Chapter 12
Wroth
“Would a human eat this?” I muttered to Marrion, poking at the pan of frying ham slices.
As a half-human, half-vampire bloodwitch, she could eat human food. Like most bloodwitches, her preferred diet was blood, but at least she had a sense of taste for what they’d like.
The ham would taste like ashes and dust to me. I examined the dark pink slice, the scorch marks, and wondered if I was in over my head.
Marrion squinted at it. “It looks good. I would eat it, if I were a human, particularly if I were a human named fel Arron.”
I huffed, slid the ham onto a tin plate, and carefully arranged several slices of toast around it. There was no fruit in our stores, nor vegetables. Fel Arron, and now that sniveling Rasmus, were living on cured meat, hard bread, and porridge.
“It’s for both of them,” I said shortly, and poured a cup of black tea, adding two lumps of sugar.
“Mm-hmm.” Marrion tipped her head back onto her bedroll, closing her eyes again. We had filled ourselves to the brim with reconstituted blood the night before; she had no interest in human food now. “Did you know, Uncle Wroth, that if you keep telling yourself that…it still doesn’t make it true?”
“I will send you straight home to your parents,” I growled, and she fell quiet, but she was smiling.
If she went through with the marriage to the crown prince of Foria, he would have his hands full for the rest of his life.
No doubt Marrion would have him dancing barefoot on hot coals for her favor the moment he laid eyes on her—as he’d damn well better.
I doubted the man was good enough for my favorite niece.
I brought the plate to the human side of the camp. Their fire had eaten itself down to coals; Rasmus was sprawled and snoring on one side of it, the sleep of a man ensconced within the safety of a camp guarded by vampires.
On the opposite side, fel Arron was curled into a tight ball in her bedroll. I crouched beside her, examining her face. It was relaxed, her dark lashes casting a shadowed fan over her cheeks, not even a line of worry between her brows.
She had kissed me, her pulse thrumming like a bird’s wings, the sweet-salt scent of her blood a cloud around me. Her lips were soft and pillowy, warm and sweet, and I thought I would give all my gold, my castle, my throne, to feel that again.
It had been a long night, my thoughts brooding over her, the temptation to lure her away from camp to some privacy where I could take more—not just a kiss, but a heavy rut, to fill her with my knot and seed.
But after what I had snarled in her face, I had not even deserved the kiss, let alone more.
I didn’t want the first face she saw upon waking to be Rasmus’s, nor did I want to acknowledge why. Perhaps because I wanted desperately to apologize for what I’d said in the grip of choking jealousy, for the blow that had clearly wounded her, and I didn’t want an audience for it.
“Awaken, fel Arron.” I laid a hand over her shoulder, squeezing gently. “You must eat.”
Her eyelids cracked, the lashes fluttering several times before she fully opened them. She squinted at me, drawing back to keep me in focus, and tugged at the chain around her neck for her spectacles.
“Wroth?” Her voice, usually as smooth and rich as syrup, was slightly hoarse, and only then did I catch the faintest whiff of salt tears.
Had she cried in her sleep? Was the terror of the place finally settling into her bones?
“It’s morning, or what passes for it,” I explained, offering her the plate and tea. “We’ll move on soon. Eat your ham before it gets cold.”
She sat up a little more eagerly, wincing as she stretched stiff limbs, and giving me one of those brilliant smiles that made something uncomfortable and unfamiliar flitter about in my stomach. “Oh, you’ll spoil me. Breakfast in bed!”
Fel Arron laid a slice of ham on the toast, took a huge bite, and as she looked up at me a hint of panic touched her eyes. She chewed slowly, stopped, and looked down at the plate, the smile falling from her face. She sipped the tea, her expression unreadable.
“I tried to arrange it pleasingly, but there’s only so much you can do without proper cutlery,” I said, embarrassed at my pathetic offering.
“No, it’s delicious,” she said haltingly. “And so thoughtful. That’s exactly how I take my tea…Wroth, I don’t want you to think that I…”
“That you what?” I stared into her eyes, picking out the amber specks I liked so much, little stars scattered in her gaze.
I very much wanted her to think about kissing again. Perhaps, next time, she would allow me to kiss her in return, if I didn’t make a damn fool of myself and freeze again.
But a tiny prickle of dread touched my heart.
She swallowed hard, her hand trembling. Gods, but she was fetching when she blushed.
“That I’m aiming above my station,” she said bluntly. “I know you belong to Esteri lai Auvray.”
The unpleasant little prickle became a cascade of icy cold despair, drowning out the warmth in my chest. A mountain settled upon my heart.
I had forgotten Esteri entirely. Fel Arron’s kiss had blown her from my mind like so much smoke.
“I…I admire you very much.” Her voice was thick and strangled. “And even if I weren’t a half-breed, I wouldn’t try to come between you and your—”
I pressed a finger to her lips, shivering at the warmth of them. “Quiet. Do not ever, for any reason, call yourself a half-breed again, do you understand?”
Eyes huge, she stared at me over my hand and nodded.
“Good. You are a person of mixed heritage, not a dog. As to the rest…” I tried to smile, but it became a harsh baring of teeth, and fel Arron flinched. I could not bring myself to say Esteri’s name aloud.
I thought of the noblemen, slavering like rabid hounds.
The flinching, milk-veined woman demanding I serve her vanity.
How the Blood Accords held me in their grip, body and soul, and that woman’s sneering father would browbeat the other noblemen, and he would get his way, his daughter on the throne whether I liked it or not, because there were no other choices.
Nobody would stand up against lai Auvray.
“As to the rest, consider it forgotten,” I finished, the mountain within me groaning and creaking, snapping my ribs under its weight. “Eat up, fel Arron. We’ll need our strength today.”
Rasmus led us back to the workers’ encampment, and pointed to one of the tunnels, indistinct from the others.
“Down this one,” he said, his finger quivering. “Oh, gods, can’t we just—”
“No,” I said, taking pleasure in the horror and despair on his face. “We see this through to the end. Your brother will answer for his crimes, lai Orros, and you for yours. Lead on.”
He had borrowed a dark wool cloak from Aleyn; he pulled it tighter about himself, looking like a lost little boy, alone in the deep dark forest.
And he was alone, the only prisoner among us; the hired men had been bound in ropes, their free will hindered by a drop of blood Marrion painted on their foreheads, and now they were the lucky ones: three knights were leading them to the surface, to be given to the custody of the watchtower wardens and delivered to the dungeons of Owlhorn.
Marrion took the tunnel first, pathfinding with the Eye, and Rasmus finally sighed and trudged after her.
Fel Arron remained at my side as we followed, silent and reserved as Talos clomped behind us. I desperately wanted to ask for her thoughts, unable to stop myself from wondering what kinds of gears were turning behind those eyes, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
She was right, after all. I was promised to another, whether I willed it or not, and nothing in this world would convince the lais of my hold to allow a half-Forian woman take the title of the Lady of the Rivers.
I needed to forget the warmth of her lips. I needed to pretend she was just another noblewoman, less than nothing to me.
Rasmus led us half a league down the sloping tunnel, right into an odd sort of antechamber, half hewn rock, half cut stone.
“The door with the sickening stone is down that hall,” he said, pointing to a tunnel entrance covered with a patinaed bronze grille.
“And this path goes down to Alvar’s dig site.
” His finger moved to a different door, one opening on another cavern.
Marrion stopped us, her arm flung out towards the bronze door. “Oh, the miasma is thick here,” she said, her voice distant. “Uncle, I do believe this stone of his is a curse-stone—a crystcore. The miasma positively radiates from it.”
“Are we still protected by the preventative alchemy?” I asked, and Marrion nodded once, but her face was taut with stress.
Fel Arron shifted at my side, eyes on the bronze grille, but she had gone deathly pale and her hand was pressed to her stomach. “Rasmus didn’t take any,” she said quietly. “We should move on. I can…feel it. The power emanating from that thing is…” She gagged, turning away from me.
Rasmus nodded emphatically, a muscle twitching under his eye as he looked at the path leading to the curse-stone. I peered beyond the grille, and there in the darkness, I thought I saw the faintest hint of pale green phosphorescence floating through the air.
The scuffling sounds of the knights echoed from the passage behind us, bringing me back to my senses.
The longer we stayed here, the more likely we were to be infected with the miasma.
It might not be visible here, but I couldn’t risk fel Arron or my niece succumbing to the effects that radiated outwards.
“Carry on, then,” I rumbled at Rasmus, and he practically threw himself down the passage to Alvar’s dig site to get away from the stone that had killed all his men.
I kept a hand hovering over fel Arron’s back, ready to catch her if she fell over from sickness, but as we left the crystcore behind she seemed to recover her equanimity.