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Juliana tensed, and he knew immediately he’d said the wrong thing. She stood up, taking a shaky step forward like she planned to bolt—before realising she couldn’t see and she wasn’t supposed to leave.
“I’m sorry,” he said, offering her a rare apology. “That was—I didn’t think.”
“I don’t know why,” she whispered. “I have no idea why anyone would want to leave here, and I’ll never be able to ask her.”
“Unless you left.”
“But I wouldn’t be able to come back.”
No one knew if that was true, of course, as Juliana had been raised in Faerie and had probably been gifted with truesight within seconds of her birth. He also couldn’t imagine her being kept out—could see her banging down the intangible barrier and forcing it to let her back in.
But he wasn’t sure he wanted her to know that he thought that about her.
“Wouldn’t be attacked by sluaghs all the time, either,” he said instead.
At this, she snorted. “I am not afraid of sluaghs.”
“What are you afraid of, then?”
A stiff wind whistled through the trees, rustling the branches with its claws. “Right now? Freezing to death.”
The cold was seeping into his bones, too, black and bitter. “I’ll get out the blanket.”
Removing any hard equipment from the packs, they stuffed them with leaves and bracken to resemble pillows, scattering some over the ground to offer some protection from the cold. Juliana pushed Hawthorn next to the fallen tree and lay beside him, facing outwards in case of attack.
“Put your arms around me,” she instructed.
Hawthorn tensed, certain he’d misheard, or if he hadn’t, that the instruction had some kind of trick to it. “Um—“
“If you want to stay warm, do it. I need my hands by my weapon.”
“Right,” said Hawthorn, dimly wondering whether or not freezing was a better option.
A sharp breeze blew through the woods, and he decided to chance it, folding one arm under his head and draping the other loosely over her middle, touching nothing.
Juliana relaxed underneath him, scooching closer. Slowly, the warmth of her back bled through her clothes, heating the fraction of space between them. Her hair tickled his nose. He found he quite enjoyed the smell of damp earth and the whispering embers stirring inside his stomach.
“It’s quite nice sharing body warmth, isn’t it?” he said eventually, the wind howling outside.
“Please remember that I am armed.”
“Oh hush, I don’t mean like that! I just mean, well, it’s comfortable, isn’t it? Cold hard damp earth aside.”
“Is this your way of telling me you like snuggling?”
“I imagine almost everyone likes snuggling, and few are comfortable enough to admit it.”
“I don’t like snuggling,” she hissed.
“You can lie.”
She muttered something incomprehensible and lapsed once more into silence. Darkness swirled around then, night gaining daggers. He knew she wasn’t sleeping, that despite her exhaustion, she’d be awake long after him, and up long before.
He wanted to put his hands in her hair. He didn’t know why. It was a tangled mess, couldn’t be nearly as soft as he’d like it to be, but it was a fine colour, and it looked thick and not entirely unpleasant.
He wondered what else he’d like to touch, if there wasn’t the sword, if this wasn’t Juliana, but some soft, warm girl who wanted him to touch her.
It occurred to him that there wasn’t much hedidn’twant to touch, so he stomped out those thoughts as surely as embers.
