But then I wouldn’t have been close to her, and I need to be close to her. It’s like somehow we were always supposed to be together.
Although being in the Underhill and all the dangers which it holds was not entirely part of the plan. Was there a plan? My lady’s scent is making my head spin. It is also wreaking havoc with my todger, and I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. If I move, I might wake her, but if I don’t, and she moves, I think it might go off.
And the damned thing has gone off enough in my lifetime for me to know that will not be a good thing, here in the shelter.
However, a noise out in the woods is enough to distract me from the pain in my nethers. I wait, listening intently for it to come again.
It does. A crack of a foot on a branch. Something is stalking us. In a blink, I am out of the shelter with a sword in my hand, a weapon I can wield, even if I don’t need such weapons.
The woodland isn’t entirely dark. Perhaps there is a moon, but even she wouldn’t want to illuminate this place. Mist creeps from tree to tree, sometimes revealing, sometimes hiding. But I’m hunting, hunting for the thing which believes it can harm my female.
Nothing harms her. Not while I have breath, and I will have it for a very long time.
I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and spin to face the thing.
There is nothing. The trees seem to shift left and right, not staying still. I flash the sword in front of me, not wanting to wake my lady but at the same time unable to stop the roar which escapes my lips, slashing out left and right at what is mist but is also…
It.
The creature who took my mortality. The creature which has a smell I’ll never forget, a voice like gravel, a body lithe, swift, and slippery.
It will not take anything else from me. I am Warden. I amtheBrag. I am a warrior, and I am the feared jailer of the Shadow Keep.
“Warden!” Through the maelstrom, I hear her voice, the soft voice of my lady. “Warden!” she calls again, but I can’t find her, no matter where I Iook. “WARDEN!”
I open my eyes, my body drenched in sweat, to see a pair of bright eyes staring down at me.
“You were dreaming,” my lady says. “Or rather a nightmare.” She sighs.
“I didn’t…hurt you, did I?”
“You were shouting a lot, and wriggly. This place is small.” She dips her head. “But you didn’t hurt me.”
I breathe a long sigh of relief.
“You were saying something, about the Shellycoat, I think.” My lady places her hand against my cheek. “Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to, but I know it helps me.”
“You were dreaming the night I…fell through your floor,” I say, the revelation hitting me.
“I often have nightmares,” she admits. “Because…I don’t know who I am, before I ended up at the tavern, as the landlady. I think they belong to my former life, but when I wake, I don’t remember enough to know who I was.”
I put my arm over her. She is shivering. I pull out her dress from where she put it and cover her with the soft, rustling silk.
“I don’t dream often,” I say, quietly. “But when I do, it’s always him. The creature who took my mortality, come back to taunt me some more.”
“I guess we’ve both lost important things.”
“But we have overcome them,” I point out. “You are the landlady of the most successful tavern in the Night Lands, and I torture the Faerie in the Shadow Keep.” I grin at her.
“Not quite the same,” my lady says with a sleepy, wry smile, before pushing up a little on my chest. “Did you saytorture?”
“It’s the least they deserve, foul creatures. Mostly I deny them access to their glamour. They hate it.” I grin again. “But then, they shouldn’t have used me in their wars against the Reivers.”
“You fought against the Reivers?”
“The Faerie from the Yeavering were fighting. I and my fellows were coerced or forced into a war which was not our own.” I growl. “It was only when we finally woke up and rose up that the Faerie found out who their real enemy was.”
“Not the Reivers?”
