Cassius waits a moment, then hands me a chunk of bread. “Are you hungry?”
I grin. “Definitely.”
He grins back, and it’s a nice smile. A rare smile.
While I eat, Sylvian says, “It sounds like you have some stories for us?”
“Oh yeah,” Ashton answers. “And I bet you have some of your own?”
“Definitely,” Sylvian responds.
“Fucking maze,” Oberon mutters.
I smile. “We can share them later. Maybe after we’ve all gotten some rest.”
They agree.
For a while, we just sit, listening to the crackle of the fire. Ashton leans against my shoulder, half asleep. Sylvian looks like he’s trying to spot the stars. Oberon pokes at the flames, saying nothing.
It’s almost peaceful.
I look around at them, at the firelight catching in their hair and on their scars. I wonder if this is what the goddess wants… five broken things, holding each other up just long enough to make it to the end.
The truth is, I’ll never know. Unless we make it out of here. But for now, I just watch the flames and let the warmth seep into my bones.
12
Ashton
We march for hours, the five of us, with no end in sight. At first, we’d talked. They’d shared what had happened to them while we were gone, and we’d shared about the strange wedding ceremony, the satyrs, and the nymphs. All of the men seem to hang onto our every word, but I notice that Alette skips over a lot, especially the moments between us, so I do the same.
But as time passes, we run out of stories. Run out of smiles and laughter.
Time continues to pass. No one talks much, except Sylvian, who shares an occasional observation, or flicks moss at Oberon to see if he’ll bite. Sometimes I catch Alette watching the ground, lost in her own mind, but whenever she looks up she makes sure her hand is nowhere near mine. I don’t blame her. There’s something between us now, something deeper than anything I’ve ever felt before, but I don’t know if I’m the only one feeling it. I don’t even know if she likes me now. What I do know, she’s making it a point to not be close to me.
Glancing down at the wedding ring on my finger, something twists in my gut. I know it wasn’t real.So, why did it feel so real?
Now she’s up ahead, boots punching holes in the mud, with Sylvian shadowing her like a wolf following a wounded lamb. He’s not subtle about his interest in her, but he doesn’t have to be. We all saw her and Sylvian climb out of the fucking hedges. We all know that he’s gotten closer to her than any of us. She laughs at his jokes. She throws moss back at him when he flicks it in her direction. She doesn’t flinch when he brushes her arm, even though his hands are the size of a newborn foal. Once, he tugs her braid, and she just rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t look at me the whole time.
Why isn’t she looking at me? Why isn’t she smiling at me?
I want to tell myself it’s fine, that I don’t care, but every time I watch him with her, a feeling I hate buzzes through my body. I know what this is. I’ve seen it happen to a hundred men, in a hundred courts, and every time I thought, what idiots. How could you let your heart walk around outside your body like that? How could you want anything badly enough to risk being hurt?
After I lost Mira, my first love, I never looked at another woman that way. I didn’t want to. I couldn’t feel that way. I wouldn’t ever risk my father hurting another woman like that, even if, technically, he would’ve celebrated me choosing a fae woman.
But as hard as I’ve worked to not ever feel this way about another woman, I feel it now. And I hate it. It feels dangerous, exciting, and terrifying all at once.
It's almost like Oberon and Cassius are purposely trailing behind, as if they don't want to be part of the group, but want to stay close enough to remind me that they're part of this just as much as I am. Cassius’s face is a mask. It’s blank and cool and unreadable. He might be thinking about the best way to kill me, or maybe just what he’ll have for dinner, but you’d never know. Oberon is scowling, flexing his hands like he wants to punch theair itself, and it gives me a small bit of joy to know that he’s just as miserable about Alette giving Sylvian all her attention as I am.
Thinking of him giving Alette a stone fills me with an unspeakable amount of joy. He’d barely met her, and he’d been smitten with her long before the rest of us.
The old fire fae has a heart after all.
We keep walking. I try to focus on anything but the ache in my chest, but it doesn’t work.
At one point, Sylvian picks a handful of cloudberries and offers them to Alette. She pops one in her mouth, then turns and, for a second, she looks at me. Her lips are red with juice. Heat slips between us, and my whole body tightens, then she goes back to Sylvian and the story he’s entertaining her with. The glance is over in a heartbeat, but my heart goes double-time for the next ten minutes, like an idiot.
I want to say something. I want to pull her aside and ask if she meant any of her vows at the wedding, even though it wasn't real, even though the whole world knows it was a sacrificial ceremony. I want to tell her that I’d still marry her, if it meant she’d look at me like that again. I want a lot of things, most of them impossible.
