Their pots were close enough that if she leaned over she’d get to within an inch of his beloved face. Moving as close as she could, she leaned into him.
“Knight?”
“Yes?”
They were in dire straits, and the odds were very good that they would not walk away from this alive, but even in the darkness a wolf could sometimes find humor. “Orcs, yes. Centaurs called Chest, yes. But flesh-eating dwarves…bluidy hell, knight, we have the worst luck.”
She said it with a lilt in her voice and tears gathering in her eyes. It was so unfair that things should end this way, and yet if there was one good thing that could come from this it was that she refused to ignore her feelings for him any longer.
“Lilith?” He lifted up both hands and gently traced one finger down her cheek, causing her lashes to flutter at the sensual touch.
“Aye?” She clutched at his fingers, pinning them to her cheek desperate he never stop touching her.
“Can I kiss you?”
Smile going wide and her heart trapped in her throat, she nodded forcefully. His kiss lacked the passionate intensity it had had the other night, but it was full of so much more. Of unspoken promises and vows. In this kiss she finally tasted Giles’s truth, and the words that had refused to pass his lips now came pouring forth.
He loved her.
She felt the sentiment flutter through every square inch of her body as he pulled away.
“That kiss was—”
“I love—” Giles began to say.
Her eyes widened. “Kiss!”
The doorknob rotated slowly, the door creaked open with a groan.
“What?” he asked, jerking his head toward the door as a gathering of dwarves bearing unlit torches piled through.
“Kiss. Giles. Kiss!”
She knew he didn’t have a clue what she was getting at, but the rush of jubilation had tied her tongue completely. Smiling stupidly at the miniature men stamping through, she whispered two words.
“Ying. Lor.”
Giles wanted to crow the moment Lilith had murmured the dragon warrior’s name. The rock foundation shook, and the fifteen or so dwarves already inside threw out their arms for balance, gazing around with terror-filled eyes as a giant fissure tore through the stone.
There was nothing more deadly to a stone dwarf than a cave collapse.
The power of the earthquake didn’t last long though. As quickly as it had come, it was gone.
Hoping that maybe the shifting ground beneath had snapped some of the chains holding him in place, he was disappointed to learn that besides a little water sloshing over the rim’s edge, nothing more had happened. The candle hadn’t even blown out.
But when he glanced at Lilith she no longer looked like a frightened little cub, she was smiling gleefully at the stumpy men, as though she knew a secret none of the rest of them did.
Taking his cue off her, he forced his mind to relax. A warrior was only as strong as his mind, for a second he’d allowed the panic to take him, believing he’d failed not only Erualis and Rumpel, but also the shifter who was coming to mean more to him than any vow of fealty he’d ever sworn.
This would not be the way things ended for them. It wouldn’t. He’d be patient, and wait for the moment freedom revealed itself.
“This meat has brought us much trouble,” a dwarf who stood in the center of the semi-circle of grizzled men said. “Shy, why haven’t they been cooked yet?”
The leader didn’t simply look as though he hated the thought of bathing—as he was coated in years’ worth of grime and dust—but he was also missing an eye. The skin around the empty socket looked melted down, as though someone had stuck a torch to it. Perhaps another victim of the cooking pot that’d managed to escape?
Giles could only hope.
A little man hidden behind the shoulders of another much broader dwarf stepped out and hung his blond head bashfully, rubbing his hands together. The length of his hair fell nearly to his knees, shielding him from view as though he stood behind a curtain.
“Sorry, Heapy. Sorry.” His head bopped up and down. “But Vet said the meat would be too soft and bland unless pumped full of adrenaline to make it stringy and game it up.” His voice was a meek whisper of sound.
“Aye, just so!” Another dwarf came forward; this one was wearing tiny little spectacles across his bulbous nose. He scratched at his matted red hair and without missing a beat, stared at his finger, then sucked it into his mouth. “Meat must be tenderized.”
Giles scrunched his nose. “I am the royal valet of Rumpelstiltskin. This female,” he pointed to Lilith, “is under his protection as well. Release us at once.”
Rumpel had done much business with the dwarves in the past, and just as his master loved his deals, the dwarves loved making money. Of which Rumpel had a limitless amount.
“We know who you are,” the one called Heapy snarled, then, grabbing his stomach, he hollered, “Well, what say you men—should we release the meat?”
“No!” The voices thundered, causing pebbles to crumble off of the ceiling and rain down on their heads.