“Which is where?”
Out of all the parts of the kingdom, I’d spent the least amount of time in the west. However, I had studied the maps. With the names of the villages, towns, and cities Caelo brought back after feeding the horses, I’d worked things out. We had passed far west of Vitvik earlier that day. The city was too far east to detour to for supplies, though we could have found all that we required there.
“In three to five hours, we should reach a small lakenestled up against the Red Mist Range. We'll camp there. Then tomorrow, you, Caelo, and I will go into the small town down the road and purchase food for horses, humans, and fae alike.”
“A good plan.” As she spoke, white puffs of air bloomed from her lips. Unable to help myself, I lowered my head to kiss those lovely, soft lips.
On her tongue, I tasted a sweet hunger for me. When her hand traveled to my chest, pushed through the folds of my cloak and stroked upward, I groaned. More than anything, I wished to throw her over my shoulder, take her deeper into the woods, and feast on another part of her. One I still remembered the sweet taste of as though it were yesterday.
But before I had a chance to act on such pleasurable thoughts, Neve pulled away and took my hand in hers.
“The sooner we reach the lake, the sooner we might find a quiet place?” She looked up at me with those eyes of violet. Eyes that came from her mother, Queen Revna, a healer queen, whereas Neve’s silvery-white hair came from the Cruel King himself, Harald Falk.
Once, that information would have terrified me. The Cruel King was nothing short of a monster, and to fall in love with his daughter would have seemed too risky.
No longer. Neve—born Princess Isolde Falk—was nothing like her cruel father.
“A quiet place sounds perfect.” I grinned back at my wife. “It will have to be quite far away from the group for the things I have planned for you.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Hmm,naughty things?”
“As naughty as you’ll allow.”
“Promise?”
A deep laugh left me, and I winked. “You know not what you’re hoping for, little beast.”
“Maybeyouknow not what I dream about.” She wagged her eyebrows as her hand drifted past my fur cloak again, brushing my hard cock.
Stars alive, this female will be the end of me.
I stood at the forest’s edge, watching the humans practice archery.
Out of the twenty humans I’d tested with a bow and arrow, eight showed reasonable skill. Anna was one of them, which came as no surprise.
While most humans had been quiet and prone to resting when we stopped to make camp, my wife’s best friend was different. Ten days ago, Anna asked Caelo to tutor her in the ways of the bow, and she had continued to practice diligently each night. No other human had been so forward to ask for help, though they’d complied when I’d requested to see their skills.
More promising than Anna, however, was a trio of people. They were novice hunters and all three had brought down birds and hares during their time at Gersemi Mine. While I remained with the other five, giving them tips to hone their skill, Caelo had taken the three best hunters deeper into the woods to look for small game. Secretly, I hope for a boar too, which Caelo possessed the skill to bringdown. Unfortunately, during our travels, not a single one had crossed our path. I’d wondered if, as winter deepened, the game would start moving south to the Autumn Court.
It had been far too long since the land was bare of snow. That limited what grew without the aid of an earth fae or the magic of a holy Drassil tree in the area.
“Very nice, Samantha,” I said to a young woman when she struck the dead center of her target, the ultimate goal of the exercise. “Try to hit that same place three more times.”
Samantha beamed at me, her cheekbones protruding so much that it looked painful. She looked to be around my squire Filip’s age. In the stage of life where she was growing a lot. The lack of food always hits the youngest ones the hardest.
I smiled back and tilted my head toward the makeshift target. The young woman turned back around and nocked another arrow. It flew, hit near her other arrow, and warmth stirred inside me.
There was hope for these people yet. A small bit, but it was there. And hope, no matter how little, was never mere.
If these humans could hunt, and if the stronghold in the mountain was enchanted with the ability to grow food as it was said to have been way back when the area was bustling with dwarves, the humans could make a home there. We only needed to make it to Dergia without incident or additional deaths.
Crack!
I turned to see Neve, still hard at work. Beneath her power, the lake ice buckled and broke. My shoulders loosened as I watched her, hands shaking as she pressed hermagic into the thick ice covering the lake and shifted the loose slab up and over the rest of the ice.
Since we’d arrived at the lake, she’d divided her attention between building compacted snow and ice domes for the humans to take shelter in during the night and cracking the lake ice that repeatedly froze. Fifty domes were already up, and though they were misshapen and often used trees for support on one side, each had enough space to house three to four humans.
That much effort, over many hours, would have drained most fae, but not my wife. Since we’d been on the move, I’d helped Neve practice her magic daily. As a result, her already prodigious power had only grown.
