Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 23 –
We found shelter a few hours from dusk, an old mill with a broken wheel which lay on its side in an over-grown stream. Once again, my diary had proved itself a useful ally, and I couldn’t help the smug grin that found me as I pointed out the shelter we were in such desperate need of to Hendrix.
The squat tower which the wheel had once been bolted to had partially collapsed. Piled rubble now left an opening which made that portion of the building untenable for shelter, but the grain store was sturdier.
“Human built,” Hendrix grumbled, taking the lead as he stalked towards the dilapidated building.
“Sorry my people aren’t offered the Art of preservation the way some of yours are,” I muttered, my boots sloshing through deep puddles, more mud caking to their sides.
I was cold, wet and miserable. The Bear may have created a passage through the storm for us to traverse but water still dripped from every tree, every vine, every bramble and the forest floor was awash with what could arguably be named a shallow lake.
“The Fae are the blessed favourites of the spirits,” he replied, earning a sneer of contempt from me.
“The Fae are soft and pampered by the lives of privilege the spirits offered you. You know nothing of hard labour and perseverance.”
“Ah, how prettily you mutter your jealous words,” he taunted. “I might feel inclined to pity you, did I not know your people to be both tenacious and vicious enough to thrive despite your… misfortunes.”
Hendrix began to push the old, wooden door which blocked the entrance to the grain store, and I bit my tongue to halt the wandering of my fingers towards my slingshot. One sharp clip to his ear would remind him of just how vicious humans could be…
The door groaned and creaked, then finally buckled beneath his battering-ram of a body, swinging wide to knock against the inner wall. A cloud of dust departed the building and engulfed him, drawing a snort of amusement from me while he cursed.
“Oh dear, your pretty hair seems to have turned beige,” I told him while he swiped the layer of dust from his face and turned a half-assed glare my way.
“The grain has spoiled. This place stinks worse than a human brothel.”
“You must have frequented the wrong ones,” I replied dismissively, brushing past him as I ventured into the grain store to take a look at our new shelter. “The brothel in my town only ever smelled of sweetness and sin.”
Hendrix narrowed his eyes at me. “And how might you know that?”
“Same way as you do, I suppose.”
I squinted in the dim light, sighing at what I found. The store had been filled to the brim when the forest had seen fit to snatch it. Sacks of grain were piled fifteen high from floor to rafter around every wall. It was a damn shame so much food had been lost and left to waste this way. Only a narrow space remained free in the centre of the store, hardly large enough to accommodate one of us throughout the night, let alone two.
“Can you lift some of those out of here?” I asked, glancing back at Hendrix whose long hair was still coated in a layer of dust and whose scowl could have cut a lesser woman to ribbons.
“Do I look like a pack mule?”
I tilted my head, considering him. “Your nose is a little too long to be a mule’s but you do have that vacant kind of look in your eyes that they get at the end of a hard day’s work, so I’d say you’ll pass for one.”
Hendrix barked a laugh, surprising me once more. He was so mercurial it was impossible to know whether he might turn to rage or mirth at any given moment – though I had to admit I found the latter preferable, even if it was more disconcerting.
He stepped around me, his arm brushing mine, my skin prickling at the contact. He was so big he took up altogether too much space, not just physically, but his aura seemed to expand to fill every inch surrounding me until I felt as though I was left with no choice but to breathe him in.
“What happened back there?” Hendrix asked as he hauled three huge bags of grain from the stack as if they weighed nothing and hurled them outside.
Mud splattered up in all directions and I leapt back, knocking into him in the process and causing him to drop his hand to the base of my spine to steady me.
“Back where?” I asked, glancing up into his green eyes before taking a measured step away from both him and the place he’d chosen to dump the bags of grain.
“The castle. With the Dragon. You summoned it but then it… well it lost its shit, didn’t it?”
I flushed, wishing I could banish the embarrassment which was clawing its way into my cheeks and stepping further away from him so I could inspect the broken waterwheel.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug.
“Bullshit. What happened?” He tossed three more bags out and splattered several more trees with mud for good measure.
The Bear watched everything with tired eyes, a low grumble escaping it as it turned its gaze onto me.
I blinked, the weight of its stare summoning the truth to my lips despite my desire to hide any and all forms of weakness from this Fae brute who insisted on keeping my company.
“I… did what you said. But it felt all wrong somehow.”
“You weren’t forceful enough,” Hendrix commented, and I scowled.
“Force is not your strength.”
I gasped, whirling around and snatching the slingshot from my belt, loading it with a stone from my pocket in the next breath and staring out into the trees in alarm as I hunted for my target.
“What is it?” Hendrix was at my side already, sword drawn, brow low as he hunted the trees with me, his powerful body poised for attack.
The protection the Bear was offering us from the storm only extended ten feet or so, and beyond it a curtain of blustering rain and swirling leaves veiled our view of the trees.
“It came from over there,” I said, bobbing my chin towards the dense woodland to the south, though truthfully, I wasn’t certain of that.
“What did?”
“That voice,” I said, sparing a frown for Hendrix whose gaze was now pinned on me alone.
“There was no voice,” he replied, no uncertainty in his words, the Fae arrogance solidly in place.
My lips parted on a protest but the voice came again.
“You were not selected for this bond for your brute strength, spirit singer. Do not think to force me beneath your heel now.”
I sucked in a breath, stumbling back a step at the rumbling voice which echoed within the confines of my own soul.
“The Dragon…” I mumbled, almost tripping on a root as I tried to back away from something which was impossible to hide from.
“Speak plainly, lightwing,” Hendrix growled, catching my arm to halt my retreat.
My eyes flicked up to his, the panic which was rising in my chest stilling at the solid weight I found in his expression.
“I can hear the Dragon’s voice in my mind,” I told him, and his brows lowered over those stoic eyes.
“The spirit speaks to you?”
“Yes… no… I mean, I hear a voice which can’t be any other.” I shrugged uselessly but he didn’t release me.
“What is it saying?”
“Nothing now. But the Dragon told me it didn’t pick me for brute strength – I don’t think it liked it when I tried to force it to fall to my command.”
Hendrix scoffed, releasing me and giving the forest a lingering look before moving back to removing sacks of grain from our shelter.
“That was apparent when it tore the castle down around us. You’ll have to be firmer with it the next time you attempt to call it forth. And I’d suggest waiting until we aren’t approaching the night with only one chance of shelter to be found.”
I frowned at his back, not agreeing with his assessment of what I needed to do to win the Dragon to my favour but not wanting to fall into an argument with him either.
I tried reaching out to the Dragon again, calling to it in the darkness of my mind, but I only found sullen silence as a reply.
My attention moved to the Bear who cocked its head at me, water spilling from its snout and ears with the movement.
“Can you talk too?” I asked it curiously.
“No,” Hendrix answered for it. “My spirits remain dormant and silent while awaiting my command. They do not whisper words of madness in my ears, and you’d do well to ignore anything the Dragon attempts to hiss your way too.”
I pursed my lips, not agreeing with him at all, but that was nothing new.
“Hello?” I felt like a fool as I tried to speak to the Bear within my own mind, but the spirit blinked as if perhaps-
A violent crash of thunder rattled the sky overhead and I flinched, having almost forgotten the storm which raged beyond the confines of the Bear’s magic.
“The other sacks will tear if I try to haul them out. This is the best I can do, unless you wish to sleep on heaps of rotting grain?” Hendrix called, and I turned to our shelter for the night.
“It will do,” I said, not looking at him as I took in just how small the space within the grain store was and just how closely we’d be spending the night with one another. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, did the wild little human just deign to offer thanks to the brutish Fae?” Hendrix taunted.
“Don’t get used to it.”
I headed inside, taking my pack from my shoulders and moving into the sparce, though thankfully dry room.
Hendrix paused on the threshold, turning back to look at the Bear as he banished it. I watched as the spirit slipped out of its physical form, returning to the amulet Hendrix wore at his throat. Jealousy sparked within me at both how easily he wielded his spirit and the unfading sting over the Bear’s ownership.
The rain slammed down into the clearing the Bear had created for us in a rush that exploded with sound, and I cringed away from the cold and wet while Hendrix stepped fully inside and slammed the door to block it out.
Night wasn’t far from us and with the door closed, there was little to no illumination left in the grain store.
I sank down to my knees to the back of the cramped space, a shiver rolling through me at the weight of my saturated clothes. This would not be a night of comfort like those which had preceded it.
Hendrix sighed as he sat too, his knee knocking against my thigh in the darkness, my skin heating at the contact.
“Any chance you had a store of food in that bag you almost died for?” he asked in a low voice which broke over the crashing of the rain on the tiled roof above our heads.
“I gathered some berries while we were walking,” I admitted, my hand moving to the bulge in my pocket to draw out some of the succulent fruit. “But I wanted to inspect them properly before eating them. Just in case I collected the wrong thing in my haste with the rain beating down.”
Hendrix snorted. “Clever little thing, aren’t you? Always planning your next move, always ready for the worst.”
“Perhaps you lived too long in comfort,” I said. “But where I grew up, the worst tended to come looking for you if you weren’t expecting it.”
Hendrix fell silent and I was unable to see more than the deeper shadow which marked his outline, so it was impossible for me to tell if he was considering my words with scorn or compassion, though of course I assumed the former. No doubt that insufferable smirk was tilting up the corner of his lips, those deep green eyes of his sparking with malice and amusement at the pathetic woes of the human he disdained so very much.
“What are you waiting for then?” he asked when the silence stretched and only the pounding of the rain sounded between us.
“Waiting?”
“The berries,” he prompted.
“I told you, I need to inspect them before risking-”
“Go ahead then.”
“In the dark?”
There was a moment’s pause before Hendrix’s dry laughter rolled through the room, the sound catching me off guard and making my heart leap in alarm.
“What?” I hissed, tensing as he aimed his mirth my way, embarrassment raising its head in the pit of my stomach – though I had no idea why he was laughing at me.
“You cannot see?” he taunted, his arm waving across the space between us, the movement making me flinch minutely as its shadow passed too close for my liking.
“I am not blind,” I bit out. “I can see enough to know where you are and where the door is, but no, I cannot see well enough to be able to spot a blueberry from a black nightshade berry.”
“One is blue while the other is black,” Hendrix scoffed.
“I am well aware of that. Just as I am aware that I picked them in a hurry while the rain pounded down on a forest which is well known to enjoy playing tricks on desperate Champions. I have no intention of eating any of them without getting a clear look at what I am putting in my mouth. But by all means – you try them.”
I took a handful of the berries from my haul and held them out into the space between us, my eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness of our shelter. I could see a little of his expression now, though mostly it was just a slight gleam to his eyes.
Hendrix hummed in thought, making no move to take the berries from me.
“Scared?” I taunted.
He snorted in dismissal, reaching out to snatch the handful from my grasp, his fingers grazing against my palm as he took my meagre offering and pressed the lot of them between his lips.
I sucked in a breath as surprise and alarm mingled within me and I lurched forward an inch as if I might strike him to knock the fruit from his mouth.
“Are you insane?” I gasped, but he only held out a hand to ward me off as I attempted to reach for him.
I watched the shadow of his jaw as it worked while he chewed, saying nothing, though traitorous thoughts arose within me. If he died from eating nightshade berries, then I’d be free to claim his amulets. My fingers curled into a fist in my lap, the stain from the berry juices sticky against my palm. My heart leapt and pounded at the thought – of course I should be hoping for that outcome but instead I only felt horror at the idea of it coming to pass.
I couldn’t see him well enough to be certain of it, but I felt his gaze boring into mine while I watched him chew and chew and-
“Spit them out,” I demanded, pushing forward and taking hold of his chin as if I might force his mouth open were he to refuse.
Hendrix’s hand curled around my wrist and he tugged my hand from his jaw, his stubble raking across my skin as he relocated my grip to his throat. I could feel it bob as he swallowed in defiance of my command.
“Worried about me, lightwing?” he mocked, his other hand moving to brush a strand of hair away from my face in a touch so gentle it had me scowling.
“Why did you do that?” I hissed.
“Silly me,” he said, not seeming the least bit chastised. “Looks like I trust your judgement even more than you trust your own. You’re no fool, Ferris Creed. You wouldn’t pick nightshade berries by mistake. It’s not in you to be that ignorant even if you tried.”
“I told you, I-”
Hendrix leaned forward until I could practically taste the sweetness of the berries on his lips, my hand still curled around his throat, our bodies all too close to one another.
“Tell me, pretty human, are you afraid of the dark?” he asked, his voice a low rumble which broke over me with a deeper tenor than the thunder which crashed in the heavens beyond our hiding place.
I swallowed, feeling his eyes on me, though I still couldn’t see nearly enough of him to be able to glean what game he was playing with me.
“I don’t like the dark,” I admitted finally, my voice an exhale that seemed to expel the fears which swum within my heart. “Not because I know to fear it. But because it’s too full of memories. The kind I wish I could banish but know I never will.”
“Tell me,” he pushed, and for some reason I found I wanted to give him that answer. I hadn’t spoken about her openly in so long. Everyone in our town knew what had happened and the gaping hole in my family spoke of her every day, but I never said her name, never spoke of it, never revealed this truth in me as if it were some secret. But it wasn’t a secret. It was a tragedy. One which had led me into the darkness of this forest. One which had brought me to this place with a Fae male who I had every reason to distrust, but still I found myself wanting him to know about her because she was important. She was everything. And here we were, halfway through our time here, hiding from the dark outside, as close as I had ever come to fulfilling the promises I’d made to her so long ago, so why shouldn’t I speak her name?
“Eight years ago, the forest took my sister, Rissa, as its sacrifice.”
Hendrix stilled, his grip on my wrist tightening, his other hand falling against the base of my spine, pressing against me as though he might draw me closer to him, or at the very least, stop me from running away.
“She was taken to be a child of the forest?” he confirmed.
That old wound tore open in my chest, memories of that night flooding through me, of waking up to find her missing from her bed, our mother’s screams of anguish, our father’s silent despair. I’d run from our home in nothing but my nightgown while the rain poured down not dissimilarly to the way it was doing right now beyond the walls of the grain store. My bare feet had carved fissures in the mud as I followed the trail of her footprints from our home towards these cursed trees, my throat had been ripped raw with my calls of her name. But it hadn’t just been her footsteps I’d followed. Alongside Rissa’s bare prints had been a set carved with boots far finer than any worn by a human.
“She wasn’t simply stolen by the trees,” I hissed, trying to pull away from him, this beast who shared heritage with the one who had stolen her from me.
Hendrix fell entirely still as realisation dawned on him, but his hold on me didn’t waver, he refused to let me retreat.
“The Fae offered her up?” he asked, his voice rough with the words.
“Yes,” I bit out. “One of your people broke into our home while my family slept and stole her away from us on the blood moon to give her up as that year’s Offering. One of the Fae deemed – not for the first time – that the sacrifice made should be human so that their kind – your kind – wouldn’t have to face the burden of the payment. After all, what value does a human life hold when compared to that of the great and immortal Fae?”
“I fought against that notion,” he said, his voice brittle, his fingers hard against my spine. “When I was still welcome at court and the curse of the forest was a distant but constant threat to our peoples, it was well known that the trees were luring children to them in sacrifice. I stood against those who wanted to ensure the humans always paid the price.”
I shook my head, trying to escape him, and he let me scramble backwards, but he followed, prowling after me on all fours as my spine hit the sacks of grain and I was left with nowhere to retreat to.
“Hear me, Ferris. I fought against it with blood and steel. I fought.”
“Why?” I rasped, tears burning the backs of my eyes. “Why would you fight for humans? Every year the forest demands a child in sacrifice and if one isn’t offered up by either the Fae or the humans, then it lures one from their bed to claim instead. I have hunted the records. I’ve scoured every book on the subject. I’ve been to the shrine which stands at the southern shore and watched as Rissa’s name was carved into the great, stone elm tree there along with so many others that there is barely a branch or bough left unscarred by their monikers. Each name is labelled with the year they were taken, and I counted every fucking one of them. And in the six hundred and fifty years since the curse began, there was barely a single year missed. I only found three unaccounted for following the first decade. Three Fae children taken. While hundreds of humans were forced to pay the price. Not because the forest ached for only human sacrifice but because each year, when the blood moon rose in demand for payment, the Fae would come hunting and select one of us to settle the debt and give the forest the Offering it demanded.”
“I fought it,” he insisted, though I had no idea why he was so adamant to make me believe him. “I tried to-”
“Whatever it was you tried to do, you failed,” I spat, because even if he’d fought tooth and nail against the plotting of his people, it hadn’t been enough and I’d lost my sister in the end.
“That is the story of my life,” he conceded, finally pulling back, allowing me my own air to breathe, my own space to think without him filling every thought. Yet as he retreated, I found I didn’t want him to leave.
I caught his hand and he stilled.
It was too dark for me to see much of his features and it was only getting darker as night fell outside, but I could just make out the twisting edges of the tattoo which marked his face, the ink so dark it seemed to drink any scrap of light that reached it.
I lifted my free hand and brushed my fingers over it without thinking.
Hendrix fell preternaturally still, his breath catching in his throat as I traced the line of the tangled mark, memory guiding me over the lines of it more than sight.
“No one has ever done that,” he growled, a low warning to his voice which sent a shiver down my spine.
I hesitated, my eyes on his in the darkness, the raw truth I’d just shared with him making me bold for some reason I didn’t understand.
“I’m not just anyone,” I told him, my fingertips curving around the turn in his tattoo as I dared him to stop me.
“I’m beginning to see that,” he admitted, his own hand coming up to knot in my hair, his fingers twisting into the wet, silver strands.
The space around us was shrinking, the grain store so small, I wasn’t certain how we fit in it at all. My heart was pounding faster with every moment, my pulse racing to a beat which might have truly been a song.
“Can you feel that?” I asked on an exhale, because there was something stirring in the air around us, something buzzing against my skin.
“Death haunts my footsteps,” he whispered, his fingers moving from my hair to skirt the side of my face. “But this feels more like her master than her.”
“Providence?” I breathed, and the pulsing in the air grew thicker at the name of the spirit which had gone unseen in so long that he had been reduced to myth.
“Perhaps,” Hendrix conceded. “Though the last time I felt him this close, I got that mark upon my face.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
Hendrix paused, his fingers skimming over my jaw and raking down the side of my neck. My spine arched just a little, my skin prickling in a way which was altogether unacceptable. He was Fae. I hated him. Not just for that but for what he’d stolen from me too, the spirits which should have been mine.
“I… did something my people could not forgive,” he said slowly, his fingers following the line of my collar bone, pushing the sodden neckline of my shirt lower, just a fraction, but it was enough to send goosebumps skittering across my flesh.
“Tell me.”
My heart was pounding so hard that I knew he could feel it where he was touching me, my human body so bad at hiding its reactions to every move he made.
He leaned in, not speaking a word in answer to my demand, his lips so close to mine that for a moment, all other thoughts departed me.
“Stop,” I breathed, but some other part of me, some foolish, wanton, insane part was screaming the opposite.
“Stop what?” His mouth brushed mine and whatever I’d been about to say dissolved into nothing.
“I can’t stop staring at your mouth,” he said in a low growl which had every thought in my mind scattering. “All the damn time. When you curse me, when you spit at me, even when you drive me utterly insane with your constant cleverness. It’s infuriating.”
I blinked at him, my eyelashes flickering as my brows pressed together, but I didn’t draw back like I should have. It was as though some force was holding me there, a breath away from a kiss I shouldn’t have wanted, a beat away from a mistake I wouldn’t be able to take back.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” I said.
“I know. But I find my tongue loosens around you in the most maddening of ways. You’re a splinter which keeps working its way deeper and deeper beneath my flesh. I’m struggling to figure out a way to remove you – and finding I keep forgetting that I’m supposed to want to do so.”
He was so close, his body so much bigger than mine, his presence so powerful I thought I might suffocate beneath the weight of it. But instead of drowning on each inhale I took of him, I was finding myself intoxicated by that same madness he claimed to be suffering in my presence because I still hadn’t withdrawn, and now I was thinking about his mouth too.
It would be nothing at all for me to lean in and taste the poison of his tongue, nothing to let the dark consume me and give in to what it seemed to want.
It would be a secret we could leave hidden in this place come morning. One neither of us would ever have to speak of again…
“You’re cold,” he said.
I was shivering so I could hardly deny it, but I shook my head. “I don’t care. But I do care what manner of beast I’m hiding in the dark with. Tell me precisely why you were given this mark.”
Something shifted in the air between us, the heat which had been building struck through with ice. I knew he didn’t want to tell me anything of his past. I fully expected him to say no, but again he paused, like his instincts were pulling him in two directions and he couldn’t decide which of them to follow.
“Lie down.”
“What?”
He gave me no choice but to comply, taking hold of me so suddenly that I found myself on my back beneath him in little more than a second. Hendrix placed his hands to the hard floor either side of my head and peered down at me, his long hair spilling over his shoulders to shroud us within it. Now I could see nothing at all.
“Do you have any clothes in your pack?” he asked.
I blinked.
“Yes,” I said, a beat too late to cover my confusion.
“Then you need to get changed.” His hand moved to the button at the top of my tunic, but I caught it before he could tug it free.
“What about you?” I demanded, fighting to ignore the flush in my cheeks. It wasn’t desire. I hated him. I didn’t care what he looked like, I didn’t care about how powerful his body was or how the green in his eyes was so deep that sometimes I felt like I might drown in it…
“Did you pack clothes for me too?” he asked sceptically.
“No,” I said, because of course I hadn’t. I kept that bag packed and close at hand so I’d be ready to run from him at any given moment. “Only a fool would forget to keep their provisions nearby while lingering in this forest,” I said. “Did you pack yourself any spare clothes?”
“I must be the fool of which you speak,” he conceded. “But I have no problem sleeping naked so that my clothes can dry.”
“What?” I squeaked, hating myself for the way my composure shattered so easily but unable to take it back.
Hendrix chuckled in amusement, then summoned the Fox abruptly, practically blinding me with its appearance.
I cursed, stamping my eyes closed while the warmth of the Fox rushed over me.
“You could have done that the moment we entered this damn shelter,” I snapped, realisation dawning on me while Hendrix began tugging the buttons of my tunic open.
“I could do many things at any given moment, lightwing. You only have to ask me nicely and any one of your dreams might come true.”
I slapped his hand away from my buttons and pushed myself upright, my skin flaming despite the cold which had sunk into my bones.
I squinted at the Fox as it leapt up onto one of the heaped sacks of grain. The warmth its flaming body provided was nothing short of sinful, and the magic it was created of made sure nothing surrounding it caught light either.
“Get changed before you catch hypothermia,” Hendrix said, shoving my pack towards me. “And eat your berries. The last thing I need is you getting cranky because your belly is lacking in food.”
“I do not get cranky,” I snapped.
“She said crankily.”
An honest to the spirits growl escaped me as I turned my back to him and obeyed his command to change because despite my desire to defy him at all turns, doing so in this instance would only hurt me.
I hated him. I told myself that over and over and over again while in the back of my mind, I could have sworn I heard something chuckling.
I shrugged out of my jacket and tunic, glancing over my shoulder at Hendrix, then jerking back towards the wall as I found him stripping off too, his shirt already discarded, the ink across his back drawing altogether too much of my attention.
Unlike me, Hendrix was keeping his eyes on the wall as if he were some kind of gentleman, so I quickly shuffled out of my pants and undergarments before pulling on the clean clothes I kept in my bag.
A ripping sound made me jump and I coughed as dust rose in the air, the ripe scent of mouldering grain pungent in my nostrils.
“What are you doing?” I asked, though I had learned my lesson and didn’t chance a look around again.
“I assume you wouldn’t be able to control yourself were I to remain naked before you, so I’m working with what we’ve got.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the wall where the Fox’s flames created dancing shadows and revealed Hendrix’s presence at my back as I was dwarfed in the darkness his figure created.
“You can turn around now.” He sounded amused and that only made me more on edge, but I turned to face him, a laugh bursting from my lips the moment I laid eyes on what he’d done.
Hendrix stood shirtless, his sodden hair dripping and leaving runs of moisture down his chest, but despite all the ways in which that should have been distracting, I couldn’t help but focus on the torn sack which he had tied around his waist as a method to cover his cock.
“I can take it off if you’d prefer?” he offered, eyes glinting with danger, and I shook my head quickly, knowing I’d just been all too tempted into considering that mistake while refusing to admit it to myself.
I didn’t want him.
I hated him.
He was vile, repugnant, arrogant and… and…
My gaze moved to the sculpted muscles of his chest, my thoughts fragmenting once more while again that deep and rolling laughter sounded in the back of my mind.
“Do you think you can swerve from fate, spirit singer?” A deep and ancient voice sounded in my head and I flinched. I knew now that it was the Dragon, but I had no idea how it managed to communicate with me in such a way and I found it more than a little disconcerting.
“Eat your berries,” Hendrix reminded me.
I was glad of the distraction, so I did as he’d commanded, the light from the Fox’s fire making it easy for me to ascertain that they were indeed safe to consume. I split my haul in half and offered some out to Hendrix, who accepted them with a thanks which only contained a little mockery.
“Lie down,” he said when I’d finished and again, I complied. Not because I was suddenly inclined to follow his commands but because there was little else for us to do now other than sleep or talk, and after what our conversation had almost led to already, I figured sleep was preferable.
I took my thin bedroll from my pack and laid it in the small space before moving to lie on it and shifting over to the very edge on my side, my back to Hendrix who still stood with his arms folded, leaning against the sacks of grain.
“There’s room for you too,” I said, not looking at him.
He said nothing and I ignored the urge to look at him while making a pillow of my arm beneath my head.
The light of the Fox dimmed, though its heat remained, and I wondered if he’d commanded it to do that, wishing I could have even half that control when it came to the Dragon.
“Control is the issue.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shot back into the darkness of my mind, but once again, the Dragon seemed to find nothing but amusement in me and didn’t offer up anything more.
I stilled as Hendrix dropped down onto the thin bedroll at my back, my body tensing as he shifted closer to me, a grunt of irritation escaping his lips.
“What? I asked despite having decided against any further conversation with him.
“Most of me does not fit on your tiny scrap of a bed, especially while you take up so much of it.”
“You should have packed better then.”
“You should have thought twice before destroying our castle.”
“You were the one who told me to summon the-”
I cried out in alarm as his arm coiled around me and he half lifted me off the ground before his other arm moved beneath my head and his chest pressed firmly to my back.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I hissed.
“This is the only way either of us will have enough room to sleep,” he said, his voice a rough rumble against my spine, his stubble grazing my neck as he rested his head all too close to mine.
“I was perfectly fine before you manhandled me into this position.”
“You don’t appear to by trying to scramble away though,” he pointed out, and I quickly shoved his arm in an attempt to make him release me.
“Stop.”
“No.”
“You’re cold. I’ll keep you warm.”
“The Fox is doing that just fine,” I insisted, my pulse coming rapidly once more as I found myself trapped in the cage of his arms and despite my protests, I couldn’t deny just how well I fit there.
“Fine, I’ll barter you for it,” he sighed dramatically, his breath making my hair tickle my neck and a shiver run down my spine.
“For what?”
“For you to allow me to lay like this so that I have some hope of actually sleeping tonight and not waking in the morning to find every muscle in my body has cramped up.”
“Seriously?” I griped, though I couldn’t deny the delicious warmth of his powerful body where it was draped around mine.
“Yes. I’ll give you something – whatever you want.”
“Those spirits you stole from me,” I said instantly, and he broke a laugh.
“Be reasonable,” Hendrix chastised.
“One spirit then,” I conceded, and he laughed again, his breath hot against my neck, my skin heating in reply to it.
I squirmed in his hold and he shifted his hand to my hip, forcing me still.
“Do that again and this sleepover will take a very different turn. It isn’t only your mouth which has my mind wandering, lightwing,” he warned in a low growl, and I fell utterly still.
Some mad part of me wanted to squirm back into him again, to call his bluff, to make him act on that threat and-
Nothing. Because I hated him and I wanted nothing at all from him – and why was the fucking Dragon laughing at me again? I wasn’t even safe with my own damn thoughts anymore.
“The truth then,” I said quickly. “About your banishment.”
Hendrix stilled and said nothing for a long time.
“If you won’t give me that much, then you can just-”
“Some of the truth,” he said finally. “Because there are parts of it which even I cannot bear to recall and parts of it which would make you run screaming from me despite the night awaiting you beyond these walls.”
I hesitated on accepting his offer because his words were laced with the truth of his warning. There were parts of his past I was better off not knowing. But I couldn’t deny my curiosity when it came to the rest of it.
“Okay,” I said finally. “If that’s all you’re offering, I’ll take it.”
Hendrix fell silent again but I knew he’d accepted my terms. His truth was on the tip of his tongue, and I was all too eager to learn it.
