AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 32
We lay side by sidein the cramped tent, the air heavy with unspoken words.
The fire still blazed outside, casting flickering shadows over the tent walls. In the dim light, I could see Vesper's golden eyes glowing as he looked back at me. We were so close I could feel his breath on my face.
“So...” I started to say.
But he was already moving towards me. Before I could speak, he captured my lips in a kiss. His mouth was hot and wet against mine. As his tongue explored every inch of my mouth, I moaned softly, closing my eyes. This. This was everything I needed. The closeness I had forgotten I could have. Vesper's lips, his body pressed up against mine. It felt so good, so right.
Hungrily, I started to push his shirt up his chest, running my hands over the taut muscles of his torso. Light amber curls ran up the center of his chest. I traced them with my fingers, moving my hands down his stomach, down to the top of his trousers and beginning to fumble with the buttons.
Vesper's hands were roving my body, tracing the curves of my hips, then settling on the soft swells of my breasts.
My body arched to his touch, responding eagerly. I wanted him. More than anything I had ever wanted before.
Our kiss deepened, building to a fever pitch, both of us lost in the moment...
And then a sound broke through the night, echoing off the stone walls.
I pulled back. “What was that?”
We listened.
The sound came again. A keening sort of cry.
I scrambled with Vesper towards the tent flap. Despite what Draven had said, what if a harpy did manage to get this far into the ruins? I had no wish to be pecked to death by those sharp beaks.
But as we stood up and looked around us, I saw it was no harpy but something else instead.
A figure had emerged from one of the passageways and was walking towards us.
A very small figure.
“It's just a child,” I said, starting to breathe a sigh of relief.
And then the figure stepped close enough that the firelight fell upon it.
Once upon a time the thing lurching towards us must have been some fae parent’s beloved little boy. Now it was something beyond even the darkest of nightmares.
The fae boy's small, frail body was contorted and twisted, limbs gnarled and bent at impossible angles. His pale blue hair hung in clumps around his face, matted and tangled with filth and gore.
As he stumbled towards us and the true extent of the child's condition was revealed, I heard a guttural sound of stark terror come from my mouth. The boy's skin was wrinkled and gray like the flesh of a rotting corpse. It sagged from his bones like a candle's melting wax. A sickening stench of decay and death emanated from the child in waves and I choked as I caught the scent of it.
The boy's face was the worst sight of all. His eyes were festering pits of blackness, rot trickling out down his cheeks, leaving me wondering how he could possibly see us at all. His nose had collapsed, leaving a gaping hole in the center of his face, while his mouth was a cavernous maw filled with jagged, putrefied teeth.
As I opened my mouth to scream for the others, an object flew past me with a whistling sound. I turned to see Vesper with his arm raised, then looked back at the little boy. A knife was embedded in his forehead.
We watched in fascinated horror as a dark liquid seeped from the wound and the child sank to his knees, then fell forward unmoving.
I was trembling, shuddering with revulsion. Vesper grasped me by the arms. “It’s all right,” he said, trying to reassure me. “There was only one.” He brushed a strand of loose hair from my eyes and kissed my forehead. “There was only one. It’s over.”
Around us the others were waking up. Lancelet pushed open her tent flap, followed by the little girl.
I saw Draven sitting up in his bedroll, staring at the boy’s corpse with an expression of utter disbelief.
