Amma’s eyes went wide, waiting for some joke or pithy remark to follow.
“Afraid,” he said carefully like the word were new, “for the outcome and…you.”
She lifted a hand out of the water to poke her collarbone.
He nodded slowly, words coming stilted and awkward. “I know that neglecting the Grand Order’s task is inviting them to retaliate, but Aszath Koth is well-protected, and I could keep you—ah, keepthemaway, I mean. Probably. I also fear that in fulfilling their order, you will be injured or worse, and it will be my fault.”
“I think something’s wrong with the spring.”
“What? Why?” Damien stood suddenly, shoulders and chest bared, water pooling off of him as his brow narrowed.
Amma giggled at the way his eyes darted over the steamy surface. “The Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne I know was threatening to kill me not so long ago, so clearly it’s enchanted.”
“Oh, very humorous.” He sank back down, relief plain on his face both from an avoided danger and the out she had given him. But his gaze finally lifted to hers, piercing as his tongue ran over his lips. “But come now, you know I wouldn’t have ever wasted you like that.”
Amma swallowed hard, glad for the heat so he couldn’t see how her face would have reddened otherwise. “Well, I’m not really a thief, my barony has lost most of its wealth and standing, and I’m in the way of your destiny, so I don’t really know whatgood I am to you alive.”
“You don’t?” Damien’s eyes roved downward as if he could see every inch of her body, and then he dunked under completely.
She remained huddled there, losing sight of the shadow that was his hair. The setting sun cast the sky in deep pinks and purples, stars beginning to dot the darkest layer, and the moons had come out, dangerously close together.
The water parted just before Amma, Damien resurfacing drenched. She held her spot, body flushing from an internal heat. An inch of movement would bring them right up against one another, naked.
He ran a hand through his black hair, and wet, it stayed out of his face for once as water dripped off his nose and chin and lips. She tried very hard to not imagine kissing those lips again, but the feeling of them on her mouth, her jaw, her throat came anyway, a corporeal memory so strong she feared that alone might break the oracle’s insistence on chastity.
“Would you want to go there? To Aszath Koth with me? I mean to see it properly, not to be eaten by a lamia or sacrificed by a cult or abducted by a blood mage.”
“You’d show me the keep?”
He wiped at his face and nodded.
Amma made a thoughtful sound. “Could I see that rug the Righteous Sentries said you stole?”
“The Azure Hide of Ruvyn?” Damien cocked a brow. “Well,thatis in my bed chamber.”
“Oh,” she said, feigning innocence, “well, in that case, I definitely hope you show it to me.”
The muscles at the corner of Damien’s jaw tightened, easy to see so close, and she wished she were right up against him, grinding back. A hand touched her waist below the water’s surface. Instead of surprise, it was relief that flooded her, andshe reached out, placing fingertips against his chest.
A gust of wind swept through the air, a flurry of darkness against the brilliant pink of the sky, and a screech like the dying cry of some animal rained down from above. Amma ducked, and Damien whirled around as a squall of feathers and inhuman shrieking landed on the pool’s edge. The gust off its immense wingspan scattered their clothes, blotting out the light of the setting sun.
“I knew we were too bloody lucky,” Damien groaned, his hand blindly thrown behind him and pressing against Amma’s stomach to push her backward.
“What in the Abyss is that?” she squeaked out, peeking around him.
Shadowed against the light, the creature was perched with taloned feet sinking into the stone, knees jutting up and out, and long, sinewy arms that tapered into claws. Its shoulders were hunched, and from its back sprouted russet wings, the largest feathers dotted with a pattern that looked to be hundreds of eyes staring down on them.
“Harpy,” said Damien in a put-upon tone, then he raised his voice. “Katz? A little help?”
There was no impish sighing from the scrub brushes, but the winged creature let out a screech that rattled the very stones of the mountain. It had a face that was almost human save for the beak, a massive, pointed thing with a tongue that jutted out covered in rows of sharp teeth.
Damien swore, then he looked down at himself and swore again. He raised a hand with a sigh, black smoke forming in his palm, and then sent a wall of haziness at the creature as it lifted off to attack. Amma shielded her eyes from the terrible gust its wings produced, a cry choking on the darkness that entangled the creature, and then a splash.
“Shit.” Damien’s other hand was still pressed to Amma’sbelly, and he pushed her farther back from where the harpy plummeted into the pool. His fingers slid downward in the slickness of the water, and for a moment Amma was too aroused to be frightened, but then the harpy burst back up from the water, and she realized this was no time to be thinking with her…heart.
Screeching and twice as angry, soaked wings beat at the surface, but the harpy was unable to take to the air again, instead advancing on its long legs. Amma’s excitement shifted right back to fear as she flung her hands around Damien’s arm and yanked him back from the irate bird-person. He simultaneously called up more smoky arcana, but two more harpies landed on either side of the spring’s rocky ledge, filling the air with angry screeching. When the shadows were released, feathers scattered, but the frantically beating wings of all three tore through the haze.
Backed right into the rock wall and squeezing Damien tight, Amma pressed herself to the vines there, wishing for a place to hide. There was a crack, and the pressure of the stone fell away from her back. Amma tumbled with a splash, taking Damien with her. Flailing underwater for only a moment, there were limbs everywhere, but thankfully none of them feathered, and when she and Damien popped back up above the surface, the harpies were gone.
