Feeling more in control of himself than he had in days, Astegur returned to his broken-down hut and settled down for the night, alone, away from the damned hag who muddled his mind.
The next morning, after he finished scouting the perimeter and checking on the stakes he had placed, a shucking noise caught his attention.
It was coming from beside the temple, and although he was not ready to face the hag or her thralls again so soon, he came across a dozen of them cutting the reeds lining the side of the building.
Confused, he watched them for a while as they filled their arms with the long stalks and brought them back to where a pile of stakes rested. Calavia was where he’d left her, now braiding the reeds and tying them together with the help of the thralls. And as the first airy purple mottled glow of the clouds covered them, he went back to her side.
“What are you doing now?” he growled.
She finally looked up at him, and he noticed the exhaustion on her face.Had she not slept?A wave of anger hit him but he tempered his reaction before she noticed.I am not her keeper.He snarled to himself.
“We finished the stakes. I ordered them to bring me reeds and help me braid them,” she said.
“For what reason?”
“I can coat them with my wax, much like the stakes, and make them unbreakable. We can tie them between the stakes and the houses and trip the centaurs who are not paying attention. We can even hide them in the water at our feet.”
Impressed, he took the braided reeds from her hands and tested them between his hands. They pulled taut but did not snap, nor did they when he breathed his flames heavily upon them. They held.
“Cunning hag,” he said, handing the makeshift rope back to her. “We will tie them below the foliage line where they cannot see them, and when our four-legged enemies come to slay us, they will be forced off the paths by the stakes, only to trip and stumble on shaky legs in the muck. I can hear their bones snap even now.”
Calavia’s eyes widened at his words, and he unconsciously puffed out his chest and enlarged his muscles at her perusal, but stopped when he realized what he was doing.
She is not a mistfucking female minotaur sizing up a potential bed partner.
“It will work,” she said, still staring at him.
“Yes.” With his frustration returning, and his aching cock priming once again, he grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her to her feet. “Now sleep.” He jerked her around to face the temple and shoved her toward it.
She stumbled once but caught herself before he grabbed her again. She turned halfway back to him, meeting his eyes once more, and nodded. Astegur watched her disappear into the shadows. His thoughts shifted.
There had always been the option of hiding until the centaurs broke through, allowing them to take her while he made his escape to the mountain pass, but now, he could not imagine fleeing to warn his brothers and rallying for war without her.
He looked down at the reeds at his hooves and the almost-empty pot of wax. He knelt where she had just been and continued her work, as the thralls did the same around him.
His snarl grew and he growled into the grey morning light.Not without her.He would not leave her to this fate when he had the strength to stop it. She was not an evil being, despite living her whole life in the horrors of the labyrinth, and if she had the blood that would clear the skies of Bathyr and make his bull sons and daughters strong, she would have been perfect.
But she wasn’t, and the human blood he had smelled the first day had not returned.
The thought of the seed he’d given her taking root stoned his skull and thoughts. He would not leave her to die in Prayer. When the centaurs overrun it, he would bring her with him to the mountains, even if her safety there was not guaranteed.
Astegur was not prepared for the burden of a human. He had decided long ago he would avoid the sacrificial zones until the Bathyr ruled them. Calavia wasn’t human, and yet he battled the need to protect her as if she were.
His hooves sank low into the water as he stepped off the raised land later that day, with ropes of reeds hanging off his right shoulder. He headed for the outer stakes first, at the settlement’s borders and began a gruesome web.
A faint noise filled his ears, and the smell of tainted blood filled the air.
Calavia?
Chapter Twelve
Astegur stopped, his muscles tense. He had forced Calavia to rest not long ago. How did she leave the temple without his knowledge?
Her scent was faint but unmistakable. His jaw ticked, his hands formed fists, and his barely suppressed anger returned. He stepped toward the source of the noise—toward the scent of blood—without making a sound.
The closer he got, the stronger the smell of tainted blood became. And as he settled his back upon the broken stones of a fallen building, Calavia’s voice filled the air, quiet and faint.
“Mother, what have you done? What have you done!”
