Page 107 of Fate's Wicked Oath

“Oh.” I winced, thinking of our Orders. “That’s my fault, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he replied simply, leaning in again to whisper against my cheek. He inhaled as if he needed extra breath for what he would say next. “I am in the dark. I am lost in the woods, and somehow you, Mariana, have become my guiding star. I feel as if I’ve stumbled far off course, I am more disoriented than ever, but when I’m with you, I don’t much care to find the path I was once on. I don’t much care for anything other than to look up and see you and know that I am finally heading in the right direction.”

I pulled back to meet his eyes; they gleamed in the lamplight. “Or heading to your doom,” I said weakly.

He dragged his thumb along the sharp edge of my jaw. “You’re aware of the state of my Order, sweetheart. If this is doom, then I welcome it.”

My stomach flipped. How was it that Faren—charming, boisterous, honorableFaren—could say such disastrously heartfelt things to someone like me? An enemy?

“You asked what I want,” I said hoarsely. “I want to avoid dooming you.”

He smiled, then, bright and defiant. “Too late.”

With his thumb still on my jaw, I lifted my chin, allowing him to guide me home. Our lips brushed, and while I was no stranger to powerlessness, I’d never felt powerless likethis. If he was lost in a forest of shifting loyalties, I was drowning in a sea of selfish desire.

“Fine,” I said against his mouth. “Get the room.”

38

Doom

Faren

Faren was single-minded as Mariana led him upstairs, his palm never leaving the small of her back. He was floating and she was the current sweeping him along. His body hummed with pent-up need, his perils abandoned on a faraway shore. He’d spent so much of their journeyfretting, and he didn’t want to fret tonight.

By contrast, the set of Mariana’s shoulders grew tenser and tenser with each step. By the time Faren closed them inside their rented room—shutting out the noise of the raucous pub downstairs—her body was braced. He’d expected the silence to soothe her, but as she took in the bed, the sparse furniture, thesmallnessof the space, it became apparent: Mariana wasnervous.

He found it oddly endearing.

Faren tried and failed to smother a smile, determined to set her mind at ease. He had no expectations, no plan. He wanted her body, but more than that, he wanted her safe, fed, happy. He wanted to make her feel good; he had the sense that shewas rather starved of feeling good. And after weeks camping and traveling alongside her, he knew just how to start.

After dumping their gear by the door, Faren knelt before the fireplace, striking flint and coaxing the flames into a healthy blaze. Next, he dragged a pair of wooden chairs to the sides of the hearth, opened his and her sodden packs, and began wringing out and draping their soaked bedrolls and clothing over the chairs to dry. He could feel Mariana watching him from the center of the room as he laid her spare socks on the stone hearth slab one by one.

“Sit,” he said as he worked. “Warm your feet.”

Her reply was overly chipper. “Need help?”

“I need you”—he enunciated, glancing over his shoulder at her—“to relax.”

With a relenting sigh, Mariana gathered a heap of blankets and pillows from the bed and arranged them on the rug in front of the fire. She sat, removed her boots and socks, then extended her shapely legs out long. Her shirt and trousers had damp patches on the thighs and around her collar, but as she leaned back on her hands and closed her eyes, Faren saw the crinkle on her forehead gradually disappear.

If she minded him rummaging through her pack and handling all her clothes, she didn’t say so. Searching for any remaining wet socks, he dug past pots of Hylder salve, mushy rations, and a vial of what appeared to be an anti-pregnancy tincture. In the bottom, he found the shawl he’d bought her in Waldron, folded neatly with the knit gloves from Orna, the fine garments still mostly dry. He decided to leave them tucked safely therein, thinking of how he, too, kept his most valuable items protected within the depths of his own bag.

When his task was done, Faren removed his own boots and sat beside Mariana on the floor, keeping a gap between them. He mirrored her position, legs outstretched, arms braced behindhim. The lick of the flames on the soles of his feet felt divine, as did the sight of the color returning to Mariana’s cheeks as the room heated.

Outside, the storm raged, making their modest haven seem all the more intimate. Faren tipped his head back, basking in the calm; his chilled magic gradually heated, spreading out under the surface of his warmed skin, content.

After a while, his senses prickled with awareness, and when he looked at Mariana, she was already staring back at him. More specifically, she was staring at his chest, where his semi-damp white shirt was stretched across his broadness. She seemed to like what she saw. The tip of her tongue slid along the scar that streaked through her upper lip, tracing its ridge. He could feel it as if it were his own tongue.

When she realized that he’d caught her appreciating him, she pressed her lips together, her long neck pulsing as she swallowed. She had a strange look on her face, her mouth soft but her jaw tense. Her dark eyes reflected the fire. He recognized the wariness of before, but there was a wildness to it, now. A thrill.

What he wouldn’t give to peek inside her mind and read all those thoughts, like incantations in a sacred Ledger; if he did, he thought darkly, he’d probably be compelled to take a wicked Oath.

Eyes skittering back to the fire, Mariana said, “This is weird.”

“Weird how?”

“You haven’t said much.”