Vespa’riel only frowned at him. “A demon spawn who helped us? Yes.” And with that, she disappeared back into the thickness of the forest like a ghost.
They stood there for a moment at the edge of the wood, still under its shadows, looking after where she had gone. Then Damien turned and led them out of the Gloomweald.
“You still want the Lux Codex? After all that ominousness?” asked Amma as they stepped into the sun. The knoggelvi snorted as they followed, and Kaz squinted up at the sky and sneezed.
“Absolutely,” said Damien though he looked less convinced. “Elves are just superstitious.”
Across the scrubby moor before them, there was a rarely-traveled road that cut between farther off rolling hills and into the valley. The valley that was Amma’s home. “So, we’re still going to Faebarrow?”
“Despite your inexplicable hesitancy, yes.”
But they couldn’t make it to Faebarrow by sunset which gave Amma her last chance. It was also her first chance, of course, because she had yet to try and slip the Scroll of the Army of the Undead from Damien’s pocket despite all of her wild plans to do so. And there would not be another chance after tonight, of that she was certain.
CHAPTER 23
A REBUTTAL TO THE USEFULNESS OF INTENT
Crickets trilled into the autumn evening as a cool wind blew over the plain that led into Faebarrow’s outer fields and farmlands. They’d chosen to bed down behind a copse of brambles to shield from the chill, the fire crackling and popping lowly between them. They had eaten, and Kaz had fallen into a hard and deep slumber as he always did at the earliest part of the night in order to wake and keep watch when it was later.
Alone together, Amma glanced at Damien across the fire. He was nearly finished with his book, squinting down at the pages he had bent toward the light. The flames jumped over the severe angles of his face from below, sharpening his brow already arched in thought, thinning out his cheeks, and highlighting his scar. His eyes flicked over the lines quickly, then stopped, focused and bright in the firelight before continuing again.
It was going to be quite difficult to seduce him if he wouldn’t even look at her.
“It’s cold,” she said into the quiet, rubbing her arms for effect.
He flicked his eyes up for only a moment. “Where is your cloak?”
It was balled up beneath her, and she gestured to it meekly. He only tipped his head as if she’d solved her own problem and returned to reading.
Amma sighed and gnawed on a nail as she thought. Maybe the whole idea was moronic. Damien might have been a blood mage, but he was undoubtedly handsome, and after how he’d spoken to and touched her in the Gloomweald, clearly not the stranger to intimacy she had thought. Looking on him, she realized he could have whoever he pleased, her included, but he had turned away when they were lying beside one another in the wood, and now he practically acted as though she didn’t exist. It was foolish, reckless, dangerous even, but then she slid a hand over her own wrist, remembering sharply how he had looked at her with a hunger so feral she had forgotten everything else under his eyes.
Seducing Damienwaspossible, and not only could she do it, she would probably enjoy it.
Amma stood then, slow, deliberate. She reached arms overhead and stretched up onto her toes, squeaking out a quiet if suggestive moan as she arced her body and silently thanked Mudryth for insisting she wear the tightest things they could find. Amma caught Damien’s eye only for a moment to be sure he was watching—he was—and turned away to pick up her cloak. She bent at the waist and tilted her hips just enough to reach the ground, then came up again slowly to shake the excess grass from the material.
Holding the cloak out, she considered it, the warmth of the fire falling over her body. Putting it on would be the exact opposite of what she wanted, so she lay it out flat with another bend, being sure to keep her best asset highlighted by the fire.
She lifted up again but only part way, working her fingers into her flaxen braid as it hung over her shoulder until her hair fell loose. Amma shook the strands out before flipping it all back, taking a breath that could only be described as heaving, eyes closed as she finally stood.
“A-Amma?” Damien’s voice cracked, striking fear into her belly despite that it was borderline fearful itself.
Wide-eyed, she looked on him, frozen with her fingers in her hair. She’d barely done anything, but it was working, and that was…good?
“Would you come here, please?”
Please. He could magically order her about any time he wanted, but finally he was beginning to ask, and in a voice so soft and sincere, she couldn’t help but comply. Amma went around the fire to sit carefully beside him on bent knees.
“I want to say,” he began, putting the book down and angling toward her, though he didn’t look her in the eye. “Well, for today…”
She leaned a bit closer. He was rarely at a loss for words—he usually chose to either use the most convoluted ones possible or none at all—but this was especially odd.
“You were very, well…how can I?” He rolled his hands over one another and blew out a breath before his shoulders drooped. “I think I mean to say thank you.”
“To me?” She pointed at herself. “For?”
“You handled our predicament with the elves much better than I could have. I couldn’t think of much else but slaying them all, but I’m…glad it didn’t come to that.”
Amma doubted that was high on the alternative plan list, but she smiled. “I’m glad too.”
