Carefully, Mina uncurled herself just enough to press her hand to her side. I swallowed, seeing her body bared to me. Her full breasts with tight pebbled nipples. Between her legs, the outline of hermelirwas concealed with soft curls.
Gritting my teeth, I told myself that only a monster would feel arousal at this moment. I told myself that the last thing she needed to feel was my cock thickening against her, tenting my loincloth, which was pressing into her hip.
She likely assumed I couldn’t see her because of the darkness. Humans were strange about nudity, whereas Dakkari were not.
“No,” she whispered and I watched her palpitate the area, like she knew what to feel for, like this had happened before. “Just bruised.”
I leaned my head back against the pillar. The fresh cut on my face pulled when I licked my dry lips and I focused on that pain instead of the pain from my tail.
“He has hurt you like that before?” I growled out.
She stiffened a little. Then gently, she leaned her cheek against my chest, seeking warmth once more.
“Yes.”
My claws curled into my palms again.
“He has touched you like that before?” I forced myself to ask, my voice going deeper.
The silence was long and tense.
“No,” she said, sniffling, and I didn’t know why I felt suchreliefat that. “He doesn’t…doesn’t like the way I speak. It angers him. Yet, it spares me from him. From that.”
“The way you speak,” I repeated, not understanding. “You speak well.”
“With you. With you, I speak well,” she told me. My brow furrowed. Had I heard her speak around others?Lysi, I supposed I had but I hadn’t noticed anything strange. “With others, I stutter my words. I’ve done it ever since I could remember. It makes others think I’m…it makes them think something is wrong with me. That I was cursed.”
That was why Benn referred to her as having a child’s mind.
I scoffed. This female was more intelligent than most. Even I’d seen that from the very beginning. They scorned her because of herwords?
“A blessing,” she whispered. “Though I didn’t always think so. But I see it now.”
So the others treated her like an outcast. Something to be used and then ignored.
“How many of you are there?” I asked.
“Thirty-one of us,” she said. “There were more before…”
“Before what?”
She swallowed. “Before Benn killed Song. And then Benn gave Jacob, Song’s son, a choice. Death or exile. So Jacob left and those that were loyal to Song went with him.”
“You didn’t go?” I asked, trying to understand why a group of humans were living under the Dead Mountain and how in Kakkari’s name they were associated with the witches.
She sniffled again and pressed closer to my chest. Another shiver racked her, though her flesh was warming. Her icy hair was still dripping down her back, however.
“I stayed because of Tess,” she answered, her teeth chattering together. “She’s my friend. More like a sister actually.”
Why did her voice sound so dejected then?
“She thought it was too risky to leave with Jacob, though she’s always regretted that decision. Or at least, she did.”
So she stayed out of loyalty to her friend?
“Now, she seems to believe Benn and the witches,” she told me. “Or at least, she believes that the fog is a curse and that the witches can break it.”
“With my heart,” I finished for her, a short huff escaping my nostrils.
