Page 34

As I eased myself off the stone platform, I teetered, feeling weakness where I had taken for granted the ability for the sticks at the end of my torso to hold me up without thinking of it.

“Come on, assholes. You did this for over twenty years. You go on a little vacation, and suddenly, you forget that you’re feet? Come on now, ankles, no sleeping on the job,” I whispered.

“Do you make an occasion of chastising your body parts?”

The soft rumble of his voice from what I thought was an empty shadow washed over me, and my feet remembered how to feet, and my ankles woke up.

“Only when they’re being lazy,” I huffed. How dare he spy on me! “Where’d you come from?”

“What a deep question. I didn’t know you had it in you to even wonder, Cricket.”

“Why do you keep calling me that when you know it’s not my name?” I spread my arms out wide to balance and took a tentative step.

My leg felt like a log connected to a rusty bike chain with only half a memory that it used to be able to move.

“It’s considered rude to call even a daoire by their true name. And a threat of violence and animus to a Fae.” His body materialized as he moved forward into the warm amber light of a sleepy brazier. His shirt was rolled up around his elbows, the fading brand of my bite mark a distant dusting on the skin, the laces to its throat haphazardly untied and untucked from his breeches. The forest of his eyes were locked on me. “You’re doing good. We hadn’t expected such progress.”

“There’s no one here but you and me. No need to worry about being rude. I won’t.”

“I’d ask nothing less of you.”

“You come to gawk?”

“At what, exactly?”

The question was lobbed back at me with a cool casualty that made me want to bite him.

“Your handy work?”

I might as well have reached out and punched him in the face. Pain, anger, and regret trampled over his handsome features and transformed into a soft sympathy in the glade of his gaze.

“If I had laid my hands on you—”

“It would have been the last thing you ever did.”

“Do you think so, Cricket?”

“Probably not, but it felt good to say it.”

“I don’t think you’re entirely wrong.” A soft creak came from the chair he was in, and he came around to me, stuffing his hands into his gloves before extending his hand to me.

I glared at him like he had shit in my cereal. “I don’t need your help.”

“I assure you, you do. Your legs have been shaking for the last minute, like they will give out at any moment. I thought distracting you would help, but you’re ignoring your body’s signals. Take my hand, Cricket. I will not coddle you. You will earn your steps, but I won’t let you do it alone and hurt yourself.”

I searched his face for any sort of game he might play, watched the way those arboreal greens, doe browns, and golds swirled together in his eyes as they watched me.

I had never particularly cared for direct eye contact. It made me uncomfortable. It felt like someone was too close, too intimate, and in my personal bubble when I wanted them ten feet away. His eyes connecting with mine didn’t immediately make every nerve up my spine prickle with discomfort, though. There was a distinct lack of physical reaction, which shouldn’t be something to remark on, but with my history, it was as big as one could truly get.

His eyes held a certain sincerity and earnestness that didn’t make sense, though. This man had held me down while Rictus was trying to sell me. He had kept me in a cage for several days, covered up like a canary when he so desired. He had lit my brain on fire for some reason. He had watched me bathe and had watched me give his king a blow job.

He had watched me be beaten to near death—should have been to death. I had never heard of someone having chunks beaten out of their skull and surviving, for the most part, unscathed. His litany of sins against me bordered on maniacal, yet he looked at me with such tenderness that it almost made me stop counting the tax on each one of them.

He was right, though, I could feel the stamina of my pride giving way to the atrophy of my joints, and my hips were wobbling under my weight. If I didn’t take his hand, there was no chance I was going to make any of the five circuits around the room I had challenged myself to. The only place I would be going would be down on my face and into the dusty stonework.

My gaze fell to his outstretched black gloved hand, and I watched it, like a dog waiting for its master to strike it the moment it leaned in for a cuddle.

“It’s your decision, Cricket. You can take my hand or not. I can’t force you to do so. But if you fall, I will not ask permission to catch you before you break your fool head on the stones.”