His voice snapped me back to myself—where I sat on my bedroll, fully clothed. The image of him pressed against my body deserted me like the receding tide, leaving me doused in ice and twinkling confusion. I went still, glancing up at him as he lay inches beside me, entirely too far away, the sounds of our joined breath still ringing in my ears. My blood hummed, a flush igniting across my cheeks as he waited for me to respond.
“Please—” I licked my lips, enrapt in disbelief that my imagination had run so viciously wild. Then abandoned me to the cold reality of nothing at all. “Would you find me an apple?”
A few feet away, Sero nickered. Leaves rustled overhead, taunting me as they danced and glittered with spent rain. Crickets chirped. Kye’s eyes never left mine.
I wondered what he saw.
He drifted to the saddlebags, his expression hidden behind the careful mask he’d often turned to in the weeks leading up to our marriage. Guarding his thoughts as though they were pieces of gold, unwilling to let anyone else near enough to see them.
“Get some sleep,” he murmured, handing me the red fruit. “I’m going to finish chopping wood.”
I took it from him, shuffling to my side as the crack of steel against logs echoed in the clearing. Trying to ignore the tingles that still hadn’t left my skin. The aching burn between my legs. Or the raw hole that had formed in the back of my throat.
24
Maren
Kye gently shook me awake.
He’d built the fire up again overnight, the pile of wood now larger than when I’d fallen asleep. Larger than we needed, since we’d planned to wake and leave immediately. I sat up, bleary-eyed and heavy-headed as Kye crouched next to me. He smelled of road dust and old leather, though I caught the notes of rain and mint as he shifted his weight.
Sunlight streamed across his cheeks. He avoided my eyes, turning his new whetstone over his fingers. Strands of gold embellished the edges of the grass, the sun gently cracking the horizon, and I wondered if he’d stayed up all night just to avoid waking me up and exchanging words with me.
“There’s a game trail that leads in the direction we’re headed,” he said, offering me the apple I’d asked for the night before. A warm, cozy cloud bloomed within me. Rather than cut the fruit down the center, he’d eaten half and saved the rest for me. I tried to force the cloud away. To ignore that there was something intimate about sharing with him. Passing the same spoon back and forth, drinking from the same canteen.
Kye pointed through the trees at deer tracks following the creek. They curved south, vanishing under gnarled branches.
“How important would it be for us to avoid the road?” I mused out loud.
His eyes traced the disappearing trail into the backdrop of birch and ash, and I knew he’d already considered my question before I’d asked. “Ideal. Especially while we’re still near the coast. I worried about entering Vranna, but we needed to supply ourselves. We’re supplied now.”
We both eyed the game trail in muted thought. Soft with grass, the ground remained mostly flat. The river dropped into a ravine, but the trail itself seemed easy enough to follow.
“We could give it a try,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. “At least until it stops heading south. Then we’d find the road again. If we have to double back, we’d only lose a few days.”
I gave a nod, standing to smooth the wrinkles from my dress. He’d already packed our camp neatly away. The pot we’d boiled water in was fastened to his saddle, the knitting needles and yarn folded along with his bedroll over Sero’s rump along with the scarf he was halfway through. It seemed my own bedding was the only things he’d left untouched.
The notion he’d wanted to avoid speaking with me so badly that he’d let me sleep until the last possible moment thrust a sharp edge into my chest. I stole the baldric from the ground, fitting the straps over my head as the sword batted against my buttocks.
He watched me take in the bare details of our night, packed and sorted away, then snagged my empty bedroll with his uninjured hand.
“Kye,” I murmured, a guilty strain evident in my voice as I buckled the baldric to my frame. Shame licked me clean. The answer I’d given him the night before, the night he’d spent awake in its aftermath, the chores he’d set himself to, neglectingto let me help. “You could have woken me.” I trailed him to Kolibri. She eyed him warily as he secured the bundle to her saddle.
He waved me away. “I knew you were sore from what happened yesterday—”
A soft crack sounded behind us. The snap of twigs, faint under the whirring tumble of the rapid creek.
Steel whistled at my hip, vibrating against my side. A hand shoved my stomach back, forcing me to step into Kolibri’s warmth. Dark chocolate hair flew across my field of view. Kye stood ahead of me, the hollow between his shoulder blades all I could see, my snatched sword firmly in his hand.
The four of us became still, Kolibri and Sero lifting their noses to the wind along with me. But it blew east, opposite us, plundering our senses. My eyes scraped the trees, the dark shadows not yet infiltrated by the morning sun. We waited.
A little rose-colored finch hopped out from a nearby bush, nosing its sharp beak into the ground where we’d eaten the night before.
My shoulders deflated, a heavy breath escaping my lungs. Kye took longer to recover, scanning our camp with mistrust, a shade of skepticism coloring the crease between his brows. Then he glanced at the empty baldric I’d just strapped to my back.
“I’ll take this back,” he said, swerving his gaze over the empty grass one last time.
I opened my mouth to argue. Then realized which of his hands held the blade.
