These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2)(78)

He takes a handful of flowers from the basket before placing it on the porch and standing to face me. “May I?” he asks, combing two fingers through a curl that’s broken free of the pins.

“It’s tradition,” Pretha says behind me. “To allow your partner to put flowers in your hair. You’ll wear them to the top of the mountain and then bury them at the door to your tent.”

“It is believed,” explains a horned male I’ve never met before, “that by burying the flowers at the door to where you’ll share a bed, you ask the gods to bless you with fertility and a healthy pregnancy.”

My eyes go wide, and flames of embarrassment lick my cheeks. Finn’s eyes dance with amusement as they meet mine. I almost swat the flowers right out of his hands and ask him what he’s thinking, but I can’t with all these people watching.

“May I?” Finn asks again, stepping even closer.

I nod, not sure what else I can do. It’s not as if there’s any risk of this ritual resulting in pregnancy anyway, so I nod, and Finn places the flowers in my hair, one by one.

The air is chilly in the rain, but Finn’s body is warm, and his big fingers are gentle, almost soothing, as he uses the pins to form miniature rosebuds and mums into a crown atop my head.

“It looks beautiful,” Pretha says when Finn steps back.

“Truly lovely,” Juliana agrees, and I wonder if anyone else notices the disapproval in her tone.

Kane grunts and nods. “Appears our prince has finally found something he’s good at.”

Finn cups my jaw for a beat. “She makes it easy,” he says roughly before stepping back.

When his hand is gone, I long for it to return.





Chapter Nineteen

Our “celebratory” hike up the mountainside was more like an endless slog through mud and rain. The good people of Staraelia don’t allow inclement weather to prevent their celebration of Lunastal, so even when the rain was coming down so hard and cold that it felt like being stabbed with a million tiny needles at once, we trudged forward. Finn was quieter than usual on the trek, always by my side but touching me only to offer help over particularly steep terrain. Every so often I’d catch him staring at me, as if he was trying to figure something out.

I like to consider myself tough, but by the time we reached the top of the mountain, I nearly whimpered in relief. I’ve let my training lapse in my weeks in the Wild Fae Lands, and I could barely keep up with these happy, sun-kissed fae from Staraelia. Perhaps instead of helping at the infirmary and school at the settlement, I should’ve worked the fields.

Someone hands me a canteen of cold water and I gulp it down while scanning our destination.

We’re not so much at the top of the mountain as we are at a rocky plateau near the top. There are dozens of tents already set up and servants darting about with food and wood.

“Your tents are ready,” a male announces from in front of a roaring bonfire. “Please retire at will.”

“Which one’s ours?” I ask Finn, trying to keep the exhaustion from my voice.

“Anxious to get him alone?” a strange male asks. His low chuckle makes me wish I could take the question back. It’s better, though, I suppose, that all these people believe Finn and I are madly in love.

Better that they don’t understand that my desire to find our tent has more to do with the muscles in my thighs trembling from that climb than it does with what will happen once we’re alone together.

“I promise to show you soon, but first you need to take a seat,” Finn says, taking my hand. The idea of sitting sounds so glorious that I happily allow him to lead me toward a seat beside the fire.

I barely have a chance to enjoy the heat of the flames before I realize that all the fae who marched up the hill with us are congregating behind Finn and smiling as they watch us.

Finn winks at me. “Don’t move,” he says.

As if I could. Now that I’m sitting, exhaustion weighs more heavily on my shoulders—in part from the exercise, but also undoubtedly from my inability to get back to sleep last night. No, now that I’m sitting, I may never rise from this spot again.

Finn takes a two large bowls from beneath the bench and turns to the fire, where he fills them with water from a black metal pot. He winks at me before sprinkling bits of dried flowers into one and adding droplets of oils to the other.

His movements are so precise, they could never be mistaken for anything but ritual, as much a part of this tradition as the flowers in my hair. The watching crowd grows as he works—my self-consciousness right along with it.

Finn returns to my bench, settling his bowls on the ground before kneeling between them. The water steams, and I can’t wait to sink my aching feet in it, but I wait, all too aware of the many eyes watching to see if I make a wrong move.

Finn reaches beneath my dress, and my breath catches. His hands wrap around my shin and slide up. The heat from his skin seeps through the leather of my boots. “It’s my honor to wash the feet of my future queen,” he says softly, his fingers beginning to unlace the boots beneath my skirt. “To show my reverence and to prove my subservience.”

My cheeks are on fire again. It seems so wrong to partake in these rituals when we’re not actually a couple, when I’m not on my way to the throne, but in the way of the throne accepting a new king.