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“Nothing good.” He pulls me toward the road, the moonlight illuminating it as a line of white against the dunes in the near distance.
The scream comes again, and he moves faster but guides me in front of him. I hug the skins to my chest as he keeps his pike at the ready.
When we finally reach the road, he stops and turns, his body tense as he waits for whatever makes that vicious scream. After a few moments, the sound comes again, but it’s farther away.
“Creatures like that don’t like being out in the open.” He glances at the dark sky dotted with stars. “In fact, neither do I.” He leads me to the opposite side of the road, the one that flows away into the wilderness of sand that seems utterly bereft of life.
The image of all those faces in the back of the slave wagon flashes through my mind. Though I wish I didn’t see, I did. And some of the faces belonged to children. They will be sold to the highest bidder—their lives wasted in the mines, or perhaps they’ll be sent back north to serve in a noble house of Byrn Varyndr. At least there they’ll be beaten in style. My eyes water the slightest bit, but I swallow hard and push my feelings down, down, down. After all, there’s nothing I can do about it. I couldn’t save myself, much less anyone else.
Gareth and I trudge in silence for a while, the food settling in my stomach and the water giving me new legs. The wind is the only sound other than our steps. Byrn Varyndr is never this quiet. The maid next door would be either snoring or crying, the neighborhood fae children would be playing or tormenting their slaves, Wreth would be cackling as she killed a chicken and ripped its head off with her teeth—there was never a moment of true quiet. Not the way it is out here.
The dunes are beautiful, but nothing stirs in them. I rub my arms despite the warm air. It’s just so lonely.
“You aren’t alone, Beth.”
I turn to Gareth, his eyes luminous under the moonlight despite the dirt smudged on his cheeks. “I didn’t know I said that out loud.”
He smiles a little, and the pureness of it makes him look young.
“How old are you?” The question takes flight before I can clip its wings.
His laugh is a boisterous hug, and I want it to wrap around me. “What a question.”
“I’m just curious.” I toss my matted hair over my shoulder in the flirtiest way anyone can toss matted hair. “I mean, I assume I’ll call you ‘my old fae fella’ if we’re ever mated.”
“If?” He tsks and takes my hand. “When, you mean.”
I suck on my canine tooth. “Tell you what. You can either tell me your age or how many females you’ve slept with.”
His steps stutter for a second, but he rights himself before falling into the coarse sand. “Okay, but what do I get in return?”
“If you tell me one of those dear facts, I’ll tell you the very same one about myself. We can set that rule for the entirety of our trip, if you like.”
“That’s a trap,” he muses.
I shrug. “Seems fair to me.”
“Fair, but a terrible way to get information, and definitely a trap.”
“How so?”
A lizard skitters across our path and disappears into the light sand. Not so barren after all.
“It’s a high cost. I want to know everything about you, but perhaps I don’t want you to know all about me. After all, I have a lot more years than you. I’ve … done things. And I can’t say I’m proud of everything in my past.” He swipes his dark hair out of his face and tucks it behind his pointed ear.
“Nervous much?” I fake my bravado, because I realize he’s right, and this is a trap—for both of us. Can I tell him my secrets? I can try, but I have to know he’s got skin in the game. This is the only way. “If we do it like this, we can only ask the other questions that we can bear to give our own answers to. So, if we’re brave, we’ll learn a lot about each other. If we’re not, then … Then I guess maybe it’s not really meant to be.”
“Your clever mind serves double duty as a torture implement.” He sighs. “And it is meant to be, with or without the questions.”
“You don’t have to take my offer.” I kick at the sand though it’s beginning to chafe the skin of my feet inside my thin shoes. “We can remain happy strangers.”
“We aren’t strangers.” He whips around and blocks me, his looming figure broad and muscled and deliciously masculine. “We’re mates.”
“We are?” I blink innocently. “What’s my favorite food, then?”
Now he’s the one blinking.
“See? How can we be mates when we don’t even know each other?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.” I put my hands on my hips. “What I said before about the bond driving you—I meant it. I’m not just going to go along for the ride because your instincts tell you ‘go rut with her, she’s the one.’”
His jaw hardens. “That’s not what—”
“So you can accept my terms, or you can go find yourself another mate.” I don’t know why I’m being so hard on him. Maybe that cheap wine went to my brain and caused it to warp out of shape. Or maybe—I take a deep breath—maybe I know this is the only way that things can work between us. And there is no maybe about this last fact: my foolish human heart wants this to work.
I gentle my tone and put one hand to his scarred cheek, running my thumb along the old wound. “I want to know you.” I drop my palm to his chest, the steady thrum of his heart against my palm. “All of you. And I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into. I’m not some innocent like Taylor. Not a fae in disguise. I’m a changeling. A slave. And I have scars that run deeper than anyone has ever seen. If I’m going to show them to you, then I need to see yours as well.”
He covers my hand with his own, his warmth seeping into me as his gaze softens. “If this is what you need, then I agree.”
“No conditions?” I arch a brow.
“None other than the terms you’ve already stated. If one asks the question, then they must also answer it.”
“Deal?”
He leans down. “Seal it with a kiss?”
I tilt my head back to meet him and give him the slightest nod.
His mouth is a brand on mine, the magic of our pact stinging through me like the tingle of lightning. He pulls me to him, our bodies pulsing with life as the eternal sands look on silently, our secrets safe within their ever-shifting dunes.
18
Gareth
“I don’t like it.” I roll my shoulders, the tension there almost unbearable as we stride toward the wide gates of Cranthum.
“Stop being a ninny.” Beth pulls lightly at the stolen rope I’ve used to bind her hands. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been tied up.” She cuts her eyes at me, devious to the core. “And I certainly hope it won’t be the last.”
I white-knuckle the rope, the image of Beth tied naked to my bed like a spike of fire down my spine. Her naughty mouth deserves some rough kissing, and I intend to give it to her as soon as we’re free of this slaver’s town.
