“You are describing the entirety of Clovermere County.”
“It was a very specific tree. And specific grass. I had a mouthful of it.” He was craning his neck, looking in every direction, and every twist of his torso was a fresh torment. I dismounted before the situation became any more untenable.
I reached up to help Pip down. He put his hands on my shoulders, swung his leg over, and slid down the front of me.
The full length of his body slid against the full length of mine, every inch in a slow, controlled descent that hinted at his strength. His chest dragged down my chest and his stomach slid against my stomach until his hips caught against mine. He paused there, feet not quite touching the ground, suspended between the saddle and the earth with his body pressed against mine.
He looked up at me, his blue eyes wide and not even a little bit innocent.
“Thanks for the lift,” he said. His breath was warm against the base of my throat. “I never could have gotten off that horse without you.”
My hands were on his waist. I did not remember putting them there. My fingers curled against the bare skin above his hips, and the vibration in my chest was no longer a hum. It was a roar. I could feel every iron fitting on Bram’s tack singing, could feel the old horseshoes buried in the road beneath us resonating, could feel the nails in the fence post ten feet away trembling intheir wood. My magic was reaching for everything metal within a hundred feet.
I looked at his mouth. It was right there. Pink, slightly parted, the lower lip full and soft and exactly the right distance from mine for what would have been the easiest thing in the world.
Pip was very still. Waiting, with those blue eyes on mine, and I understood in that moment that if I kissed him, he would let me, and if I let go, he would smile and make a joke, and either way, something between us would change.
Bram stamped his hoof, the crack of his foot on the hard dirt of the road cutting through the moment like a stone through glass.
I set Pip on the ground and stepped back.
“We should search the area,” I said. My voice was level. Seven hundred and fifty years of training was good for something.
For a second, I was completely certain Pip was about to cry. Then the smile returned, bright and easy and utterly impenetrable.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s look at some grass. I just need to see it up close to see if it’s the right stuff.”
We found nothing. There were no marks, no residual magic that I could feel through the iron in the soil, no scorched earth or shimmering portal or convenient glowing circle. Just afield in Clovermere, indistinguishable from every other field in Clovermere.
I watched him from a distance while pretending to examine the road. He was picking flowers. He had arrived in this world through impossible means, survived an interrogation, been detained by a military force, and now he was standing in a field selecting wildflowers by color and weaving them into a little crown.
Bram came up behind me and pressed his nose against my shoulder, shoving me forward.
“Don’t,” I said.
He shoved me again.
“You don’t understand,” I told my horse, and went to collect the human before he wandered into the next county.
The ride back was worse. Or better. I could no longer tell the difference.
Pip sat in my lap and talked about the flowers he’d picked and the birds he’d seen and the way the light caught the hills, and his body moved against mine with every stride, and my hand stayed firmly on the reins where it belonged, and by the time the towers of Feravael came into view, I had recited the Grey Guard oath of conduct four more times and it had continued to help not at all.
When we reached the stable yard, I dismounted first. I lifted Pip down by the waist, at arm’s length, placing him on the ground with the care of someone handling an unpredictable explosive.
“Fun outing,” Pip said. He was wearing the wildflower crown, and it was difficult not to think he looked pretty. “Same time tomorrow?”
“We’ll see,” I said.
Pip grinned at me. Then he turned and walked toward the Grey Guard wing, his ruined trousers doing something unconscionable to his—
I looked away and found Bram watching me.
“Not a word,” I said.
Chapter 7
Pip
