His words reminded me of how he treated Pascale. Clearly the Salticidae believed that a female ought to be able to support herself and care for herself without a male at her side. I rather liked that.
Theirs was an ideal I could have embraced if circumstances had been kinder.
I reached for the length of fabric at my feet. “I couldn’t agree more.”
During the minutes it took me to retie the covering over my wings, Old Father began snoring.
Asher stepped outside while I checked my work then waved for me to join him.
Wishövi sat under the tree where we left him. “Come with me.” He put his knife through his belt and jumped to his feet. The soap creature he left on the arm of Old Father’s chair. “Old Father said it was the Araneidae’s wish you stay at Paladin Rhys’s house while you’re here. I will take you there.”
I gestured toward Asher. “What about him?”
The youth blushed. “He asked for a hammock, miss.”
I folded my arms. “Why would you want one of those?”
Wishövi’s gaze drooped until he stared at his bare feet.
Asher patted the boy’s shoulder. “The house where you’re staying has an orchard behind it.”
“I see.” I tapped my fingers against my elbow. “And you intend to make use of my trees?”
A slight smile curled Asher’s lips. “That’s one way of putting it.”
With heat rising in my cheeks, I took Wishövi’s arm and let him escort me to my lodgings.
Chapter 9
Night sounds drifted through the open windows. Paladin Rhys’s Beltanian getaway was modest in a way that convinced me he must have owned it prior to marrying Maven Lourdes. I found it hard to believe the matriarch of the wealthiest clan in the Araneae Nation would choose so simple a home for them. While simple by the elegant standards of Erania, I fell in love with the place at first glance.
I might live in such a home and be content all the days of my life, a shame those were numbered.
My favorite amenity was its distance from the main street. It stood apart and gave me privacy other quarters in the city would not have afforded me. I relished the room to move, to breathe.
How the paladin bore leaving this tranquil spot for the chill of Erania, I couldn’t imagine.
Full on sleep and willing to put off unpacking until the morning, I went to explore my backyard.
My night vision was excellent thanks to Idra, and I had no trouble finding the path leading to the small grove of apple trees planted at the rear of the house. Since I was in residence, I hoped no one faulted me for picking a ripe fruit from the tallest tree or piercing its tight flesh with my teeth.
“It’s dangerous to walk alone in the dark.”
“Asher.” I spun toward his voice. “What are you doing?”
“I am a guard,” he said. “I guard things. Namely you.”
I put a hand over my racing heart. “Well that certainly does explain things.”
He prowled closer, underneath the tree limbs, until he loomed in shadow beside me. He wore the red-cheeked, pink-eyed look of a male who had drunk too much, but not enough to get the desired result.
“I want to ask you a question,” he enunciated carefully. “I would appreciate an honest answer.”
I braced myself for unpleasantness. “The honesty of my answer depends on the question.”
“I have reason to doubt your relationship with Edan.” He leaned against the tree trunk.
My laughter shocked us both. “You’re drunk. Find your hammock and sleep off this madness.”
“I read your journal.” He removed it from his back pocket and shook it at me. “All of it.”
My mouth went dry. “How dare you.”
“Me?” He tapped my chest with the edge of the binding. “You have a lot of nerve.”
I snarled, “Then you must have borrowed some.”
“Did you know anyone can make an offering to Old Father, and if he accepts, he can divine their future mate?” He let me snatch the journal out of his hands. “The Salticidae belief in soul mates is so deeply rooted in their culture that before a person forms a strong bond with their significant other the couple must have their spiritual status confirmed. They bring Old Father an item that belongs to their beloved, and from that he can tell whether they are a match. I decided to test his process for myself.”
“Why would you—?” A worse thought occurred to me. “You shared my journal with him?”
“No.” He reached behind his back. “That would have been a violation of your trust.”
“Trust? What trust?” My claws lengthened. “You read my journal without my permission.”
His lips tightened. “I read your notes to save you, to learn how to care for you.”
The joints in my wings began itching. “I am not a pet.”
“You would have died if I hadn’t,” he pointed out to me.
I tucked the journal, the memories of Edan, against my chest. “I wanted to.”
He went still. “And now?”
“I will do my duty to Henri.” Starting tomorrow, I would write. “Then I’m going after Idra.”
He pulled the bowl I had used for breakfast from behind him.
“Where did you—?” I groaned, feeling ten kinds of foolish. “You lied to me.”
“I did. I had to know.” He tossed it to the ground. “Tell me.”
Tell him. Not hardly. “I see no reason to answer your deceit with the truth.”
“Tell me the truth.” He prowled closer. “Were you married to Edan?”
The evasion came harder to my tongue than expected. “That is none of your business.”
He stalked me until my back hit a tree. “A yes would have been simpler.”
My pulse leapt when he braced a hand over my head and leaned closer. “Why does it matter?”
“It might be what you are, or what was done to me, but I can’t stop thinking about you.” His jaw worked. “You can imagine how that conflicts my morals to covet another male’s wife, especially one whose husband obviously adored her.” He smiled, and it was hard. “Rather he doted on her, like one might a younger sister. After reading your journal, I thought to myself that I never saw you and Edan be affectionate in the way husbands and wives are. Rough as his edges were, he would have stolen a kiss from you, a real kiss, if he had wanted one. Yet he never did. Not that I saw. Why was that?”
I shivered as his eyes searched mine. “Perhaps we believe in keeping our private lives private.”
“No.” He brushed his knuckles down my cheek. “You have such fire in you and yet I never once saw that spark of passion in your eyes when you looked at him. You didn’t desire him, did you?”
I clamped my mouth shut.
“There it is.” His soft chuckle blew his warm breath across my face. “That spark I so admire.”
I shoved his chest. “What did Old Father tell you to make you so bold?”
What he read must not have been proof enough for him to act on his interest. What had he read? I thought I was being so careful. I never said we were or weren’t married or much else on the topic. I stuck to the facts in case we had reason to return to Erania as husband and wife. Was that the tip-off?
Had he expected me to praise the man he thought was my husband in some softhearted fashion?
“Old Father said only that the heart of the female who last used the item might yet be won.”
“My heart is not a prize.” I shoved him again, harder. “Love is a gift. Not a trinket.”
He put a hand at my hip to prevent me from pushing him away.
“I don’t know what this is, but it’s not a game.” He stroked my side. “Not to me.”
Heat spread through me at his touch. “Please tell me he didn’t convince you we were fated.”
“On the contrary, he said my soul is tainted. Whatever he might have gleaned from me is gone.” He stared at my mouth. “He said the same for you, that your heart was too well hidden
from him.”
“Or perhaps it is the bond of matrimony that conceals the inner workings of my heart.”
“Don’t torment me.” He bent his head. “I have to know, for my own peace of mind. It’s not that I believe in fated mates. I don’t believe anyone is entitled to love, but I do believe there is something to be said for the power of spirit walkers. I have witnessed the power of my own clan’s maven often enough, and Maven Mana was Old Father’s apprentice. Her powers must stem from his teachings.”
I put a hand to his chest, above his racing heart. “Until we crossed the veil, you were indifferent to me. Are you sure this sudden swell of affection isn’t due to a sense of misplaced obligation?”
His head snapped back. “Is that what you think?”
“You glared at me the whole way,” I reminded him, “and barely saw fit to converse with me.”
“I thought you were Edan’s wife.” He shoved from the tree and turned. “I was showing him the proper respect by avoiding your company whenever possible so as to resist temptation.”
“I don’t believe you.” I scowled. “Your actions might have roots in some sense of propriety, but I saw the way you looked at me. It was not covetous or desirous. It was furious, disgusted or worse.”
Asher spun around. “Can you blame me if I was afraid of my attraction?”
His meaning struck me mute for a moment. “You thought I had beguiled you.”
He flung out his arm. “I thought all your kind were capable of such manipulation.”
My kind. Imagine what he would think if he had been cognizant enough to remember how a few notes of my accidental song appeared to have broken Idra’s spell. “I told you I had no such talent.”
His arm dropped. “I didn’t believe you until I saw how you were…after Edan.”
“Ah.” I tapped a finger to my lips. “I was a heartless monster who preys on innocent males until you saw how the loss of one has broken me.”
He jabbed a finger at me. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You are so set on proving to yourself that your attraction to me is of your own doing—and not mine—that you are overlooking whether or not I am attracted to you at all. It’s not the matter of my marriage to Edan, or whether we were married at all that you seek to disprove. You want to have me so that you can say to yourself, ‘That proves it. My attraction is real because I couldn’t possibly—’”
Asher closed the distance between us, fury crackling in every step. He cupped my face between his hands and pressed his lips to mine. His were soft and tasted sweetly of the blueberry wine he had been drinking, and I wanted to kiss him back. More than anything, I wanted to kiss him back.
So I smashed my knee into his groin and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
He grunted and sank to the ground.
I stepped over his legs. “Never touch me again in such an intimate way without asking permission.”
I ignored his garbled plea to stay and let him explain. I had heard enough. I went inside and left him to his moaning.
Chapter 10
The next morning as I lay in bed, knocks on the door pulled my attention from the first chapters of my journal. The ones I had written when I still had hope for a somewhat normal life with Edan among the Salticidae.
It all seemed like so long ago. A lifetime had passed.
Despite my best efforts, I had changed yet again.
“Marne?”
I groaned and shoved my journal under my pillow. “What do you want now?”
“I brought a peace offering.”
“Asher, it’s early, and I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“What?” The knob jiggled. “I can’t hear you.”
With a growl, I pushed to my feet, stalked toward the door and opened it a crack. “Talk fast.”
He did one better. He held up a bow and an arrow.
“Why do you have those?” My fingers curled to grip the bow.
“I thought a hunt would do you good.” He offered the weapons to me. “The diet here is not ideal for either of us. Since your hunger for meat has increased since… Well, I thought we might supplement our meals with fresh lepus. We might luck up and find a pecora, though I haven’t seen many animal signs since arriving except those of the domestic variety.”
“The plague wiped out most of the larger wildlife in the area.” I grinned as I slung the thick belt holding a quiver of arrows around my hips. It might be an unconventional style, but it kept my wings free. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful,” he said without hesitation. “You like it?”
“It’s perfect.” Keeping my head down to hide my red cheeks, I nodded. “Did you rig this yourself?”
The swell of his chest at my compliment told me he had.
“We should hunt while we have a chance.” He searched the sky. “The city will wake soon.”
“I can’t argue with that.” It had been too long since I hunted for myself.
We crept along the river’s edge, leaving the city behind us. Once the smell of civilization faded, and the scents of the earth rose to my nose, tracking prey became easy. I inhaled a wisp of the trail of a lepus hopping to its burrow. I followed that scent on light feet, through the scrub and over the clay earth baked hard and crunchy by the sun. Asher’s now-familiar scent told me he was close.
The moment I spotted a flash of cotton tail, I nocked an arrow and took aim.
My target fell to the earth mid-leap.
Remnants of the old Marne, the one who had had the luxury of delicate sensibilities, mourned.
My next breath dragged the rich scent of my kill to me, and my stomach tightened painfully.
When I stood over the lepus, I lifted its limp body by the arrow protruding from it. Warm blood trickled down the arrow’s shaft and coated my hand. I watched the crimson rivulet, mesmerized until an odd sensation left me scratching the base of my neck. Before I fell upon the kill, Asher was there.
He eased the arrow from my hand and pretended not to watch when I licked a finger or when the low growl rose up the back of my throat. He had snatched my food, my meat, and taken what was mine.
“Marne,” he said under his voice.
“I’m fine.” My claws were not out. My back was not spasming. I was fine.
I backtracked to the water and rinsed my hands.
“Do you want this raw?” His expression held no condemnation. “Let me clean it first.”
“We will sear it.” Like normal people.
“Don’t pretend for my benefit.” He licked a fat drop of blood from his thumb. “I understand the craving, better than you might think.” He pulled a knife from his pocket. “I am Mimetidae after all.”
Mimetidae. A flesh eater. They ate the hearts of enemies who fell in battle against them.
He had tasted Araneaean flesh as surely as I had, yet his acceptance of the practice chilled me.
I did not want to look at a person and imagine the crunch of their bones between my teeth or the heat of their blood pouring down my throat. I wanted to look at them and see a person. Not a meal.
“I can’t do this.” I staggered away from him.
Embracing the knowledge I craved the meat bloody, that he might too, unhinged me.
I yanked the material from my shoulders, flexed my wings and leapt into the sky. The rush made my heart pound and ears ring. The air cleared my head and muted the blood thirst while I soared.
“Running from your nature again,” Idra whispered. “Do you ever tire of it?”
Red haze shrouded my vision at the sound of her voice. “Let me mourn in peace.”
The glide of air through my wings, the warmth of the morning and the brightness of the dawn let me force her grim tidings to the back of my mind. I had hunted. I would eat soon. The day was mine.
“He doesn’t understand you.” Idra’s voice was the pulse beating at my temples. “He never will.”
Pressure in my head crushed my focus. I stuttered in flight before s
haking off her presence.
If Asher called to me, I didn’t hear him. I pushed myself higher and harder until the wind cut my lungs and my chest ached. Here was clarity, here was sensation. This was who I was meant to be.
Up here I could pretend Idra’s voice wasn’t hammering at my head, that Edan wasn’t dead.
“Let me show you what your allies have planned for you.”
Her shrill laughter chased me while I whirled frantic circles through the sky.
“Go on,” she coaxed. “Look for yourself.”
A prickle down my spine drew me up short, and I hovered over the river, gaining my bearings.
The building sense of unease drew me farther downriver, until the scent of decay and soft moans of the dying sank me to the ground. My feet were rooted in the dirt while the morning breeze carried the promise of danger to my nose. I inhaled and crept closer.
The wind changed, gusting at my back and carrying my scent ahead of me.
Inquisitive grunts came from what appeared to be a corral made from mud bricks stacked seven or more feet high. The stench of rot came from its occupants. Risers. What would a pen full of risers be doing on Salticidae land? Staring back the way I had come, I was no longer sure this property was theirs. Even if it belonged to a neighboring clan, the Salticidae should be made aware of the danger.
My presence had agitated the risers, but I had been told only the one who had sung them awake after their death from the plague could command them. My appearance had affected them, it seemed.
The smell of me had made them hungry.
Scrabbling sounds reached my ears. Here and there hands clawed at the bricks circling the top of the enclosure. Their excitement made my nape itch, and when I scratched it, I felt two small bumps.
Blasted insects, they had been the one thing I didn’t miss about being in the northlands.
“Get the clubs,” a gruff voice called. “Something’s got them riled.”
“You want a turn?” a second male voice answered. “My arm’s sore from last night.”
I bit my thumbnail. Was this the disturbance that had kept the maven and paladin out so late?
Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection Page 121