I stay awake the entire night.
Tauron and Tyton each wake to take their shifts, but when it becomes clear I won't sleep, they each give up and head back to their bedroll.
Tauron, refusing to leave me to my despair, mutters under his breath, “At least one of us needs to be alert tomorrow, and it’s clearly not going to be you.”
The witch sleeps all night.
Roan wakes before sunrise and quietly packs his belongings, tying the bedroll to the back of his horse’s saddle and riding into the darkness with nothing more than a curt bow in my direction. Worry bleeds off him; it has from the moment my cousin announced her latest pregnancy. I insisted on skipping him for guard duty, knowing he wouldn’t have anyone watching his back on the ride home, but I doubt he got much more sleep than I did.
I doubt he ever truly rests.
As the first fragile rays of summer sunlight hit the grass around us, the witch’s eyes open, fluttering as she comes back into consciousness. There’s a single moment of softness on her features before she appears to remember where she is and why she's sleeping upright. Then the softness disappears. A hard look replaces it before that same blankness overtakes her, a small window of truth before the mask descends.
There are no markings on her face.
I've never seen a witch without them, and I'm tempted to search her to find where she hides them, but the idea of touching her makes my skin crawl.
She must feel my gaze, because she turns to look at me, but the mask stays secure as those silver eyes of hers pick me apart, dissecting every inch of my face and clearly finding me wanting. The distaste that dares to curl her lip burns me as surely as the iron is failing to burn her, a searing brand that blinds me with rage, and I’m forced to look away from her lest I risk the safety of the entire group. The fantasy of unchaining her from that tree, pinning her down, and flaying her alive is far too tempting. Maybe then she’d find something worth fearing in my scarred face.
“I need to find the Seer,” I mutter under my breath, and Tauron sits up with a foul look on his face.
“She left years ago, you’ve no chance of finding her now. Not unless you want to risk a passage across the ocean to the Northern Lands. The Sol King won't welcome an unexpected visit from the heir to the Southern Lands, I'm sure.”
He shoots an enraged look toward the tree before he stands and packs away his things, snapping out orders to my soldiers as we ready for our long journey.
I can't afford to leave my kingdom anyway. Whatever barbs my uncle has scraping at the surface of the Unseelie Court will surely dig deeper the moment I do, and the risk of the games he would play with my family is too great. Airlie’s pregnancy complicates everything further.
I stand up and stretch, then pull water out of my pack before I walk into the forest to relieve myself. I go farther away than usual, more to clear my head than out of any sense of propriety. I don't care what the witch thinks of me, but I can feel the heavy weight of her eyes as she watches me go, silent behind the gag shoved in her mouth. I’ve had centuries of learning to control my temper, endless lessons from my uncle’s sadistic games and callous treatment of those I swore to protect, and yet I’m holding it back by a thread.
Her eyes will unravel the calm within me until I’m nothing but the savage my uncle swears me to be.
When I get back, Tyton and Tauron have overseen the rest of the soldiers as they pack away the bedrolls and saddled the horses. Tyton feeds them small handfuls of oats that he had stashed away, murmuring as he strokes a hand down his horse's nose. There’s still an unbalanced look to his eyes and a frenetic movement to his limbs that speaks to how hard the magic of the forest is riding him.
I don't like how closely the witch watches him as well.
“Are you going to give her anything to eat? I’ll get one of the soldiers to take her to relieve herself, but she’s going to need water at the very least if we’re going to continue dragging her back to Yregar on foot. If you want her to arrive alive, that is. I’m more than happy to return with a corpse for the fires,” Tauron says.
The curl of his lip is damning, and when I force my gaze to follow his, I find the witch staring back at us. Every word passed between us has been weighed and measured by her now, I’m sure, every piece of information she collects going straight to Kharl’s ear. I know almost nothing about the magic of witches, but anything could be possible.
He eyes her. “Could it be some sort of glamor? Some new curse they’ve cooked up for us? Because no matter how I turn this over in my mind, I can’t believe the Fates would do this to you…to us all.”
It certainly feels like a curse to me.
She's blocked me out of her mind again, so I doubt she’ll answer me now, but I send a message through our connection regardless.If you don't reassure me that you are in fact my mate and this isn't a ruse, I’ll slit your throat right here and leave your body behind, Fates be damned.
Nothing.
I step up to her finally, the closest I've gotten to her so far, and pull an iron dagger out of its sheath at my hip. The weight of it is heavy in my hands as the magic in my blood rejects it, but I’m comfortable handling it.
The witch eyes it then looks back up at me, and I press the metal to her throat. The smell of burning flesh fills my lungs as I push down my instincts to stop, to throw myself in front of the iron instead to save my mate from the pain. Hurting her goes against every moral I’ve ever held, the very male I believed myself to be, but the Fates are testing me.
As the iron sizzles against her skin, the witch doesn't react. She stares back at me, unflinching, until I want to gouge out those silver eyes of hers, a constant reminder of the blood running through her veins. I’m rough as I use my other hand to loosen the tie around the back of her head, pulling until the gag falls away from her mouth, murmurs of concern rumbling through the soldiers who look on.
She runs her tongue over the lush plumpness of her lips, and when she speaks, her voice cracks, hoarse from the dryness of her throat. “If you slit my throat now, all you’ll achieve is breaking the Fates. I don't think that's a good idea, Donn.”
Donn.
The single damning word feels like a noose tightening around my neck once more.
