“No, you don’t understand. He told me, ‘I’ll make you suffer before I’m through with you’.” I clutched the leather sheath until it creaked. “My presence here will put you all in danger.”
Both Ric’s and Ethan’s faces turned stony as the information sank in. The boiling mercury had bled out in Ethan’s eyes as he turned to Ric and mumbled quietly to him. “First, I’ll get her back to my room. We need to discuss this before Alistair gets back.”
“Wait, what do you mean ‘my room’? I have a room.”
“I know,” he grasped my arm, “mine.” He hoisted me over his shoulder as I tried pulling against him. “You’ve been sleeping in it since you arrived.”
Ric’s laugh echoed in the hallways as Ethan carried me out onto the terrace. The journey up the stairs and across the bridge was not an easy one to stomach as the world around me rocked with each step. I kicked my legs out as he opened the bedroom door, finally fed up with his game, and he dropped me on the bed. He moved to the windows and pulled them shut, locking them tightly.
“A gentleman might have courted me first,” I joked wryly.
“Cute.” He gave a tight smile. “Look, the others don’t need to know what happened tonight but what you saw is landing you in a heap of trouble.” Ethan stretched and flexed as he headed toward the door again and stopped, gesturing to his back. “As I said, we’re not like you.”
The wound on his back had clotted and the deep gashes in his flesh were thinner than they were an hour previously. He winked and shut the door behind him, once again leaving me with a thousand unanswered questions. My face crinkled as I rubbed my poor, aching ribs. That bastard. Yet, there was something about him that drew me in; something about him that I found fascinating and terrifying all at once. What an odd man he was – if he was a man at all.
I kicked off my boots, stripped out of my dress and buried my face into one of his pillows, letting out a frustrated ‘humph’. He was like two different people altogether: a somewhat well-mannered gentleman and an attention-seeking little boy. It seemed the longer I stayed with them the more I wanted to know. Willow, Alistair and Lavender were almost identical in their ways and had the same blue eyes. Ethan was something else altogether. Though he moved with a similar grace his energy was different. It was raw; powerful; almost regal. And then those eyes…
I fell into a frenzied sleep as I cycled through images of faces and nightmares past. My ordeal in the forest joined up with my new nightmares as I relieved the experience; watching as Ethan’s gorgeous, deadly arrow materialised in front of him. I studied his hands, his arms, his shoulders while he readied his shot and released. My body twitched as I heard the hollow thunk as the arrow drove through its mark and the creature’s final scream washed over my ears.
Then all was still.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DESPITE MY LATE-night hike I’d risen with the sun that morning. The dirty dress I’d discarded the night before was gone and a new one waited for me on the dresser. I pulled on the base and smoothed its green skirts before lacing up a lightly-embroidered, black bodice over the top. It had been a while since my arrival and as I looked in the mirror a breath of relief passed through my lips. At last, Gabriel’s handprint had started to fade. The yellowy mark was far less unpleasant than its purple predecessor and I pulled on my boots before throwing the door open.
The breeze made me thankful for the warm, fitted sleeves of my gown as it whipped through my loose hair and washed across my face. I tucked a loose strand behind my ear and walked to the side of the balcony, watching the sun as it rose above the treeline. The floor below me was speckled with pink and purple flowers that swayed as though dancing to music we couldn’t hear. The long drop down, though it still caused my stomach to flip, didn’t nauseate me as it once had. Perhaps it was my leap from the window the previous night that made the height more bearable. I twined my fingers around the iron bar and leant my head backwards, enjoying another cool wind. My feet moved more sturdily as I took each careful step across the bridge and looked behind me.
The hut was quaint. As opposed to what I’d previously believed it seemed the construction of wooden rooms and bridges may have actually been a temporary fix – or a hasty extension. Now that I looked at it, the ground was littered with the bricks and stone that probably once formed a grand establishment. What I’d seen as a terrace below me was actually rough around its sides, like there had once been a wall or corridor leading to another section. The cracks had been sealed with wood, and fired clay to make an appropriate roof to the lower section of the house. The steps leading to the lower level were hammered into the trees; a mixture between stone and wood. Yet, behind the room – Ethan’s room – was something I couldn’t see a set of stairs to. Its brickwork was still mostly intact, though its floors were held up between trees, stone columns and wooden stilts. It wasn’t a long, long way from the ground but I’d hate to think of how little was holding it up. Curious.
“Ava!”
I was pulled from my thoughts as someone yelled at me from below. I looked over the rope of the bridge, ignored the plummet in my stomach, and saw Lavender waving at me from the terrace – er – floor – terrace. Nausea swept over me, though not from fear of the fall. I’d have to apologise for my behaviour. Looking back on it I could see I’d overreacted, but when a man tries to kill you is it really that easy to believe their excuses and say ‘I forgive you’?
Despite the fact these people were unfamiliar to me their promises so far had been true. They didn’t want to hurt me. They might now, a bit. And I, being as stubborn as my late mother, took to the wilds with little more than a chest full of fear and a head full of hot air. As much as I hated to admit it, had Ethan not found me yesterday I wouldn’t have seen another sunrise. Maybe that’s why it seemed so beautiful when I woke.
I started walking across the bridge when I quickly doubled back and grabbed my dagger from the top of the dresser. Never again, I thought and strapped it to my leg.
LAVENDER AND WILLOW were both merciful to me when I’d apologised. That’s not saying they didn’t give me a hard time from the amount of pans, clothes and filthy floors I had to wash and scrub for the next week. If I could describe what Gehn looked like, it was dried porridge on the bottom of a pan.
“I’m sorry, again,” I said, carrying a pile of wet washing into the sitting room.
“I suppose you’re forgiven – as long as these are spotless,” Willow said, taking the clothes from me.
I opened the back door for her and gulped, looking to Lavender for reassurance. She shrugged against the sofa and turned to the next page of her book. “What are you reading?”