Even he could admit that it was a good thing the shifters were finally showing their faces down here. Their people were getting understandably angry at the way their complaints had been ignored. It took a lot for any rural people to trust a stranger, and Deyvid knew he was about as strange as they came, but he was determined to repay the tentative tendrils of trust that had been offered to him. He was doing a job. He had done well so far, and by the three, by the three, he was going to finish it. As soon as he got out of here, he’d—
Swish.
He stiffened. Where had that sound come from? Was he being watched? Keeping his head still, Deyvid cast his eyes around, searching for the source of the noise. He saw nothing on land, but there was something, somethingin the water, fast and sleek and coming right at him.
Deyvid didn’t have a clue what it could be. Surely this winding stream didn’t have any large predators in it, but he gripped the handle of one of his knives in his cold and trembling hand and prepared himself to strike. Closer, closer … When the creature was barely two feet in front of him, he pulled the dagger, brought his hand back, prepared to strike—and found two small, almost dainty paws pressing against the front of his chest.
Startled, Deyvid nearly lost his grip on his dagger as he looked into the big brown eyes of a river otter. He husked a laugh, thengroaned because he knew, without a doubt, this was no mere otter. Wild animals didn’t behave this way. Curious shifters, on the other hand?
“You found me,” he said hoarsely, putting the dagger away. It would do him no good now. He was likely surrounded. He should have known better than to think he could outdistance a whole pack of these people. “What are you going to do with me?”
The otter looked at him searchingly, an odd expression on an animal, before it delicately reached out and bit the tie of his shirt that was dangling free in the water. The otter tugged hard, once, then let go and pushed away, making quick time toward the shore.
Well, that was plain enough. Deyvid sighed, then followed it, forcing energy into his leaden limbs. The second the air hit his sodden body, he began to tremble even worse. Oh, this was going to get uncomfortable fast. By the time he was fully on dry land, he was staggering with fatigue, stiff with cold and pain, and ravenous from hunger.
“Don’t suppose you brought me any dry clothes, did you?” he asked the otter perched on the shoreline. A second later, it transformed back into the human he had known it to be. “Of course, it’s you.” Deyvid groaned. “I thought you were a raven,” he managed around his chattering teeth.
“Oh, I am,” the man said urbanely, looking not a bit put out by either the temperature or the interrogation. “I contain multitudes.”
“What a delight for you, really,” Deyvid muttered. “However, unless your multitudes contain a blanket, maybe we could hold off on the show-and-tell until I manage to find one.”
The shifter smiled at him. “Prickly, aren’t you?”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘cold,’” Deyvid said stiffly.
“So start a fire, then.”
Deyvid did his best to arch an eyebrow but couldn’t force his frozen facial appendage to cooperate.Damn it.“With what?” he asked. “My supplies are nowhere near here, and I don’t carry a flint and striker on me when I’m going into a fight.”
“Huh, you can’t just conjure one?” the tall, handsome, and decidedly nude shifter asked provokingly.
Deyvid scowled. “What on earth would make you think I could conjure flames?” he demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the same thing that makes me think you have some way to shield from an arc lance?”
Well, damn it.He’d seen it. Deyvid tried to play it off. “Ah, I think I know what you’re referring to. Clearly, the shot didn’t hit me,” he said, gesturing down at his still whole and decidedly unburned body.
“Oh, but it did.” The shifter sounded supremely confident in his answer. It was the sort of confidence that came either from vast experience—and looking at this man, who couldn’t be more than his mid-twenties, his experience couldn’t bethatvast—or it came from an elevated position of birth. There was something about the aristocracy, Deyvid had found, that allowed them to give off the impression that they had been born infallible.
Luckily for him, that wasn’t an impression that he fell prey to. “Clearly, you don’t know everything.”
The shifter grinned. “I know more than you think I do,” he said and took a step forward. He flared his nostrils as he breathed in, and Deyvid found himself transfixed by the light at the back of the man’s eyes, a glow that made him look like any other creature, peering out of the woods.
“Ordinarily, I would just think you were a liar,” the shifter continued. “A mage who didn’t want to admit it for some reason, or someone in possession of some very powerful protective spells even if you didn’t come up with them on your own. But no …” He breathed in deep again. “You smell like marlroot.”
Deyvid kept his face serene, but inside he was cursing. “I don’t believe there’s any law against consumption of marlroot.”
“You see, that’s the thing, though,” the shifter drawled, putting his hands on his hips. It was a provocative posture, particularly given the fact that he was completely nude. Deyvid did his best not to let his eyes follow the movement down. “Marlroot’s not something that you eat. It’s generally considered inedible, thanks to its incredible bitterness and likelihood of causing intestinal upsets. The only uses for it are either as a purgative, to help you get rid of parasites and poison, or as a dye.
“And you—” He took another step closer, lifting up a hand. Deyvid shied back, but the man just wiped the pad of his thumb beneath his own right eye. “You have the look of someone who used marlroot to color your skin tone and hair, which creates a realistic-enough color, but you’d have done better to vary the shades. Plus, there’s just a little bit of color missing right around your eyes.” He grinned fiercely. “I wonder what color I would see if I looked in your ears, or on the bottoms of your feet, or between your toes. Or”—his grin got a bit sharper—“perhaps if I spread your thighs—”
Deyvid pulled a dagger, threw it, and immediately followed it up with the second one. The shifter knew what he was.I have to get out of here. But the shifter batted the daggers out of the air like they were nothing—they didn’t even come close to connecting.
Deyvid turned to dive back into the river, but strong arms clamped around his body and lifted his feet off the ground. He wasn’t a small man, not by a long shot, but this shifter, whoever he was, had several inches and at least forty pounds on him. Still, he jerked his foot up and back, trying to connect with the man’s unfortunately bare testicles, but his leg was trapped between strong thighs before it could connect.
“Ah, ah, ah,” the shifter tutted in his ear. “None of that. There’s no cause for violence between us.”
“Let me go,” Deyvid said through gritted teeth.
