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“For that reason and many more, little bug. But I have all of eternity to pay penance for my foolishness.”

A quirk of her lips was all I was given before she closed her eyes again, her arm reached out and found the faded mark of the bite she had given me the night of the Market. Her thumb stroked it idly. I smiled at the peaceful sight of her spread naked beside me, her hair pooling across the single pillow on the bed, not that she would use it. I kept running my fingers through her hair until her breathing went deep and steady.

Only then did I press a kiss to the tip of her ear and whisper, “A thousand years from now, when magic itself has forgotten my name, and my body has rotted away to feed a forest above it, every bough in every tree, every blade of grass and every flower will whisper your name as a prayer.”

Chapter 17

Cricket

The first winks of dawn battling back the night were twinkling outside the window when his deep masculine snores woke me from my shallow sleep. I hadn’t even meant to fall into that, I had wanted to stay awake until he fell asleep and then leave, but the warmth of his body and the steady thump of his heart against my skin had dragged me down into a sated peace I hadn’t experienced before.

His arm was draped luxuriously over me, his hand resting against my hip, engulfing it. I stared at it, wishing I could lay here in his arms for that eternity he had promised. But when he woke, he’d be taking me back to the palace. He’d said nothing about an alternative plan in our entire night together. We hadn’t spoken at all about our time in the palace, or what waited for us beyond the door of the tiny room. I had nearly begged him silently to say he wouldn’t take me back.

He didn’t though.

And I had to assume for the benefit of my friends, that was his aim. He had nowhere else to go. I had nowhere else to go, that he knew of.

And I had my three friends out in the wilderness waiting for me. I had a responsibility to keep them safe, so I slid free of his warmth and found his discarded belt. Carefully, I tied him to the broken headboard of the bed. It wouldn’t hold him for long, but it would hold him for a little while. Long enough for us to get away, and that’s all that mattered.

I slipped into the wrinkled mess of my chemise before pulling the curtain down across the window, hoping the darkness blocking out the dawn would keep him sleeping longer, and I fished the string of beads from the wadded up remains of my dress. I didn’t know how he had found me, but I had been foolish to keep the beads, knowing that he had given them to me. Knowing that his magic was infused in them. Foolish and sentimental.

A single tear slipped free from my grip as I pulled a button, one of the many bone buttons I had gotten good at making for my dresses, and tied it onto the string. The fat tear splashed across the ivory of the button and soaked into it. He could keep this one part of me and nothing more. I laced the string through what looked like a ring for a cloak on his discarded leather armor and crept to the door.

One last look. Just one last look, and I’d never see him again. This time for sure. Where I was going, he could not follow. He had told me that the House of Magic was protected by a magic storm. Violet had told me that it was deadly to Fae. And for the safety of my friends, he could never know where I was going.

I took him in, laying on his back like a model. His body was peppered with the pucker of old wounds, those beastly tattoos, the lurid evidence of our fucking—written in slashes, bite marks, and small bruises—and his arms tied to the headboard. The urge to slip back into bed and ride him until he broke free was almost too strong.

I gathered my courage and tiptoed into the hall, letting the door silently close behind me.

It took me four steps to realize what had happened as I struggled to turn my dress right side out. The pale grass green of my dress burned into my retinas as the warm orange of the lamp light danced round it.

Color. My eyes darted around the once drab hallway of the inn to take in the rich, royal blue wallpaper with the shimmering green peacock damask pattern, took in the dark, polished wood, lustrous in its brown tones. I didn’t have time to stand there in wonder as color bled back into my world. I had to go.

I shoved myself back into my dress, not even bothering to properly arrange my clothes before dashing on tiptoes down the stairs and through the inn. The woman who had been sitting by the fire when I came in looked up from a steaming cup of tea as if she hadn’t moved at all, but aside from a twitch of amusement in her arched brows, made no indication she knew what had passed between The Raven and I in the night.

I burst free of the inn and out into the rays of the new dawn as it broke in dazzling oranges and purples across the sky. I stuffed my fist into my mouth, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all and screamed into my own flesh. I did not realize how much I missed the vibrance of the world around me until it came crashing back in a cacophony of brilliance.

“Oi!” I heard a hiss behind me and turned to see soft, lavender eyes peeking out from behind the cover of a bush. “If you’re done getting fucked seven ways from the gods’ glory, I’ll thank you to get a leg on!”

The bush moved and revealed Violet hiding behind Green Man’s contorted body.

“Gods!” I exclaimed in a whisper as Goose also unwrapped himself from the trio of my friends. I had sent him out to protect the three as I waited, not realizing that the Fae I waited for was The Raven.

“We’ve gotten effective at hiding as a team it seems,” Green Man quipped.

I nodded and the four of them came away from the woods in a dash. We ran, following Green Man. Emerald, however, stopped next to the pretty, young mare that was grazing next to the inn. A flash of her brilliant, green smile and she pulled the strap that held the saddle to the mare, and a small knife slashed repeatedly at the belt until it was nothing more than chunks as she tossed the seat to the ground.

I snorted a laugh. “Clever.”

“Let’s hope he can’t ride a horse bareback as well as he can ride I Don’t Know.” barked Violet as she snatched Emerald’s hand.

We ran for what seemed like hours, first picking our way through a bog where faces watched our progress, and then into gentle rolling hills, rich with swaying gold and red grasses. There were no braying of hounds nor shouts behind us. I expected at every moment for The Raven to appear over the ridge of one hill or another, but he never did.

We stopped at a stone-lined spring, resting our backs against one of the many great oaks dotting the landscape like stars against the night sky.

“Goose.” The massive dog raised his head from between his paws and padded over to flop next to me. His great head found a place in my lap, and I couldn’t help but lavish him with scratches. “I have nothing to write with bud. If I send you somewhere, do you think you could do what you did down in the deep dark?”

Three sets of eyes turned curiously to me. When I recounted the story of the spider and my mother, I had left out the part where Goose had talked in my mind. Goose however, just watched me for a long while before finally huffing.