His eye darts to my finger then to me, the squirrel remains hopefully forgotten. “And wh—what would that be?” he stutters, sounding nervous. Ironic that he’s alone in the woods with a necromancer, but the reason he is nervous is because a woman touched his face.
It makes me want to stroke his face again.
“The same reason I am,” I whisper. “You were hoping to come across me so we could finish that last step of our dance.”
Evengi’s eyebrows furrow. “Our… dance?”
“Yes,” I breathe, leaning closer. Evengi leans against the tree, tripping a bit over the root and fully leaving the squirrel remains behind. He presses his back against the tree even as I pressmyself against him. “Such a dance is incomplete without one final move.”
Evengi licks his lips nervously. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about, and I like to consider myself an exceptional dancer.”
“It’s this,” I breathe leaning forward and pressing my lips against his. It’s supposed to be a brief kiss, one that gets his mind completely off the squirrel, but as I kiss him, I find myself apparently very desperate to help him forget what he was doing. Because as soon as I start kissing him, I discover I have no intention of stopping, at least not any time this witching hour.
I slide my hands up his chest, and Evengi lets out a sigh, and then he is kissing me back, his hands on my hips, gripping into the sides of my dress.
As I lean closer, tracing my lips over his, suddenly a chilling neigh echoes through the forest. Evengi shoves me away, coming to his senses first, and I stumble back a step, almost landing in the squirrel remains myself.
He whips his head around. “We aren’t alone in this forest,” he says just as a dark form that appears to be mounted on horseback races through the woods, silent as the night.
Chapter Ten
Natasya
How could I have been so stupid?
I don’t know who saw us kissing in the woods, but if word gets back to Brom I’ll have ruined everything. My entire plan is about to go up in flames and all because one too curious outsider almost walked in on me practicing necromancy.
Although the blame can’t be exclusively laid at Evengi’s feet. After all, I’m the one who thought I’d use my feminine wiles to distract him from that fact. I’m the one whokissedhim.
“Idiot,” I growl to myself.
There are easier ways to get rid of prying eyes. For one, I could always pluck them out. Not kiss and reward the man snooping into my affairs.
I press open the door to the cottage my father bought for me to use while I’m staying here in Sunder Hollow and freeze when I come across a note lying on the floor as if it had been slipped under the door. It has my name scrawled across it in Brom’s handwriting.
My heart stops, and I glance outside at the quickly lightening gray sky. Did someone wake him up at the crack of dawn to tell him what they saw? I’d thought I’d at least have some time to figure out my excuses.
Although I’m not quite sure how I am going to excuse my behavior. I’ve been acting the same I was when I was utterly unattached. It’s true that my marriage with Brom would be a loveless one, at least on my end, and very likely on Brom’s as well. He may act doting, but I know full well that he doesn’t love me. It’s a fairly well-kept secret by the Lower Elves, but if they come to love someone and then lose that person, they do not handle the loss well at all. They would rather die than face an eternity without them. They die quite literally of a broken heart.
I only know because I was raised by a Lower Elf, and Elwis has spent my entire life worrying he would lose me, my sisters, or my mother and he would die from the loss. He has given my twin, Bronwyn, and I time to live our lives as humans, but while we are given the choice to choose when we will become vampires, Elwis already decided for us that wewillbecome vampires someday.
My mother Vala chose it when she saw her first gray hair, I intend to take my father up on his offer of immortality long before then. But for the time being I am enjoying the ease of a human life. I’m already an outcast as a necromancer, but as a vampire, I would be doubly an outcast. And this time visibly so.
Brom does not act like someone whose very life hinges on my survival. He sees me more as a prize, one that he won, and he is pleased about keeping for himself. Still knowing all this, I never intended to beunfaithful.
I place my hand over my heart as I draw to a stop. Dear gods and demigods alike, is that what I was?
I’d only been wanting to distract Evengi from my necromantic practices, but to anyone watching from the outside… to Evengi even, I was kissing a man who wasn’t my fiancé.
I suddenly start wondering if maybe I really want to be engaged if it comes with this much expectation. It’s true that it’s the easiest way to get my hands on the spellbook, but there are other ways to get it.
I’m pondering those other options as I stare at the note on the floor at my feet as I try to come to terms with the fact that my engagement is likely over already.
I may not love Brom, but I certainly don’t wish to kill him, so I will need to steal the spellbook from him somehow. That will not be easy, spellbooks are usually jealously guarded by their Magickers. And while Brom may be little more than a cheap illusionist, his spellbook is still very powerful. If he chooses to use any spells in it to keep the book from me well…
Once the wielder of that spellbook killed a hundred necromancers, so what good would I do against it?
I need to be smart, but first I need to figure out just how angry Brom is with me.
