“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.
21
“Would you stop it?” I snapped, swatting Caelum’s hand away as he tried to snake his arm around my waist.
Again.
“You’re still limping,” he argued, as if that was justification for his continued attempts to carry me.
“You said it wasn’t much farther,” I said, nodding my head forward and motioning him on as I passed him.
He growled in response; the sound rumbling in his chest as he stalked after me. His massive hand came down on the top of my head, using it to steer my body more northward than I’d begun to walk. “You have the sense of direction of a hydra.”
“Aren’t they blind?” I asked, thinking back to the paintings I’d seen in the books that warned of the horrors of Alfheimr when the High Priestess wanted to scare me into staying away from the Veil. They were filled all the creatures we wouldn’t ever have to see with the Veil to protect us, so long as I learned to leave it alone. The Fae were terrifying enough, their ethereal bodies so similar to ours but different in all the ways that mattered. The monsters and beasts of Faerie were crafted from nightmares, molded from darkness and all the evil magic brought into the world. The enormous three-headed serpents didn’t even have eye sockets.
“Yes. Yes, they are,” he agreed, quirking an eyebrow at me as he walked at my side, his pace relaxed so that I could keep up.
As much as I feared the cave beasts, the thought of sleeping exposed to the elements and to the Wild Hunt and others who might kill us in our sleep was somehow even more terrifying. At least when I had Caelum to protect me, the two of us might have been able to escape a cave beast’s wrath.
But I doubted the Wild Hunt would let us slip away twice.
“I wish I was a hydra,” I teased. “Then I could just swallow you whole and not have to endure your endless hovering anymore.”
“My star, you can swallow me whole anytime you—” I smacked him in the stomach, drawing pleasure in the grunt that rolled into a laugh as the strike cut him off.
“There’s that tingle.” He laughed when I glowered at him.
“You do realize you aren’t supposed to enjoy being punched, don’t you?”
“I can think of worse ways to pass the time,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as if my little violent outbursts weren’t of actual concern to him. It both infuriated me and intrigued me that he was so unconcerned with my displays of violence, when so many men would’ve had me beaten for less.
“Do you not worry that I might bite it off if you put it near my mouth?” I asked, braving the dangerous tension between us to continue the conversation I should have left unanswered. His gaze felt heavy on the side of my face, his attention fixated on me when I didn’t turn to meet his stare. I focused on my feet, on the way my too-large boots trudged through the leaves and underbrush on the ground.
“Maybe,” he said finally, his eyes leaving my face as he turned his attention toward the path in front of us. A building appeared in the distance, the first of the village where we needed to gather supplies. “But I’d know a few moments of perfection until you did.”
I scoffed, laughter bubbling in my throat and doubling me over as I tried to catch my breath. “Do you believe the lines you feed to the women you try to bed? How do you say them with such a straight face?”