Chapter 12
Ashton
We march for hours, the five of us, with no end in sight.
At first, we’d talked. They’d shared what had happened to them while we were gone, and we’d shared about the strange wedding ceremony, the satyrs, and the nymphs.
All of the men seem to hang onto our every word, but I notice that Alette skips over a lot, especially the moments between us, so I do the same.
But as time passes, we run out of stories. Run out of smiles and laughter.
Time continues to pass. No one talks much, except Sylvian, who shares an occasional observation, or flicks moss at Oberon to see if he’ll bite.
Sometimes I catch Alette watching the ground, lost in her own mind, but whenever she looks up she makes sure her hand is nowhere near mine.
I don’t blame her. There’s something between us now, something deeper than anything I’ve ever felt before, but I don’t know if I’m the only one feeling it.
I don’t even know if she likes me now. What I do know, she’s making it a point to not be close to me.
Glancing down at the wedding ring on my finger, something twists in my gut. I know it wasn’t real. So, why did it feel so real?
Now she’s up ahead, boots punching holes in the mud, with Sylvian shadowing her like a wolf following a wounded lamb.
He’s not subtle about his interest in her, but he doesn’t have to be.
We all saw her and Sylvian climb out of the fucking hedges.
We all know that he’s gotten closer to her than any of us.
She laughs at his jokes. She throws moss back at him when he flicks it in her direction.
She doesn’t flinch when he brushes her arm, even though his hands are the size of a newborn foal.
Once, he tugs her braid, and she just rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t look at me the whole time.
Why isn’t she looking at me? Why isn’t she smiling at me?
I want to tell myself it’s fine, that I don’t care, but every time I watch him with her, a feeling I hate buzzes through my body.
I know what this is. I’ve seen it happen to a hundred men, in a hundred courts, and every time I thought, what idiots.
How could you let your heart walk around outside your body like that?
How could you want anything badly enough to risk being hurt?
After I lost Mira, my first love, I never looked at another woman that way. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t feel that way. I wouldn’t ever risk my father hurting another woman like that, even if, technically, he would’ve celebrated me choosing a fae woman.
But as hard as I’ve worked to not ever feel this way about another woman, I feel it now. And I hate it. It feels dangerous, exciting, and terrifying all at once.
It's almost like Oberon and Cassius are purposely trailing behind, as if they don't want to be part of the group, but want to stay close enough to remind me that they're part of this just as much as I am. Cassius’s face is a mask. It’s blank and cool and unreadable. He might be thinking about the best way to kill me, or maybe just what he’ll have for dinner, but you’d never know.
Oberon is scowling, flexing his hands like he wants to punch the air itself, and it gives me a small bit of joy to know that he’s just as miserable about Alette giving Sylvian all her attention as I am.
Thinking of him giving Alette a stone fills me with an unspeakable amount of joy. He’d barely met her, and he’d been smitten with her long before the rest of us.
The old fire fae has a heart after all.
We keep walking. I try to focus on anything but the ache in my chest, but it doesn’t work.
At one point, Sylvian picks a handful of cloudberries and offers them to Alette.
She pops one in her mouth, then turns and, for a second, she looks at me.
Her lips are red with juice. Heat slips between us, and my whole body tightens, then she goes back to Sylvian and the story he’s entertaining her with.
The glance is over in a heartbeat, but my heart goes double-time for the next ten minutes, like an idiot.
I want to say something. I want to pull her aside and ask if she meant any of her vows at the wedding, even though it wasn't real, even though the whole world knows it was a sacrificial ceremony. I want to tell her that I’d still marry her, if it meant she’d look at me like that again.
I want a lot of things, most of them impossible.
The ring is burning a hole in my mind.
After a while, the stone gives way to gravel.
The sound changes. Instead of the soft thud of boots on stone, it’s the click and scatter of stones, then something else, a sound of water, fast and loud, like a river in full flood.
Glancing behind me, I see that Cassius’s ears have perked up first. He points with his chin, and we all pick up the pace.
The trees thin, and then the world opens.
We come out on the edge of a lake, so blue and wide it hurts to look at.
The water stretches forever, silvered by the sky.
The far shore is just a smear of green. There’s a beach, sort of, a mix of sand and little stones, and the air smells clean for the first time in days.
Alette stops so suddenly that Sylvian almost crashes into her. She stands there, breathing, like she’s afraid if she moves it’ll vanish.
“Nice,” Oberon grunts, pushing past the rest of us. He makes for the water’s edge, kicks off his boots, and just stands there with his toes in the wet sand. Cassius walks the shore, but comes back, seemingly satisfied that it’s safe.
Sylvian laughs, a real, open sound, and strips his shirt off with one hand, undoes his pants, and drops it all to the ground.
“I’d forgotten what clean felt like,” he says, and then he’s in the water, splashing and shouting and making a spectacle.
Oberon stares at him for a second, then shrugs and follows, stripping down to just his undergarments, before stomping in up to his knees and then diving forward with barely a splash.
Cassius looks at the lake, then at me. “Go on,” he says. “You’ll feel better.”
He’s right. I’m filthy, covered in a week’s worth of hedge-dirt and blood and sweat, and my hair is crunchy and gross. But I don’t move. I’m watching Alette, who’s still at the edge of the clearing, arms crossed, eyes on the water but mind somewhere else.
She catches me looking.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, moving closer to her.
“It’s fine,” she says, “I’m just going to go a little further down for some privacy.”
“I can come with you… if you want.”
She turns scarlet and shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
She drops her arms, then moves down the shore, away from the rest of us.
She pulls her boots off, then her jacket, then mostly disappears behind some tall plants.
I want to go to her, but I don’t. I just stand there, feeling the lake breeze on my face, wishing she’d told me I could come with her.
Imagining what I’d do to her in the lake.
Her tiny body wrapped around mine. Her eyes wide as I grip her hips and slide into her.
A shudder moves through my body, and I know that I’m hard. Thinking. Wondering. Knowing how good it’d feel to be inside her tight little body. Would she say my name? Would she pull me closer?
I adjust myself, realizing I don’t want to be getting into the water with the others with a hard on. I need to think about something else. Maybe the three jackasses.
Sylvian is floating on his back, arms out, eyes closed.
Oberon is washing himself like he wants to take off the first few layers of his skin.
Cassius paces, watching the reeds and the far shore, never relaxing for a second, even though as a water fae he should have already eagerly jumped in the water.
I finally pull my shirt off, then my boots and pants, and wade in. The water is cold, shockingly cold, but after a minute it starts to feel good. I dunk my head, and when I come up, Sylvian is grinning at me.
“You’re brooding,” he says.
I shake the water out of my hair. “So?”
He laughs. “You’re not a brooder. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Maybe I’m trying something new.”
He rolls, sending a wave at me, and I dodge. “You could try smiling. Or, you know, stop acting like someone pissed in your wine.”
“I’ll get right on that,” I say, but my heart’s not in it.
He floats closer, lowering his voice. “Are you too busy thinking about Alette?”
“No.”
He looks at me, really looks, and something in his expression goes soft. “She’s really growing on you, huh?” he says, no judgment in it.
“Yeah,” I admit.
“I feel the same way,” he says with a shrug. “We all do. One of the few things we accomplished while you and Alette were gone was realizing that we all share similar feelings. It must be something about the labyrinth, or the sword, or maybe it’s just her.”
I nod, water dripping down my face. “I think it’s just her.”
He laughs again. “You’re probably right.” Then he swims off, whistling.
I stand in the water, watching the sky, and try to scrub the jealousy out of my bones. It doesn’t work. Every time I think about Alette smiling with Sylvian, all I can think about is how wonderful it was when it was just her and I, and the sound of her laughing with me.
Cassius eventually gets in the water, swims around like a fish, and then spends a little time washing his pale white hair. But unlike when I’ve seen him in water in the past, he doesn’t look happy. He looks on edge. And he leaves the water before any of the rest of us.
After a while, I get out and find a patch of sun to dry in and play with my magic. Cassius is there, arms folded, watching the wind make patterns on the lake as I nudge it with my mind. He glances at me, then nods toward where Alette had disappeared behind the water plants.
“I’ve never met a woman who’s that shy about being seen naked. Is it a human thing?”