Chapter Twenty-Five
I spent most of the day researching the fae, their customs and history until the sun came down. But most importantly, I wondered if this was what my brother wanted me to find. To know. According to maps and websites I wouldn’t have trusted before all this, the four corners of heaven, as they called it, were connected to the four deities of the fae.
I stopped in the middle of a video, the same blonde girl with makeup on her face whose content helped me discover Ansgar’s identity when a knock interrupted my activity. My heart startled out of my chest and I checked the time and saw that it was almost ten in the evening.
“Come in,” I invited and leaped from the sofa, arranging my hair and realising I wore a long tacky t-shirt and shorts and probably looked disastrous.
“Very funny,” Ansgar replied from behind the door while I arranged the small pillows onto the sofa, trying to hide my vegetative state for most of the day. The rest of the bloodied cushions I had already thrown out.
“Ansgar?” I checked, not understanding why he wasn’t coming in. Meanwhile, my hands moved as many objects around as they could to make the room look a bit more presentable.
“The door handle?” he remarked drily. “Iron?”
I hadn’t even realised.I quickly marched towards the door and pulled it open with an urgent movement, as the memory of him kicking the door open this morning made so much more sense.
“I am sorry,” I said but my mouth stopped muttering words, too busy drooling at the image in front of me. It was Ansgar, but in a way I hadn’t seen him before. He wore loose dark green pants, they had dropped under the triangle of his pelvis, only an inch or two from something I very much desired to see. A knife holstered into a sheath neatly tied onto his bicep, the blade covering the skin up to his shoulder. His hair pulled half up, gathered into a small plait at the back. The rest of him was bare, his tanned skin shining into the moonlight.
“Oh my God,” I gawked and made him chuckle with slight embarrassment. In response, his lips touched my head and planted a small kiss, making his way inside. “Is this how you normally look?” I asked, still amazed at the sight of him, my eyes running all over his body.
“I wanted to see you so badly I didn’t bother going home to change,” he explained and grabbed an apple from the kitchen, enjoying a big bite, then taking a seat on the sofa that still remained speckled with his blood from a day ago. I really should have cleaned instead of snoop on him and his kind.
“Is this how you wander around the forest? Shirtless and sexy? If so, damn, I wanna go to work with you!” Verbal diarrhoea may not be the best way to start the evening, but I was absolutely shocked by how stunning he looked and those pants hung so tentatively low, inviting me to pull down on the string that kept them tied around his hips.
“Did you have a nice day?” he asked, the most obvious question to calm down my agitated self. Before I answered, he turned his attention towards the video I had paused and my notebook that was left open at a page where I had circled ERIK with big letters and green highlighter. He turned at me to smile, “I see you’ve been busy,” then turned back to the laptop and read the title out loud. “Faerie gods: documented cases.”
“It’s all just theory and people talking,” I shoved the screen away while discreetly closing the notepad that contained all the information I gathered throughout the day. I didn’t want him to jump straight into an interrogation.
“You have questions. It’s understandable,” he nodded in agreement and took one of my hands in his to kiss my knuckles. “I can answer them if you wish.”
I nodded and went straight to the fridge. I wasn’t sure if alcohol was the best choice at that moment, but it seemed necessary to get me through the night if this almost-naked supernatural being was to spend time at my side and perform kind gestures on my skin.
“Drink?” I asked as I opened the fridge and checked the options.
His reply came slow and affirmative. “Sure, thank you.”
I did not exactly know what fae drank and that was not the question I wanted to start the evening with, so I brought a bottle of caramel vodka and two cans of ready-made cosmopolitan, then opened one of the cupboards and grabbed two tall shot glasses and went back into the sitting room.
“I hope you like sweet drinks, that’s all I have.” I placed them all atop the table next to where he sat, very comfortably so, on the sofa.
“I’ll have whatever you are having,” he smirked at me, like he was planning to taste something more than alcohol tonight. My stomach dropped and my insides twisted with desire as his eyes burned on me.
I opened the bottle and poured two shots, silently passing him one. I swallowed mine in a single breath, then poured a second one and did the same thing. I was on my third when he picked his glass up and lifted it to his nose to smell, then slowly, very gently, placed his lips on the rim and took the world smallest sip. As he did, he moved it around his mouth and licked his lips, swallowing.
“I like this,” he smiled with satisfaction, positioning himself even more comfortably on the sofa as the drink made its way into his stomach. The hilt of his dagger drove into the back pillow, making his arm shift with the movement. “I apologise, I forgot I had this,” he excused himself.
Ansgar untied the leather band that held the weapon onto him, releasing it and placing it onto the far end of the table, outside of his reach. I knew he did it for my benefit and I nodded, grateful, taking my fourth shot of the evening.
“I have questions, Ansgar,” I finally replied, working up the courage to speak, “but before I do, you must make an oath onto silver,” I stated, hoping that I remembered the article correctly. Apparently not, since he started to laugh frantically, shaking his head and taking another sip of his drink. He looked at me with a grin so great that made me feel like some kind of a buffoon, only there for his amusement.
“What’s so funny?” I asked angrily, crossing my hands for emphasis.
“There is no such thing as an oath onto silver, it’s how my ancestors tricked the humans to make them believe we cannot lie,” he continued to grin and enjoy his caramel vodka.
“Then how can I make sure you don’t lie?” I asked surprised.
“How can I make sure you don’t either?” he retorted. “Is there a magical oath that binds the humans into solely telling the truth?”
“Of course not, that would be ridiculous,” I protested.
