Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
Seraphina
It had been three days of burning shins and bleeding toes, and the bastard was laughing at her.
Sera realized Al was downright elated now that running had been added to their daily itinerary.
Between running every morning and spending her nights examining the map while marking potential ruins and doorways, she was going to hurl.
Bent over, forearms on knees, she was desperate to catch her breath. Snik stood beside her, whining at her discomfort, but Sera was too busy sucking down precious air to soothe him.
“You know if we were being chased, you would’ve died hours ago.” A light sheen on Alistair’s forehead had dampened his hair just enough that it stayed in a perfect dark wave when he pushed the strands back. Those blue eyes were startling in the sunlight.
“I’m fine,” she said between heaving breaths.
He smirked at her, that dimple mocking beneath the shadow of stubble. Apparently he could grow a full beard now, too, unlike the scraggly mustache he’d had in their youth. “You don’t look fine.”
“Has anyone ever told you it’s rude to comment on a witch’s looks?
” Sera plopped on the ground and held her stomach.
The dark well inside her was restless, despite the running, despite her exhaustion.
The abomination swirled, making her chest tight.
Sera couldn’t help but wonder if it was a bad omen.
Was something coming? If so, she didn’t know how to prepare.
What she wouldn’t give to feel a semblance of control.
She’d had control when she created that scourge and whipped that demon lord. It had been as natural as breathing. “Maybe it was the jerky we had for breakfast,” she offered as an excuse. Snik whined.
“Tasted fine to me.”
“Well, maybe I’m a little more sensitive than you.” Sera unwrapped her curls from a high bun, rubbing hard at her scalp.
“You’re most definitely more sensitive than me.” He held out his gloved hand. “Come on, we’re on the outskirts of Ironoak.”
It was odd how he kept his hands covered. She could understand it when they sparred, but while running? Shadow, every inch of her was sweating. She couldn’t imagine wearing gloves.
“Does that mean I get to sleep in a bed?”
“You’ll be sleeping in a bed tonight, Minnow. You’ll also need to wear that dress I bought you.”
“Never mind, I’ll sleep on the ground.”
“Oh, come on. It’s purple. I like purple.”
At least he was trying. It had been days since they’d had even a tiny spat. If anything, she had started to think he enjoyed her company.
“It’s lavender, and if you like it so much, you wear it. Purple isn’t my color.” Truth be told, the only color she liked wearing was black.
“Give me the dress,” he said.
“Can you glamour it? Make it look halfway decent?” Sera reached into her pack and threw it at him.
“Something like that.” Al threw the lavender monstrosity to his feet and stomped it into the dirt.
She’d catch flies with how far her jaw dropped.
Once the tread from his boots was visible, he picked it up and handed it to her.
“There. Now it’s purple and brown, and since you can’t glamour, we’ll have to get creative. ”
Alistair bent down, dragged his gloved hand through the soil of the forest floor, and approached her.
“No.” She backed away. “No, Al, don’t.”
He was snickering. Outright snickering, and if her palms didn’t already itch with the abomination begging to be released, she would have pummeled him.
You can’t burn him alive. He’s your only way to save Nora.
She repeated her new mantra while they trudged into the outskirts of Ironoak.
Alistair had glamoured himself well enough.
There was a dullness to his skin and reddened marks on his cheeks and under his eyes.
His beard was much longer, but he still couldn’t hide all that muscle.
“Did you really have to wipe dirt over my entire face?” Sera asked. She was sure a grain of dirt had burrowed its way into her tear duct, and rubbing was only making it worse. Also, this dress’s blind seamstress had made the sleeve so uneven that the arm kept twisting with every movement she made.
“Humans don’t have flawless skin,” he said, keeping his gaze on the city before them. She supposed she should take that as a compliment. “Try not to gag when we get to the tavern.”
Sera was already missing Snik. She hoped he was out having fun, gallivanting with the furry tree rats… or eating them. He did like to eat them. The little goblin had seemed so sad when she’d told him to go.
Sera was pulling at the twisted fabric between her armpit and her pack’s shoulder strap when her toe hit a rock. Before she could hit the ground, Alistair was there, gripping her around the waist.
“Coven founders, Minnow. Watch where you’re stepping, won’t you?”
She couldn’t breathe with his hands on her like that, with the low baritone of his voice in her ear. She gripped Al’s hand as they turned onto the main road.
Ironoak wasn’t as grand as the Citadel, but it was more impressive than Feybury. Sera tried to swallow the lump forming in her throat. There were so many more people here. Which meant more casualties if she had an incident.
Just don’t lose control. The magic laughed at her, and she shook her head.
Alistair’s grip on her hand tightened. The streets were a combination of smoothed rock and packed dirt.
Jedan Quarter didn’t even have the privilege of stone mixed with the dirt of their roads.
Would that help keep the street from becoming a muddy mess in the rain?
Her irritation flared as she realized that humans had better materials than the lowest magic-born.
“Wait, why would I gag?” she asked, trying to divert her attention from the hypocrisy of her own coven.
“Humans are dirty and smell.”
“I’ve been in a human settlement before. They didn’t seem that bad.”
As Sera and Al moved through the city, dense with tightly clustered houses, children ran after each other, hopping over fences, and dogs happily chased them.
With each person they passed, Sera felt her airway grow tight.
She hadn’t anticipated the physical reaction to being in a settlement again.
Everyone she passed—the children, the old women gathered around a washbasin, the men guiding their carts to market—she imagined melting before her and crying out in pain.
“Have you been to a human city?” Al asked.
“Well, no. It was a small farming village. That’s usually where artifacts are found, buried in large fields.” The leather of Al’s glove was absorbing her hand’s sweat, but she didn’t let go as a group of men stumbled around the corner.
“Oye,” one of them called out to her. “Handsome pair.” He collided with two of his friends, who struggled to stay upright themselves.
Al moved his grip to her elbow, using his body to shield her.
He was all but snarling at them as his heavy palm rested on the small of her back.
The slight touch sent a wave of warmth through her.
It was so much easier to hate him when he was being an ass. Not this new, protective, rugged version of him.
Sera tried to focus on Ironoak’s charm. Wooden posts with metal candle holders lined the streets in front of timber-framed cottages with brick chimneys.
Al led her toward a quaint-looking two-story building, which was washed yellow—or, she supposed, it could have once been white, but the surface was now imbued with dirt and sand.
Green shutters framed a few windows. Its peaked roof was shingled with slate, and a wooden sign above the door bore a carved barrel design.
Alistair entered the doorway, passing into the darkness beyond.
Sera followed and immediately gagged.
A briny odor of rotting onions and something almost living, like a fungus, invaded her nostrils. Her eyes watered, and she coughed, refusing to leave the doorway.
An I told you so grin was plastered on Alistair’s face as he approached the barkeep.
Sera squeezed her nose shut, pulling desperate breaths through her mouth. This was more than smelly—it was damned putrid. How on Eraphon did they not smell themselves?
Alistair had that twinkle in his eye every time he glanced at her, the side of his mouth inching upward. She supposed it was her discomfort that brought it out in him, but she couldn’t deny she was drawn to it. His confident movements. The way he commanded a room. Sera sighed.
“Give me your pack,” he said after talking to the barkeep. She swung it onto his waiting arm, happy to relieve her shoulders. “What do you have in here? Rocks?”
“Guilty,” she said in her nasal tone, refusing to release her nose until they were at least a floor above the vileness of the tavern. “Can we stay somewhere else?”
“No. We’ve got the last room in all of Ironoak, apparently,” he replied and nodded toward the stairs. Once they’d mounted them, Alistair led them to the end room of the upstairs hall.
The air didn’t smell as foul here, considering the filth on the bottom level of the establishment. And there was a desk. “Al, give me the map.”
He sighed and pulled it out of his pack. Sera unrolled it and traced her finger south. “According to this, if we walk maybe twenty more miles south, we’ll run into this section here. There’s a clearing in the trees, you see?”
The colors of the parchment indicated elevation, forests, and beaches, but right under her finger was a section that seemed bare.
If she had to guess, it was possibly a ruin, and with it, a door.
Alistair leaned over her. The heat of him was nearly driving her insane when she realized that their sparse room held only one bed.
Sera snapped upright and hissed at the sharp pain at the back of her head when she hit Alistair’s chin.
“Shadow almighty, Minnow. Will you stop with that?” A light flashed behind her, but her mind was already running through every uncomfortable yet delicious scenario where she was lying in a bed beside him.
“Where’s the other bed?”
“There isn’t one.”
“I’m not sleeping next to you,” she said, moving around the desk.
There needed to be something between them.
For some reason, sleeping next to him under the stars didn’t quite feel so intimate.
Sera backed away until she was stopped by the mattress in question.
An expression was all over his face, and she didn’t quite know if it was annoyance, but it looked like it was.
Something sharp poked into the back of her leg. “This is straw.”
“Did you expect clouds?” Al gritted, still rubbing his jaw.
“I don’t know what I expected. I’ve only ever stayed in an enchanted tent on assignment.”
Al rolled his eyes, crossed the room, and opened the door. “It should feel better than sleeping on the hard ground. Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
There was no need to be nervous. She was grown, mature, completely capable of not making this something that it wasn’t. Right? They were on a mission, and she’d have to suck it up.
Heat climbed her neck and across her cheeks as she followed Al downstairs.