CARNAL (EXILED Book 1)

by Victoria Danann

  Rosie’s eyes filled with empathetic tears when she saw that Carnal’s eyes were bright with moisture.

  He shook his head. “That’s not what you want to hear about.”

  “It is.” She was quick to offer reassurance. “I want to know everything about you. You’re fascinating, but you’re a mystery. If you want me to stay, I need to know what I’m staying for.”

  “I’m fascinating?” His cocky smile always tugged at the corners of her own mouth.

  “I have a feeling that’s not a surprise. You already know you are.”

  Right on cue a young female voice said, “Carnal?” Rosie looked up to see one of the Farsuitwailian girls approaching the table. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “I’ve been busy.” He looked at Rosie. “And I’m going to be busy from now on. Forever.” He glanced at the girl. “Pass the word along. Okay?”

  The girl looked at Rosie. “Because of her? She doesn’t look that special.”

  Carnal turned around and faced the intruder. “Are you blind? It doesn’t get any more special than this.”

  The hostess came out from the back. “Are you bothering my customers, chicklet? Go on now. Shoo. Shoo.” She began swinging a rag at the girl. “And don’t come back here unless you got money to pay for food.”

  Rosie looked at Carnal. “I take back what I said about that woman. I think I like her a lot.”

  Carnal laughed.

  True to his word, the fish things were splendid. Rosie laughed through stories about Carnal and Crave getting into trouble all over Newland and, later, playing tricks on Charming. She saw the admiration he had for both his parents when he talked about them and what they’d accomplished.

  When dusk grew heavy, the boy who kept the ale coming brought oil lamps. It would have been too cold to sit out, but a thick red ale warmed bodies with a glow that felt both invincible and immortal. For a time. Rosie wasn’t affected by alcohol, but enjoyed observing Carnal become more and more relaxed as the evening wore on.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

  “You’ve been asking me questions for hours.”

  “I know, but this one’s different. Do you not like Dandy?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You always say as little as possible and act like you want to get away as soon as possible.”

  Carnal sat back and sighed. “She’s my brother’s Promise. Being around her reminds me that he’s… not here and that…”

  “Makes you sad.” She finished the sentence for him. “That makes sense. I just wondered. We need to get a check,” Rosie said.

  “What’s a check?” Carnal slurred.

  “It’s the bill. So we can pay for dinner? Please tell me you have money.”

  “Money? Noooooo. We don’t need money. Dinner is complimentary for Exiled. All part of the service.”

  “A perk?” When he opened his mouth, she said, “Never mind.” She assumed that meant it was a gratuity in acknowledgement of the service Exiled provided in terms of defense of the city.

  Rosie pushed her chair back and stood up. “Alrighty then.”

  “Where you goin’?”

  “We’re going home, big fella. I’m not sure how yet. ‘Cause you’ve had too much ale to drive a motorcycle and it’s too far to walk.”

  “First of all,” he waved,” I’m not drunk. Second of all… what was the question?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Come on.”

  She held onto Carnal’s waist as they made their way back to the street. The market was deserted, the stalls closed for the night, and the avenue was just as quiet so far as Rosie could tell. She waited for Carnal to get on the bike in front of her, but while he was fumbling for the ignition, she got on and whisked them for a short ride through the passes. When Carnal looked up, they were sitting in front of the Extant’s house.

  “See? I told you I’d get us here safe and sound,” he said.

  “Yep. And here we are. Let’s get you inside. That ale must be really different from what we serve at the Commons because I’ve never seen one of you drunk before.”

  Carnal almost fell down when he missed the first step at the porch.

  “Shhhh. You’re going to wake everybody in the house.”

  He laughed. “Stop acting like I’m drunk.”

  “You are drunk.” He leaned toward her, his intent unmistakable. “No kisses when inebriated.”

  “I’m not ineeeee…,” he seemed to stop and think for a few seconds before deciding to finish the sentence with, “…bated.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She opened the door as quietly as possible, but Carnal sounded like a bull turned loose in a tea room. She noticed the kitchen light was on. She wouldn’t have expected it at that time of night. They’d talked for hours at the restaurant and it was late.

  Heading toward the kitchen, she hoped Carnal would manage the stairs and get himself to bed.

  She knew instantly when she reached the kitchen threshold that something awful had happened. Free, Serene, and Charming sat at the kitchen table. In front of them two objects sat on the table, an open box and a handwritten note. Serene looked like she’d been crying for a long time.

  “What’s happened?” Rosie asked.

  Free swallowed. “Someone put this in the side compartment of one of the builder’s bikes today, when he was in Farsuitwail meeting with Red.”

  “What is it?” came a deep, raspy and demanding growl from behind her.

  Rosie couldn’t believe the sweet, funny, tipsy Carnal she had helped inside a few minutes before was the same person who sounded so awake and angry. It was difficult to understand what he’d said, like his vocal cords had thickened. But apparently instantaneous sobriety was a side effect of seeing his family in crisis.

  When no one answered immediately, he stepped around Rosie and looked in the box. It contained a blood-soaked rag. He picked it up, held it to his nose, sniffed, and dropped it like it was on fire before snatching up the note that lay on the table.

  Rosie stood statue still and watched helplessly as a range of emotions played over Carnal’s face. He looked from Free to Serene, then at Charming before he crumpled the note in his fist, dropped it on the table, and turned away without a word. Rosie followed as he walked toward the front door.

  “Carnal, stop! Where are you going? What’s happened?” He kept walking without acknowledging her. “You’re just going to leave? Stop and talk to me!”

  He didn’t. He never broke stride. He left the front door standing open, got on his motorcycle, and rode away into the darkness.

  Rosie stood motionless for a minute or two, staring out at the night, hoping he’d change his mind and come back. At some point, when she decided that was wishful thinking, she closed the door and turned back toward the kitchen.

  “Will somebody tell me what’s wrong?” she asked, standing at the threshold, half afraid to step over.

  “Someone sent us proof that Crave is alive,” Free said.

  Rosie jerked her attention from Free to Serene when she heard Serene begin quietly weeping again. She looked at the rag in the box. “How do you know?”

  “We know what our son smells like.”

  “Oh,” she said. “What was on the note?”

  Charming looked at her. “It says that if we ever think of attacking the Rautt, he’ll be nailed to their gates so that he’ll be the first casualty. He’s their insurance policy.”

  The horror of that image made Rosie feel like she had to sit down. She remembered hearing that a person would be better off dead than captured by Rautt and she knew that’s what Crave’s mother had to be thinking at that moment. Rosie knew that Serene was imagining what he’d been forced to endure for the past year since he’d been taken and was trying not to think the worst.

  It took a few minutes for Rosie’s brain to begin sorting through the information, but when the synapses resumed firing, she said, “Someone in Farsuitwail is delivering messages fr
om the Rautt?”

  All Free could do was nod.

  “We’ve got to find out who,” Rosie said, “then we’ve got to rescue Crave.”

  “Rescue,” Free said drily. “Don’t you imagine that if there was a way to do that, we would have set it in motion long before your arrival here?”

  Rosie’s mouth set into a firm line of resolution. “There’s always a way, Free. My father taught me that. We just haven’t thought of it yet. But when we find out who planted this message, we can start piecing together clues as to how to get him back.”

  “How do you think we’re going to find out who planted the message?”

  “If you have to line up every single human in Farsuitwail and have them make a statement to Carnal, one at a time, then so be it. You ask every person questions until you find out who’s in contact with Rautt and helping them with something so heinous. Are you in contact with Rautt? Did you plant a message intended for Exiled? Do you know someone who is in contact with Rautt? Do you have any information about a message being secretly delivered? Do you have any information about anyone hiding to avoid being questioned?

  “It just has to be done in an organized way so that everybody over the age of seven gives a statement.”

  Free turned to Charming. “You need to go tell Dandelion that her Promise is alive.”

  Charming nodded, got up, and left the table without a word or a glance toward Rosie.

  When he was gone, Free said to Rosie, “I know you want to be helpful. You have been helpful with other matters and I’ll take your suggestions into consideration. Right now I need to console my mate.”

  Rosie could see that Free was barely holding it together. His hand had been shaking when he’d raised it to gesture. She nodded to no one in particular and quietly withdrew, wishing she could do something more for the people who had taken her in and treated her like family. But most of all, she’d been crushed by the look of utter devastation on Carnal’s face. She knew she’d never forget it as long as she lived. Crave’s capture had broken Carnal’s heart and she could do nothing to change that.

  She climbed the stairs, closed the door to the room that had been Carnal’s, and stopped, hearing thunder in the distance. She hoped Carnal wouldn’t be caught in a storm on his bike. She supposed that worrying about him meant she cared about him. She also supposed that, if she was going to give him a chance with her, she needed to make it clear that running off into the night was unacceptable, no matter how provocative the reason.

  After changing into a floor length linen shift, loomed by the Exiled at the Weavers’ Barn, she lay down on top of her covers using her multicolored shawl like a lightweight winter throw. The house was quiet and, she thought, filled with a sadness that was palpable. She didn’t turn the bedside lamp off. The dim light was a small comfort.

  A flash of lightning drew her attention toward the window. She started counting. One. Two. Three. Before she got to four there was a deafening crack of thunder. Sheets of rain began pelting the window and, once again, she hoped Carnal was safe and dry somewhere. So long as it was not in the arms of another woman. Even if that was his choice, she wouldn’t interfere with his path by hunting him down.

  She was staring at the window, watching the light show made by the storm, when a soft knock turned her head toward the door. “Yes?”

  Charming opened the door a few inches and pantomimed asking to enter. She nodded and scooted over so he could sit on the bed.

  She could see that his hair was damp and surmised that he’d gotten caught in the rain then changed to dry clothes.

  “How did she take it?” Rosie asked.

  “She tried really hard not to cry, but she was doubled over like she was in so much pain.” He shook his head and looked away. “I hated being the messenger.”

  Rosie sat up and scooted back against the white French provincial headboard she’d substituted for Carnal’s roughhewn bed. “Should I go to her? Do you think it might help if I was with her?”

  Charming looked a little surprised. “You close with Dandy?”

  “Yeah. At least I think so. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “Hey. What about me?”

  With a slight rolling of eyes, Rosie said, “The best female friend. How are your parents?”

  “You know, the only difference between today and any other day is that today they’re letting their feelings show more. They’ve been grieving for him every hour of every day since he was taken.” He sighed deeply. “But I didn’t come to talk about Dandy or my parents. I came to talk about Carnal.”

  “What about him?” When he hesitated, she prompted, “Charming.”

  “I know I warned you off him, but I didn’t know you were… He’s different with you. Really different. I guess I just wanted to say something about the way he left tonight. Carnal and Crave were closer together in age. They were tight as leggings. Always together and, when they were, a legion wouldn’t take the two of them on.

  “Carnal had a really hard time when Crave was taken. He wasn’t anywhere near where it happened. Crave was fighting in a different part of the city with his own crew. The way the Rautt raid, they try to create distractions so that those who aren’t fighting can grab stuff. They’d rather steal from humans than learn to make what they need. Or trade for it.

  “For the first year, anytime Crave’s name came up, Carnal would just say, ‘I should have been there,’ and then walk out. That wasn’t right. Not at all. But he took it on himself like it was his fault that Crave… Well, he was in bad shape and we were all worried about him for a long time.

  “Anyway, it’s way hard when your family has to hope that somebody is dead for fear of what’s happening to them if they’re alive. Getting that box, well, we don’t know how to feel. Should we be happy that he’s alive? Or horrified that he’s been living as a Rautt captive all this time? I think this just opened up a big gaping hole in Carnal’s middle. He probably doesn’t have any idea where to begin sorting out his feelings. You know what I mean?”

  Rosie nodded, impressed with Charming’s insights, and grateful that he thought to share with her. “You’re a wise man wearing a kid’s body for a disguise.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Hey. This is no kid’s body.” He pointed at himself with two index fingers. “If you weren’t Carnal’s, I’d show you the wisdom of that.” He grinned.

  She cocked her head to the side, an unconscious mannerism she’d picked up from the Exiled. “You think I’m Carnal’s?”

  Charming laughed quietly. “Everybody thinks you’re Carnal’s, Rosie. Don’t be thinking anybody else will be sniffing you up. You’re his. Oddly enough, and this is the part I wasn’t expecting, I think he’s yours, too. The way he looks at you…” Charming didn’t finish, but let the partial sentence hang in the air. “Okay. I’m heading up. Can you believe this rain?” Rosie looked toward the window. “We get little showers often enough to grow things, but we don’t get torrents like this. Even the wasteland is getting wet and that’s never happened in my whole life! See you tomorrow.”

  “Yep.”

  He closed the door quietly.

  Sometime between worrying about Carnal and listening to the rain pelt the window, she dozed off and had unsettling dreams. In her sleep she saw Carnal standing in the driving rain, soaked to the marrow, just looking up at the sky like he was defying weather to touch him. Then he was standing by her bed, calling her name.

  “Rosie.” She turned her head away from the window and toward the door just as a lightning flash outlined Carnal’s form. He was wearing soft weave pants and nothing else. “Permission to touch.”

  She looked at the man standing beside her bed for a few heartbeats while she shook away sleep and disturbing dreams, considering the pain evident in Carnal’s voice, all that Charming had said, and her own feelings. His posture made him look lost and, even though she couldn’t make out his features in the darkness, she knew to her bones that he was vulnerable and in anguish.
That’s when she realized that Charming was right. Carnal was hers. She wasn’t sure how or when it had happened, but she didn’t care.

  She moved over and opened her arms. When Carnal climbed on the bed to lie beside her, she felt his damp hair and wondered if he actually had been standing in the rain, like the vision she’d seen in her dream. When he rested his head on her breast, a feeling of completeness settled over her bringing both peace and purpose. She hadn’t known there was a vacuum waiting to be filled until she felt her heart respond to the simple, but immeasurable pleasure of being needed.

  As he settled his head, and slid his heavy arm over her waist, she said, “Are you okay?”

  He turned his face toward her neck. “No,” he said, but after a couple of seconds he decided to amend that. “I don’t know. It feels better with you.”

  He felt her nod in response. Carnal appreciated that about Rosie. She didn’t feel like she had to fill the air with meaningless words when there was nothing to say.

  They lay together in peaceful contentment, listening to the rain, experiencing the warmth and comfort of each other at rest. Carnal felt Rosie’s heartbeat where his right cheek was pressed over her heart. When his left hand skimmed down her body, he felt as well as heard her heartrate speed up. And that was more erotic to him than previous experience.

  He rolled the both of them over so that she was on top, her face poised inches away from his.

  “Are you mine, Carnal?”

  His voice was deeper than usual, gruff and raspy, but he answered without hesitation. “I’m yours, little demon. And I always will be.”

  She lowered her lips to his, already knowing the heavenly taste and feel of his mouth, eager to repeat the delicious experience of his kiss. He opened his mouth to her and matched her passion, pressure for pressure, touch for touch, until she rolled them over again, longing to feel the weight of his body stretched along the length of her.

  He tugged upward on the shift, urging her to raise her hips so that he could pull it over her head. She explored his beautiful body with her hands while he tore the pants away and threw them to the floor, off to the side of the bed. When he returned to the arms held open for him, their desire was accelerated by the exquisite feel of skin on skin. She moaned. He growled without opening his mouth. It startled her temporarily until she realized it wasn’t hostile or aggressive. It was simply Carnal far more aroused than she’d seen him before.