere to go and no money. I had nothing I could sell to raise funds. Every bit of coin I earned from sewing, they took, until I found a way to keep a few coins here and there and hide them. It took me a year to finally save up enough to get to Coldspell and take a boat to a city and disappear.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t make it, obviously.”
Given my joy at having her in my arms, I couldn’t regret that her plans had gone awry—only that she’d encountered this Lord Vedast and suffered such grievous injuries.
I had yet to hear the full story of what had befallen Hazel in the forest, though I’d surmised most of it.
Likewise, she’d left out all but the most basic details of living with her cousins.
I suspected the full truth would chill and enrage me.
I wanted to know it all, but I was loath to push for more on either topic until she was ready to speak about such difficult matters.
For now, I would settle for helping her sleep tonight.
“And your dream?” I asked, my voice gentle.
“My cousins found me in the forest,” she said, again in that emotionless tone that hid the true depths of her pain.
“They were taking me back to their house in chains, pulling me along behind them while they rode in an…in an apple cart.” She swallowed hard and rubbed her bare wrists.
“I can still feel the iron on my arms,” she whispered.
I brought her hands to my mouth and kissed her wrists. “No irons, you see?” I said, rubbing my nose over her soft skin. “There are no manacles and no chains. You’re safe now, my shelshi. Your cousins won’t find you.” My voice hardened. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“How?” She pushed herself up and eyed me suspiciously. “What are you planning?”
Visions of her faceless cousins writhing in agony from my bites filled my head. My tail vibrated. “Nothing more than what they deserve,” I said. “I will take care of everything. You don’t need to be there.”
“Terolon.” She cupped my face. “I’m a witch with plant magic. I did all their cooking. Do you know how many times I thought about slipping something poisonous into their food?”
I studied her eyes and the darkness in those captivating blue depths. “Many times?”
“Many times,” she agreed. “But I felt the Goddess stay my hand every time until I got my reason back. If they’d died, the authorities would have suspected me immediately.
Everyone in the village knew how my cousins treated me.
They saw the bruises. They saw my clothes and how little I was allowed to eat.
My motive would have been obvious. Even if I’d had money to get away to Switftreach or Crowford, I would have been hunted until I was found.
No matter the circumstances, I doubt I would have been spared the noose. ”
She rested her forehead on my sternum. “Even on the worst days, I knew I had to trust the Goddess,” she murmured into my scales. “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you now.”
I caressed her back, feeling the bones of her spine and her ribs and remembering all the half-healed lash marks and even boot prints I’d seen while bathing and dressing her.
“Yes, but death by venomous bite could not be attributed to you,” I said hopefully.
“But it would be attributed to a serpentae, and then hunters would search the area looking for the culprit. Any of your kind might become their target.” She rubbed my arm, which was pleasantly distracting. “And if my cousins simply disappeared, I’d likely be blamed. Please, let them be.”
The thought of her name on a murder warrant or another of my kind becoming a scapegoat for my actions made me ill, but so did the prospect of doing nothing to avenge my mate’s suffering.
“These men shouldn’t go unpunished,” I said, my words edged with a hiss.
“They’re not going entirely unpunished,” she murmured.
“Oh?”
“Before I left, I cooked them one last supper and put it on the table. It’s possible I mistook one herb for another when gathering the ingredients and they may experience intense…
distress for many days as a result.” I sensed rather than saw her smile.
“I wanted to give myself extra time to get away, but also I felt I owed them some sort of torment for what they’d done to me.
And of course now they have no one to cook or clean for them either, so that’s a punishment as well. ”
I flexed my fingers, careful not to let my claws prick her delicate skin. “It’s not enough, my shelshi.”
“Maybe not,” she said softly. “Or maybe they are bitter, lonely men who are dying slowly from chasing wealth deep in a poisonous mine, and the Goddess will take them through the veil soon enough anyway. I’ll leave the matter to her.”
My fangs still ached with the need to envenomate these men. “As you wish. But if you should change your mind…”
She looked up at me, a faint smile on her lips. “Thank you for offering. No one has ever offered to help me before—not even people in the village who saw me twice a week at the market. I’m grateful.”
She reached for me, so I slid her up my chest so she could grace me with the gentlest and sweetest of kisses. “I think I’ll sleep better now,” she said.
“Good.” I rubbed her back. “Perhaps you’ll dream of beautiful gardens and autumn forests now.”
“That would be nice.” She yawned and snuggled against my chest. “Good night, Terolon.”
“Good night, my shelshi.”
She fell asleep only minutes later, but I remained awake, watching over her as if I could somehow guard her against bad dreams and worse memories. I willed her to sense not only the strength of Stosior’s wards but also how fiercely I would protect her should any threat arise.
I couldn’t change Hazel’s past—or sink my fangs into her vile cousins, no matter how viscerally I wanted to do just that—but I could do all that was within my power to ensure her future was full of happiness and love.
And I could provide a home where she could use and enjoy her magic in safety for the first time in her life.
If freedom and security were worth more to her than revenge, then I would gladly give her both.