A sound came from up the hallway and outside, familiar, one that triggered my heart to beat faster—a horse's whicker.
Hope squeezed my chest, but I tried to tell myself to cut that shit out. A horse's whicker did not mean Hellbreath. It could be any horse, or more than one driving a whole carriage, with a driver who had no problem shooting someone.
Still, I turned toward it, keeping my arms in front of me, my arrow gripped tight in one hand and the outer edge of my other palm facing out to slash through the unknown like a spider web.
It felt like the hallway went on forever, but finally my hands brushed leather, soft cloth, and smooth plastic—a whole wall of it. Book spines, I realized, dozens and dozens of them. I couldn't help but grin at the feel of them, and my stomach did crazy flips at the idea of Jade or Archer reading them all to me, at the promise of adventure and drama and facts and feeling in each one.
Nearby, just outside, an impatient whinny sounded followed by the unmistakable nicker that was all Hellbreath. My breath funneled out of me as my eyes filled with tears.
"My girl," I whispered. I could hardly believe she'd come back to me.
I felt my way to the left along the precious book wall to where my hands slipped to what felt like a heavy wooden door. After struggling with the lock, I opened it to a blast of wintry air.
"Hellbreath?" I said, and she puffed warm steam across my cheek.
A sob choked its way out as I threw my arms around her neck and pressed my tears to her mane—and then froze.
We weren’t alone. I could feel it in the severe prickling up my scalp, the dig of someone’s eyes watching. Waiting. Did Hellbreath have a rider? I didn’t think so, not from the way she kept nudging me with her nose to tell me to get on her so we could get out of here.
I pulled away from her slightly. “Is someone there?” My voice came out wispier than normal, cut through with the knife of cold air and nerves.
No one answered. I wouldn’t know if Hellbreath had a rider unless I crept my hands toward her saddle, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who was looking at me so closely, and why.
With a deep breath that stabbed through my ribs, I gently pushed my horse out of the doorway and limped outside. My bare feet met snow. The bitter cold wind seeped through my long flannel in an instant and chattered my teeth together. I’d made much smarter decisions than coming out here like this.
But even if I didn’t want to know, I had to know. I stuck close to Hellbreath and searched for the horn on her saddle, or a stray leg to a rider who refused to say a word. No leg though. Just something tied to the horn, something that hadn’t been there when I’d ridden Hellbreath through the Crimson Forest.
She whinnied then, and a sound followed immediately after like snow cracking just a few feet away. A footstep?
I whipped my head toward it, my breath snagging in my lungs. “Grady? Is that you?”
Hellbreath pawed at the ground, likely sensing my nervousness.
After several seconds of silence, I ran my hand over the fabric tied to the horn and worked the knot loose. It felt damp, probably from the snow, and the ends of it fluttered against my palm. The smell hit me when I freed it, the night air stirring just enough to send a coppery whiff toward me.
Blood. A lot of it.
My hands shook as I tried to figure out what the piece of cloth was, and then my thumb hit one corner of it, and the monogram stitched there by my mother. KS. My baba’s initials.
I was holding his bloody handkerchief. A bloody warning.
A slight breeze sighed through the treetops, and I swore I heard a faint, whistling chuckle.
Chapter 5
I shut the door and locked it on Hellbreath, and the surge of guilt crashed into my terror so hard, it nearly buckled my knees. I had to leave her out there. I couldn’t go outside myself, not with someone lurking about and delivering bloody warnings when I didn’t even know where the barn was.
Gritting my teeth against my tears, I turned back in the direction of my room with my baba’s bloody handkerchief and my arrow. By the time I made it down the hallway, my body was sagging, my broken ribs and bruised, punctured flesh screaming. I needed to lie down, but I needed to find Archer more. When I made it to Sasha’s door, I leaned against it and tried the doorknob. Locked.
“Archer?” I knocked softly.
“Aika?”
That was Archer's voice, soft yet tense, coming from the far end of the hallway behind me.
I sucked in a relieved breath and then loosed it in a garbled mess of words. "Hellbreath— My horse is outside, and I think someone brought her here. They're still outside, and they brought me a warning. My baba's bloody handkerchief.” I held it out for him to see. “I think it's the same guy who shot my baba and…" I started to sag farther, the weight of everything too much for my healing body.
Archer was there in an instant, his arms wrapping around me and holding me close. I sank into his strength, shivered into his warmth, breathed in his scent that reminded me of wood smoke and caramel.
"I'll go out and take care of your horse," he said, his breath caressing the top of my head. "But first, we need to get you back to bed, okay?"
I nodded, my cheek sliding against his soft flannel shirt. His body felt like fire against mine, almost too hot, and I reluctantly stepped away. "Do you have a weapon you can take with you?"
"Yes." He trailed his hand down my back as he opened my bedroom door and guided me through it, his other hand at my elbow. "Don't worry about me."
"That guy out there… He desperately wants my moonshine when he could literally go anywhere to get it. I don't know why he wants mine, but I'm sure he recognized Hellbreath and followed her here or led her here to see if I was here.” I dropped my arrow and the handkerchief on the floor and then lay down on the bed, exhausted. “I'm so sorry, Archer. I'm so sorry for getting you involved in this…whatever."
"It's not your fault." He tucked the blanket up to my chin, and I found his hand and squeezed.
"Promise me you'll be careful when you go out there?"
A long pause, and I could feel him searching my face, staring intently, and for some reason, it made my cheeks flush. "I promise."
He slid his hand from mine, but I held to his fingertips for as long as I could, for his warmth, for his safety. I hated feeling like a bruised coward. Give me a wild from the Crimson Forest at far range—keyword: far—and I could handle that well enough. But a strange man who had no problem shooting my baba and then hunting me? Hell no.
After a minute, the front door closed on Archer's footsteps, and then quiet blanketed the cabin. I listened until my ears burned for the slightest sound. For Archer to come back. For the front door to open and it not be Archer.
I doubted this man outside—whoever he was—would stop until he had my moonshine. He could sneak past Archer unnoticed while he dealt with Hellbreath.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why had my brain gone in that direction? Sure, flash me the worst hypothetical so I could focus on it.
Archer could handle himself, could be aware of more than one thing at a time. Besides, when I'd been clinging to him, he sure hadn't felt breakable. I still burned where he'd touched me, still felt a little breathless at the way my body had fit with his.
The front door opened and closed.
My pulse hammered and my palms grew slick. I tugged the blanket up to my nose, but not enough to cover it so I could breathe in any change of smells. Nothing yet. Just snow and cold.
Footsteps down the hallway.
I snaked one arm out of the blanket and reached for my arrow on the floor.
The footsteps creaked on the loose board and stopped in the bedroom doorway. I closed my eyes to home in on every detail I could sense, prepared to spring up and punch and scream if I had to.
A sigh, laced with weariness and peeling off layers of wood smoke and caramel off the body it came from, filled the room. Just Archer.
I snapped my eyes open. "Did you see anything? Is Hellbreath okay?"
"She's fine. Awfully happy about the apple that hadn't gone rotten yet that I found for her." He crossed into the room and took a seat on the creaky chair next to my bed. "I saw footprints that looked like they'd trailed after your horse before she made it here, but not the owner of those prints."
I firmed my lips and nodded. "He wouldn't last too long without a fire tonight. I bet he's gone." I wished I could breathe easier at that, but unease still chased through my veins. "But now he knows I'm here."
Archer hummed in agreement.
"If it's the package he's after, there has to be more to it than just moonshine and wolfsbane and my ama’s—mom’s—herbs," I said.
"Maybe…" The chair creaked as Archer scooted closer. "Maybe it's not the ingredients themselves that make your package so interesting to him, but what the combination of those ingredients can do. Do you know what it can do, Aika?"
"Not really," I admitted with a sigh. "My baba…isn't"—damn it, I’d almost said wasn't, past tense—"the most talkative person with me. He mostly just wants me out of the way."
"Yet you're the one who tried to make the delivery to keep feeding your family when he couldn’t. That hardly seems fair."
"Well, I didn't have much choice. My baba got shot, and Jade is only fifteen and has to take care of her brother, Lee, who…needs a lot of help."
"Her brother. Not yours?"
I shook my head. “Their parents died two years ago, so we take care of them."
"We meaning your baba and you."
"Yeah."
"Why would your baba bother to take care of them if he's the type of person who wants his real daughter out of the way and names his horse Hellbreath?"
I pushed my lips together, really not wanting to go down the road that led to talking about my baba. "What does this have to do with moonshine and the guy outside?"
"I'm just trying to figure out your baba since he very likely has all the answers."
"Well, he very likely might be dead." Admitting it churned my stomach, but I might have to face the truth eventually. So might as well start preparing. "But you're right, though. The morning he got shot, he was crying, like he knew something was going to happen."
"Like what?" Archer asked softly.
"It would have to be something big to make him cry."
"Something like knowing someone was after the valuable package, the money for which would help feed him and his family through the winter?"
"Yeah. Something like that. But it's not valuable."
"It’s… It sounds like it's a lot more valuable than you think. Maybe that’s the reason your baba wants you out of the way."
Pretty sure it was because I was blind. Useless. I’d had that told to me on many occasions, the words screamed and sharpened so they’d drill farther into my skull.
“You don’t look like you believe me,” Archer said.
"You don't know my baba."
"So tell me about him."
I turned my head away from him, not a fan of going deeper into that conversational topic at all.
"Does he beat you." It wasn't a question, his voice growing too hard to make it one.
"Not once. All he does is work in the cellar beneath our house all day, every day." That was it. The end. Time to redirect. "Do you know what the package is?"
He went quiet for so long that I thought he hadn't heard me. Then, finally, the word twisting with pain: "Poison."
Poison. I’d always called it “the delivery” or “the package” to put distance between it and myself. Deep down, though, I knew from my own limited experience with it. It wasn’t just moonshine and wolfsbane and some of Ama’s herbs because the combination was powerful. I knew this, and I hated that I did.
But I didn’t know how he knew and why he seemed so affected by it.
I waited, feeling like I should reach out and touch him, gently coax more out of him. Maybe this was why he drifted away sometimes, lost in memories so vivid that they literally shook him. It had to be, and since I was already involved with the attempted delivery of it, I had a feeling this would be difficult for me to hear. But not as difficult for him to say.
We sat in silence for the longest time while he struggled—for words, for trust, for courage. I wished I could just hand those things over. I could feel his gaze roaming over my face, searching for any reason not to tell me.
"Archer, you don’t have to—"
"It killed almost my entire family."
I expected something devastating, but nothing like that. I assumed the package had something to do with livestock—which didn't really make any sense—but that was all I could come up with on my own. It had killed his entire family. My baba—with Ama’s help—had killed his family. The truth whipped across my face sharp enough to bring tears.
Would my delivery have done something similar? Killed another family, maybe?
"Indirectly," he continued. "It slowed us down, made us weak."
"Why?" I croaked through the guilt strangling my tongue.
"We used to live in the Crimson Forest."
I blinked. “Aren’t we in the Crimson Forest?”
“We’re right on the edge in the Slipjoint Forest.”
"But wilds live in the forest, not people."
"Well…we did. Another group came and decided they wanted us out. Of the Crimson Forest, anyway."
"They wanted you out when you had been there first? Why?"
He scraped his shoe across the wooden floorboards. "The ruby caves."
"Rubies… I didn't know there were ruby caves."
"Not many do. But somehow, they found out."
"Who is they?" But as soon as I asked it, I knew. "Gabriel.”
“And Faust,” he corrected.
“The ones we sold the moonshine to."
Archer kept silent, either giving a nod or nothing at all, but not disagreeing.
"Do you know where the ruby caves are?" I asked.
"I don't."
"So they resorted to murder for greed. They wanted the rubies all to themselves."
"They're far beyond greed." He gave a bitter laugh, a sound so unlike his usual good nature that it splintered down my spine. "They're sadistic monsters. One of us did know where the mines were…but now he's gone. Missing."
But not dead. Or at least Archer wasn't saying he was. Tortured, then? I was afraid to ask. And Grady? Surely, this explained some of his issues too. The surly attitude and maybe even the limp. My mouth soured, and an impossible knot tied itself into my gut.
"If they're already in the forest, then why do they need more moonshine?” I asked. “Unless there are more people living in the Crimson Forest?"
"No, it’s to keep anyone else who might be looking for the ruby caves out."
"And the guy who wants to steal my moonshine…" I winced, feeling like I'd just been punched in the chest. "Maybe he wants to be Faust’s supplier. He's moving in on my baba's territory in much the same way those people moved in on yours in the Crimson Forest."
Archer ground his heel into the floor, rolling what sounded like dirt or sand into the wood. "That about sums up my thinking as well."
"I swear I had no idea," I blurted. “If I had, I would’ve confronted my baba.”
And he would’ve laughed bitterly in my face.
"I know,” he said. “But you're still going to deliver that package, aren't you?"
I sank my eyes closed and deflated. That was our only source of money. My baba, whether he was alive or not, had one skill, and making the moonshine was it. And I… Well, I could hunt when there were wilds, and I could learn, neither of which would help to keep us all alive all winter. I didn't know what else to do. It was either my family's lives or another's who happened to stumble into the forest, and if I had to choose…
He must've read my answer all over my face because he rose and crossed to the door swiftly, like he couldn't wait to get away from me. "That's what
I thought."
The door shut with too much force and shook out the tears from my eyes.
I didn't blame him for being angry with me. But what he didn't know was that I had been poisoned, too, by the very thing he didn't want me to deliver, the thing hidden underneath my pillow. Only instead of a group of murderous ruby fanatics, it was my own mother.
Chapter 6
“Aika?”
I stirred at the sound of Archer’s voice, sensing that he sat on the edge of my bed from the heat radiating off of his body. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
It was all I’d thought about between fitful bursts of sleep, how much he’d lost, due in no small part to me, and the weight was enough to make me feel like I couldn’t breathe. He had every right to hate me—for both what my baba had sold, and what I still planned to do with it—but that thought alone made it all so much worse. He was good and kind and didn’t deserve to be hurt like this.
“I’m not mad at you.” He sighed as he flipped a lock of my hair over my shoulder, his fingertips lingering on my flannel-covered arm to draw lazy circles.
I became aware of each of them, the strength and heat behind the touch, and suddenly I wondered what it would feel like on my bare skin. My body warmed at the thought, and an unexpected tingle ran down my thighs.
“It’s a lot to take in, but I don’t blame you,” he said. “You didn’t kill my family.”
“I’m sorry. I really am, for all of it. If there was another way short of robbery to get money, I would do that instead of helping these ruby fanatics murder just to keep the forest for themselves.” Feeling like that wasn’t enough of an apology, like it would never be enough, I reached for his hand on my arm and pulled it to my lips. His hand dwarfed mine, his skin rough and hard, and I wrapped his fingers in mine before I pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Archer.”
He loosed a breath, a ragged, hot burst that fanned my cheek. He was sitting so close that his nearness galloped my heartbeat faster. “It’s nothing.”
Winter's Edge (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 1) Page 4