“I guess I’ll have to try.” She released her knives.
He pressed back against the other side of the narrow shaft. “Watch those things.”
She gave him a dry look. “I know what I’m doing.”
His eyebrow quirked. “Is that why you jumped down here in the first place?”
“Oh... shut up,” she muttered. She glanced down at Hero on her shoulder. “This is your fault, you know.”
He turned his butt to her cheek, lashing her neck with his tail.
She stretched up and jammed her knives as deep into the earth as she could. Once they seemed lodged, she tried to heave herself up. The earth buckled and rained down on her. She stumbled back into Kaelan.
“Yes, I can see you know what you’re doing,” he said as he caught her and then gave her a push upright again.
She retracted her knives and shrugged the clods of dirt off her chest, brushing away as much as she could.
She could imagine Endreas’s smirk and what he would’ve said, “I told you to stay clean. I’m not your personal dry cleaner.” Of course, he wouldn’t have said dry cleaner, rather brownie or washer woman. Her heart lurched; bringing back to her attention the ache for him that never really disappeared.
“What are you thinking about?” Kaelan asked from close behind her.
She flinched, almost having forgotten he was there. “I was thinking that I need to stop finding myself trapped underground with you.”
He folded his arms and leaned back. “Now what... Mistress?”
She crossed her arms too, leaning against the opposite side of the passage. “Now you’re going to tell me just how long it was you were strung upside down by gorgon rope, and just how rotten were those apples?”
His jaw flexed. He looked away.
“Does it hurt a lot to be hit with a rotten apple?”
“You’re not funny,” he said.
“No, I really want to know. It was you, wasn’t it? You really were raised as an imp. You actually looked like one?”
“Yes,” he said. “I was disguised until I came of age.”
“The tail and the wings . . . the ears . . . everything?”
He scowled at her.
“And the scar. How did you come by that? Pixie skin doesn’t scar easily.”
“I’ve always had it,” he muttered.
“I didn’t thank you for healing my scars,” she said, brushing more dirt from her arm. A sharp flare of anger surged through her as she remembered Endreas piercing her skin with iron. “Iron scars are said to be impossible to heal. So, thanks.”
“Are we going to stay down here and chat all day, or are we going to come up with a plan for escape?”
“Damion will come,” she said, “eventually.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “You never answered my question. What doesLjósálfrmean?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You’re lying,” he said.
She tensed. “No, I’m not. I don’t know what it means.”
