Arwyn is awake, too.
They don’t sleep.
More than their icy auras, more than the white blood in place of tar, Arwyn and Samick just don’t sleep very much.
I mean, sure, Arwyn just got back, but even now, he’s awake, watching the flames, and Mika’s passed out beside him.
I’m not as relaxed as they apparently are.
Every so often, I lift my chin, raise my gaze over the flames, and look at where Rust sleeps. On his back, a dagger in his fist and rested on his chest.
He’s still asleep.
It doesn’t ease me.
Rust’s position in the camp is a short distance down from us, but that gives him access—to watch me.
And he did, for hours and hours, wine bottles passed around, stories told, laughter grumbling, his gaze melted in with the fires, aimed at us through the flames.
It’s because of him I’m awake now.
Any time I drift off, whether for a minute or an hour, I startle to the fear that he’s standing over me, dagger raised, ready to plunge it down into my heart—and the winter fae just lets it happen.
That’s how I woke up about an hour ago.
Samick merely considered me in his silence, a gaze slid to the corner of his eyes, tired of me, before he returned to his sewing.
Now, that leather and wool strip is tucked away in the satchel. He traded it for his sketchbook.
He’s been running those chalky sticks over the thick parchment pages for a while now, long enough for an entire log in the fire to be eaten away.
He draws a garden.
Sprawling, it overlooks the ripples of a sea, and it’s neat, organised, split into three sections with paths dividing them. But it’s an outline, and I can’t make out more than that.
I turn my cheek to him and startle.
Arwyn considers me through the flames. His stone gaze isn’t on my face. It’s aimed at my gut. His head is tilted, and before I can even recoil from his stare, it happens.
A twisting stab of pain.
My face tightens with a grimace.
My hand is quick to worm under my jacket and hold my belly, firm, as though that’ll ease the cramps somehow.
The cramps…
I throw a startled look at Samick’s gaze already fixed down his nose at me.
Behind the wheel, at the back of the mausoleums, he gave me the pad, told me to use it, and he didn’t give me much choice in it.
Because he knew.
He knew my period was coming…
Worse than that.
He didn’t just know it was coming, he knows it has actually hit right now, in this moment, that my insides are twisting and that blood is coming out.
