Turning, the hulking Tauran held something out to me. Cupping his hand under mine, tipping my palm up so I was holding it out to him, he placed a long length of chain into it, a tiny black and gold pendant with two daggers and a sword in the middle dangling prettily.
“Oh my, this is... wow. You made this?”
Beaming, proud, the male nodded. His smiles were fleeting but blindingly bright, like a shock of sunshine on a cloudy day.
Holding it out to hand it back to him, reluctant to let it go, I wondered how horrible it would be to actually use some of the coin Vachel had offered up. A dinner plate sized hand closed over mine, curling my fingers over the trinket.
“For you.”
Stunned, I stared up at him. “I couldn’t- Wh- I-”
Those thick lips tipped up. “Don’t insult me.” He let my hand go to turn back to his work, his stutter noticeably absent. “Just take it.”
“I- I-”
A deep grumble. “You’re welcome.”
The necklace was long, so long I had to wrap it around my neck several times before it didn’t hang too low.
“Suits you,” Cephonie stated as she walked back in, offering a nod of approval.
My hand went to the trinket and I fingered one of the little metallic beads. “Thank you.”
“He said you’d come,” the gruff-voiced blacksmith admitted.
“Who did?” I murmured, happily admiring the pretty piece.
“He did.”
“Oh, you- He. Oh-” I couldn’t quite find my words.
A roar had me whirling around, where I spotted Adelric spitting mad, lifting up the table I’d been seated at, demanding the shopkeeper give me back, to then toss the table right out of his booth and over the top of the next.
“Shoot,” I gasped out, rushing off. “Adelric!” I shrieked. “You put him down! Now! Do you hear me?! Ye gods, I’m right here! Don’t you dare throw that male!”
“She’s smaller than I’d thought she’d be,” I overheard Cephonie commenting. “Spunky.”
A grunt from her brother. “She’s got fire.”
“Mouthy.” A snigger.
A happy, deep rumble. “I like her.”
˜˙˜*˜˙˜
“For someone who doesn’t want to draw attention to his attraction to the demonized wingless, you sure put on quite the show,” I muttered.
“There wouldn’t have been a show to be seen,” Adelric seethed, “if you had stayed put!”
Right. He was still really mad. Needed to remember that.
My skin prickled as I eyed the landscape. The odd feeling I was being watched was overwhelming. Pulling my itchy blanket cloak higher on my shoulders, I shivered.
“Humans are not made for Tavros,” Adelric felt the need to gripe, “you will have frozen over before we’ve made it to temple.”
“Then I guess you won’t have to deal with me anymore, will you, and I won’t have to hear you,” I told his back, glaring at the back of his fat, woolly-mopped head. “We both get our wish.”
Spinning on cloven hooves, the male was on me in a minute. “You think this funny?” His snarl had the tree above us shaking, upsetting whatever woodland creatures might’ve called it home. “You could have been taken, been dead!”
“Hilarious,” I snarled back, growing tired of his games. Coming up to him, bumping his chest with mine, I lifted my hands, gripping his shoulders. My boot came out, kicking his leg out from beneath him.
We both went down, which I’d expected, leaving me scrambling to get away from the raging beast as he snarled unintelligibly. “Here!” I huffed out. “You hot-headed lout! You could use the cool- Ah!”
A thick hand clasped my boot, yanking my leg, dragging me back to him.
Kicking out at him, spitting mad and fearing the worst, hands slapping, screeching, the wind was knocked clean out of me when he gave a great yank and I went flying. The male was on me as I crashed into a snowbank, before I could catch my breath.
My shoulders were gripped and the ex-enforcer shook me. “Hear me, human! I couldn’t find you! You weren’t where I’d left you! I thought someone had taken you! Hurt you. Do you hear me now, vacha? Do my words penetrate that odd shaped, tiny head of yours?”
Heard him, loud and clear. I’d scared him. He cares, and I’d scared him.
Gulping, eyes starting to water, my throat worked. “I’m sorry,” I croaked out.
“No,” he muttered, sitting up to leave me lying there, “you don’t get to do that,” he pointed to my face, pink dusting my cheeks. “You don’t get to look at me like that and make me want to forgive you. I’m mad at you, and you just... you just leave me be. I want to be mad at you.”
Turning, he began trudging towards temple.
“Why?” I asked quietly, not expecting an answer.
“It is just easier this way, and you will allow me this.”
“Easier for who?”
“Me.”
Struggling to my feet, tears burning my eyes, I grabbed a clump of snow, racing after him. “Oh no you don’t, you fucking bastard!” The snowball hit him before I did. “Don’t you gods be damned dare!” I was screaming, straddling his back, lifting clump after clump of wet white stuff off his back to smash it into the back of his fuzz filled, overbearing head. “You think you can just put me wherever, tell me to do whatever, tie me to a fucking tree so it can beat my arse, peeling flesh from bone, then act like you do, make me feel the way I do, help me feel sorry for living, then just dump me as you please to pick me back up when it works for you? You’re all the fucking same!” I was crying now, sobbing softly.
Adelric lifted himself up, dumping me next to him when I slumped, no longer fit to fight.
“Vacha.” Thick fingers swiped at my eyes and strong arms went to wrap around me. I snarled at him in warning but it went ignored. His snout brushed the tip of my nose. Cupping my face, murmuring my name with a groan, the beastie tilted my face towards his. Our lips touched, once twice, my hands trembling as I felt myself falling. “Vacha,” he murmured, like my name was a prayer.
His big body, putting off heat like a furnace, moved closer. I wanted to burrow into that warmth while he plowed into me and...
“NO!” I bellowed, squirming from his hold. “NO! No more! You don’t get to do this!” Scrambling to my feet, I shook my head. “You’re worse than the weather. Hot! Cold! Hot! Cold! You’re- You’re messing with my head and I can’t take it anymore! It’s too much. This is all too much. I feel like I’m going insane! Just- just leave me alone!”
The Tauran looked stunned, watching me as I trudged off ahead of him.
My hand went to the bead looking links of my necklace chain and I gripped them until my skin pinched. “I was only a few booths away from Yhem’s, and made sure to stay out in the open. Kerberos was there, and Cephonie. Dama-lama-ding-ding could have totally seen me with his one eye from his tent! You’re ridiculous! Now you just leave me be!”
Adelric caught up to me, eventually, following along quietly behind me, allowing me to lead.
Sniffling, swiping at my cheeks, I’d swear I caught sight of brief peeks of glowing eyes, cleverly hidden in the trees, but every time I stopped to look nothing was there.
When we arrived at the temple I went inside with barely a greeting to anyone. Once inside my room I undressed, hanging my wet clothes to dry, put on a clean gown, and slipped into bed.
There was a soft knock at my door but I feigned sleep. The door creaked open, a small sliver of light spilling inside. The door opened wider. “Vacha?” Adelric whispered.
The door closed moments later. A small sniffle escaped me but I forced it back.
Hours later, about to drift off to sleep, a hand came up, brushing the hair from my face, a thick snout bussing my cheek, and the blankets at my shoulders were settled better over me.
“Pleasant dreams, demon pixie,” that deep voice rumbled. He had yet to leave.
When I awoke the next morning I swore to myself it was
a dream. The caspwop bones on the small bedside table claimed otherwise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Sitting at the pool, staring off at nothing, wondering where to go from here, I heard it.
My crochet ruins finally got that companion sock, though they made better mittens. Vachel and I had spent the better part of the last two days constructing snow creatures in the garden. It was mind numbing, something to pass the time, and Vachel had taken to it with gusto.
Adelric was called to the village by Yhem. He’d been gone since yesterday but came back late tonight, eating and going straight to bed.
It was better this way, I kept telling myself, knowing it probably was. Here I am stomping around waiting for some fae to ‘accept’ for a bit of help of some sort, and I’d tried to add him to all of this? Kvigor and Puck to deal with were enough. I didn’t need one more male trying to tell me what to do.
Glancing towards the main foyer and the gardens, I heard it again. Then nothing.
Walking to the entrance to the garden, I paused, trying to keep out of sight. When time passed and nothing happened I was about to give up when I spotted him. But the eyes glowing in the dark were more purple than red.
My heart dropped to my feet as I slunk back inside.
˜˙˜*˜˙˜
If I wasn’t hiding to commune with the All-father, so to speak, more determined than I’d ever felt—though my, uh, communing was more like screaming and ranting at him, or more so to myself, as he seemed to have abandoned me, much as Puck had his beastly headed children—I was kept busy poring over books with Vachel, who seemed to be growing more and more restless with each passing day. Otherwise, I was tending to chores with the others, swimming, searching for any distraction possible.
I avoided Adelric now as steadfastly as he once had me, taking to eating my meals early so as not to cross paths with the male. Yet I missed the gutless beastie, as if I’d lost my right arm.
The nights were horrid. If I wasn’t having nightmares I was lying awake living one. Every night I sought out a shape in the landscape, a speck of color, a shadow of movement from the safety of the hall before the garden. Maybe he wasn’t really there. Maybe I was deluding myself.
This night I’d gone in search of a certain All-father, snarling at his reluctance to accept my acceptance, if that rambled bit made any sense. I’d just come tumbling out of the foliage, muttering to myself all the while, unaware I was being watched.
“Too cold,” the male in shadow said quietly, seated by the pool, “to be trampling around through there. Could get lost.”
“Like you care,” I muttered churlishly. I was too dead tired to be polite. Tangles ratted my hair, the length loose, hanging freely about my shoulders. Sticks and leaves jabbed at me, trapped in the mess. My addled mind had thought maybe a dance was the trick. If anything my only accomplishment was in frightening a small family of birds into moving their nest, but not before attacking me first.
Rotten luck should have been my middle name.
Making to stomp right past him, he turned, staring up at me as I grew closer. “Sit with me a while.”
“No thank yo-” I began to mutter, to be cut off with a softly rumbled, “Please.”
Pausing, glancing from the male to the water, my feet were rather sore...
“Only for a moment. And not for you,” I made sure to let him know, plopping down a safe distance away to tug off my boots, my socks next to go, “my feet hurt.”
His smile was slight, unsure. He was nervous, his amber eyes lighting up as I scowled at him.
“And stop smiling like that. You look a fool. Cow-eyed... no good...”
His lips twitched, eyes dancing.
“You’re still doing it,” I grumbled.
“Apologies, vacha.” His lips actually lifted and he held a small, familiar basket out to me, offering a chewy biscuit.
Picking the best three, I bit into one, pointing it at him. “You’re still doing it.”
Stuffing a biscuit into his mouth to chew slowly, he turned away, staring off over the water. One might think him thoughtful or contemplative, but I knew better. The bull headed lout was hiding a smirk.
“Don’t get used to this,” I said around a mouth full of biscuit.
“Of course not, vacha.” A cough sounded, one that was clearly masking a laugh.
“Stop calling me vacha, beastly beastie.”
“As you wish, vacha.”
The biscuit hit him square in the side of his face, bouncing off, and he caught it, smacking a kiss to it, lifting it to his lips to take a huge bite.
“I’ll never understand you lot,” I opined.
Reaching out to pluck a stick and a crumbling leaf from my hair, my companion made a rumbling noise in his chest. “No truer words have ever been spoken,” a pause, “demon pixie.”
The little birdy I flipped him said it all.
˜˙˜*˜˙˜
My feet dangled over the water, dipping in to the warmth of the dark pool one foot and then the other. Adelric’s hooves made small circles, the action comical. This had sort of become our routine, though everything was certainly far removed from what it used to be.
Everything felt strained, the tension too much, strings pulling tight beyond their intended strength. I’d no clue where to go from here, how long until something broke.
Possibly feeling the same, Adelric was unusually silent.
“You have been searching?” he asked carefully, his eyes shifting towards the temple forest.
“And someone’s been following my movements,” I responded in kind.
“You’re looking for him, aren’t you? Going to accept him, in the hopes of more gifts.”
“The promise of more gifts. Gifts that are supposed to help us rid you lot of Puck once and for all.”
“Was suckling the peacock into your mouth to bring him to completion as he inhabited Kvigor one of those considerations?” There was no judgement to his words, though they stunned me stupid. He was curious, trying to understand, maybe a bit of something else.
“My mouth and what I choose to put in it, or suckle, are none of your concern.” When we lapsed into silence and I was all out of biscuits, I sighed, admitting, “No. That decision was mine and mine alone.” I let a beat pass. “I hadn’t taken it into consideration where your All-father is concerned at all. Thought if I gave the male a peek at what his life would be like, watching his own body as someone else enjoyed it, as well as, uhm, me, it might push him.”
“He hasn’t been back since,” the bull man noted.
“Yes.” My mouth screwed up, eyes squinting. I was becoming emotional, trying to force it all back. “I’ve spotted him amongst the tree line, I believe, but he no longer approaches.” I took a deep breath. “Looking back on it, I may have erred in my judgement. There’s more purple to the glimpses I catch than I like.”
More silence.
“Do not misunderstand me, but the idea had merit, I’ll admit.” Scratching at his stubbly chin, jaw jutting, he gave a slow nod.
Clearing my throat, my fingers fiddling with the leather of my boots, which were sitting to my left, I bit the inside of my cheek. I was nervous. “Let us hope I haven’t yet again made things worse.”
“And I have been helpful in your journey?” A hard snort.
I peeked over at him, his countenance as low as mine. “Your mother, she’s a pip. I suppose, as you come from her, that counts in your favor.” Patting my boot, I smiled. “And Vachel gave me my dagger back. I will love her eternally for that feat alone.”
Head cocking, dull, bronze eyes shot with amber met mine. At my teasing smirk he barked out a laugh. When I laughed along with him his lips kicked up.
“I’ve missed that sound,” he murmured.
“My goose honking?” I joked.
“The sound of happiness, however minute. It is not often you are in my sights long enough for it to reach my ears.”
My teasing smirk fell. “I don’t recall starting t
hat up.” Not to begin with. I’d certainly put an end to whatever had begun, though.
“You would be correct.”
“I won’t be running after where I’m not wanted.” Adelric looked like he wanted to comment but I shook my head, adding, “Ah, except for the All-father.”
“You have not heard from him, then? He has not presented himself as his vessel?” He sounded hopeful by the idea.
“No,” I gave him a long look, “which means I can’t find a way to accept him, or his gifts, should he still be amiable to the trade.”
“A trade.” The beastman’s voice dropped, barely above a whisper.
“I’m starting to wonder if he’d ever meant to keep his word.”
“The All-father would not play false,” he stated confidently, shutting up when I gave him a censorious look. “That, uh, I am aware of,” he added, if only to appease the curled-lipped banshee seated not a foot from him.
“There is one thing that doesn’t make any sense to me that I’ve been wondering.” Or more so, I was curious for confirmation about, a niggling suspicious tickling my subconscious. The necklace around my neck slid as my fingers gripped the small pendant, running it through the chain from side to side rhythmically.
“Just the one?” Bull lips twitched.
“Kvigor’s ring.” Nose crinkling, I wiggled the ring in my nostril. “It’s a sign of loyalty to your All-father. Why, then, does- did he start wearing it?” If he was upset about Kvigor, he didn’t show it. I think, no matter what he claimed, he cared very much.
“Protection.” His smile was small, fleeting. “He has a mother who does, and a bone deep need to please his sire and dam.”
“I see.” Which made me wonder what would happen, should he put the ring back in.
Adelric nodded when I said nothing more. “The sun will rise soon. I bid you good rest, then.”
As he stood, stretching, and turned to leave, I watched him, swallowing past the lump in my throat and biting at my lip. I honestly didn’t want him to go, not yet.
I was feeling so lost, adrift at sea with no one to help me. “And you, Adelric?”
By the Horns Page 41