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Another creaking shrug was given. “You had the poor luck to leave it to air out, and we the poor luck to be blessed with eyes when you did.”
“Ah yes, poor luck, story of my life.”
He snorted as I finally fished my hands free. The shackles were a simple design, not nearly as intricate as I would have guessed. Just a pair of bars bent into a D-shape and joined with another bar in the center to hold them together.
The chisel was set to them, and he began pounding away at the joint where it would naturally be weakest. The ruffling sound of the leaves and vines that made up the man known as Green Man filled the otherwise silent chamber as we both held our breath that no one would come in while he worked on them. When the first finally gave, we breathed a sigh of relief and exhaled it when the second followed suit.
Rubbing my sore wrists to work them free of aches and pains, Green Man eyed me and gave a sniff to the air. “Gross. Stop that.”
“Well, if I were not just a bunch of lawn trimmings with an especially debonaire air about me, I’d say that you stink like Fae cum and sin, Cricket.”
“Well, then, it’s a good thing that you’re far too debonaire to say that,” I quipped while I struggled to find armholes in the massive cloak.
The ivy brows drew down, chasing away the jovialness I had come to know him for. “Did he rape you?”
“What! Green Man!”
“Did. He. Rape you. It is not a complicated question, Cricket.”
“No! No one raped me, Green Man. Fuck, man. You don’t just barge into a room and ask someone something like that.”
The leaves of his face rearranged themselves into a bright, sunny smile. “Good! Because I’d hate to have to figure out exactly how much force it would take to push him out a window.”
The story I had heard in passing of a Árus Adaig courtier who had fallen from a balcony a few months before I arrived trickled back into my mind.
“That was you?”
“What was me? No one here but the squirrels and a fork!” And a fork was produced and stabbed viciously into a lump of stew meat floating in the bowl he had brought me. “Now, you sit and eat, and I will catch you up.”
Hands finally free to wriggle back into the trunk I had been diving into. I fished out a pair of canvas breeches that had leather stitched into the seat and crotch and a dark-green linen shirt.
The Raven was twice my size easily, but it was nothing the loop leather belt I snatched couldn’t fix. I ducked my head into the mouth of the cloak and shimmied into the borrowed clothing cinching the belt as tight as I could get it in a knot like a Windsor knot I had once learned to tie from a foster dad. Satisfied I was no longer bare-assed, I shucked off the cloak.
“Better.” I ignored the way The Raven’s scent floated around me in a lingering cloud of comfort and the way it tightened my core around a nettle of need.
Green Man pursed wooden lips and did his best impression of a wolf whistle. “Fit to slay any monster, now sit. Eat. I can’t imagine that brute has been feeding you.”
“He has,” I assured him but did as I was bid and began tucking into the bowl of rich stew, breaking off a piece of crusty bread to dip in the dark vegetable broth.
It wasn’t the delicious bread from the temple, but it was food.
“Well, word’s gone round the warren that you killed the King.” I choked on a carrot, and he held up his hands. “Now, now, no deep-throating the innocent vegetables—that’s what got you in this mess to begin with. Had you let me finish I’d have said that Emerald has convinced most of them that there was no way you could have possibly gotten that venom. Unfortunately, some of the nosier old timers saw you having a picnic with that brat, The Lady Oaken Rose near the orchards. Some of the old timers are nursing broken knees and legs. No idea what happened there. We came back from duties, and suddenly, like magic even, there they were tucked into their bed moaning about their wounds., No idea how that happened at all.”
I snorted and waved my fork at him. “You really need to work on your innocent act, Green Man. I didn’t even believe you for a single moment. So, was it you or Emerald?”
“Well, I was in the gardens with the rest of my hunt, and there’s baskets and bushels of vegetables some of which are in your stew to prove it.”
“And Emerald?”
“Why she’s employed by the Master of the Royal Wardrobe! She was probably somewhere in the racks and racks of his royal shit-stained robes. Most likely scrubbing some filth from his garments. Probably.”
A sly grin formed in the leaves of his face, and I snorted again. “So, Emerald was part of the mob back in human, I take it. Go on.”
“What her life was like in Human, I haven’t the slightest idea. She’s pretty tight lipped on it.” I snorted again at his joke.
Emerald’s inability to speak, having had a tongue lock too severe that shredded the larynx in her throat, had been mourned and turned into dark humor long before I showed up.
It made me a little uneasy, but she seemed all too pleased to show images beneath her glittering green stone-like skin of all manner of valorous ways in which she had lost her voice. My favorite was her deep-throating a dragon’s dick too vigorously and him coming molten flame down her throat. Made me giggle and snort every single time but also made me wonder what Brittle Spear would have tasted like if he had been more dragon than Fae.
