I trailed behind Caelum as he led the way through the woods, walking with the calm assurance of a man who knew how to
navigate in a place where everything looked the same. I suspected we might be heading in the direction we’d come the night before, back toward the village with the barn that had changed everything and sent us spiraling down a path that I regretted with every breath.
Every so often, Caelum tried to interject and start a conversation up, but I think he grew tired of receiving one word answers from me. He studied me with the wariness of a man who thought I might just lie down in the middle of the forest and sleep for an eternity, and in my weaker moments that was exactly what I felt like doing.
“He wouldn’t want you to give up,” he said finally, acknowledging what we both knew kept me quiet. My grief consumed me, the knowledge that I’d been responsible for Brann’s death sitting heavy on my shoulders.
“You know nothing of my brother,” I snapped, my vision filling with the memory of Brann’s remorse as he raised the dagger high and prepared to sink it into my heart. I didn’t know what Caelum had seen on the cliff before he’d intervened, didn’t know if Brann’s attempt on my life was shared knowledge between us, but even I understood that my brother had been keeping secrets from me.
“I know that if I were fortunate enough to have a sister, I would protect her with everything I had to give. Even if that meant losing my life so that she could continue on. You can’t quit now, not when he gave his life for
you,” Caelum said, his voice gentle despite the harsh words. It was as if he knew he needed to temper them with something soft, that my breaking point loomed just out of reach.
“And what am I supposed to do if what he wanted was for me to die?” I asked before I could think better of it. I regretted the words as soon as they’d left my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut as I berated myself for my stupidity.
If I needed Caelum, adding more to the possibility of there being something fundamentally wrong with me was probably the stupidest choice I could make.
“What?” Caelum asked, his voice nearly silent as his steps stopped altogether. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, his jaw tightening as those dark eyes glared down at me. “What do you mean he wanted you to die?”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, turning away from him and his blinding intensity as I continued in the direction we’d been walking only a moment before. “Death was preferable to being taken. That’s all I meant.” I brushed off my near admission, hoping he wouldn’t read further into something that really could be so simple.
“Do not lie to me, Estrella,” he said, grasping my forearm and spinning me around to face him once again. He invaded my space, his stomach so close to my chest that a deep breath would force us to touch. The moment would have felt intimate if it hadn’t been for the hatred blazing in his eyes. “That is the one thing I will not tolerate from you. If you want to keep your secrets, then fine. Keep them, but at least give me the respect of not looking me in the eye and tainting that pretty mouth with ugly lies.”
“Fine,” I grumbled, snapping my mouth closed as soon as I’d clipped out that one word. If he didn’t want me to lie, then I wouldn’t lie. I’d just keep my Gods-damned secrets to myself.
Caelum chuckled, the rage fading off his face with an odd sort of rumble from his chest. “Oh, Little One. I am going to enjoy unraveling every part of you slowly,” he murmured, lifting one of his calloused hands to brush a lock of hair back from my face. His skin touched mine gently as his finger curved over my cheek and down the line of my jaw, stopping to grip my chin for a moment before he released me.
“You just said I could keep my secrets,” I said, my voice cracking as his smile washed over me. His voice was the greatest sin, wrapping around the
words as if they were a sensual promise.
“You’re welcome to try,” he said, releasing my forearm where he’d grabbed me, in favor of tracing a single finger over the sleeve of my dress. It was the same spot where my dagger had rested before, pressed against my skin and waiting for me to use it to kill myself.
Brann had saved me the trouble, pulling it free and trying to take my burden from me himself.
“But I think we both know it’s only a matter of time before you let me inside your head. If we’re both being entirely honest,” he murmured, his gaze burning into mine. “I’m already there.”
“That’s a bold presumption to make toward someone you’ve just met,” I said, jerking my arm away from his grip and continuing on my way. His hands came down on my shoulders, pointedly turning my body to the proper direction so I didn’t walk off our course. He came up beside me, strolling as if he didn’t have a care in the world and hadn’t insisted he would invade my privacy bit by bit.
“Perhaps, or maybe it’s just the truth. If it’s any consolation, you’re already in mine, too, Little One. Every time I close my eyes I see you holding a blade to my throat with your eyes burning as if you were born in blood and violence,” he said, immediately drawing from the horrific stories I’d heard from my father when he spoke of my birth.
Of the way my mother had nearly died trying to deliver me.
Caelum took my hand in his, the coolness of his skin drawing a shiver from me as he guided me to the side and into the space where the trees were closer and provided better cover. The village Brann and I had abandoned the night before loomed ahead, the structure of the barn both a taunt and a reminder of all that I’d lost since then.
“Let’s find you something warmer,” he said, ducking low and pulling me to follow him as he skirted around the edge of the village. People meandered down the road that went between the houses, unaware that we were sneaking around nearby. We passed the pub where Brann had gone to search for food in exchange for helping out the next morning, my heart leaping into my throat when a man his age hurried around inside the dirty windows. “Stay here.”
I did as he said, watching as he bent forward and made his body smaller. He crouched as low as he could, approaching one of the houses on the outskirts of the village and the clothesline where a woolen dress hung. He
pulled it off quickly, hurrying back into the tree line unnoticed as I sighed in relief. The last thing either of us needed was to attract attention for stealing, and I suspected we would have a lot of it in our future, since we couldn’t be seen with our Fae Marks.
He returned to my side, draping the dress over his arm as we continued to circle around the outskirts of the village. “I haven’t seen any cloaks.”
“Most people have just started wearing them. I doubt they’re all that dirty yet,” I said, shrugging even though it pained me to think of not being able to find one. I couldn’t wear Caelum’s forever, and a winter without even a cloak to cover me wouldn’t be survivable.
When we emerged back to the place where we’d first come upon the village, the barn once again tormenting me, Caelum heaved a sigh of resignation. “We’ll look in the next village,” he conceded.
I yearned for even the thin cloak I’d lost, and I’d hoped we would stumble across it as we made our way back to the village. Part of me was even certain we’d passed the very same copse of trees where I’d lost it, but there was nothing to be found.
As if it had floated away like ashes in the wind.
He carried the dress as we passed the village and headed in the opposite direction of the cliffs. We walked in near silence for a few minutes, his cloak feeling heavy around my shoulders. I still felt chilled to the bone, my dress cold and slightly damp, and the knowledge that I would need to give it back soon didn’t help matters.
“Go ahead and change,” he said, stopping when we were far enough away from the village that our risk of being stumbled upon had diminished. I swallowed, staring into his dark eyes as he watched me reach up trembling fingers to unclasp his cloak.
I turned to the side, draping it over a fallen log in the woods so it wouldn’t touch the ground. “Do you mind?” I asked, finding him still watching me as I unlaced the top of my dress.
“Not particularly,” he said, smirking as he watched my fingers cease to move. I bit the inside of my cheek, shoving down the sharp retort I wanted to give.
“I’m not taking my clothes off in front of you,” I said, trying to ignore his infuriating, arrogant expression.
“I promise you, I have seen a naked woman before, Little One. I’m capable of controlling myself,” he said, raising a brow at me. I snatched the
dress from his hands, turning and walking into the thicker parts of the trees with a huff.
“I promise you I don’t care!” I called over my shoulder, ducking behind the biggest tree trunk I could find.
His aggravating laughter echoed through the woods, wrapping around me as I dropped my pea green dress to the ground and slid the new, dark brown one over my head.
Dick.
 |
Once I’d changed and successfully hidden my body from Caelum’s prying eyes, we continued trudging through the seemingly endless
woods. The hours passed by in a monotonous blur, and all I could think was that it was far too similar to my days spent staring into twilight berry bushes.
I regretted my boredom the moment night fell over the forest, bathing me in darkness that made me startle at every sound. I’d always loved it, always found comfort in the inky shadows as they wrapped around me. Something about it, after being pursued in the eclipse when the Fae took over our world, while running for my life with my brother at my side, just didn’t feel like home anymore.
It was just one more thing the Fae had taken from me, and I hated them even more for it. If I didn’t belong to the night, then where exactly did I belong at all?
“We should stop for the night,” Caelum said, looking at the sky above
us.
“Where though?” I asked, looking around for any place to hide and take
shelter. There wasn’t a clear spot that would hide us from the Wild Hunt or the Mist Guard; nothing that could provide any semblance of cover whatsoever.
“We won’t always have a barn or a cave to sleep in, Little One. Tonight we’ll have to sleep beneath the stars and take turns on watch,” he said,
moving to a place where the trees were thicker and provided just a little bit more shelter from hunting eyes.
“How do I know I can trust you to watch over me while I sleep?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as he dropped to the ground gracefully, his massive body seeming fluid as it melted down to the forest floor.
“If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have to wait until you’re asleep to do it, my star, and I most definitely wouldn’t have bothered saving you from the Wild Hunt,” he said, his lips curving into a grin. I grimaced at the words and the reminder of my own weakness. It shamed me to admit that I liked when he called me Little One, against my best intentions, though I would never tell him that. “My star,” on the other hand, sent a wave of something that felt a lot like affection through me, warming my cheeks.
I shoved it down in my irritation.
“You’re so pretty until you speak,” I said, smiling at him sweetly. “Do try not to ruin it.”
He chuckled as I took a seat next to him, my cheeks flushing at the smirk that claimed his lips. He sank his white teeth into his bottom lip as he studied me intently, like a predator stalking his prey.
“Why is it that you blush when you compliment me? Shouldn’t it be my face that turns pink?” he asked, grasping my hand in my crossed arms and tugging as if he wanted me to sit closer to him. I resisted.
“Only you would take it as a compliment when someone tells you that you’re prettier when you’re silent,” I returned with a scoff, refusing to answer his question. Caelum didn’t need to know that I found him far more than pretty, that something I didn’t understand compelled me toward him. He seemed larger than life. He terrified me, but he also appealed to me, turning my insides liquid and me into someone he could play with and mold into whatever he wanted.
“I’ve heard worse,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and quirking a brow at me. “I wonder how much you’ll blush when I tell you that you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Everything in me stilled, and I turned my face away from his to hide the deep red stain to my cheeks. Even knowing it was a lie or an exaggeration, or both, I couldn’t stop the flush that lit my face on fire. “Like that then.”
It should be criminal to be so handsome that he threatened to make me lose my senses while his mouth tormented me so easily. I recovered as
quickly as I could, clearing my throat. “Perhaps it is you who should be worried, Caelum the Marked,” I said, twisting my lips into a saccharine smile as he watched me. I fought back a shiver as the cold from the ground seeped into me, even with my dress as a barrier.
I knew without asking that there could be no fire to keep us warm tonight, not without a hiding place to shield the light from all manner of predators or the beings hunting us. I shuddered just thinking of what might find us, uncertain if I preferred death by fang to death by freezing or blade.
“Are you planning to gut me while I sleep, my star?” he asked, as he laid himself out on the ground. Even with his cloak still wrapped around my shoulders, he didn’t seem bothered by the cold dirt beneath him. Stretching his arms over his head and cocking a knee so the bottom of his boot pressed into the ground, he bent his elbows and used his forearms as a pillow. “Perhaps burn me with the fire that smolders inside of you, waiting to ignite?”
“I need you alive for now, but that doesn’t mean I need you to have all of your appendages functioning. I’ve kind of always wondered how a man would scream if I cut off his prized flesh between his legs,” I said, wrinkling my nose. My only hesitation in doing it to Lord Byron, aside from the obvious death sentence it would bring, had been that I would need to touch it in order for that to happen.
I would pass on that any chance I got.
“There’s my girl,” he said, pursing his lips in a move that only drew attention to them. All I wanted was to lean forward and sink my teeth into the plump, tempting flesh, to draw blood in a way that felt so unlike me. I’d enjoyed being able to protect myself in the past, but I’d never thought of myself as being particularly violent.
Not until the Fae Mark took everything I thought I knew about myself and changed me, twisting me into the bitter, rage-filled woman I felt myself growing into more and more, every hour that passed. The darkness lurking inside of me seemed overwhelming in the moments when I overreacted to Caelum’s ridiculous commentary and his desire to irritate me.
He pushed me, challenged me, but there was nothing that he’d done to deserve my ire. He’d even saved my life. So what was it about the stupidly handsome man that kept me in a constant state of vacillating between wanting to fight with him and wanting to kiss him?
“I’m not your anything,” I said, laying myself on the ground next to him. I kept my distance, ensuring that no parts of our bodies touched. I wouldn’t allow myself to show how cold I was, gritting my teeth as I fought back the chattering that wanted to overtake my jaw.
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Caelum retorted with a chuckle, turning his body toward mine. He scooted forward, inching across the grass, dirt, and dead, dried leaves beneath us. They crackled, the sound grating on me as I stared up at the last, bare hint of light in the sky above us. Shortly enough, there would only be the moon and stars shining in the dark sky.
Something slid over my wrist, and I squeaked as quietly as I could and shoved it off. The flesh of a male arm against my hand drew a relieved sigh from me, the lack of scales or slime reassuring against the initial instinct that I’d attracted something far more menacing.
Though some nights in Lord Byron’s library had made me question if there was anything more menacing than a man when he didn’t get what he wanted.
“What are you doing?” I asked, flinching back as he wrapped that arm around me more tightly and pulled me into his chest. He was somehow warm, his body heat radiating into me as I pressed my freezing hands against his stomach.
“You’re going to freeze,” he said, acting as if it was obvious. The shadows hid the expression on his face, masking it from my view except for the faintest trace of his bone structure. He grabbed hold of his cloak where it was wrapped around me, unclasping it from around my throat and shifting it to cover us both as he slid his other arm underneath my neck and offered it to me as a pillow. “Get some sleep, Little One. I’ll take first watch.”
I nodded, and I would have sworn that my mind wouldn’t allow itself to fall asleep with a stranger so near. I’d never just been held in my life, never lain with a man at my side. For all that I’d experienced in terms of physical affection, between the abuse of Lord Byron’s hands on my skin and the hurried moments of passion I’d had with Loris, had I ever really known anything of true intimacy?
I could think of nothing more intimate than the feeling of Caelum’s breath rustling my hair, and his rhythmic heartbeat thumping against my face softly as I curled closer into him.
For warmth, I assured myself as he shifted his body, and I felt his gaze on my face as my eyes drifted closed. The softness of his lips brushed
against my forehead, sending a tingle through the back of my neck in response as my exhaustion claimed me.
Most definitely for warmth.
