“I’ll speak with Arwyn, only if you promise to contemplate forfeiting the trails. It is the safest way out of this shithole. And before you refuse me again, think about Kai. Coven or not, how can we protect one another when the next trial may be the one that kills one of us again. Just do me that favour, it will be the only one I ask of you.”
Romy looked me up and down, a silent hesitance evident in every crease across her forehead. I sensed the ebb of wondering, as if her eyes looked through my flesh and bone to my soul, and the part that was now missing.
I sagged with relief when she never asked the question I dreaded.
“I’ll give him the option as I said I would. That’s as much as I’m promising you, Hector.”
“Thank you,” I exhaled, my relief impossible to hide.
“You better go and find Arwyn,” Romy said, cracking the door open enough for me to catch Kai’s still body laid outamongst mounds of faded-white bedsheets. “Time is precious. I’ve just learned that. Go and figure out what it is you want from each other, but most importantly, what you need.”
With her final comment, Romy slipped into the room, closed the door, and left me. I waited all but a few seconds before I turned on my heel, my body’s compass turning exactly in the direction of where Arwyn was waiting.
** *
Arwyn Hopkin sat slouchedat a table, the hearth raging with newly lit flames behind him, a metal, dented tankard lifted up to his mouth. His eyes were lost to an unimportant place on the table before him, no doubt his head full of thoughts he was too frightened to speak out loud.
I paused in the shadows of the stairs, heart thundering in my chest as I devoured him. Arwyn looked as though he had the weight of the world on his broad shoulders, but I knew that pressure actually came from his past. The trauma forced down on him the further he strayed from it.
The next step I took sent a groan through the old wood. Arwyn’s keen ears picked it up, head snapping in my direction and bright eyes searching the exact place I stood. “Hector?”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you,” I said, stepping into the halo of light from the bar.
“You could never scare me,” Arwyn replied, carefully placing his tankard on the table and standing as if to greet me.
“That sounds an awful lot like a challenge,” I replied, taking the final steps to the ground floor, hyper-aware of the way his gaze tracked my each and every move. “And if memory serves me, I remember you looking slightly frightened when I attacked you in your bedroom a few days ago.”
“Has it only been a few days?” Arwyn smiled softly, as though the reminder was pleasant to him. “It already feels like a lifetime ago.”
“Need a reminder?” I asked with a wink.
I found it easier injecting some humour into the moment instead of sweltering in the awkwardness between us.
“I think I’ll pass on that, thank you.” Arwyn stepped around the table, reached for a second chair that was tucked beneath it, and then pulled it free. “Although, I would really like it if you came and sat with me.”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course. I think we have a few things to catch up on.”
Catch up. It made everything left to say between us so mundane. But before I could even contemplate running away, my feet were moving me across the room directly to him. Like a moth to a flame, without caring for the potential of danger, I drifted until I stood to the chair’s side.
“Please,” Arwyn whispered, gesturing for me to sit down.
I did as he suggested, looking back at him as I positioned my bottom on the chair. With little effort, he tucked me beneath the table, knuckles brushing my spine as he did so.
“So did your father teach you the importance of manners before or after how to hunt and kill witches?”
Curse my fucking tongue.
“Ouch. I deserved that,” Arwyn replied simply, moving away from the table to the bar at the far side of the room. “How about a stiff drink to help you swallow everything we have to say to one another?”
“As long as you don’t poison it.” My throat was parched, and my stomach violently hungry.
“Double ouch.”
I winced. “Make it strong.Please.”
Arwyn returned to the table with a tumbler filled with a strange blush-red liquid. It sloshed over the crystal rim when he pushed it towards me. Arwyn must’ve noticed my expression of distrust because he followed up with the ingredient list. “Double vodka and cranberry, right?”
