Still, when I looked at how Fear stood, with his broad shoulders and perfect posture and the way he drew every eye, I thought it would be hard not to know him even masked.
“At least it means Obsidian will believe I could be a hired orc guide.” His tone suggested he hated being here. He tiltedhis head at me, studying me. “And you could be a little mortal servant.”
I had not considered, until that moment, what being a mortal in low Fae territory meant for me. The little I had been taught of low Fae in school was that they avoided mortals, for reasons our teachers had skipped.
I’d heard rumors since. That mortals, unable to reach the High Fae who cursed them and conscripted them and harvested their magic, had turned their rage on the low Fae they could harm without royal reprisal. That had been going on, by the sound of it, for generations. The low Fae would have their own reasons for disliking a mortal in their territory.
I added it to the list of things that could kill me before this trip ended.
He was not distracting me that easily from his distress. “At least?”
He shrugged. “My father would like to have me eviscerated for killing my brothers.”
Evisceratedwas a strong and vivid word choice, especially for a man whose vocabulary was usually not terribly expansive. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He must need to share the burden of what had happened. Otherwise, he’d never bring it up.
“Gods no.” He scoffed.
“Are you all right going into orc territory?” I would kill Fear if he wasn’t.
He nodded. “It’s family business. Orcs are private. The truth would embarrass my father. Unless we run into him, no one knows. And if we run into my father, we’re all dead.”
Cheerful thoughts.
We rode as late as we dared, but we were in low Fae territory, and it did not serve us to be out after dark. We stopped when we reached a waystation warded against their tricks.
Two plain rooms, wooden shutters over the windows, and a fireplace that still functioned. Kiegan took one glance in the second room and said, “The cot will only hold one. I will take the back room.”
He was the size of two of us, but I was not going to argue. I started a fire in the fireplace, disturbing something that flew up out of the chimney. I was thankful it wentupand notin.
“Can you cook, Fear?” I asked.
“I thought we could picnic,” he said, which was an answer.
“Spoiled prince,” I teased, though I knew that being a prince had left him far from spoiled. At least in my often-hungry childhood I had been well loved.
Kiegan went out to check the territory around us. I worried about him in the dark, as mortals didn’t stir in the woods at night in Stonehaven.
“He’s the most dangerous thing in the dark.” Fear was spreading our bedrolls out on the floor.
“Unless he runs into other orcs,” I said.
Fear tilted his brows at me, and I didn’t want to risk giving away Kiegan’s secrets, so I held my tongue. Fear sat back. He’d arranged our bedrolls side by side, touching each other, which seemed like more of the day’s punishment extending into our sleep.
I fed a little more tinder to the fire. “Perhaps I should sleep beside Kiegan, given the constraints on us.”
“We’ll be fine. You could come over and kiss me right now, and I would be reasonable.”
I crooked my finger at him. “You told me you’d crawl to me if you were drunk.”
“I think you’re confused about what I meant, which is understandable for such an innocent.”
For a moment, despite his words, he looked as if he might just crawl to me across those wooden floorboards and press me down in front of the glowing firelight, the flickering flame casting shadows across that handsome face, his lips caressing my throat.
Then the door slammed open with a bang. Fear’s face didn’t change, but I could feel annoyed with Kiegan for us both.
We ate our meal, which was hardly worthy of a picnic, and when I lay down, Kiegan was already beginning to snore in the next room. The fire was banked low, but Fear was warm beside me. I marveled at Kiegan’s ability to fall asleep so quickly.
