I snuggled deeper into the warmth wrapped around me, rubbing my face against bare skin where the laces of his shirt had parted in
sleep. A deep groan startled me just enough that my eyes flew open in shock, holding myself perfectly still as I tried to unravel what had happened.
I’d fallen asleep with my head on Caelum’s lap, so why was it his chest I snuggled into? I glanced down at our bodies, wincing when I found my dress hiked up to reveal my bare calf where my leg draped over his waist. My body was half on top of him, sprawled across his as if I could suck the heat from his bones and into mine. With the embers of the fire at my back, his body warmth at my front, and his cloak draped over myself, the cold of the early winter outside was a thing of the past.
Something hard pressed against my belly, the length of him seeming impossible to even speculate on as I bit down on my bottom lip to stifle the shocked gasp that tried to escape. His fingers tightened, bunching the fabric of my dress up further as he squeezed an entire cheek of my ass in his grip. His hand was enormous, covering it entirely and using the grip to pull me tighter into his body as he shifted his hips to grind his erection into my belly.
I looked up into his face, where the lines that were usually taut with intensity and a hint of brutality, or playfully arrogant, were relaxed in sleep. Nothing remained in his expression of the man he projected in his waking
hours, only a peaceful expression, giving him the illusion of being somehow…normal.
Of being less intimidating, less exceptional.
I swallowed down my nerves, slowly lifting my head away from his chest to put some distance between us. I must have rolled onto him in my sleep at some point, and I could just imagine his arrogance if he woke to discover me clinging to him like a leech. I lifted my leg off his waist, slowly pulling it back to twist my body off of his without disturbing him.
He moved, rolling me beneath him in a move so smooth and sudden that I squeaked as my back rested against the stone. His weight covered me, his dark eyes seeming to dance with shadows as he opened them suddenly. “Where are you running off to, my star?” he asked, squeezing my ass in his hand more intentionally as his lips tipped into a smirk that made me want to punch him in the mouth. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice your body wrapped around mine? That I wouldn’t feel you even in the depths of sleep?”
“I loathe you,” I mumbled, shifting my hips to try to rub his hand against the dirt beneath our bodies until he had no choice but to remove it. The motion rubbed me against him, my legs spread around where he’d slid his hips in between them when he’d rolled me.
“If this is what your hate feels like, then I can’t wait to feel your love,” he said, leaning forward until his nose touched the end of mine. He trailed it up, tracing a path over the arch until he touched his lips to my forehead. When he drew back, his eyes dropped to my mouth.
“Love?” I asked, the hushed sound hovering between us as he stared at my lips intently.
“Yes, Little One. Love. Did you believe I was aiming to earn your friendship with my hand on your ass and my cock nestled between your thighs?” he asked, grinding forward as if he could prove his point.
“Friends can fuck, Caelum. I would have thought you’d be completely aware of that, given all your sexual adventures,” I hissed, turning my head away from his. He was too close, his face lingering so near to mine that I thought he just might be able to hear the thoughts swirling in my head.
“There’s that jealousy again,” he teased, a growl of satisfaction rumbling through his chest. “Do friends get jealous of past lovers? Because I cannot promise I wouldn’t disembowel any man who has been inside you.”
“Well, fortunately there’s no need for that,” I said, a scowl taking over my face. “He’s already nothing more than snow.”
Caelum stilled, all the amusement falling off his face as he tipped his head to the side and stared down at me. “He tried to harm you after you were marked?”
“He was one of the Mist Guard they sent to hunt me down and run me through. A good way to prove his loyalty, I suppose.”
“He chose his duty over you,” Caelum said, leaning his face forward until he nuzzled into the sensitive skin at the hollow of my neck. His breath was warm as it wafted over my mark, the intimacy of it feeling familiar. “He was a fucking idiot.”
“Duty always comes first,” I said, echoing the words that had been beaten into me from a young age. Duty before family. Duty before love. Duty before everything.
Mine had been to bear the next Lord of Mistfell. I couldn’t help but wonder what duty Caelum had been saddled with. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn he was the perfect candidate for the Royal Army.
“Love should always come first. We’ve gotten lost as a whole if we’ve forgotten that. There was a time when people would have burned the world down for those they loved,” he said. My stomach rumbled beneath him, drawing a grin to his face as it interrupted the moment.
To have someone love me so completely that they not only chose me, but would have defied everyone and everything to have me—it seemed so impossible in our world. Brann had sacrificed everything to protect me, but even that had felt like there was an ulterior motive. As if there was something I didn’t know, that I couldn’t know, hanging between us that drove him to protect me.
Because if the most important thing to him was making sure the Fae didn’t capture me, why wouldn’t he have allowed the Mist Guard to kill me in the first place? It was the only guarantee.
“Come on,” Caelum said, removing his weight from me and holding out a hand to help me to my feet. “I’ll teach you how to set a couple of traps. We’ll wait for a little while and hopefully catch something before we need to get moving for the day.”
“Are we still trying to get to the Mountains of Rochpar?” I asked, thinking of the grueling travel through the coldest months. There was no chance we would make it before true winter came, and while I couldn’t
deny that putting as much distance between us and the fallen Veil as possible would be to our advantage, freezing to death wasn’t appealing in the slightest either.
“Eventually,” he said, hoisting me up into the tunnel we’d entered through. He followed at my back as we made our way out, finding the weather much more agreeable in the early morning light. The wind had died down, the snow had stopped, and most of it had melted off the ground already. “But with the weather being unpredictable, I think we need to find an alternative to wait out the cold season. There are rumors of a Resistance to the Fae and the Mist Guard in the Hollow Mountains. We’re going to keep moving in the hopes of stumbling across them.”
“How will we find them?” I asked, the idea of a resistance to the Fae seeming out of my wildest dreams. More people like us, more ability to survive if there was a place to ride out the winter successfully.
“You don’t,” he said, jumping down from the tunnel and reaching up to grasp me around the waist and lower me to the leaf-covered ground. “They find you.”
 |
My heel had been tormented enough, the skin that had split long ago and blistered around the original wound, parting to give way
to a deeper wound that was much worse than I’d thought it could get. I flinched with my steps, feeling it tear further with every pace.
Caelum lifted his head slightly as he studied me, danger churning in his gaze. “You’re hurt,” he said, leveling a look at me that I thought might have made grown men wither. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“There’s nothing to be done for it. I can’t walk without boots,” I said, shrugging off the pain in my ankles. One was worse than the other, the slick feeling of blood on my skin driving me to the point of madness.
Well- fitted footwear was of great importance when walking for endless hours every day.
“Your boots are hurting you?” he asked, his brow furrowing. Just a glance at his clothing spoke to the high quality items he’d been accustomed
to before the Veil had shattered. The needlework on his tunic and trousers alone probably cost more than I would see in a year as a harvester.
“Yes. They don’t fit me right, so the leather rubs at my ankles and bunches up my socks and cuts into me,” I explained, watching his jaw clench.
He took my hand in his, guiding me away from the base of the low mountain we’d been hugging, so that we’d have the ability to find shelter in a cave when the sun started to set. “Where are we going?” I asked.
“There’s a village not too far from the Hollow Mountains. We’ll go find you some new boots there and maybe a cloak while we’re at it. You can’t keep walking in boots that wound you,” he said, his tone feeling scolding as he glared down at me.
“A few blisters are the least of our problems,” I said, even though I wouldn’t object to functioning footwear and a warm cloak that didn’t bear the weight of leaving Caelum unprotected from the elements.
“Did they heal overnight?” he asked, studying me intently.
“Mostly,” I admitted. I hadn’t wanted to voice the strange healing that seemed to happen every time I got hurt. Scrapes faded quickly; my dislocated shoulder had stopped hurting within hours. Nothing lasted, but every time the blisters healed over, the fresh baby skin that covered the wounds was reopened the next day.
“You’ll heal quickly now. If we can just find you some boots that fit you better, your feet will be better in no time. That’s important, Estrella. You can’t run properly if you’re in pain.”
“I just don’t think it’s worth exposing ourselves to the Mist Guard.” I sighed, but I followed. He then sighed, stopping his journey to reach behind me and lay a hand across my waist. His other went to the underside of my legs, sweeping them out from under me until I was cradled in his arms with my head resting on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“You’re slow because you’re in pain. We’ll move faster if I carry you,” he said, striding forward as if he didn’t have the weight of a whole-ass person draped over his arms like a rug that needed cleaning.
“Don’t be a dick. I can walk myself.”
“Can you?” he murmured, raising a brow as he ran his eyes over my torso, down my legs, and to the boots that even I knew were slowly filling with blood.
“Don’t make me punch you,” I warned, squirming until he finally relented and set me to my feet. My heels protested it immediately, but I pushed forward and walked faster with him at my side.
I wouldn’t be carried through the woods like a damsel, not when I knew I was capable of walking myself. To think such a small wound could render me incapable would only make me angrier.
We continued on in silence, both of us stewing in our own frustration through the hours we walked to find the village he’d mentioned. I didn’t want to ask; didn’t think it wise to try to learn anything more about his background. Not when his life and history only served to endear me to him more and more.
“Was your father a Lord or something?” I asked, unable to stop the burning curiosity.
“You could say that,” he said evasively, shrugging his shoulders. That certainly explained why he’d been tolerated even though he wasn’t a legitimate child.
Money could buy many things. Even a bastard child as an official heir.
I quieted down, reading the signs of his unwillingness to discuss more about his father’s title. It didn’t matter in the end.
Nothing about the world we’d known mattered anymore.
